United States President-elect Joe Biden on Sunday claimed that the US is facing "four historic crises at once". The soon to be elected leader of the US claimed that his team is attempting to tackle the challenges ahead before he takes charge of the office of the president later in January.&nbsp;

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Biden was referring to the crisis of COVID-19 along with climate change, racial injustice, and the economic condition of the country. 
 
"From COVID-19 and the economy to climate change and racial justice -- our nation is facing four historic crises at once. And come January, there will be no time to waste. That`s why my team and I are hard at work preparing to take action on day one," Biden tweeted.

A few hours after Biden's tweet, incumbent President Donald Trump signed the coronavirus relief bill, which will ensure that Americans receive government aid.&nbsp;

President Donald Trump signed a $1.4 trillion spending bill and accompanying $900 billion economic stimulus package into law on Sunday evening, averting a Tuesday government shutdown and clearing the way for $600 stimulus checks and $300 weekly enhanced unemployment benefits after nearly a week's delay and under pressure from all sides.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-signs-900-billion-covid-relief-bill-days-after-he-suggested-he-would-block-it-352808" hreflang="en">Trump signs $900 billion Covid relief bill days after he suggested he would block it</a>

On Saturday, Biden had called out Trump for "abdicating responsibility", and urged Trump to immediately sign the coronavirus relief bill which was cleared by the US house earlier, and required Trump's signature. 
 
"It is the day after Christmas, and millions of families don`t know if they`ll be able to make ends meet because of President Donald Trump`s refusal to sign an economic relief bill approved by Congress with an overwhelming and bipartisan majority," Biden said in a statement.

The $2.3 trillion package was passed with bipartisan support in the US Congress, and members of both the parties had urged Trump to sign the historic bill.

Earlier, on Sunday, Dr Anthony Fauci, top infectious disease expert in the US warned that the US was headed for the worst of COVID-19 in the coming few weeks, with Americans travel during the holiday season.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/covid-19-situation-in-us-may-worsen-after-holidays-dr-fauci-352793" hreflang="en">COVID-19 situation in US may worsen after holidays: Dr Fauci</a> 
 
"The reason I`m concerned and my colleagues in public health are concerned also is that we very well might see a post-seasonal, in the sense of Christmas, New Year`s, surge," CNN quoted Fauci as saying.

US President-elect Joe Biden last week said that the "darkest days'' against COVID-19 are still making inlays in the US, claiming the worst is ''ahead of us, not behind us''.

On Sunday, the US had surpassed the 19-million mark for the number of cases, the highest ever in the world.

The country`s current death toll stands at 333,069.

United States President-elect Joe Biden on Sunday claimed that the US is facing "four historic crises at once". The soon to be elected leader of the US claimed that his team is attempting to tackle the challenges ahead before he takes charge of the office of the president later in January.

United States President-elect Joe Biden on Sunday claimed that the US is facing "four historic crises at once". The soon to be elected leader of the US claimed that his team is attempting to tackle the challenges ahead before he takes charge of the office of the president later in January. Biden was referring to the crisis of COVID-19 along with climate change, racial injustice, and the economic condition of the country. "From COVID-19 and the economy to climate change and racial justice -- our nation is facing four historic crises at once. And come January, there will be no time to waste. That`s why my team and I are hard at work preparing to take action on day one," Biden tweeted. A few hours after Biden's tweet, incumbent President Donald Trump signed the coronavirus relief bill, which will ensure that Americans receive government aid. President Donald Trump signed a $1.4 trillion spending bill and accompanying $900 billion economic stimulus package into law on Sunday evening, averting a Tuesday government shutdown and clearing the way for $600 stimulus checks and $300 weekly enhanced unemployment benefits after nearly a week's delay and under pressure from all sides. Also read: Trump signs $900 billion Covid relief bill days after he suggested he would block it On Saturday, Biden had called out Trump for "abdicating responsibility", and urged Trump to immediately sign the coronavirus relief bill which was cleared by the US house earlier, and required Trump's signature. "It is the day after Christmas, and millions of families don`t know if they`ll be able to make ends meet because of President Donald Trump`s refusal to sign an economic relief bill approved by Congress with an overwhelming and bipartisan majority," Biden said in a statement. The $2.3 trillion package was passed with bipartisan support in the US Congress, and members of both the parties had urged Trump to sign the historic bill. Earlier, on Sunday, Dr Anthony Fauci, top infectious disease expert in the US warned that the US was headed for the worst of COVID-19 in the coming few weeks, with Americans travel during the holiday season. Also read: COVID-19 situation in US may worsen after holidays: Dr Fauci "The reason I`m concerned and my colleagues in public health are concerned also is that we very well might see a post-seasonal, in the sense of Christmas, New Year`s, surge," CNN quoted Fauci as saying. US President-elect Joe Biden last week said that the "darkest days'' against COVID-19 are still making inlays in the US, claiming the worst is ''ahead of us, not behind us''. On Sunday, the US had surpassed the 19-million mark for the number of cases, the highest ever in the world. The country`s current death toll stands at 333,069.

United States is facing 'four historic crises at once', says President-elect Joe Biden

US President Donald Trump has so far refused to sign into law a $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package, insisting that it did not do enough to help everyday people.

Due to this, millions of Americans are about to see their jobless benefits expire on Saturday.

Trump stunned Republicans and Democrats alike when he said this week he was unhappy with the massive bill, which provides $892 billion in badly needed coronavirus relief, including extending special unemployment benefits expiring on December 26, and $1.4 trillion for normal government spending.

Without Trump's signature, about 14 million people could lose those extra benefits, according to Labour Department data.&nbsp;

After months of wrangling, Republicans and Democrats agreed to the package last weekend, with the support of the White House. Trump, who hands over power to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden on January 20, did not object to terms of the deal before Congress voted it through on Monday night.

But since then he has complained that the bill gives too much money to special interests, cultural projects and foreign aid, while its one-time $600 stimulus checks to millions of struggling Americans were too small. He has demanded that be raised to $2,000.

Americans face an unprecedented holiday season amid a pandemic that has killed nearly 330,000 people in the United States, with a daily death toll now repeatedly well over 3,000 people, the highest since the pandemic began.

Trump spent much of Thursday and Christmas Day golfing at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida. The bill has been sent to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence.

On Saturday, Trump remained at his Mar-a-Lago club, with minimal staff but with members of his family, including senior advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. He has been sending tweets repeating his baseless claims about election fraud and accusing his fellow Republicans of abandoning him in his bid to overturn the election result, already shot down multiple times by US courts. He is yet to acknowledge Biden's November 3 victory.

Trump has also repeated his discontent over a $740 billion bill authorising the nation's defense programs, a legislation he vetoed last week.

On Monday, the House is scheduled to vote on overriding Trump's veto. If the House vote succeeds, the Senate could hold its vote as early as Tuesday.

Also, a partial government shutdown will now begin on Tuesday unless Congress can agree a stop-gap government funding bill before then.

 
&nbsp;

US President Donald Trump has so far refused to sign into law a $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package, insisting that it did not do enough to help everyday people.

US President Donald Trump has so far refused to sign into law a $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package, insisting that it did not do enough to help everyday people. Due to this, millions of Americans are about to see their jobless benefits expire on Saturday. Trump stunned Republicans and Democrats alike when he said this week he was unhappy with the massive bill, which provides $892 billion in badly needed coronavirus relief, including extending special unemployment benefits expiring on December 26, and $1.4 trillion for normal government spending. Without Trump's signature, about 14 million people could lose those extra benefits, according to Labour Department data. After months of wrangling, Republicans and Democrats agreed to the package last weekend, with the support of the White House. Trump, who hands over power to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden on January 20, did not object to terms of the deal before Congress voted it through on Monday night. But since then he has complained that the bill gives too much money to special interests, cultural projects and foreign aid, while its one-time $600 stimulus checks to millions of struggling Americans were too small. He has demanded that be raised to $2,000. Americans face an unprecedented holiday season amid a pandemic that has killed nearly 330,000 people in the United States, with a daily death toll now repeatedly well over 3,000 people, the highest since the pandemic began. Trump spent much of Thursday and Christmas Day golfing at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida. The bill has been sent to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence. On Saturday, Trump remained at his Mar-a-Lago club, with minimal staff but with members of his family, including senior advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. He has been sending tweets repeating his baseless claims about election fraud and accusing his fellow Republicans of abandoning him in his bid to overturn the election result, already shot down multiple times by US courts. He is yet to acknowledge Biden's November 3 victory. Trump has also repeated his discontent over a $740 billion bill authorising the nation's defense programs, a legislation he vetoed last week. On Monday, the House is scheduled to vote on overriding Trump's veto. If the House vote succeeds, the Senate could hold its vote as early as Tuesday. Also, a partial government shutdown will now begin on Tuesday unless Congress can agree a stop-gap government funding bill before then.

Trump refuses to budge over aid bill, millions risk losing jobless benefits

The year will turn, Joe Biden will take the oath of office, and we’ll heal.

That was the fundamental promise of his campaign, no? That was the hope.

But I’m struggling mightily to hold on to even a sliver of it.

Like President-elect Biden, I believe in common ground, in comity, in identifying where we intersect rather than where we diverge. I was drawn to him, as were a critical mass of other Americans, because he represented the calm after the storm, the sense after the sensation.

But is calm a mirage? Is normalcy obsolete? In the many weeks since it became clear that he lost the election, Donald Trump has successfully marketed an outrageous alternate reality, so that 70% of registered Republican voters, according to a Quinnipiac poll this month, believe that Biden’s victory was illegitimate. Trump has taken his refusal to concede to historic, previously unthinkable lengths. And an overwhelming majority of Republican members of Congress have played along, actively or passively, many of them knowing better, all of them traitors to democracy and profiles in cowardice.

To this crew Biden is supposed to extend an olive branch?

From this bunch he’s expected to wring droplets of decency?

Wishing for that may be like looking for leprechauns. The new year will let us know.

The current one, at long last ending, just about finished us. America was a frayed tapestry in the grip of some cosmic hands that kept pulling it apart, harder and harder. The most wickedly divisive, wantonly self-serving president in the country’s modern history went full-bore nihilist. A once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that should have given us shared purpose turned us against one another.

But that president is packing. The advent of effective vaccines promises a far side to all the death and fear. We have an opportunity to discover what measure of cooperation, integrity and plain old practicality we have left in us.

That’s going to be the political story of 2021, the one that overarches any specific confirmation hearing, any particular scandal, the fading thunder of Trump’s henchmen and the cruel aftershocks of social lockdowns and economic slowdown.

We’ll either seize this fresh chance — maybe our best chance — to get along, just a little, and get something done. Or we’ll blow it.

We’ll either take baby steps back toward a chapter of American government less savagely partisan than the past few years — and decades — have been, or we’ll accept polarization and paralysis as the country’s default setting for the foreseeable future. The stakes feel exactly that big to me.

“I think it’s very hard to get back to the way things were,” said Mitt Romney of Utah, the only Senate Republican who voted to convict Trump at the end of his impeachment trial. We spoke the day after the electors in the Electoral College formalized Biden’s victory.

One of the obstacles, Romney said, is a media environment in which different Americans now consume entirely different facts. “If you have 70% of Republicans thinking that Biden stole the election, that’s a hard hole to dig out of,” he said.

But if any president can make headway in this era of gall and grievance, it’s Biden. He was elected to soothe rather than stir, plod rather than strut, and by all appearances so far, he understands that.

Just look at his preternatural reticence in the face of Trump’s and other Republicans’ postelection provocations. Across much of November and December, reporters sought from Biden some howl of anguish, some fiery denunciation, and got oratorical oatmeal instead. He murmured metronomically that Republicans would eventually come around. It was unsatisfying but right. What would be accomplished by screaming the opposite?

Even when he finally took Trump and his Republican enablers to task in a speech Dec. 14, he did so with an appeal for unity and a renewed pledge to work as hard for the Americans who hadn’t voted for him as for the Americans who had. His recriminations were measured and sandwiched between feel-good reflections on democracy.

Three days later, when he and Jill Biden were interviewed by Stephen Colbert, he remained impossibly placid and insistently positive as Colbert wondered about the ferocity with which Republicans were going after Biden’s son, Hunter. “It is what it is,” Biden said, assuring Colbert that no matter how unfair or overzealous Republicans’ effort, he would always try to work with them when Americans’ welfare was in the balance.

That’s not just public posturing. The Washington Post reported that in a recent meeting with supporters of his, he was upbeat about opportunities for bipartisanship, telling them: “I may eat these words, but I predict to you: As Donald Trump’s shadow fades away, you’re going to see an awful lot change.”

Jack Markell, the Democratic former governor of Delaware, told me that Biden “has demonstrated an incredible amount of maturity by taking this long game and not getting in any spats in the meantime. His tone has been perfect, and that will serve him well.”

So will his 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president. He has dealt extensively with many powerful Republicans in Congress, and they have dealt with him, enough to appreciate, at least privately, that he’s neither an ideologue nor a grandstander.

“Republican senators from Mitch McConnell on down know his intentions,” Pete Buttigieg, whose campaign for the presidency emphasized the need to end the ceaseless warfare in Washington, told me in an interview more than a week before he emerged as Biden’s nominee for transportation secretary. “They know that he’s a good person. They know that he has good will.” Buttigieg added that he wasn’t speaking “as a kind of partisan defender of Joe Biden” but as someone familiar with what Republican lawmakers say about the president-elect when they’re away from microphones and television cameras.

Obviously, Biden’s interactions with McConnell will be shaped by the outcome of the two Senate runoffs in Georgia and whether Democrats or Republicans control the chamber. Either way, though, McConnell will play a major role in the fate of Biden’s agenda, and the faint, flickering possibility that the two might not end up as mortal enemies locked in perpetual combat was captured in the media’s fascination, following Election Day, with whether they had begun talking.

It was as if all the political journalists in Washington were packed onto some widow’s walk craning their necks for the first sign of bipartisanship’s mast. There! On the horizon! An across-the-aisle phone call!

“I feel like I’m on a roller-coaster ride, running between hopeful and hopeless,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas. We spoke just hours before the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from her state’s Republican attorney general that asked the justices to throw out the results in four states, Texas not among them, that voted for Biden. Seventeen other Republican state attorneys general supported the suit. So did 126 of her Republican colleagues in the House, including Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader.

“Initially,” Escobar said, “I was so furious and disgusted. There are lawyers on that list. There are veterans on that list. I was on the airplane, reading those names, shaking my head, saying, ‘My God, what is going on here?’ But then there was the hopeful me that looked for the names of certain colleagues and was relieved that they were not on that list.” Indeed, 70 House Republicans took a pass.

“That’s where I found my hope,” Escobar said. “Maybe they’re the path forward.”

There are additional places to find hope. The vaccination campaign that just began casts government as a constructive, even lifesaving force. And once enough of us have been vaccinated, we can — and may yearn to — come together, both literally and figuratively. Buttigieg envisioned “this return, I hope, to a different kind of social and physical life by summertime.”

“That just changes what it feels like to be an American,” he said. “That’s not a policy thing, but it’s a dynamic that’ll be happening all around us.”

Although House Republicans continued, even after the Electoral College had spoken, to cower before and coddle Trump, Senate Republicans began to sing a more melodious tune, with McConnell as their unlikely choirmaster.

He not only declared on the Senate floor that “the Electoral College has spoken” and publicly congratulated Biden; he also privately instructed Republican senators not to indulge Trump’s attack on those results.

Biden, ever affable, called and thanked McConnell. Can this marriage indeed be saved?

Romney’s answer was especially interesting, as he’s among the small but consequential contingent of Republican lawmakers from whom the Biden administration would seek cooperation. And he said that the fate of comity hinged on key variables, some of which are outside Biden’s control:

“What is Trump going to do?” he wondered aloud. “Will he get tired of the prospect of being on TV every day and battling? I don’t think so. Will people move on or will they continue to want to be entertained by a particularly skilled showman?”

If they remain rapt and his show is the usual pageant of paranoia and self-pity, it’s hard to see how Washington changes.

Also, Romney said, “Where does my party go? That will affect the nature of the dialogue. There are two roads we can take. One road is: We need to get the youth, we need to do better with minorities, we need to regain the suburbs that we lost. I don’t see a lot of people arguing for that.”

He meant in terms of future party leaders and Republicans who might be looking at the 2024 presidential race. “Ben Sasse, Chris Christie,” he said, referring to the Nebraska senator and the former New Jersey governor. “That’s about all that I can come up with.”

But, he added, “the other lane” of politicians trying to appropriate Trump’s populism is crowded. He mentioned Sens. Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, along with Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who served as Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations. If they drive the Republican conversation, he said, “that would represent a challenging environment for a Biden administration.”

“On the other hand,” he said, “there are a number of us who feel a responsibility to work on a bipartisan basis.” Romney was in a small group of Republicans and Democrats who proposed a stimulus deal that seemed to move the pandemic-relief legislation forward, and the House’s and Senate’s later passage of a sweeping $900 billion relief package, no matter how seriously flawed, “showed the ascendance of moderates as a new force in a divided Senate” and validated Biden’s “belief that it is still possible to make deals on Capitol Hill,” Carl Hulse wrote in The Times on Monday.

Biden could be helped by the care he has taken not to seem too partisan himself. “I haven’t evaluated the Cabinet terribly closely, but they have not yet been alarming,” Romney said. “They’re adults. They’re Democrats and they’re more liberal than I am, but that’s what the nation has chosen.”

It’s crucial, he said, for Biden “to recognize that while he won by 7 million votes, President Trump got a record number of votes as well. And part of that is because people were very fearful of things that they thought he might do.” He gave the Green New Deal as an example. “Don’t prove the fearmongers right. Don’t go out with a bevy of cultural actions that will terrify and energize the most extreme voices in my party.”

And don’t pin all of the pain caused by the pandemic on Trump. That was the plea of Rep. Susan Brooks, an Indiana Republican who is retiring from Congress after four terms in the House. “This is not one person’s, one administration’s, one party’s fault, and yet I can already see that beginning: to place all of this death and destruction at the feet of President Trump,” she told me. “And that’s not fair.”

More to the point, it’s not a remedy, it’s not forward-looking, and it plays into Republicans’ fervent and comity-thwarting belief that Democrats and the media never, from the very beginning, gave Trump the benefit of the doubt.

You know who gets that? Biden.

Even as Trump’s irrationally furious supporters threatened election officials, even as they took violently to the streets, even as Trump and many Republican lawmakers encouraged them with unsubstantiated claims about fraudulent votes and even as Biden correctly called this out as “unconscionable” in that Dec. 14 speech, he emphasized Americans’ goodness and America’s greatness. It wasn’t just an oratorical feat. It was a spiritual and emotional one.

“We need to work together to give each other a chance to lower the temperature,” he said. “We may come from different places, hold different beliefs, but we share in common a love for this country.”

That’s another conviction that I struggle with. But it’s essential — it’s everything — that Joe Biden embraces it.

The year will turn, Joe Biden will take the oath of office, and we’ll heal. That was the fundamental promise of his campaign, no? That was the hope. But I’m struggling mightily to hold on to even a sliver of it.

The year will turn, Joe Biden will take the oath of office, and we’ll heal. That was the fundamental promise of his campaign, no? That was the hope. But I’m struggling mightily to hold on to even a sliver of it. Like President-elect Biden, I believe in common ground, in comity, in identifying where we intersect rather than where we diverge. I was drawn to him, as were a critical mass of other Americans, because he represented the calm after the storm, the sense after the sensation. But is calm a mirage? Is normalcy obsolete? In the many weeks since it became clear that he lost the election, Donald Trump has successfully marketed an outrageous alternate reality, so that 70% of registered Republican voters, according to a Quinnipiac poll this month, believe that Biden’s victory was illegitimate. Trump has taken his refusal to concede to historic, previously unthinkable lengths. And an overwhelming majority of Republican members of Congress have played along, actively or passively, many of them knowing better, all of them traitors to democracy and profiles in cowardice. To this crew Biden is supposed to extend an olive branch? From this bunch he’s expected to wring droplets of decency? Wishing for that may be like looking for leprechauns. The new year will let us know. The current one, at long last ending, just about finished us. America was a frayed tapestry in the grip of some cosmic hands that kept pulling it apart, harder and harder. The most wickedly divisive, wantonly self-serving president in the country’s modern history went full-bore nihilist. A once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that should have given us shared purpose turned us against one another. But that president is packing. The advent of effective vaccines promises a far side to all the death and fear. We have an opportunity to discover what measure of cooperation, integrity and plain old practicality we have left in us. That’s going to be the political story of 2021, the one that overarches any specific confirmation hearing, any particular scandal, the fading thunder of Trump’s henchmen and the cruel aftershocks of social lockdowns and economic slowdown. We’ll either seize this fresh chance — maybe our best chance — to get along, just a little, and get something done. Or we’ll blow it. We’ll either take baby steps back toward a chapter of American government less savagely partisan than the past few years — and decades — have been, or we’ll accept polarization and paralysis as the country’s default setting for the foreseeable future. The stakes feel exactly that big to me. “I think it’s very hard to get back to the way things were,” said Mitt Romney of Utah, the only Senate Republican who voted to convict Trump at the end of his impeachment trial. We spoke the day after the electors in the Electoral College formalized Biden’s victory. One of the obstacles, Romney said, is a media environment in which different Americans now consume entirely different facts. “If you have 70% of Republicans thinking that Biden stole the election, that’s a hard hole to dig out of,” he said. But if any president can make headway in this era of gall and grievance, it’s Biden. He was elected to soothe rather than stir, plod rather than strut, and by all appearances so far, he understands that. Just look at his preternatural reticence in the face of Trump’s and other Republicans’ postelection provocations. Across much of November and December, reporters sought from Biden some howl of anguish, some fiery denunciation, and got oratorical oatmeal instead. He murmured metronomically that Republicans would eventually come around. It was unsatisfying but right. What would be accomplished by screaming the opposite? Even when he finally took Trump and his Republican enablers to task in a speech Dec. 14, he did so with an appeal for unity and a renewed pledge to work as hard for the Americans who hadn’t voted for him as for the Americans who had. His recriminations were measured and sandwiched between feel-good reflections on democracy. Three days later, when he and Jill Biden were interviewed by Stephen Colbert, he remained impossibly placid and insistently positive as Colbert wondered about the ferocity with which Republicans were going after Biden’s son, Hunter. “It is what it is,” Biden said, assuring Colbert that no matter how unfair or overzealous Republicans’ effort, he would always try to work with them when Americans’ welfare was in the balance. That’s not just public posturing. The Washington Post reported that in a recent meeting with supporters of his, he was upbeat about opportunities for bipartisanship, telling them: “I may eat these words, but I predict to you: As Donald Trump’s shadow fades away, you’re going to see an awful lot change.” Jack Markell, the Democratic former governor of Delaware, told me that Biden “has demonstrated an incredible amount of maturity by taking this long game and not getting in any spats in the meantime. His tone has been perfect, and that will serve him well.” So will his 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president. He has dealt extensively with many powerful Republicans in Congress, and they have dealt with him, enough to appreciate, at least privately, that he’s neither an ideologue nor a grandstander. “Republican senators from Mitch McConnell on down know his intentions,” Pete Buttigieg, whose campaign for the presidency emphasized the need to end the ceaseless warfare in Washington, told me in an interview more than a week before he emerged as Biden’s nominee for transportation secretary. “They know that he’s a good person. They know that he has good will.” Buttigieg added that he wasn’t speaking “as a kind of partisan defender of Joe Biden” but as someone familiar with what Republican lawmakers say about the president-elect when they’re away from microphones and television cameras. Obviously, Biden’s interactions with McConnell will be shaped by the outcome of the two Senate runoffs in Georgia and whether Democrats or Republicans control the chamber. Either way, though, McConnell will play a major role in the fate of Biden’s agenda, and the faint, flickering possibility that the two might not end up as mortal enemies locked in perpetual combat was captured in the media’s fascination, following Election Day, with whether they had begun talking. It was as if all the political journalists in Washington were packed onto some widow’s walk craning their necks for the first sign of bipartisanship’s mast. There! On the horizon! An across-the-aisle phone call! “I feel like I’m on a roller-coaster ride, running between hopeful and hopeless,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas. We spoke just hours before the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from her state’s Republican attorney general that asked the justices to throw out the results in four states, Texas not among them, that voted for Biden. Seventeen other Republican state attorneys general supported the suit. So did 126 of her Republican colleagues in the House, including Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader. “Initially,” Escobar said, “I was so furious and disgusted. There are lawyers on that list. There are veterans on that list. I was on the airplane, reading those names, shaking my head, saying, ‘My God, what is going on here?’ But then there was the hopeful me that looked for the names of certain colleagues and was relieved that they were not on that list.” Indeed, 70 House Republicans took a pass. “That’s where I found my hope,” Escobar said. “Maybe they’re the path forward.” There are additional places to find hope. The vaccination campaign that just began casts government as a constructive, even lifesaving force. And once enough of us have been vaccinated, we can — and may yearn to — come together, both literally and figuratively. Buttigieg envisioned “this return, I hope, to a different kind of social and physical life by summertime.” “That just changes what it feels like to be an American,” he said. “That’s not a policy thing, but it’s a dynamic that’ll be happening all around us.” Although House Republicans continued, even after the Electoral College had spoken, to cower before and coddle Trump, Senate Republicans began to sing a more melodious tune, with McConnell as their unlikely choirmaster. He not only declared on the Senate floor that “the Electoral College has spoken” and publicly congratulated Biden; he also privately instructed Republican senators not to indulge Trump’s attack on those results. Biden, ever affable, called and thanked McConnell. Can this marriage indeed be saved? Romney’s answer was especially interesting, as he’s among the small but consequential contingent of Republican lawmakers from whom the Biden administration would seek cooperation. And he said that the fate of comity hinged on key variables, some of which are outside Biden’s control: “What is Trump going to do?” he wondered aloud. “Will he get tired of the prospect of being on TV every day and battling? I don’t think so. Will people move on or will they continue to want to be entertained by a particularly skilled showman?” If they remain rapt and his show is the usual pageant of paranoia and self-pity, it’s hard to see how Washington changes. Also, Romney said, “Where does my party go? That will affect the nature of the dialogue. There are two roads we can take. One road is: We need to get the youth, we need to do better with minorities, we need to regain the suburbs that we lost. I don’t see a lot of people arguing for that.” He meant in terms of future party leaders and Republicans who might be looking at the 2024 presidential race. “Ben Sasse, Chris Christie,” he said, referring to the Nebraska senator and the former New Jersey governor. “That’s about all that I can come up with.” But, he added, “the other lane” of politicians trying to appropriate Trump’s populism is crowded. He mentioned Sens. Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, along with Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who served as Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations. If they drive the Republican conversation, he said, “that would represent a challenging environment for a Biden administration.” “On the other hand,” he said, “there are a number of us who feel a responsibility to work on a bipartisan basis.” Romney was in a small group of Republicans and Democrats who proposed a stimulus deal that seemed to move the pandemic-relief legislation forward, and the House’s and Senate’s later passage of a sweeping $900 billion relief package, no matter how seriously flawed, “showed the ascendance of moderates as a new force in a divided Senate” and validated Biden’s “belief that it is still possible to make deals on Capitol Hill,” Carl Hulse wrote in The Times on Monday. Biden could be helped by the care he has taken not to seem too partisan himself. “I haven’t evaluated the Cabinet terribly closely, but they have not yet been alarming,” Romney said. “They’re adults. They’re Democrats and they’re more liberal than I am, but that’s what the nation has chosen.” It’s crucial, he said, for Biden “to recognize that while he won by 7 million votes, President Trump got a record number of votes as well. And part of that is because people were very fearful of things that they thought he might do.” He gave the Green New Deal as an example. “Don’t prove the fearmongers right. Don’t go out with a bevy of cultural actions that will terrify and energize the most extreme voices in my party.” And don’t pin all of the pain caused by the pandemic on Trump. That was the plea of Rep. Susan Brooks, an Indiana Republican who is retiring from Congress after four terms in the House. “This is not one person’s, one administration’s, one party’s fault, and yet I can already see that beginning: to place all of this death and destruction at the feet of President Trump,” she told me. “And that’s not fair.” More to the point, it’s not a remedy, it’s not forward-looking, and it plays into Republicans’ fervent and comity-thwarting belief that Democrats and the media never, from the very beginning, gave Trump the benefit of the doubt. You know who gets that? Biden. Even as Trump’s irrationally furious supporters threatened election officials, even as they took violently to the streets, even as Trump and many Republican lawmakers encouraged them with unsubstantiated claims about fraudulent votes and even as Biden correctly called this out as “unconscionable” in that Dec. 14 speech, he emphasized Americans’ goodness and America’s greatness. It wasn’t just an oratorical feat. It was a spiritual and emotional one. “We need to work together to give each other a chance to lower the temperature,” he said. “We may come from different places, hold different beliefs, but we share in common a love for this country.” That’s another conviction that I struggle with. But it’s essential — it’s everything — that Joe Biden embraces it.

Biden’s withering olive branch

President Donald Trump’s baseless and desperate claims of a stolen election over the last seven weeks — the most aggressive promotion of “voter fraud” in American history — failed to get any traction in courts across seven states, or come anywhere close to reversing the loss he suffered to Joe Biden.

But the effort has led to at least one unexpected and profoundly different result: A thorough debunking of the sorts of voter fraud claims that Republicans have used to roll back voting rights for the better part of the young century.

In making their case in real courts and the court of public opinion, Trump and his allies have trotted out a series of tropes and canards similar to those Republicans have pushed to justify laws that in many cases made voting disproportionately harder for Blacks and Hispanics, who largely support Democrats.

Their allegations that thousands of people “double voted” by assuming other identities at polling booths echoed those that have previously been cited as a reason to impose strict new voter identification laws.

Their assertion that large numbers of noncitizens cast illegal votes for Biden matched claims Republicans have made to argue for harsh new “proof of citizenship” requirements for voter registration.

And their tales about large numbers of cheaters casting ballots in the name of “dead voters” were akin to those several states have used to conduct aggressive “purges” of voting lists that wrongfully slated tens of thousands of registrations for termination.

After bringing some 60 lawsuits, and even offering financial incentive for information about fraud, Trump and his allies have failed to prove definitively any case of illegal voting on behalf of their opponent in court — not a single case of an undocumented immigrant casting a ballot, a citizen double voting, nor any credible evidence that legions of the voting dead gave Biden a victory that wasn’t his.

“It really should put a death knell in this narrative that has been peddled around claims of vote fraud that just have never been substantiated,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit legal group, and a former Justice Department attorney whose work included voting cases. “They put themselves on trial, and they failed.”

Yet there are no signs that those defeats in the courts will change the trajectory of the ongoing efforts to restrict voting that have been core to conservative politics since the disputed 2000 election, which coincided with heightened party concerns that demographic shifts would favor Democrats in the popular vote.

The false notions have lived on in Trump’s Twitter and Facebook feeds; on the television programming of Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network; and in statehouse hearings where Republican leaders have contemplated more restrictive voting laws based on the rejected allegations.

In Georgia, Republican legislators have already discussed toughening the state’s rules on voting by mail and on voter identification. In Pennsylvania, Republican lawmakers are considering reversing moves that had made it easier to vote absentee, and their counterparts in Wisconsin are similarly considering tighter restrictions for mail voting, as well as for early voting.

If anything, Trump has given the movement to limit ballot access new momentum while becoming the singular, charismatic leader it never had.

After declaring outright that high levels of voting are bad for Republicans, he persuaded his base that the election system is rotten with fraud, and to view that fiction as a bedrock party principle. Several recent polls have shown that majorities of Republicans think the election was fraudulent, even as election officials across the country report that it went surprisingly smoothly even in a pandemic, with exceptionally high turnout and no evidence of fraud aside from the usual smattering of lone wolf bad actors or mistakes by well-intentioned voters.

A Losing Streak

Through seven weeks of court rulings, voter-fraud allegations have been rejected again and again as lacking proof or credibility, often by Republican-appointed judges.

Trump and his allies have argued that the 59 losses they faced in 60 lawsuits filed since Election Day were based on procedural rulings, complaining that judges refused to look at the particulars of allegations they have sought to use to overturn an election Biden won by 7 million votes (and by 74 in the Electoral College).

But according to a New York Times analysis, they did not even formally allege fraud in more than two-thirds of their cases, arguing instead that local officials deviated from election codes, failed to administer elections properly or that the rules in place on Election Day were themselves illegal.

In the single case Trump won, his campaign challenged a state-ordered deadline extension in Pennsylvania for the submission of personal identification for mailed ballots, affecting a small number of votes.

In nearly a dozen cases their fraud accusations did indeed have their days in court, and consistently collapsed under scrutiny.

Despite the definitive nature of those rulings, the Republican response has been to hold fast to the president’s fraud fictions.

Republicans in Congress have promoted them, too, as Trump pushes senators and House members to reject the Electoral College results at what is supposed to be a procedural vote to affirm Biden’s clear victory over the president on Jan. 6.

In a Senate hearing on Dec. 16, for instance, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma reprised a series of Trump campaign lawsuit claims about illegal voting in Nevada.

“Forty-two thousand people in Nevada voted more than once, according to your work,” Lankford said during questioning of a Trump campaign attorney, Jesse Binnall. Lankford went on to repeat the Trump campaign’s claims that dead people, out-of-state residents and noncitizens had cast illegal ballots in Nevada in substantial numbers. The campaign had based those charges on analyses that matched voting lists with records from commercial and governmental sources.

But the trial judge in the Nevada case had dismissed the suit nearly two weeks earlier, rejecting those analyses as unsound and unconvincing, declaring that the campaign “did not prove under any standard of proof that illegal votes were cast and counted.”

Such so-called “list matching,” of the sort states rely on to pare their rolls of invalid voters, takes careful work by longtime experts. It is easy to do poorly. It was ill-conceived or badly executed data analyses that led Georgia and Texas to move recently to wrongfully eliminate tens of thousands of valid registrations, reversing course only after voting rights groups and others called attention to the mistakes.

Conservatives have also used such data analysis to make wild claims about voter fraud over the years, often hitting stumbling blocks in court as they were shown to be badly flawed or incorrect. That pattern held in this year’s torrent of pro-Trump lawsuits, as well.

For instance, in pressing their cases across the country, Republicans have referenced data analyses by a cybersecurity executive and one-time Texas congressional candidate named Russell J. Ramsland Jr. One of his reports alleged that various Michigan counties had vote tallies that exceeded their populations, implying their totals were padded with illegal ballots; the counties in question, it turned out, were in Minnesota, not Michigan.

Likewise, several specific accusations that people illegally cast ballots in the names of dead people have been born of amateurish data analysis that later proved faulty.

In a federal case the Trump campaign brought seeking to delay certification of the results in Michigan, the specific mention of a ballot cast by a dead voter was incorrect: No vote was cast through the dead man’s registration. Rather, a man with his same exact name voted legally. (Trump’s team pulled that case from the docket as Michigan moved forward toward certification).

That is a common issue in claims about “dead voters,’’ “double voters” and “out of state” voters — blind comparisons of official data often lead to “false positives” treating two people with the same names as the same person.

In Georgia, lawyers for the secretary of state are seeking to have the court reject an “expert” analysis declaring that Biden’s winning result included more than 10,000 ballots from dead citizens. The state’s own expert analyst in the case, the MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III, concluded that the Trump campaign only appeared to “identify the unremarkable fact that some Georgians who voted share the name and birth year of a different person who died,” as state lawyers put it. In several other instances, the “dead voters” in whose names the Trump campaign said ballots were cast proved very much alive.

This past week in Pennsylvania, authorities did make one arrest based on an accusation the Trump campaign first leveled in November. Delaware County prosecutors said a man named Bruce Bartman cast an absentee ballot in his deceased mother’s name — for Trump. Bartman’s lawyer said Bartman had done so as a misguided “form of protest,” and the local prosecutor said it was nothing more than “evidence that one person committed voter fraud.”

Implausible Complaints

Trump and his allies have also attacked election officials themselves. In a new twist on voter fraud mythology, they have claimed the officials were either complicit in fantastical fraud schemes or willing participants. In multiple states such accusations were summarily thrown out by judges.

In Arizona, Republicans filed a federal lawsuit claiming that both election workers and Democratic officials overseeing the election “could” have perpetuated any number of fraudulent activities. Judge Diane Humetewa, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, dismissed the suit, saying “these innuendoes fail to meet” standards for fraud allegations.

In Michigan, Judge Timothy Kenny, a state judge, was asked to consider the claim that election officials “coached” people to vote — a claim that was made, the judge noted in dismissing it, without a location or date or other relevant details.

Few Trump-era claims of fraud, however, have quite caught on in conservative media like those involving computerized voting systems allegedly “switching” Trump votes to Biden votes.

One of the wildest of those claims was an accusation that officials in at least four states used ballot tabulators built by Dominion Voting Systems to flip hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of votes from Trump to Biden.

This improbable plot received its fullest airing in four lawsuits filed by Sidney Powell, a onetime lawyer for the Trump campaign.

Her personal record is much like that of all of the other failed Republican voter fraud suits. Despite refutation from judges and election officials around the country, her narrative has been continually repeated in right-wing media, ensuring that the notion of extensive fraud gained traction unimpeded.

A judge in Phoenix called Powell’s complaint “void of plausible allegations.” A judge in Michigan wrote that Powell’s belief that voting machines changed the election outcome was “an amalgamation of theories, conjecture, and speculation.”

The most thorough debunking of Powell’s conspiracies came this past week in a blistering letter from Dominion that affirmed the integrity of its machines, which has been verified in independent audits. The company demanded she retract her statements and accused her of engaging in “a reckless disinformation campaign.”

Dominion indicated that it was also mulling legal action against Rudy Giuliani, who has led Trump’s postelection legal effort, and several prominent conservative media figures.

As she continues to press her fraud myth nationally, Powell has taken her arguments to the Supreme Court, all the while keeping close contact with Trump, meeting in-person at the White House.

The city of Detroit is seeking sanctions against Powell, and the Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel says she is considering doing the same because of “intentional misrepresentations” in Powell’s legal filings.

Yet for all of that, the story line lives on, even on Christmas Eve, when Trump took the time to write on Twitter, “VOTER FRAUD IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY.”

President Donald Trump’s baseless and desperate claims of a stolen election over the last seven weeks — the most aggressive promotion of “voter fraud” in American history — failed to get any traction in courts across seven states, or come anywhere close to reversing the loss he suffered to Joe Biden.

President Donald Trump’s baseless and desperate claims of a stolen election over the last seven weeks — the most aggressive promotion of “voter fraud” in American history — failed to get any traction in courts across seven states, or come anywhere close to reversing the loss he suffered to Joe Biden. But the effort has led to at least one unexpected and profoundly different result: A thorough debunking of the sorts of voter fraud claims that Republicans have used to roll back voting rights for the better part of the young century. In making their case in real courts and the court of public opinion, Trump and his allies have trotted out a series of tropes and canards similar to those Republicans have pushed to justify laws that in many cases made voting disproportionately harder for Blacks and Hispanics, who largely support Democrats. Their allegations that thousands of people “double voted” by assuming other identities at polling booths echoed those that have previously been cited as a reason to impose strict new voter identification laws. Their assertion that large numbers of noncitizens cast illegal votes for Biden matched claims Republicans have made to argue for harsh new “proof of citizenship” requirements for voter registration. And their tales about large numbers of cheaters casting ballots in the name of “dead voters” were akin to those several states have used to conduct aggressive “purges” of voting lists that wrongfully slated tens of thousands of registrations for termination. After bringing some 60 lawsuits, and even offering financial incentive for information about fraud, Trump and his allies have failed to prove definitively any case of illegal voting on behalf of their opponent in court — not a single case of an undocumented immigrant casting a ballot, a citizen double voting, nor any credible evidence that legions of the voting dead gave Biden a victory that wasn’t his. “It really should put a death knell in this narrative that has been peddled around claims of vote fraud that just have never been substantiated,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit legal group, and a former Justice Department attorney whose work included voting cases. “They put themselves on trial, and they failed.” Yet there are no signs that those defeats in the courts will change the trajectory of the ongoing efforts to restrict voting that have been core to conservative politics since the disputed 2000 election, which coincided with heightened party concerns that demographic shifts would favor Democrats in the popular vote. The false notions have lived on in Trump’s Twitter and Facebook feeds; on the television programming of Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network; and in statehouse hearings where Republican leaders have contemplated more restrictive voting laws based on the rejected allegations. In Georgia, Republican legislators have already discussed toughening the state’s rules on voting by mail and on voter identification. In Pennsylvania, Republican lawmakers are considering reversing moves that had made it easier to vote absentee, and their counterparts in Wisconsin are similarly considering tighter restrictions for mail voting, as well as for early voting. If anything, Trump has given the movement to limit ballot access new momentum while becoming the singular, charismatic leader it never had. After declaring outright that high levels of voting are bad for Republicans, he persuaded his base that the election system is rotten with fraud, and to view that fiction as a bedrock party principle. Several recent polls have shown that majorities of Republicans think the election was fraudulent, even as election officials across the country report that it went surprisingly smoothly even in a pandemic, with exceptionally high turnout and no evidence of fraud aside from the usual smattering of lone wolf bad actors or mistakes by well-intentioned voters. A Losing Streak Through seven weeks of court rulings, voter-fraud allegations have been rejected again and again as lacking proof or credibility, often by Republican-appointed judges. Trump and his allies have argued that the 59 losses they faced in 60 lawsuits filed since Election Day were based on procedural rulings, complaining that judges refused to look at the particulars of allegations they have sought to use to overturn an election Biden won by 7 million votes (and by 74 in the Electoral College). But according to a New York Times analysis, they did not even formally allege fraud in more than two-thirds of their cases, arguing instead that local officials deviated from election codes, failed to administer elections properly or that the rules in place on Election Day were themselves illegal. In the single case Trump won, his campaign challenged a state-ordered deadline extension in Pennsylvania for the submission of personal identification for mailed ballots, affecting a small number of votes. In nearly a dozen cases their fraud accusations did indeed have their days in court, and consistently collapsed under scrutiny. Despite the definitive nature of those rulings, the Republican response has been to hold fast to the president’s fraud fictions. Republicans in Congress have promoted them, too, as Trump pushes senators and House members to reject the Electoral College results at what is supposed to be a procedural vote to affirm Biden’s clear victory over the president on Jan. 6. In a Senate hearing on Dec. 16, for instance, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma reprised a series of Trump campaign lawsuit claims about illegal voting in Nevada. “Forty-two thousand people in Nevada voted more than once, according to your work,” Lankford said during questioning of a Trump campaign attorney, Jesse Binnall. Lankford went on to repeat the Trump campaign’s claims that dead people, out-of-state residents and noncitizens had cast illegal ballots in Nevada in substantial numbers. The campaign had based those charges on analyses that matched voting lists with records from commercial and governmental sources. But the trial judge in the Nevada case had dismissed the suit nearly two weeks earlier, rejecting those analyses as unsound and unconvincing, declaring that the campaign “did not prove under any standard of proof that illegal votes were cast and counted.” Such so-called “list matching,” of the sort states rely on to pare their rolls of invalid voters, takes careful work by longtime experts. It is easy to do poorly. It was ill-conceived or badly executed data analyses that led Georgia and Texas to move recently to wrongfully eliminate tens of thousands of valid registrations, reversing course only after voting rights groups and others called attention to the mistakes. Conservatives have also used such data analysis to make wild claims about voter fraud over the years, often hitting stumbling blocks in court as they were shown to be badly flawed or incorrect. That pattern held in this year’s torrent of pro-Trump lawsuits, as well. For instance, in pressing their cases across the country, Republicans have referenced data analyses by a cybersecurity executive and one-time Texas congressional candidate named Russell J. Ramsland Jr. One of his reports alleged that various Michigan counties had vote tallies that exceeded their populations, implying their totals were padded with illegal ballots; the counties in question, it turned out, were in Minnesota, not Michigan. Likewise, several specific accusations that people illegally cast ballots in the names of dead people have been born of amateurish data analysis that later proved faulty. In a federal case the Trump campaign brought seeking to delay certification of the results in Michigan, the specific mention of a ballot cast by a dead voter was incorrect: No vote was cast through the dead man’s registration. Rather, a man with his same exact name voted legally. (Trump’s team pulled that case from the docket as Michigan moved forward toward certification). That is a common issue in claims about “dead voters,’’ “double voters” and “out of state” voters — blind comparisons of official data often lead to “false positives” treating two people with the same names as the same person. In Georgia, lawyers for the secretary of state are seeking to have the court reject an “expert” analysis declaring that Biden’s winning result included more than 10,000 ballots from dead citizens. The state’s own expert analyst in the case, the MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III, concluded that the Trump campaign only appeared to “identify the unremarkable fact that some Georgians who voted share the name and birth year of a different person who died,” as state lawyers put it. In several other instances, the “dead voters” in whose names the Trump campaign said ballots were cast proved very much alive. This past week in Pennsylvania, authorities did make one arrest based on an accusation the Trump campaign first leveled in November. Delaware County prosecutors said a man named Bruce Bartman cast an absentee ballot in his deceased mother’s name — for Trump. Bartman’s lawyer said Bartman had done so as a misguided “form of protest,” and the local prosecutor said it was nothing more than “evidence that one person committed voter fraud.” Implausible Complaints Trump and his allies have also attacked election officials themselves. In a new twist on voter fraud mythology, they have claimed the officials were either complicit in fantastical fraud schemes or willing participants. In multiple states such accusations were summarily thrown out by judges. In Arizona, Republicans filed a federal lawsuit claiming that both election workers and Democratic officials overseeing the election “could” have perpetuated any number of fraudulent activities. Judge Diane Humetewa, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, dismissed the suit, saying “these innuendoes fail to meet” standards for fraud allegations. In Michigan, Judge Timothy Kenny, a state judge, was asked to consider the claim that election officials “coached” people to vote — a claim that was made, the judge noted in dismissing it, without a location or date or other relevant details. Few Trump-era claims of fraud, however, have quite caught on in conservative media like those involving computerized voting systems allegedly “switching” Trump votes to Biden votes. One of the wildest of those claims was an accusation that officials in at least four states used ballot tabulators built by Dominion Voting Systems to flip hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of votes from Trump to Biden. This improbable plot received its fullest airing in four lawsuits filed by Sidney Powell, a onetime lawyer for the Trump campaign. Her personal record is much like that of all of the other failed Republican voter fraud suits. Despite refutation from judges and election officials around the country, her narrative has been continually repeated in right-wing media, ensuring that the notion of extensive fraud gained traction unimpeded. A judge in Phoenix called Powell’s complaint “void of plausible allegations.” A judge in Michigan wrote that Powell’s belief that voting machines changed the election outcome was “an amalgamation of theories, conjecture, and speculation.” The most thorough debunking of Powell’s conspiracies came this past week in a blistering letter from Dominion that affirmed the integrity of its machines, which has been verified in independent audits. The company demanded she retract her statements and accused her of engaging in “a reckless disinformation campaign.” Dominion indicated that it was also mulling legal action against Rudy Giuliani, who has led Trump’s postelection legal effort, and several prominent conservative media figures. As she continues to press her fraud myth nationally, Powell has taken her arguments to the Supreme Court, all the while keeping close contact with Trump, meeting in-person at the White House. The city of Detroit is seeking sanctions against Powell, and the Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel says she is considering doing the same because of “intentional misrepresentations” in Powell’s legal filings. Yet for all of that, the story line lives on, even on Christmas Eve, when Trump took the time to write on Twitter, “VOTER FRAUD IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY.”

Trump’s fraud claims died in court, but the myth of stolen elections lives on

Two years ago, Democrats celebrated a sweep of seven Republican-held congressional seats in California as evidence of the party’s growing ability to compete in swing districts here and across the nation.

But this year, Republicans snatched back four of those seats even as Joe Biden swamped President Donald Trump in California. The losses stunned Democrats and contributed to the razor-thin margin the party will hold in the House of Representatives this January.

The turnaround is testimony to how competitive the seats are, particularly in Orange County, once a bastion of conservative Republicanism that has been moving steadily Democratic over the past 20 years.

But by any measure, the results were a setback for Democrats in this state and nationally, signaling the steep obstacles they will face in 2022 competing in the predominantly suburban swing districts that fueled their takeover of the House in 2018.

The Democrats’ losses came for a number of reasons, including forces particular to California and the complications of campaigning during a pandemic. But as much as anything, they reflected the potency of Republican attacks, some false or exaggerated, that Democrats were the party of socialism, defunding the police and abolishing private health insurance.

The attacks — led in no small part by Trump as a central part of his reelection strategy — came at a time when parts of California were swept by street protests against police abuses, some of which turned into glass-shattering bouts of looting and confrontations with law enforcement that were heavily covered on local television.

“Republicans hung around Democrats’ necks that we are all socialist or communist and we all wanted to defund the police,” said Harley Rouda, a Democrat from Orange County who was defeated by Michelle Steel, a Republican member of the Orange County board of supervisors. “In my opinion, we as a party did a less than adequate job in refuting that narrative. We won in 2018 and took the House back because of people like me — moderates — flipping radical Republican seats.”

Republicans said that attempts by Democrats to portray themselves as moderates were undercut by a shift of the party to the left and by the demonstrations.

“It was incredibly easy for us to draw contrasts,” said Jessica Millan Patterson, leader of the California Republican Party. She said the protests “were happening all over. It looked like a war zone.”

For all that, election outcomes are the result of many factors — and that was particularly the case in a campaign that played out against a deadly pandemic and with such a polarizing figure as Trump dominating the political debate.

Democrats said they were also hurt by a national policy, set by the party, to avoid door-to-door canvassing during the pandemic. Presumably, that will not be a factor in 2022.

“The No. 1 issue in our campaign is we didn’t canvass,” said Rep. T.J. Cox, a Democrat who represents the San Joaquin Valley and lost to David Valadao, the Republican he unseated in 2018. “We didn’t do the door-to-door.”

He said it was like playing for a football team that had been told “they can’t pass.”

Christy Smith, a Democrat from northern Los Angeles County who failed to win a district her party captured in 2018, said she had adhered to public health guidelines to her disadvantage. (The Democrat who won in 2018, Katie Hill, stepped down after being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.)

“We couldn’t attend a forum or a town hall,” Smith said. “That’s my favorite way to campaign.”

California’s often lurching effort to combat COVID-19 was damaging in Republican-leaning districts where there has been public defiance of mask-wearing mandates and contempt for the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom.

“Everyone is concerned about COVID,” said Sam Oh, a Republican consultant to two of the Republican winners, Young Kim and Steel. “But we are trying to find a path to give small-business owners a way to keep making a life. This is incredibly important, and Democrats are tone-deaf to this.”

And Republicans, analysts said, recruited strong candidates, which is always the most critical task in an election. They included Steel and Kim, who will be among the first Korean-American members of Congress, and Mike Garcia, a former military pilot who won a special election in May to replace Hill and then beat Smith in November.

Democrats set their targets on seven Republican-held seats in 2018 and won all of them, cutting the size of California’s Republican congressional delegation in half. That sweep suggested that Democrats were encroaching on once-Republican areas of the state, presenting a road map for how the party could compete in swing districts across the country.

But Republicans succeeded this time by playing on themes that have long been resonant among moderate voters, particularly in places like Orange County: high taxes, intrusive government and law and order. Democrats said the debates on the national stage hurt them, particularly among Latino and Asian-American voters.

“I think we undervalued the strength of the attack,” said Dan Sena, who was the first Hispanic executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “The national socialism messaging, combined with the crime messaging, was a death by a thousand cuts in a place like California.”

Smith said she was frustrated in trying to campaign in an environment “where Republicans are so persistent in false narratives,” and that Democrats had failed to figure out how to address that.

“We never got our hands around it,” she said.

Republicans argued that the results here — and across the country — were powerful evidence that many voters were rejecting policies that Democrats on the left were advocating.

“Democrats said they were going to pick up 10 to 15 seats in the House,” said Torunn Sinclair, a press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Obviously they are missing something. It has to go back to these far-left policies that people just didn’t want. ‘Medicare for All,’ defunding the police.”

The margins of victory in California’s pivot districts were narrow for the Democratic winners in 2018 — and for the Republican winners in 2020.

“These districts — including mine — were very difficult to flip,” said Rep. Katie Porter, one of the Orange County Democrats who won in 2018 and was reelected in 2020. “These are Republican districts. They were always going to be very competitive races.”

Two years ago, Democrats celebrated a sweep of seven Republican-held congressional seats in California as evidence of the party’s growing ability to compete in swing districts here and across the nation.

Two years ago, Democrats celebrated a sweep of seven Republican-held congressional seats in California as evidence of the party’s growing ability to compete in swing districts here and across the nation. But this year, Republicans snatched back four of those seats even as Joe Biden swamped President Donald Trump in California. The losses stunned Democrats and contributed to the razor-thin margin the party will hold in the House of Representatives this January. The turnaround is testimony to how competitive the seats are, particularly in Orange County, once a bastion of conservative Republicanism that has been moving steadily Democratic over the past 20 years. But by any measure, the results were a setback for Democrats in this state and nationally, signaling the steep obstacles they will face in 2022 competing in the predominantly suburban swing districts that fueled their takeover of the House in 2018. The Democrats’ losses came for a number of reasons, including forces particular to California and the complications of campaigning during a pandemic. But as much as anything, they reflected the potency of Republican attacks, some false or exaggerated, that Democrats were the party of socialism, defunding the police and abolishing private health insurance. The attacks — led in no small part by Trump as a central part of his reelection strategy — came at a time when parts of California were swept by street protests against police abuses, some of which turned into glass-shattering bouts of looting and confrontations with law enforcement that were heavily covered on local television. “Republicans hung around Democrats’ necks that we are all socialist or communist and we all wanted to defund the police,” said Harley Rouda, a Democrat from Orange County who was defeated by Michelle Steel, a Republican member of the Orange County board of supervisors. “In my opinion, we as a party did a less than adequate job in refuting that narrative. We won in 2018 and took the House back because of people like me — moderates — flipping radical Republican seats.” Republicans said that attempts by Democrats to portray themselves as moderates were undercut by a shift of the party to the left and by the demonstrations. “It was incredibly easy for us to draw contrasts,” said Jessica Millan Patterson, leader of the California Republican Party. She said the protests “were happening all over. It looked like a war zone.” For all that, election outcomes are the result of many factors — and that was particularly the case in a campaign that played out against a deadly pandemic and with such a polarizing figure as Trump dominating the political debate. Democrats said they were also hurt by a national policy, set by the party, to avoid door-to-door canvassing during the pandemic. Presumably, that will not be a factor in 2022. “The No. 1 issue in our campaign is we didn’t canvass,” said Rep. T.J. Cox, a Democrat who represents the San Joaquin Valley and lost to David Valadao, the Republican he unseated in 2018. “We didn’t do the door-to-door.” He said it was like playing for a football team that had been told “they can’t pass.” Christy Smith, a Democrat from northern Los Angeles County who failed to win a district her party captured in 2018, said she had adhered to public health guidelines to her disadvantage. (The Democrat who won in 2018, Katie Hill, stepped down after being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.) “We couldn’t attend a forum or a town hall,” Smith said. “That’s my favorite way to campaign.” California’s often lurching effort to combat COVID-19 was damaging in Republican-leaning districts where there has been public defiance of mask-wearing mandates and contempt for the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. “Everyone is concerned about COVID,” said Sam Oh, a Republican consultant to two of the Republican winners, Young Kim and Steel. “But we are trying to find a path to give small-business owners a way to keep making a life. This is incredibly important, and Democrats are tone-deaf to this.” And Republicans, analysts said, recruited strong candidates, which is always the most critical task in an election. They included Steel and Kim, who will be among the first Korean-American members of Congress, and Mike Garcia, a former military pilot who won a special election in May to replace Hill and then beat Smith in November. Democrats set their targets on seven Republican-held seats in 2018 and won all of them, cutting the size of California’s Republican congressional delegation in half. That sweep suggested that Democrats were encroaching on once-Republican areas of the state, presenting a road map for how the party could compete in swing districts across the country. But Republicans succeeded this time by playing on themes that have long been resonant among moderate voters, particularly in places like Orange County: high taxes, intrusive government and law and order. Democrats said the debates on the national stage hurt them, particularly among Latino and Asian-American voters. “I think we undervalued the strength of the attack,” said Dan Sena, who was the first Hispanic executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “The national socialism messaging, combined with the crime messaging, was a death by a thousand cuts in a place like California.” Smith said she was frustrated in trying to campaign in an environment “where Republicans are so persistent in false narratives,” and that Democrats had failed to figure out how to address that. “We never got our hands around it,” she said. Republicans argued that the results here — and across the country — were powerful evidence that many voters were rejecting policies that Democrats on the left were advocating. “Democrats said they were going to pick up 10 to 15 seats in the House,” said Torunn Sinclair, a press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Obviously they are missing something. It has to go back to these far-left policies that people just didn’t want. ‘Medicare for All,’ defunding the police.” The margins of victory in California’s pivot districts were narrow for the Democratic winners in 2018 — and for the Republican winners in 2020. “These districts — including mine — were very difficult to flip,” said Rep. Katie Porter, one of the Orange County Democrats who won in 2018 and was reelected in 2020. “These are Republican districts. They were always going to be very competitive races.”

A stinging setback in California is a warning for Democrats in 2022

Joe Biden went to the Royal Missionary Baptist Church in South Carolina in late February, before the state’s presidential primary, and listened as the Rev. Isaac J. Holt Jr. delivered a message of encouragement.

“You’re going to win,” Holt said he told Biden privately, a political prophecy that was fulfilled in the coming days.

Now Holt, the pastor of one of Charleston’s largest Black congregations, has another message for Biden as he plans for his incoming administration: “Biden owes us. And we have not forgotten.”

Black voters have a political marriage of convenience with the Democratic Party. They are at once the party’s most solid voting demographic and deeply frustrated by the lack of systemic change its politicians have delivered for them.

In South Carolina, the state that helped propel Biden to the Democratic nomination and where about half the Democratic electorate is Black, voters complain of receiving campaign promises from politicians while they are running but not being prioritized once they are elected.

There are similar grievances among voters in cities like Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia — hubs of general-election campaigning in key swing states — who have grown used to the silence that follows presidential election years.

In their telling, attention quickly shifts to midterm races in gerrymandered, Republican-leaning congressional districts, and the Black voters who helped Democrats ascend to the White House are sometimes discarded. Their issues are too divisive. Their needs are too great.

Biden has insisted that this time will be different, and people like Holt are taking him at his word. Last month, in his victory speech after becoming president-elect, Biden cited Black voters specifically, alluding to those who rallied around him in South Carolina after his primary campaign flopped in other early-voting states.

“Especially at those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me,” Biden said. “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.”

But who defines political priorities for Black voters, and what does it mean to have their back?

Leading Black politicians, civil rights leaders, activists and many of the same South Carolina church leaders Biden leaned on to turn his campaign around all said in interviews that it was important to address the coronavirus pandemic. But they also raised issues that ran the gamut of liberal policy initiatives, from investing in small businesses and historically Black colleges and universities to tackling student debt and climate change.

Many also pushed back against the singular focus on racial representation that has dominated debates over Biden’s transition team and Cabinet picks. Having a Cabinet that reflects the racial diversity of America is good, they said. But they added that Biden’s legacy on race would be judged on his willingness to pursue policy changes that address systemic racism — a standard he has set for himself.

“What he’s got to do, in my opinion, is to depart from the tradition,” said Rep. James E. Clyburn, a powerful South Carolina Democrat who is the highest-ranking Black member of the House. “What is getting us in trouble in the past is when people get into office, they abandon the platform they ran on” in favor of appeasing Republicans, he said.

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, cited a commitment Biden had made during a public forum to prioritize eliminating poverty and addressing the concerns of poor people.

Live up to that, he said, and a cross-racial section of marginalized Americans, including Black people, will have their lives transformed.

“We certainly want to see a Cabinet that looks like America. But more important, we want to see a Cabinet that works for America,” Barber said. “And not just the middle class. And not just the so-called working class. But from the bottom up.”

In effect, they are asking President Biden to take a cue from candidate Biden. During the primary and general election, and under pressure from activists who cast Biden as an artifact of the political past, his team embraced a plan for Black Americans called “Lift Every Voice,” which would seek to close the Black-white income gap, expand educational opportunities, invest $70 billion in historically black colleges and universities, and reimagine the criminal justice system and policing.

Biden’s selection of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the first Black woman on a major party ticket, was — with the campaign’s encouragement — taken as a symbolic affirmation of these commitments. Former President Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, had to assure white America he would be a president for all races. But Biden repeatedly asserted that Black communities would get special attention in his administration.

Black political leaders believe that the biggest barrier to Biden’s commitment to address systemic racism is his own instinct for compromise, bipartisanship and deference to the idea of Washington civility. Biden has consistently restated his belief that congressional Republicans will work with his administration in due time, though some of them continue to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory, and President Donald Trump shows no signs of loosening his grip on the party’s base.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)

“Bipartisanship is how the president-elect and vice president-elect plan to get things done from day one,” said Ramzey Smith, a spokesperson for Biden’s transition team. “They’ve made it abundantly clear that in order to combat the systemic inequities that Black Americans have faced for generations, it is imperative to work across the aisle and engage with all groups to reach a consensus that doesn’t compromise our principles or priorities.”

Some Black leaders who have met with Biden and Harris during the transition have been frustrated by this sentiment, according to several people familiar with the discussions. Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party, is one of the few Democrats left who believes that the Republicans who reflexively opposed Obama’s every action and have been slow to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy are simply an aberration.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

Leaders are asking him to consider unilateral action like executive orders to enact his agenda, claiming that Washington horse-trading has rarely prioritized the needs of Black communities. Biden has been steadfast: Republicans will come around.

“We will see if he’s right, and we’ll see very shortly,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., who has met with the Biden transition team. “If he’s not, we’ll also see it very shortly. It’s perfectly fine to be hopeful. But certainly you should be fully prepared to pivot and to be effective.”

Even vocal allies of Biden say his ability to rise to the standards he set for himself, particularly when it comes to racial equity and a Black agenda, may rely on his willingness to see Republicans as obstructionists to be overcome, not negotiators to be met at a midpoint.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

Clyburn, whose well-timed endorsement of Biden in South Carolina helped ensure his dominance in the state, said Biden must learn from the mistakes made by previous Democratic leaders, including Obama.

He cited Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland, whom Republicans refused to even grant a hearing, as an example.

Republicans “lied to him and told him that if he put up a moderate, they will approve him for the Supreme Court,” Clyburn said. “They never did it, and they never planned to do it.

“I told them at the time that you will be better off putting up an African American woman for the Supreme Court,” he added. “If you put up a Black woman, she would have an immediate constituency. Make them turn her down. He would have redefined politics in this country, and frankly, I think Hillary Clinton would have been elected president.”

The Rev. Joseph A. Darby Jr., the senior pastor at Nichols Chapel AME Church in Charleston and a former leader of the local NAACP, said he had been heartened by Biden’s Cabinet choices, including that of retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who would be the first Black man to lead the Defense Department.

“Just having new folks at the table is helpful,” Darby said. “But it’s that plus the substance.”

The stakes could not be higher. Black people sit at the intersection of the year’s biggest policy priorities: access to health care, criminal justice and the climate change crisis. Black Americans have been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, dying, being hospitalized and facing economic devastation at disproportionate rates.

In Darby’s congregation, a mother and her child both died from the virus. Holt’s congregation has not been able to convene since March, just weeks after Biden spoke from the pulpit as a candidate.

Last week, in an interview at his church, Holt made another of his patented political predictions: If Biden does not follow through on his promises to Black people — does not make eroding systemic racism a priority in deed, not just words — Republicans will make gains with Black voters.

He cited the modest shift toward Trump in November’s election among some Black voters and the increasingly nonpartisan nature of younger Black people. Those are warning signs, he said.

“The party system is not something that fits the Black community as a whole,” Holt said. “We’re tired of Democrats, and we’re tired of the two-party system.”

Some of Holt’s congregants, at a socially distant gathering in the sanctuary they had not visited in months, echoed their pastor’s urgency. Although they expressed confidence in Biden and said they all voted for him in the primary and general elections, they framed their choice as a call for action rather than a blank check of trust.

“He can’t get stuck on healing hearts,” said Shakeima Chatman, 46, a real estate agent. “But he can institute policies and regulation.”

What gave them hope: that Biden was comfortable among Black voters on the campaign trail and the loyalty he showed to Obama as his vice president.

What worried them: that he favorably invoked segregationists in the name of bipartisanship, that he said Black people who did not support him “ain’t Black,” and that he told wealthy donors at a fundraiser that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he was elected.

For Black communities, it must.

“Policies created these disparities,” said Cleo Scott Brown, who is 66. “Policy has to fix it.”

Joe Biden went to the Royal Missionary Baptist Church in South Carolina in late February, before the state’s presidential primary, and listened as the Rev. Isaac J.

Joe Biden went to the Royal Missionary Baptist Church in South Carolina in late February, before the state’s presidential primary, and listened as the Rev. Isaac J. Holt Jr. delivered a message of encouragement. “You’re going to win,” Holt said he told Biden privately, a political prophecy that was fulfilled in the coming days. Now Holt, the pastor of one of Charleston’s largest Black congregations, has another message for Biden as he plans for his incoming administration: “Biden owes us. And we have not forgotten.” Black voters have a political marriage of convenience with the Democratic Party. They are at once the party’s most solid voting demographic and deeply frustrated by the lack of systemic change its politicians have delivered for them. In South Carolina, the state that helped propel Biden to the Democratic nomination and where about half the Democratic electorate is Black, voters complain of receiving campaign promises from politicians while they are running but not being prioritized once they are elected. There are similar grievances among voters in cities like Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia — hubs of general-election campaigning in key swing states — who have grown used to the silence that follows presidential election years. In their telling, attention quickly shifts to midterm races in gerrymandered, Republican-leaning congressional districts, and the Black voters who helped Democrats ascend to the White House are sometimes discarded. Their issues are too divisive. Their needs are too great. Biden has insisted that this time will be different, and people like Holt are taking him at his word. Last month, in his victory speech after becoming president-elect, Biden cited Black voters specifically, alluding to those who rallied around him in South Carolina after his primary campaign flopped in other early-voting states. “Especially at those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me,” Biden said. “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.” But who defines political priorities for Black voters, and what does it mean to have their back? Leading Black politicians, civil rights leaders, activists and many of the same South Carolina church leaders Biden leaned on to turn his campaign around all said in interviews that it was important to address the coronavirus pandemic. But they also raised issues that ran the gamut of liberal policy initiatives, from investing in small businesses and historically Black colleges and universities to tackling student debt and climate change. Many also pushed back against the singular focus on racial representation that has dominated debates over Biden’s transition team and Cabinet picks. Having a Cabinet that reflects the racial diversity of America is good, they said. But they added that Biden’s legacy on race would be judged on his willingness to pursue policy changes that address systemic racism — a standard he has set for himself. “What he’s got to do, in my opinion, is to depart from the tradition,” said Rep. James E. Clyburn, a powerful South Carolina Democrat who is the highest-ranking Black member of the House. “What is getting us in trouble in the past is when people get into office, they abandon the platform they ran on” in favor of appeasing Republicans, he said. The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, cited a commitment Biden had made during a public forum to prioritize eliminating poverty and addressing the concerns of poor people. Live up to that, he said, and a cross-racial section of marginalized Americans, including Black people, will have their lives transformed. “We certainly want to see a Cabinet that looks like America. But more important, we want to see a Cabinet that works for America,” Barber said. “And not just the middle class. And not just the so-called working class. But from the bottom up.” In effect, they are asking President Biden to take a cue from candidate Biden. During the primary and general election, and under pressure from activists who cast Biden as an artifact of the political past, his team embraced a plan for Black Americans called “Lift Every Voice,” which would seek to close the Black-white income gap, expand educational opportunities, invest $70 billion in historically black colleges and universities, and reimagine the criminal justice system and policing. Biden’s selection of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the first Black woman on a major party ticket, was — with the campaign’s encouragement — taken as a symbolic affirmation of these commitments. Former President Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, had to assure white America he would be a president for all races. But Biden repeatedly asserted that Black communities would get special attention in his administration. Black political leaders believe that the biggest barrier to Biden’s commitment to address systemic racism is his own instinct for compromise, bipartisanship and deference to the idea of Washington civility. Biden has consistently restated his belief that congressional Republicans will work with his administration in due time, though some of them continue to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory, and President Donald Trump shows no signs of loosening his grip on the party’s base. (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.) “Bipartisanship is how the president-elect and vice president-elect plan to get things done from day one,” said Ramzey Smith, a spokesperson for Biden’s transition team. “They’ve made it abundantly clear that in order to combat the systemic inequities that Black Americans have faced for generations, it is imperative to work across the aisle and engage with all groups to reach a consensus that doesn’t compromise our principles or priorities.” Some Black leaders who have met with Biden and Harris during the transition have been frustrated by this sentiment, according to several people familiar with the discussions. Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party, is one of the few Democrats left who believes that the Republicans who reflexively opposed Obama’s every action and have been slow to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy are simply an aberration. (END OPTIONAL TRIM.) Leaders are asking him to consider unilateral action like executive orders to enact his agenda, claiming that Washington horse-trading has rarely prioritized the needs of Black communities. Biden has been steadfast: Republicans will come around. “We will see if he’s right, and we’ll see very shortly,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., who has met with the Biden transition team. “If he’s not, we’ll also see it very shortly. It’s perfectly fine to be hopeful. But certainly you should be fully prepared to pivot and to be effective.” Even vocal allies of Biden say his ability to rise to the standards he set for himself, particularly when it comes to racial equity and a Black agenda, may rely on his willingness to see Republicans as obstructionists to be overcome, not negotiators to be met at a midpoint. (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.) Clyburn, whose well-timed endorsement of Biden in South Carolina helped ensure his dominance in the state, said Biden must learn from the mistakes made by previous Democratic leaders, including Obama. He cited Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland, whom Republicans refused to even grant a hearing, as an example. Republicans “lied to him and told him that if he put up a moderate, they will approve him for the Supreme Court,” Clyburn said. “They never did it, and they never planned to do it. “I told them at the time that you will be better off putting up an African American woman for the Supreme Court,” he added. “If you put up a Black woman, she would have an immediate constituency. Make them turn her down. He would have redefined politics in this country, and frankly, I think Hillary Clinton would have been elected president.” The Rev. Joseph A. Darby Jr., the senior pastor at Nichols Chapel AME Church in Charleston and a former leader of the local NAACP, said he had been heartened by Biden’s Cabinet choices, including that of retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who would be the first Black man to lead the Defense Department. “Just having new folks at the table is helpful,” Darby said. “But it’s that plus the substance.” The stakes could not be higher. Black people sit at the intersection of the year’s biggest policy priorities: access to health care, criminal justice and the climate change crisis. Black Americans have been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, dying, being hospitalized and facing economic devastation at disproportionate rates. In Darby’s congregation, a mother and her child both died from the virus. Holt’s congregation has not been able to convene since March, just weeks after Biden spoke from the pulpit as a candidate. Last week, in an interview at his church, Holt made another of his patented political predictions: If Biden does not follow through on his promises to Black people — does not make eroding systemic racism a priority in deed, not just words — Republicans will make gains with Black voters. He cited the modest shift toward Trump in November’s election among some Black voters and the increasingly nonpartisan nature of younger Black people. Those are warning signs, he said. “The party system is not something that fits the Black community as a whole,” Holt said. “We’re tired of Democrats, and we’re tired of the two-party system.” Some of Holt’s congregants, at a socially distant gathering in the sanctuary they had not visited in months, echoed their pastor’s urgency. Although they expressed confidence in Biden and said they all voted for him in the primary and general elections, they framed their choice as a call for action rather than a blank check of trust. “He can’t get stuck on healing hearts,” said Shakeima Chatman, 46, a real estate agent. “But he can institute policies and regulation.” What gave them hope: that Biden was comfortable among Black voters on the campaign trail and the loyalty he showed to Obama as his vice president. What worried them: that he favorably invoked segregationists in the name of bipartisanship, that he said Black people who did not support him “ain’t Black,” and that he told wealthy donors at a fundraiser that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he was elected. For Black communities, it must. “Policies created these disparities,” said Cleo Scott Brown, who is 66. “Policy has to fix it.”

Black voters want President Biden to take a cue from candidate Biden

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Saturday committed to work on a humane strategy to regional migration by addressing its root causes in Central America and southern Mexico.

Joe Biden promises to reverse Trump's immigration policies

President Donald Trump on Wednesday granted pardons to his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former adviser Roger Stone, sweeping away the most important convictions from U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.

So far, Trump, who has 27 days left in the White House until President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20, has issued 70 pardons since taking office.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that Trump had talked with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about pardoning him, citing two people briefed on the matter. The Times also said that Trump has asked advisers about the possibility of “preemptively” pardoning his three eldest children - Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump.

In 2018, Trump even said he had the “absolute right” to pardon himself - a claim many constitutional law scholars dispute.

Here is an overview of Trump’s pardon power.

CAN A PARDON BE PREEMPTIVE?

Yes.

Most pardons are issued to people who have been prosecuted and sentenced. But pardons can cover conduct that has not resulted in legal proceedings, though they cannot apply to future conduct.

The Supreme Court said in 1866 that the pardon power “extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.”

Most famously, former President Richard Nixon was preemptively pardoned by his successor Gerald Ford in 1974 for all crimes he might have committed against the United States while he was in office.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter preemptively pardoned hundreds of thousands of “draft dodgers” who avoided a government-imposed obligation to serve in the Vietnam War.

ARE THERE LIMITS ON A PRESIDENT’S PARDON POWER?

The pardon power, which comes from the U.S. Constitution, is one of the broadest available to a president. The nation’s founders saw the pardon power as a way to show mercy and serve the public good.

The&nbsp;president does not have to give a reason for issuing a pardon. In a 1981 case, the Supreme Court said pardons "are rarely, if ever, appropriate subjects for judicial review.”

The pardon power, however, is not absolute. Crucially, a pardon only applies to federal crimes.

COULD TRUMP PARDON HIS CHILDREN AND INNER CIRCLE?

It would be legal for Trump to pardon his inner circle, including members of his family.

In 2001, former President Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, Roger, who was convicted for cocaine possession in Arkansas.

Clinton pardoned about 450 people, including a Democratic Party donor, Marc Rich, who had earlier fled the country because of tax evasion charges.

HOW BROADLY WORDED CAN A PARDON BE?

It`s unclear.

The pardon Nixon received from Ford was very broad, absolving Nixon for all criminal offenses he committed or may have taken part in during his presidency.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on whether such a broad pardon is lawful. Some scholars have argued the nation’s founders intended for pardons to be specific, and that there is an implied limit on their scope.

WHAT WOULD TRUMP PARDON HIS CHILDREN OR GIULIANI FOR?

Trump’s children have not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing, and it is unclear what Trump would pardon them for.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who enforces New York state laws, has been conducting a criminal investigation into Trump and his family company, the Trump Organization. Vance, a Democrat, has suggested in court filings that his probe could focus on bank, tax and insurance fraud, as well as falsification of business records.

It is unclear what stage the investigation is at. No one has been charged with wrongdoing.

Trump, a Republican, has called the Vance probe politically motivated harassment. A presidential pardon, which can only be granted for federal crimes, would not apply to this investigation.

Giuliani’s potential criminal exposure is unclear. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been investigating his business dealings in Ukraine. Giuliani has denied wrongdoing and denied that he spoke to Trump about a pardon.

“Never had the discussion they falsely attribute to an anonymous source,” Giuliani said on Twitter on Dec. 1, referring to the New York Times report.

CAN PARDON RECIPIENTS "PLEAD THE FIFTH"?

Under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, individuals can decline to speak to investigators if doing so might lead to self-incrimination. If someone receives a pardon and no longer faces legal jeopardy on the federal level, it may make it more difficult for them to assert this constitutional right.

However, since a presidential pardon applies only to federal crimes, pardon recipients can still lawfully refuse to cooperate if the conduct they have been pardoned for can also be prosecuted as a state crime.

CAN TRUMP PARDON HIMSELF?

There is not a definitive answer. No president has tried it before, so the courts have not weighed in.

“When people ask me if a president can pardon himself, my answer is always, ‘Well, he can try,’” said Brian Kalt, a constitutional law professor at Michigan State University. “The Constitution does not provide a clear answer on this.”

Many legal experts have said a self-pardon would be unconstitutional because it violates the principle that nobody should be the judge in his or her own case.

Trump could try to pardon himself preemptively to cover the possibility of prosecution for federal crimes after he leaves office. No pardon could protect him against prosecution for any crimes by a U.S. state.

For a court to rule on the pardon’s validity, a federal prosecutor would have to charge Trump with a crime and Trump would have to raise the pardon as a defense, Kalt said.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday granted pardons to his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former adviser Roger Stone, sweeping away the most important convictions from U.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday granted pardons to his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former adviser Roger Stone, sweeping away the most important convictions from U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. So far, Trump, who has 27 days left in the White House until President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20, has issued 70 pardons since taking office. The New York Times reported earlier this month that Trump had talked with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about pardoning him, citing two people briefed on the matter. The Times also said that Trump has asked advisers about the possibility of “preemptively” pardoning his three eldest children - Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump. In 2018, Trump even said he had the “absolute right” to pardon himself - a claim many constitutional law scholars dispute. Here is an overview of Trump’s pardon power. CAN A PARDON BE PREEMPTIVE? Yes. Most pardons are issued to people who have been prosecuted and sentenced. But pardons can cover conduct that has not resulted in legal proceedings, though they cannot apply to future conduct. The Supreme Court said in 1866 that the pardon power “extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.” Most famously, former President Richard Nixon was preemptively pardoned by his successor Gerald Ford in 1974 for all crimes he might have committed against the United States while he was in office. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter preemptively pardoned hundreds of thousands of “draft dodgers” who avoided a government-imposed obligation to serve in the Vietnam War. ARE THERE LIMITS ON A PRESIDENT’S PARDON POWER? The pardon power, which comes from the U.S. Constitution, is one of the broadest available to a president. The nation’s founders saw the pardon power as a way to show mercy and serve the public good. The president does not have to give a reason for issuing a pardon. In a 1981 case, the Supreme Court said pardons "are rarely, if ever, appropriate subjects for judicial review.” The pardon power, however, is not absolute. Crucially, a pardon only applies to federal crimes. COULD TRUMP PARDON HIS CHILDREN AND INNER CIRCLE? It would be legal for Trump to pardon his inner circle, including members of his family. In 2001, former President Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, Roger, who was convicted for cocaine possession in Arkansas. Clinton pardoned about 450 people, including a Democratic Party donor, Marc Rich, who had earlier fled the country because of tax evasion charges. HOW BROADLY WORDED CAN A PARDON BE? It`s unclear. The pardon Nixon received from Ford was very broad, absolving Nixon for all criminal offenses he committed or may have taken part in during his presidency. The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on whether such a broad pardon is lawful. Some scholars have argued the nation’s founders intended for pardons to be specific, and that there is an implied limit on their scope. WHAT WOULD TRUMP PARDON HIS CHILDREN OR GIULIANI FOR? Trump’s children have not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing, and it is unclear what Trump would pardon them for. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who enforces New York state laws, has been conducting a criminal investigation into Trump and his family company, the Trump Organization. Vance, a Democrat, has suggested in court filings that his probe could focus on bank, tax and insurance fraud, as well as falsification of business records. It is unclear what stage the investigation is at. No one has been charged with wrongdoing. Trump, a Republican, has called the Vance probe politically motivated harassment. A presidential pardon, which can only be granted for federal crimes, would not apply to this investigation. Giuliani’s potential criminal exposure is unclear. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been investigating his business dealings in Ukraine. Giuliani has denied wrongdoing and denied that he spoke to Trump about a pardon. “Never had the discussion they falsely attribute to an anonymous source,” Giuliani said on Twitter on Dec. 1, referring to the New York Times report. CAN PARDON RECIPIENTS "PLEAD THE FIFTH"? Under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, individuals can decline to speak to investigators if doing so might lead to self-incrimination. If someone receives a pardon and no longer faces legal jeopardy on the federal level, it may make it more difficult for them to assert this constitutional right. However, since a presidential pardon applies only to federal crimes, pardon recipients can still lawfully refuse to cooperate if the conduct they have been pardoned for can also be prosecuted as a state crime. CAN TRUMP PARDON HIMSELF? There is not a definitive answer. No president has tried it before, so the courts have not weighed in. “When people ask me if a president can pardon himself, my answer is always, ‘Well, he can try,’” said Brian Kalt, a constitutional law professor at Michigan State University. “The Constitution does not provide a clear answer on this.” Many legal experts have said a self-pardon would be unconstitutional because it violates the principle that nobody should be the judge in his or her own case. Trump could try to pardon himself preemptively to cover the possibility of prosecution for federal crimes after he leaves office. No pardon could protect him against prosecution for any crimes by a U.S. state. For a court to rule on the pardon’s validity, a federal prosecutor would have to charge Trump with a crime and Trump would have to raise the pardon as a defense, Kalt said.

Can anything stop Trump from pardoning his family or even himself?

The youngest victim of the 2007 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, committed by Blackwater mercenaries whom Donald Trump pardoned Tuesday, was a 9-year-old boy named Ali Kinani.

In a 2010 documentary, journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed Ali’s father, Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani, who spoke of how he’d welcomed the U.S. invasion of his country and brought along his son to greet U.S. soldiers. “The first day the American Army entered Baghdad, I handed out juice and candy in the street to celebrate our liberation from Saddam,” said Kinani. Scahill called him “that rare personification of the neoconservative narrative about the U.S. invasion.”

On Sept. 16, 2007, Kinani was driving toward the traffic circle at Nisour Square with his sister, her children and Ali when guards from Blackwater opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers. (Blackwater, a private security company, has since changed its name to Academi.) Ali was one of 17 people killed. According to The Washington Post, a U.S. military report found that there had been no provocation. “It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong,” a military official told the paper. An FBI investigator reportedly described it as the “My Lai Massacre of Iraq.”

The U.S. Embassy offered Ali’s family a $10,000 condolence payment. After initially refusing the money, they donated half of it to the family of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. “They wanted to do that to honor and acknowledge the sacrifice of those men and women that had come over to Iraq to fight for them and free them from Saddam Hussein,” Paul Dickinson, a lawyer who represented Kinani and others in a civil suit against Blackwater, told me.

Gen. Raymond Odierno, then the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, wrote to Ali’s mother, “In the face of your family’s own personal tragedy, your act of kindness and compassion for grieving American families is truly remarkable.”

Until Tuesday, the American system worked to give Ali’s family a modicum of justice. Blackwater settled with the family. The guards were prosecuted criminally. The process was torturous, with several roadblocks, but powerful figures in the United States were determined to see it through. After a judge dismissed the charges on procedural grounds, Vice President Joe Biden promised, in a 2010 news conference in Baghdad, that there would be an appeal. “The United States is determined, determined to hold accountable anyone who commits crimes against the Iraqi people,” he said.

Eventually three of the Blackwater guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and other charges. A fourth, Nicholas Slatten, was convicted of murder and last year sentenced to life in prison. Kinani moved to America and became a citizen, though he was back in Iraq when the BBC reached him Wednesday. Until just days ago, he’d felt that the legal system in the United States had been “very fair with me,” he said.

Then came Tuesday’s pardon spree, which included the Blackwater killers along with some Russiagate felons, corrupt ex-congressmen and others. It was perhaps not surprising that the president acted to free the mercenaries; Trump’s enthusiasm for war crimes is well known, and last year he pardoned three men accused or convicted of them. Because of Biden’s words in 2010, some conservatives called the perpetrators of the Nisour Square massacre the “Biden four,” giving Trump an extra incentive to let them go. Erik Prince, who founded Blackwater, is a close Trump ally and the brother of his education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

Neither the predictability of these pardons, however, nor our dulled capacity for shock lessens their grotesqueness. The last days of Trump’s reign have been an orgy of impunity as he hands out indulgences like party favors and rubs America’s face in his power to put his supporters beyond ordinary law. On Wednesday, Trump pardoned even more cronies, including, most egregiously, his former campaign chair Paul Manafort, a likely reward for Manafort’s help undermining Robert Mueller’s investigation. But even in this low moment, the pardons of the Blackwater killers stand out for their depravity.

They also exemplify a core tenet of Trumpism: absolute license for some and absolute submission for others. Nowhere is that truer than in Trump’s conception of the relationship between U.S. soldiers and paramilitaries and foreigners.

Last year, Trump intervened to reverse a demotion of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL special operations chief who took a celebratory photo with a corpse and was described by men under his command as “freaking evil” and “toxic.” But the president didn’t just spare Gallagher. He lionized him, and his movement made him an icon. The New York Times described Gallagher “making appearances at influential conservative gatherings and rubbing elbows with Mr. Trump’s inner circle at Mar-a-Lago.”

You could argue that Trump has simply stripped pretense from the dynamics that always drove the “war on terror.” As Spencer Ackerman wrote in The Daily Beast, “Blackwater fed from the same American logic of occupation — the same impunity — that turned even those Iraqis willing to work for the U.S. into ‘local nationals’ who had to enter dining halls on U.S. military bases through separate doorways.”

But if the approach to Iraq that preceded Trump was infested with hypocrisy, that hypocrisy at least revealed an aspiration to a humane foreign policy. That aspiration did more than flatter the sensibilities of liberals and neoconservatives. It could be leveraged to allow a man like Kinani to make demands of the country that occupied his.

Trump’s pardon, Kinani told the BBC, made him feel as if Ali, who should now be 22, had been killed again. Before, he said, he felt that no one was “above the law.” No more.

“I feel I’m nothing today. I feel I’m nothing. I lost my son, and I feel I’m nothing,” Kinani said. By all indications, the president of the United States agrees.

The youngest victim of the 2007 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, committed by Blackwater mercenaries whom Donald Trump pardoned Tuesday, was a 9-year-old boy named Ali Kinani.

The youngest victim of the 2007 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, committed by Blackwater mercenaries whom Donald Trump pardoned Tuesday, was a 9-year-old boy named Ali Kinani. In a 2010 documentary, journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed Ali’s father, Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani, who spoke of how he’d welcomed the U.S. invasion of his country and brought along his son to greet U.S. soldiers. “The first day the American Army entered Baghdad, I handed out juice and candy in the street to celebrate our liberation from Saddam,” said Kinani. Scahill called him “that rare personification of the neoconservative narrative about the U.S. invasion.” On Sept. 16, 2007, Kinani was driving toward the traffic circle at Nisour Square with his sister, her children and Ali when guards from Blackwater opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers. (Blackwater, a private security company, has since changed its name to Academi.) Ali was one of 17 people killed. According to The Washington Post, a U.S. military report found that there had been no provocation. “It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong,” a military official told the paper. An FBI investigator reportedly described it as the “My Lai Massacre of Iraq.” The U.S. Embassy offered Ali’s family a $10,000 condolence payment. After initially refusing the money, they donated half of it to the family of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. “They wanted to do that to honor and acknowledge the sacrifice of those men and women that had come over to Iraq to fight for them and free them from Saddam Hussein,” Paul Dickinson, a lawyer who represented Kinani and others in a civil suit against Blackwater, told me. Gen. Raymond Odierno, then the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, wrote to Ali’s mother, “In the face of your family’s own personal tragedy, your act of kindness and compassion for grieving American families is truly remarkable.” Until Tuesday, the American system worked to give Ali’s family a modicum of justice. Blackwater settled with the family. The guards were prosecuted criminally. The process was torturous, with several roadblocks, but powerful figures in the United States were determined to see it through. After a judge dismissed the charges on procedural grounds, Vice President Joe Biden promised, in a 2010 news conference in Baghdad, that there would be an appeal. “The United States is determined, determined to hold accountable anyone who commits crimes against the Iraqi people,” he said. Eventually three of the Blackwater guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and other charges. A fourth, Nicholas Slatten, was convicted of murder and last year sentenced to life in prison. Kinani moved to America and became a citizen, though he was back in Iraq when the BBC reached him Wednesday. Until just days ago, he’d felt that the legal system in the United States had been “very fair with me,” he said. Then came Tuesday’s pardon spree, which included the Blackwater killers along with some Russiagate felons, corrupt ex-congressmen and others. It was perhaps not surprising that the president acted to free the mercenaries; Trump’s enthusiasm for war crimes is well known, and last year he pardoned three men accused or convicted of them. Because of Biden’s words in 2010, some conservatives called the perpetrators of the Nisour Square massacre the “Biden four,” giving Trump an extra incentive to let them go. Erik Prince, who founded Blackwater, is a close Trump ally and the brother of his education secretary, Betsy DeVos. Neither the predictability of these pardons, however, nor our dulled capacity for shock lessens their grotesqueness. The last days of Trump’s reign have been an orgy of impunity as he hands out indulgences like party favors and rubs America’s face in his power to put his supporters beyond ordinary law. On Wednesday, Trump pardoned even more cronies, including, most egregiously, his former campaign chair Paul Manafort, a likely reward for Manafort’s help undermining Robert Mueller’s investigation. But even in this low moment, the pardons of the Blackwater killers stand out for their depravity. They also exemplify a core tenet of Trumpism: absolute license for some and absolute submission for others. Nowhere is that truer than in Trump’s conception of the relationship between U.S. soldiers and paramilitaries and foreigners. Last year, Trump intervened to reverse a demotion of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL special operations chief who took a celebratory photo with a corpse and was described by men under his command as “freaking evil” and “toxic.” But the president didn’t just spare Gallagher. He lionized him, and his movement made him an icon. The New York Times described Gallagher “making appearances at influential conservative gatherings and rubbing elbows with Mr. Trump’s inner circle at Mar-a-Lago.” You could argue that Trump has simply stripped pretense from the dynamics that always drove the “war on terror.” As Spencer Ackerman wrote in The Daily Beast, “Blackwater fed from the same American logic of occupation — the same impunity — that turned even those Iraqis willing to work for the U.S. into ‘local nationals’ who had to enter dining halls on U.S. military bases through separate doorways.” But if the approach to Iraq that preceded Trump was infested with hypocrisy, that hypocrisy at least revealed an aspiration to a humane foreign policy. That aspiration did more than flatter the sensibilities of liberals and neoconservatives. It could be leveraged to allow a man like Kinani to make demands of the country that occupied his. Trump’s pardon, Kinani told the BBC, made him feel as if Ali, who should now be 22, had been killed again. Before, he said, he felt that no one was “above the law.” No more. “I feel I’m nothing today. I feel I’m nothing. I lost my son, and I feel I’m nothing,” Kinani said. By all indications, the president of the United States agrees.

Trump’s most disgusting pardons

Philip Esformes acquired a $1.6 million Ferrari and a $360,000 Swiss watch and traveled around the United States on a private jet, a spending spree fueled by the spoils from what federal prosecutors called one of the largest Medicare fraud cases in history.

“Philip Esformes is a man driven by almost unbounded greed,” Denise M. Stemen, an agent in the FBI’s Miami field office, said last year after Esformes, 52, a nursing home operator, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the two-decade scheme that involved an estimated $1.3 billion worth of fraudulent claims.

That prison term ended suddenly this week, when President Donald Trump commuted what remained of Esformes’ sentence.

His rapid path to clemency is a case study in how criminals with the right connections and resources have been able to cut through normal channels and gain the opportunity to make their case straight to the Trump White House.

For Esformes, that involved support from a Jewish humanitarian nonprofit group that advances prisoners’ rights and worked with the White House on criminal justice issues, including clemency and legislation overhauling sentencing laws that was championed by Trump and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and adviser.

Esformes’ family donated $65,000 to the group, the Aleph Institute, over several years starting after his indictment, according to the group.

His name adorns a school in Chicago associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch group of Hasidic Jews, whose leader at the time was involved in the creation of the Aleph Institute in the early 1980s. His father is a rabbi in Florida. His family has also donated for years to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, to which Kushner has long-standing ties.

In the announcement of the commutation, the White House said Esformes had been “devoted to prayer and repentance” while in prison and is in “declining health.”

Alan M. Dershowitz, a longtime supporter of clemency who works with the Aleph Institute on a volunteer basis, said the group “played a significant role” in Esformes’ clemency effort and “put together the papers” for the petition.

Trump has largely overridden a highly bureaucratic process overseen by pardon lawyers for the Justice Department and handed considerable control to his closest White House aides, including Kushner. They, in turn, have outsourced much of the vetting process to political and personal allies, allowing private parties to play an outsize role in influencing the application of one of the most unchecked powers of the presidency.

Among those allies is the Aleph Institute, a well-known force in criminal justice issues that beyond Esformes’ case has also weighed in on less high-profile clemency requests to Trump.

The White House on Wednesday specifically cited Aleph in announcing Trump’s commutation of what supporters had contended was a disproportionately severe 20-year sentence given to Daniela Gozes-Wagner&lt;strong&gt;,&lt;/strong&gt; a single mother and midlevel manager in Houston, in a health care fraud and money laundering case.

Clemency efforts represent a small fraction of the work done by the Aleph Institute, which has championed fewer than 50 such cases, a majority of which involve prisoners who are not Jewish and are indigent, according to the group.

“Aleph has worked with more than 35,000 inmates and their families since its inception,” Rabbi Sholom D. Lipskar, the institute’s founder, said in a statement Thursday. “Almost all of the people Aleph works with are destitute, and the same is true for almost all the clemency cases.”

Aleph has helped advance at least five of the 24 commutations handed down by Trump, including the recipient of the president’s very first commutation — issued in 2017 to Sholom Rubashkin, chief executive of a kosher meat processing company who was convicted in 2009 on fraud charges — and three commutations announced Wednesday.

“They are a major, major force of pushing commutations,” said Dershowitz, who recommended a number of clemency petitions that Aleph supported and said he personally spoke to Trump about Rubashkin’s case.

Dershowitz said donations to Aleph were “absolutely not” a factor in deciding which clemency cases to support.

“The people who make those decisions are completely independent,” he said. “I can tell you categorically that Aleph is supporting people who A, are not Jewish, and B, who have made no contributions whatsoever.”

Like several of the lawyers who work with the Aleph Institute — including Ken Starr, the former independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton, and former federal prosecutor Brett L. Tolman — Dershowitz has ties to the Trump White House of the sort that tend to be coveted by clemency seekers hoping for the president’s attention.

He and Starr represented Trump during his impeachment trial, while Tolman advised the White House on the criminal justice reform overhaul pushed by Kushner and signed into law by Trump in 2018.

Dershowitz, Starr and Tolman have all lent their names to clemency efforts championed by the Aleph Institute, as have other prominent Republicans like former FBI director Louis J. Freeh and former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, both of whom are featured on the Aleph Institute’s website endorsing the group’s work.

Freeh and Dershowitz have also worked with Gary Apfel, a lawyer who worked on a volunteer basis with the Aleph Institute, including on the clemency campaign for Esformes. The three lawyers were registered lobbyists for Dan Gertler, an Israeli billionaire whose assets were frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2017 because of corrupt mining deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Apfel, Freeh, Starr and Mukasey did not respond to requests for comment.

Dershowitz said the Aleph Institute’s effectiveness stemmed from the thoroughness of the clemency applications it submits to the White House.

He said that staff members in the White House Counsel’s Office, which has worked with Kushner’s team to vet the applications presented to Trump, told him that “the counsel’s office relies heavily on the credibility of Aleph, and they prove credible repeatedly.”

The Aleph Institute was founded nearly four decades ago by Lipskar of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Jews, at the direction of the movement’s leader, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, who emphasized the rehabilitation of prisoners. The Aleph Institute had a budget of $6.9 million during the 12-month period from fall 2018 to fall 2019. The group takes its name from the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet and supports a range of programs beyond clemency, including criminal justice reforms and expanded religious and social services for prisoners and military personnel.

Lipskar said in an interview in August that the organization was working on a commutation for Esformes but had not yet met with anyone in the White House.

He said he did not remember precisely how he came to learn about the case of Esformes.

Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have their own connections to Chabad-Lubavitch, having chosen a home in Washington within walking distance to a Chabad synagogue where they attend Shabbat services. The weekend before the 2016 election, they visited the grave site of Schneerson. The Kushner family foundation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to projects and institutions associated with Chabad, according to a tally by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

After Esformes was indicted, Lipskar said he visited Esformes in prison at least 25 times and “became almost like his personal rabbi.”

Esformes’ father “ramped up his financial commitment to Aleph,” according to a 2019 court filing by Esformes’ lawyers. They said the money was donated partly “in appreciation for all that Aleph has done for Esformes” and was given to the group “generously, if not exclusively selflessly.”

The donations, which began in 2016 and ended in 2019, totaled $65,000, according to Aleph.

Most donors behind Aleph Institute are not public, but its board members include Miami-based real estate developers Sonny Kahn, Alberto Kamhazi and Russell Galbut, as well as David Schottenstein, a member of the Ohio family that created retail giants like DSW and American Eagle.

Its mission comports with the particular value assigned by the Chabad-Lubavitch tradition on rehabilitating and freeing incarcerated people, stemming partly from the imprisonment of its founding rabbi in late 18th-century Russia on politically motivated charges.

Kushner, who had championed a criminal justice overhaul that Trump signed into law, is seen by supporters of overhauling the criminal justice system as an ally who is willing to consider recommendations on sentencing changes and clemency petitions. The legislation expanded early release programs and modified sentencing laws, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, to more equitably punish drug offenders. But it fell short of more expansive measures sought by many activists.

Kushner also had a personal connection to the issue. His father, Charles Kushner, served 14 months in a federal prison in Alabama for tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal donations. The elder Kushner was among those pardoned Wednesday by Trump.

Jared Kushner played a role in recommending that Trump commute the sentence of Rubashkin, the former kosher meat processing executive whose commutation in 2017 was supported by Aleph Institute.

At the White House Hanukkah party last year, Trump praised one of the group’s leaders, Zvi Boyarsky, a Chabad rabbi, for his leadership in generating support among lawmakers, judges, prosecutors and Jewish groups for the criminal justice reform legislation.

Boyarsky thanked Trump for commuting Rubashkin’s sentence, calling the president “God’s angel.”

In the summer, Lipskar said Boyarsky might approach the White House regarding Esformes’ case.

This year, the Aleph Institute hired Tolman, a former U.S. attorney from Utah, to lobby on criminal justice issues, including the so-called trial penalty, when defendants who refuse plea deals offered by prosecutors receive far longer sentences after being convicted at trial.

Two of the people whose sentences were commuted by Trump on Wednesday, Mark A. Shapiro and Irving Stitsky, were each sentenced to 85 years in prison for their roles in a $23 million real estate scheme after they turned down plea agreements of less than 10 years each.

The White House specifically credited Tolman and the Aleph Institute for supporting the commutations.

Dershowitz, whose brother’s daughter-in-law was paid $110,000 by the Aleph Institute from fall 2018 through fall 2019, the period covered by its most recent tax return, to work on alternative sentencing, called the case “a paradigmatic trial penalty case.”

Tolman, who was paid $50,000 to lobby for the Aleph Institute this year, did not respond to questions about his work for the group or with the White House, except to say in an email, “I have not done any work on behalf of Philip Esformes.” He referred questions about the case to the Aleph Institute.

Esformes was convicted of a scheme in which he directed employees to pay doctors kickbacks in cash, using code words like “fettuccine.”

He then took a cut worth about $37 million of the illegal profits, prosecutors said, using the money to pay for items such as escorts, travel expenses and a bribe to a coach at the University of Pennsylvania to help his son gain admission.

At his sentencing last year, Esformes described himself as “reckless, impulsive” and “arrogant,” and said he had “cut corners without fear of consequences.” He added, “There’s no one to blame but myself.”

The judge overseeing the case called Esformes’ behavior a violation of trust of “epic proportions.”

But supporters of Esformes say he was a victim of misconduct by prosecutors in his case, who were found by a magistrate judge to have improperly gained access to dozens of boxes of documents compiled by his lawyers, material that should have been protected under attorney-client privilege.

“It is a litany of the worst prosecutorial misconduct I have ever seen and fatally damaged any chance Esformes had for a fair trial,” Roy Black, a lawyer for Esformes, said in a statement. “This is why the president decided to commute the sentence.”

In March, Esformes’ lawyers had asked a federal judge to release him, claiming “pulmonary and upper respiratory problems” as well as the threat of the coronavirus. But federal prosecutors strongly objected to his release, disputing the claims of declining health. The judge rejected the request.

“Virtually every person over the age of 50 has some health condition that could conceivably put that person at a greater risk of succumbing to the coronavirus,” Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. wrote in April, “but this does not entitle every inmate over 50 to be released.”

Philip Esformes acquired a $1.6 million Ferrari and a $360,000 Swiss watch and traveled around the United States on a private jet, a spending spree fueled by the spoils from what federal prosecutors called one of the largest Medicare fraud cases in history.

Philip Esformes acquired a $1.6 million Ferrari and a $360,000 Swiss watch and traveled around the United States on a private jet, a spending spree fueled by the spoils from what federal prosecutors called one of the largest Medicare fraud cases in history. “Philip Esformes is a man driven by almost unbounded greed,” Denise M. Stemen, an agent in the FBI’s Miami field office, said last year after Esformes, 52, a nursing home operator, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the two-decade scheme that involved an estimated $1.3 billion worth of fraudulent claims. That prison term ended suddenly this week, when President Donald Trump commuted what remained of Esformes’ sentence. His rapid path to clemency is a case study in how criminals with the right connections and resources have been able to cut through normal channels and gain the opportunity to make their case straight to the Trump White House. For Esformes, that involved support from a Jewish humanitarian nonprofit group that advances prisoners’ rights and worked with the White House on criminal justice issues, including clemency and legislation overhauling sentencing laws that was championed by Trump and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and adviser. Esformes’ family donated $65,000 to the group, the Aleph Institute, over several years starting after his indictment, according to the group. His name adorns a school in Chicago associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch group of Hasidic Jews, whose leader at the time was involved in the creation of the Aleph Institute in the early 1980s. His father is a rabbi in Florida. His family has also donated for years to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, to which Kushner has long-standing ties. In the announcement of the commutation, the White House said Esformes had been “devoted to prayer and repentance” while in prison and is in “declining health.” Alan M. Dershowitz, a longtime supporter of clemency who works with the Aleph Institute on a volunteer basis, said the group “played a significant role” in Esformes’ clemency effort and “put together the papers” for the petition. Trump has largely overridden a highly bureaucratic process overseen by pardon lawyers for the Justice Department and handed considerable control to his closest White House aides, including Kushner. They, in turn, have outsourced much of the vetting process to political and personal allies, allowing private parties to play an outsize role in influencing the application of one of the most unchecked powers of the presidency. Among those allies is the Aleph Institute, a well-known force in criminal justice issues that beyond Esformes’ case has also weighed in on less high-profile clemency requests to Trump. The White House on Wednesday specifically cited Aleph in announcing Trump’s commutation of what supporters had contended was a disproportionately severe 20-year sentence given to Daniela Gozes-Wagner, a single mother and midlevel manager in Houston, in a health care fraud and money laundering case. Clemency efforts represent a small fraction of the work done by the Aleph Institute, which has championed fewer than 50 such cases, a majority of which involve prisoners who are not Jewish and are indigent, according to the group. “Aleph has worked with more than 35,000 inmates and their families since its inception,” Rabbi Sholom D. Lipskar, the institute’s founder, said in a statement Thursday. “Almost all of the people Aleph works with are destitute, and the same is true for almost all the clemency cases.” Aleph has helped advance at least five of the 24 commutations handed down by Trump, including the recipient of the president’s very first commutation — issued in 2017 to Sholom Rubashkin, chief executive of a kosher meat processing company who was convicted in 2009 on fraud charges — and three commutations announced Wednesday. “They are a major, major force of pushing commutations,” said Dershowitz, who recommended a number of clemency petitions that Aleph supported and said he personally spoke to Trump about Rubashkin’s case. Dershowitz said donations to Aleph were “absolutely not” a factor in deciding which clemency cases to support. “The people who make those decisions are completely independent,” he said. “I can tell you categorically that Aleph is supporting people who A, are not Jewish, and B, who have made no contributions whatsoever.” Like several of the lawyers who work with the Aleph Institute — including Ken Starr, the former independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton, and former federal prosecutor Brett L. Tolman — Dershowitz has ties to the Trump White House of the sort that tend to be coveted by clemency seekers hoping for the president’s attention. He and Starr represented Trump during his impeachment trial, while Tolman advised the White House on the criminal justice reform overhaul pushed by Kushner and signed into law by Trump in 2018. Dershowitz, Starr and Tolman have all lent their names to clemency efforts championed by the Aleph Institute, as have other prominent Republicans like former FBI director Louis J. Freeh and former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, both of whom are featured on the Aleph Institute’s website endorsing the group’s work. Freeh and Dershowitz have also worked with Gary Apfel, a lawyer who worked on a volunteer basis with the Aleph Institute, including on the clemency campaign for Esformes. The three lawyers were registered lobbyists for Dan Gertler, an Israeli billionaire whose assets were frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2017 because of corrupt mining deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Apfel, Freeh, Starr and Mukasey did not respond to requests for comment. Dershowitz said the Aleph Institute’s effectiveness stemmed from the thoroughness of the clemency applications it submits to the White House. He said that staff members in the White House Counsel’s Office, which has worked with Kushner’s team to vet the applications presented to Trump, told him that “the counsel’s office relies heavily on the credibility of Aleph, and they prove credible repeatedly.” The Aleph Institute was founded nearly four decades ago by Lipskar of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Jews, at the direction of the movement’s leader, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, who emphasized the rehabilitation of prisoners. The Aleph Institute had a budget of $6.9 million during the 12-month period from fall 2018 to fall 2019. The group takes its name from the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet and supports a range of programs beyond clemency, including criminal justice reforms and expanded religious and social services for prisoners and military personnel. Lipskar said in an interview in August that the organization was working on a commutation for Esformes but had not yet met with anyone in the White House. He said he did not remember precisely how he came to learn about the case of Esformes. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have their own connections to Chabad-Lubavitch, having chosen a home in Washington within walking distance to a Chabad synagogue where they attend Shabbat services. The weekend before the 2016 election, they visited the grave site of Schneerson. The Kushner family foundation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to projects and institutions associated with Chabad, according to a tally by Israeli newspaper Haaretz. After Esformes was indicted, Lipskar said he visited Esformes in prison at least 25 times and “became almost like his personal rabbi.” Esformes’ father “ramped up his financial commitment to Aleph,” according to a 2019 court filing by Esformes’ lawyers. They said the money was donated partly “in appreciation for all that Aleph has done for Esformes” and was given to the group “generously, if not exclusively selflessly.” The donations, which began in 2016 and ended in 2019, totaled $65,000, according to Aleph. Most donors behind Aleph Institute are not public, but its board members include Miami-based real estate developers Sonny Kahn, Alberto Kamhazi and Russell Galbut, as well as David Schottenstein, a member of the Ohio family that created retail giants like DSW and American Eagle. Its mission comports with the particular value assigned by the Chabad-Lubavitch tradition on rehabilitating and freeing incarcerated people, stemming partly from the imprisonment of its founding rabbi in late 18th-century Russia on politically motivated charges. Kushner, who had championed a criminal justice overhaul that Trump signed into law, is seen by supporters of overhauling the criminal justice system as an ally who is willing to consider recommendations on sentencing changes and clemency petitions. The legislation expanded early release programs and modified sentencing laws, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, to more equitably punish drug offenders. But it fell short of more expansive measures sought by many activists. Kushner also had a personal connection to the issue. His father, Charles Kushner, served 14 months in a federal prison in Alabama for tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal donations. The elder Kushner was among those pardoned Wednesday by Trump. Jared Kushner played a role in recommending that Trump commute the sentence of Rubashkin, the former kosher meat processing executive whose commutation in 2017 was supported by Aleph Institute. At the White House Hanukkah party last year, Trump praised one of the group’s leaders, Zvi Boyarsky, a Chabad rabbi, for his leadership in generating support among lawmakers, judges, prosecutors and Jewish groups for the criminal justice reform legislation. Boyarsky thanked Trump for commuting Rubashkin’s sentence, calling the president “God’s angel.” In the summer, Lipskar said Boyarsky might approach the White House regarding Esformes’ case. This year, the Aleph Institute hired Tolman, a former U.S. attorney from Utah, to lobby on criminal justice issues, including the so-called trial penalty, when defendants who refuse plea deals offered by prosecutors receive far longer sentences after being convicted at trial. Two of the people whose sentences were commuted by Trump on Wednesday, Mark A. Shapiro and Irving Stitsky, were each sentenced to 85 years in prison for their roles in a $23 million real estate scheme after they turned down plea agreements of less than 10 years each. The White House specifically credited Tolman and the Aleph Institute for supporting the commutations. Dershowitz, whose brother’s daughter-in-law was paid $110,000 by the Aleph Institute from fall 2018 through fall 2019, the period covered by its most recent tax return, to work on alternative sentencing, called the case “a paradigmatic trial penalty case.” Tolman, who was paid $50,000 to lobby for the Aleph Institute this year, did not respond to questions about his work for the group or with the White House, except to say in an email, “I have not done any work on behalf of Philip Esformes.” He referred questions about the case to the Aleph Institute. Esformes was convicted of a scheme in which he directed employees to pay doctors kickbacks in cash, using code words like “fettuccine.” He then took a cut worth about $37 million of the illegal profits, prosecutors said, using the money to pay for items such as escorts, travel expenses and a bribe to a coach at the University of Pennsylvania to help his son gain admission. At his sentencing last year, Esformes described himself as “reckless, impulsive” and “arrogant,” and said he had “cut corners without fear of consequences.” He added, “There’s no one to blame but myself.” The judge overseeing the case called Esformes’ behavior a violation of trust of “epic proportions.” But supporters of Esformes say he was a victim of misconduct by prosecutors in his case, who were found by a magistrate judge to have improperly gained access to dozens of boxes of documents compiled by his lawyers, material that should have been protected under attorney-client privilege. “It is a litany of the worst prosecutorial misconduct I have ever seen and fatally damaged any chance Esformes had for a fair trial,” Roy Black, a lawyer for Esformes, said in a statement. “This is why the president decided to commute the sentence.” In March, Esformes’ lawyers had asked a federal judge to release him, claiming “pulmonary and upper respiratory problems” as well as the threat of the coronavirus. But federal prosecutors strongly objected to his release, disputing the claims of declining health. The judge rejected the request. “Virtually every person over the age of 50 has some health condition that could conceivably put that person at a greater risk of succumbing to the coronavirus,” Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. wrote in April, “but this does not entitle every inmate over 50 to be released.”

Behind Trump clemency, a case study in special access

The Trump administration has significantly invested in its relationship with India over the past four years, seeing the country as a crucial partner in counterbalancing the rise of China.

Military cooperation and a personal friendship between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India — both domineering nationalists — have pushed New Delhi and Washington closer.

Now, as President-elect Joe Biden is set to move into the White House, U.S. diplomats, Indian officials and security experts are resetting their expectations for relations between the world’s two largest democracies.

On one hand, experts said, Biden’s administration will most likely pay more attention to India’s contentious domestic developments, where Modi’s right-wing party has been steadily consolidating power and becoming overtly hostile toward Muslim minorities. Trump has largely turned a blind eye.

Others believe that the United States cannot afford to drastically alter its policy toward New Delhi because the United States needs its help to counter China and increasingly values India as a military and trade partner.

“The real opening between the United States and India began under President Clinton, it accelerated under President Bush, it continued under President Obama, and it’s accelerating again under our president, President Trump,” Stephen Biegun, the deputy secretary of state, said in October. “One of the constants in U.S.-India relations has been that every presidential administration here in the United States has left the relationship in even better shape than the one it inherited.”

Most experts agree that China will be the driving force behind how India’s relationship with Washington morphs in a Biden administration.

“We need India for various reasons,” said Ashley J. Tellis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “Most important of which is balancing Chinese power in Asia.”

This year, 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the worst border clash between India and China in decades. As relations between New Delhi and Beijing soured, India strengthened its commitment to a multilateral partnership with the United States, India, Japan and Australia — known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad.

China has castigated this forum as an Asian version of NATO, one that is directly aimed at counterbalancing its interests. India, leery of formal alliances and upsetting trade relations with Beijing, was initially hesitant to fully engage.

Biden, who once spoke optimistically of China’s emergence “as a great power,” has become increasingly tough on Beijing, and some analysts said his administration would most likely use the Quad as a way to ensure that the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region does not tilt too far toward China.

“They’ll keep the Quad going,” said Richard Fontaine, chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, adding that the partnership had gone from largely being considered “a meeting in search of an agenda to something real that is doing things.”

But some Indian officials are concerned that the next administration will not be as tough on China as the current one and that Biden will adopt a more nuanced and less favorable position toward India, analysts said.

“If he’s seen as pursuing a softer approach with China, it will make New Delhi have second thoughts about a soft alliance,” said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, a think tank in New Delhi.

Biden’s administration will inherit a growing military relationship with India. In recent months, the United States and India have shared more intelligence and conducted more coordinated military training exercises. The military cooperation is closest among the navies of the two countries; Kenneth J. Braithwaite, the Navy secretary, visited India last week.

The United States has been trying to increase arms sales to India, but the country's history of buying weapons from nations such as France, Israel and Russia has complicated that effort. American officials are concerned about providing equipment to India if there is a risk that members of the Russian military or other foreign agents would then have access. American and Indian officials signed an agreement to share real-time geographical data through satellite images when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited India in October.

Despite the warming ties, though, Indian officials also worry that Biden might be less critical of Pakistan, the country's archrival, than Trump has been. Biden may even reach out to Islamabad for support as the United States draws down troops in Afghanistan. Early in his presidency, Trump suspended military aid to Pakistan, accusing it of supporting terrorists and giving the United States “nothing but lies and deceit.”

In contrast, Trump has said little about the increasing hostility toward Muslims in India and the divisive politics of Modi’s Hindu nationalist party. The Trump administration has kept largely quiet about Modi’s crackdown on Kashmir last year and the passage of a new, blatantly anti-Muslim citizenship law. And Modi’s recent pro-market agricultural policies have fueled a farmer rebellion that has snarled daily life in the capital and stirred up more anti-government feeling.

Both Biden — who is considered a strong friend of India since his days as a senator when he worked to approve the country’s landmark civil nuclear agreement in 2008 — and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are likely to be more critical of India’s human rights record, both in private and in public, experts said.

Harris, whose mother was Indian and who has remained close to that side of her family, has already indicated that she is concerned about Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim area that has long been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan.

Biden’s campaign documents specifically called on the Indian government to “take all necessary steps to restore rights for all the people” in Kashmir. His campaign added that he was also “disappointed” in Modi’s citizenship law.

Some American activists want the Biden administration to go even further and warn Indian officials that discontent over some of its current policies could imperil how strong a partner India might be for the United States.

“Human rights first is equally important,” said Simran Noor, chairwoman of South Asian Americans Leading Together, an advocacy group in the United States. “The impacts of not addressing it now could lead to a lot worse conditions in the future.”

Another challenging issue is visas. Trump this year suspended H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, a major setback for U.S. technology companies, which employ many Indians, and the wider Indian diaspora in the United States.

The two countries have also struggled to sign a comprehensive trade agreement, with talks hung up over imports of U.S. dairy products and medical devices such as coronary stents. After two decades of India loosening its trade restrictions, Western officials say the country has been tightening them over the past two years, embracing Modi’s push for a “self-reliant India.”

And many of Biden’s priorities — including climate change — will most likely require India’s cooperation, ensuring that New Delhi remains front of mind for Biden’s chief diplomats.

“There is no relationship today between any two countries that is as important as the relationship between the U.S. and India,” said Nisha D. Biswal, President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs. “Neither of us can go it alone.”

The Trump administration has significantly invested in its relationship with India over the past four years, seeing the country as a crucial partner in counterbalancing the rise of China.

The Trump administration has significantly invested in its relationship with India over the past four years, seeing the country as a crucial partner in counterbalancing the rise of China. Military cooperation and a personal friendship between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India — both domineering nationalists — have pushed New Delhi and Washington closer. Now, as President-elect Joe Biden is set to move into the White House, U.S. diplomats, Indian officials and security experts are resetting their expectations for relations between the world’s two largest democracies. On one hand, experts said, Biden’s administration will most likely pay more attention to India’s contentious domestic developments, where Modi’s right-wing party has been steadily consolidating power and becoming overtly hostile toward Muslim minorities. Trump has largely turned a blind eye. Others believe that the United States cannot afford to drastically alter its policy toward New Delhi because the United States needs its help to counter China and increasingly values India as a military and trade partner. “The real opening between the United States and India began under President Clinton, it accelerated under President Bush, it continued under President Obama, and it’s accelerating again under our president, President Trump,” Stephen Biegun, the deputy secretary of state, said in October. “One of the constants in U.S.-India relations has been that every presidential administration here in the United States has left the relationship in even better shape than the one it inherited.” Most experts agree that China will be the driving force behind how India’s relationship with Washington morphs in a Biden administration. “We need India for various reasons,” said Ashley J. Tellis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “Most important of which is balancing Chinese power in Asia.” This year, 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the worst border clash between India and China in decades. As relations between New Delhi and Beijing soured, India strengthened its commitment to a multilateral partnership with the United States, India, Japan and Australia — known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad. China has castigated this forum as an Asian version of NATO, one that is directly aimed at counterbalancing its interests. India, leery of formal alliances and upsetting trade relations with Beijing, was initially hesitant to fully engage. Biden, who once spoke optimistically of China’s emergence “as a great power,” has become increasingly tough on Beijing, and some analysts said his administration would most likely use the Quad as a way to ensure that the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region does not tilt too far toward China. “They’ll keep the Quad going,” said Richard Fontaine, chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, adding that the partnership had gone from largely being considered “a meeting in search of an agenda to something real that is doing things.” But some Indian officials are concerned that the next administration will not be as tough on China as the current one and that Biden will adopt a more nuanced and less favorable position toward India, analysts said. “If he’s seen as pursuing a softer approach with China, it will make New Delhi have second thoughts about a soft alliance,” said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, a think tank in New Delhi. Biden’s administration will inherit a growing military relationship with India. In recent months, the United States and India have shared more intelligence and conducted more coordinated military training exercises. The military cooperation is closest among the navies of the two countries; Kenneth J. Braithwaite, the Navy secretary, visited India last week. The United States has been trying to increase arms sales to India, but the country's history of buying weapons from nations such as France, Israel and Russia has complicated that effort. American officials are concerned about providing equipment to India if there is a risk that members of the Russian military or other foreign agents would then have access. American and Indian officials signed an agreement to share real-time geographical data through satellite images when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited India in October. Despite the warming ties, though, Indian officials also worry that Biden might be less critical of Pakistan, the country's archrival, than Trump has been. Biden may even reach out to Islamabad for support as the United States draws down troops in Afghanistan. Early in his presidency, Trump suspended military aid to Pakistan, accusing it of supporting terrorists and giving the United States “nothing but lies and deceit.” In contrast, Trump has said little about the increasing hostility toward Muslims in India and the divisive politics of Modi’s Hindu nationalist party. The Trump administration has kept largely quiet about Modi’s crackdown on Kashmir last year and the passage of a new, blatantly anti-Muslim citizenship law. And Modi’s recent pro-market agricultural policies have fueled a farmer rebellion that has snarled daily life in the capital and stirred up more anti-government feeling. Both Biden — who is considered a strong friend of India since his days as a senator when he worked to approve the country’s landmark civil nuclear agreement in 2008 — and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are likely to be more critical of India’s human rights record, both in private and in public, experts said. Harris, whose mother was Indian and who has remained close to that side of her family, has already indicated that she is concerned about Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim area that has long been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan. Biden’s campaign documents specifically called on the Indian government to “take all necessary steps to restore rights for all the people” in Kashmir. His campaign added that he was also “disappointed” in Modi’s citizenship law. Some American activists want the Biden administration to go even further and warn Indian officials that discontent over some of its current policies could imperil how strong a partner India might be for the United States. “Human rights first is equally important,” said Simran Noor, chairwoman of South Asian Americans Leading Together, an advocacy group in the United States. “The impacts of not addressing it now could lead to a lot worse conditions in the future.” Another challenging issue is visas. Trump this year suspended H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, a major setback for U.S. technology companies, which employ many Indians, and the wider Indian diaspora in the United States. The two countries have also struggled to sign a comprehensive trade agreement, with talks hung up over imports of U.S. dairy products and medical devices such as coronary stents. After two decades of India loosening its trade restrictions, Western officials say the country has been tightening them over the past two years, embracing Modi’s push for a “self-reliant India.” And many of Biden’s priorities — including climate change — will most likely require India’s cooperation, ensuring that New Delhi remains front of mind for Biden’s chief diplomats. “There is no relationship today between any two countries that is as important as the relationship between the U.S. and India,” said Nisha D. Biswal, President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs. “Neither of us can go it alone.”

Biden expected to expand US-India relationship while stressing Human Rights

The Russian foreign minister also said that the United States’ actions were based on "a strategy" aimed at weakening Washington’s rivals on the global markets

'Russia to respond to new US sanctions', says Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov

President Donald Trump doesn’t use his pardon power often, but when he does, he abuses it for all it’s worth.

In less than four years in office, Trump has made a mockery of mercy, doling out clemency to some of the most deplorable people in the country, an alarming number of whom happen to be his friends, while ignoring tens of thousands of more deserving applicants.

On Wednesday, Trump once again granted pardons to some of his closest allies: Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman; Roger Stone, his longtime confidant; and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. These grants, along with 26 others, followed 20 Trump issued a day earlier, many to a rogues’ gallery of wrongdoers who shouldn’t have been on anyone’s mercy list. These included four Blackwater security guards convicted in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians, three corrupt Republican former members of Congress and two figures who pleaded guilty as part of the special counsel’s Russia investigation.

Sure, Trump has tossed a bone to a few people sentenced under outrageously harsh three-strikes laws, like Weldon Angelos, who got 55 years in prison for selling marijuana while carrying a handgun. But those are the exceptions. In general, if you are not a xenophobic sheriff, a right-wing troll, a homicidal military officer, an old friend or a turkey, your odds of being pardoned by this president hover around zero.

What makes Trump’s clemency record even worse is how paltry it is. As the old joke goes, the food is terrible, and the portions are too small. To date, Trump has issued a not-so-grand total of 94 pardons and sentence commutations — fewer than any president but George H.W. Bush in more than 100 years. He may add a few more to that list, of course, if only by preemptively pardoning his lawyers and family members.

Trump’s stingy, self-serving approach to clemency is due in part to his transactional view of the law as something to punish his enemies and to protect himself, his friends and his allies. But it’s a power that is easy to abuse because it is nearly unlimited. While Trump may be the most flagrant abuser, he’s far from the first. From Bill Clinton’s pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich to Gerald Ford’s pardon of his predecessor Richard Nixon, there are plenty of examples of presidents of both parties exploiting mercy for dubious reasons.

The solution isn’t for presidents to pardon fewer people; it’s to pardon more, with more consideration and more consistency.

As President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take over, he has the opportunity to re-imagine this deeply important but long-abused power and make it work more as the founders intended: as a counterweight to unjust prosecutions and excessive punishments. “Without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist No. 74.

If ever there was a moment to reform the system, it is now. The decades-old American prison crisis has dumped millions of people behind bars, many suffering under hugely disproportionate sentences. Last summer, the nation was engulfed by mass protests over criminal-justice abuses, and prisons continue to endure many of the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. Recent federal laws, including one signed by Trump, have alleviated some of the most egregious sentences, but they haven’t done nearly enough. There are currently nearly 14,000 clemency petitions waiting for action. And unlike so many other parts of the federal government, clemency is one area in which presidents can do a lot of good on their own, and fast.

First and most important: Take back control of the pardon process. The power to grant mercy may be the president’s alone, but the office of the pardon attorney operates out of the Justice Department. Under most administrations, before any request for clemency can land on the president’s desk, it has to survive review by a gantlet of people whose job it is to win convictions, not undo them. In some cases, the same prosecutors who sent a person to prison are asked to weigh in on granting that person mercy. It’s “akin to having Yankees fans pick the Red Sox’s starting pitcher,” wrote Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law who advocates for comprehensive clemency reform.

Prosecutors’ built-in biases are exacerbated by the fear of public blowback if any grant of clemency goes wrong — say, if a person commits a crime after being granted relief.

The gulf between presidents and their pardon decisions has confounded executives of both parties. One of the last pieces of advice the outgoing President George W. Bush gave the incoming President Barack Obama was to pick a pardon policy and stick to it. Obama didn’t heed the warning. He dithered for years before finally developing clear clemency standards late in his second term. The result: mercy for more than 1,900 people, many of them serving absurdly long sentences for low-level drug crimes. That was very good, but as long as the Justice Department maintains control over the process, it easily reverts to form.

It’s not enough simply to bring pardons back into the White House. Trump’s near total disregard of any process shows the danger in that. Instead, Osler proposes the establishment of a clemency board or commission with a direct line to the president, and staffed with experts in the field of criminal justice rather than with politicians worried about how their decisions might affect their electoral prospects. Board members should reflect the nation’s diversity in terms of race, geography and political ideology. Nearly all states incorporate the work of a board or commission in their clemency processes; not coincidentally, states generally do a much better job of handling their petitions than the federal government does.

Biden could create and staff a clemency board by executive order. He could also avoid Obama’s mistake by laying out clear, consistent standards for considering petitions early in his administration. What the Justice Department currently considers — the seriousness of the crime, whether the offender has expressed remorse and shown rehabilitation — is reasonable, but it often isn’t reflected in clemency decisions. (Certainly not those of Trump.)

Congress has an important role to play too. The pardon power is vast but not without limits. For instance, presidents may not violate core constitutional rights with their pardons, dangle pardons as a way to evade the justice system or offer mercy in exchange for bribes. Some constitutional scholars say they may not pardon themselves, although no president has yet tried to. To remind presidents that they are being watched, Congress can require the White House to issue a regular clemency report, as many states require as part of their process. It may also investigate individual pardons for possible abuse, as it did after Clinton’s pardon of Rich. And it can impose consequences, up to and including impeachment.

Speaking of impeachment, Trump has a few weeks left in office, during which he could choose to make at least some amends for his degradation of the pardon power by, say, considering the petitions of even some of the thousands of people still waiting. We’re not holding our breath. Real reform is more likely to come from Biden, who has his own amends to make. As a senator, Biden helped draft and championed many of the harshest federal criminal-sentencing laws of the 1980s and ’90s, laws that drove the nation’s prison crisis in the first place. He can’t undo the damage these federal laws have inflicted, but he can begin to repair it, and his own legacy on this issue, by reforming the pardon power from the ground up.

President Donald Trump doesn’t use his pardon power often, but when he does, he abuses it for all it’s worth. In less than four years in office, Trump has made a mockery of mercy, doling out clemency to some of the most deplorable people in the country, an alarming number of whom happen to be his friends, while ignoring tens of thousands of more deserving applicants.

President Donald Trump doesn’t use his pardon power often, but when he does, he abuses it for all it’s worth. In less than four years in office, Trump has made a mockery of mercy, doling out clemency to some of the most deplorable people in the country, an alarming number of whom happen to be his friends, while ignoring tens of thousands of more deserving applicants. On Wednesday, Trump once again granted pardons to some of his closest allies: Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman; Roger Stone, his longtime confidant; and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. These grants, along with 26 others, followed 20 Trump issued a day earlier, many to a rogues’ gallery of wrongdoers who shouldn’t have been on anyone’s mercy list. These included four Blackwater security guards convicted in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians, three corrupt Republican former members of Congress and two figures who pleaded guilty as part of the special counsel’s Russia investigation. Sure, Trump has tossed a bone to a few people sentenced under outrageously harsh three-strikes laws, like Weldon Angelos, who got 55 years in prison for selling marijuana while carrying a handgun. But those are the exceptions. In general, if you are not a xenophobic sheriff, a right-wing troll, a homicidal military officer, an old friend or a turkey, your odds of being pardoned by this president hover around zero. What makes Trump’s clemency record even worse is how paltry it is. As the old joke goes, the food is terrible, and the portions are too small. To date, Trump has issued a not-so-grand total of 94 pardons and sentence commutations — fewer than any president but George H.W. Bush in more than 100 years. He may add a few more to that list, of course, if only by preemptively pardoning his lawyers and family members. Trump’s stingy, self-serving approach to clemency is due in part to his transactional view of the law as something to punish his enemies and to protect himself, his friends and his allies. But it’s a power that is easy to abuse because it is nearly unlimited. While Trump may be the most flagrant abuser, he’s far from the first. From Bill Clinton’s pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich to Gerald Ford’s pardon of his predecessor Richard Nixon, there are plenty of examples of presidents of both parties exploiting mercy for dubious reasons. The solution isn’t for presidents to pardon fewer people; it’s to pardon more, with more consideration and more consistency. As President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take over, he has the opportunity to re-imagine this deeply important but long-abused power and make it work more as the founders intended: as a counterweight to unjust prosecutions and excessive punishments. “Without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist No. 74. If ever there was a moment to reform the system, it is now. The decades-old American prison crisis has dumped millions of people behind bars, many suffering under hugely disproportionate sentences. Last summer, the nation was engulfed by mass protests over criminal-justice abuses, and prisons continue to endure many of the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. Recent federal laws, including one signed by Trump, have alleviated some of the most egregious sentences, but they haven’t done nearly enough. There are currently nearly 14,000 clemency petitions waiting for action. And unlike so many other parts of the federal government, clemency is one area in which presidents can do a lot of good on their own, and fast. First and most important: Take back control of the pardon process. The power to grant mercy may be the president’s alone, but the office of the pardon attorney operates out of the Justice Department. Under most administrations, before any request for clemency can land on the president’s desk, it has to survive review by a gantlet of people whose job it is to win convictions, not undo them. In some cases, the same prosecutors who sent a person to prison are asked to weigh in on granting that person mercy. It’s “akin to having Yankees fans pick the Red Sox’s starting pitcher,” wrote Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law who advocates for comprehensive clemency reform. Prosecutors’ built-in biases are exacerbated by the fear of public blowback if any grant of clemency goes wrong — say, if a person commits a crime after being granted relief. The gulf between presidents and their pardon decisions has confounded executives of both parties. One of the last pieces of advice the outgoing President George W. Bush gave the incoming President Barack Obama was to pick a pardon policy and stick to it. Obama didn’t heed the warning. He dithered for years before finally developing clear clemency standards late in his second term. The result: mercy for more than 1,900 people, many of them serving absurdly long sentences for low-level drug crimes. That was very good, but as long as the Justice Department maintains control over the process, it easily reverts to form. It’s not enough simply to bring pardons back into the White House. Trump’s near total disregard of any process shows the danger in that. Instead, Osler proposes the establishment of a clemency board or commission with a direct line to the president, and staffed with experts in the field of criminal justice rather than with politicians worried about how their decisions might affect their electoral prospects. Board members should reflect the nation’s diversity in terms of race, geography and political ideology. Nearly all states incorporate the work of a board or commission in their clemency processes; not coincidentally, states generally do a much better job of handling their petitions than the federal government does. Biden could create and staff a clemency board by executive order. He could also avoid Obama’s mistake by laying out clear, consistent standards for considering petitions early in his administration. What the Justice Department currently considers — the seriousness of the crime, whether the offender has expressed remorse and shown rehabilitation — is reasonable, but it often isn’t reflected in clemency decisions. (Certainly not those of Trump.) Congress has an important role to play too. The pardon power is vast but not without limits. For instance, presidents may not violate core constitutional rights with their pardons, dangle pardons as a way to evade the justice system or offer mercy in exchange for bribes. Some constitutional scholars say they may not pardon themselves, although no president has yet tried to. To remind presidents that they are being watched, Congress can require the White House to issue a regular clemency report, as many states require as part of their process. It may also investigate individual pardons for possible abuse, as it did after Clinton’s pardon of Rich. And it can impose consequences, up to and including impeachment. Speaking of impeachment, Trump has a few weeks left in office, during which he could choose to make at least some amends for his degradation of the pardon power by, say, considering the petitions of even some of the thousands of people still waiting. We’re not holding our breath. Real reform is more likely to come from Biden, who has his own amends to make. As a senator, Biden helped draft and championed many of the harshest federal criminal-sentencing laws of the 1980s and ’90s, laws that drove the nation’s prison crisis in the first place. He can’t undo the damage these federal laws have inflicted, but he can begin to repair it, and his own legacy on this issue, by reforming the pardon power from the ground up.

Trump corrupted the presidential pardon. Biden must repair it

Twitter will make Joe Biden's @POTUS account as well as @WhiteHouse account to start afresh with zero followers once he is sworn in as the next president of the United States on January 20.

The micro-blogging platform will not transfer existing the followers of the existing accounts to the new administration, Rob Flaherty, Biden's digital director, was quoted as saying in media reports on Tuesday.

The accounts for @VP, @FLOTUS, @PressSec, @Cabinet, and @LaCasaBlanca will also have their followers gone.

While @POTUS currently has 33.2 million followers, @TheWhiteHouse has 26 million followers on Twitter.

According to The Verge, this is a reversal from what Twitter did in 2017 when the Trump administration took over accounts from the Obama administration.

"Back then, Twitter essentially duplicated the existing accounts, creating an archive of Obama-era tweets and followers and building a new set of accounts for the incoming administration that retained all of those followers without any of the tweets," the report mentioned.

The Wall Street Journal reported that there was contention between the Biden team and Twitter over whether followers would transfer over.

Twitter said it is "in ongoing discussions with the Biden transition team on a number of aspects related to White House account transfers."

The company last month said all existing tweets on those accounts will be archived and it will transfer the accounts -- reset to zero tweets -- to Biden.

Donald Trump's @POTUS account will be renamed @POTUS45 and "frozen as-is".

Trump will be in control of @realDonaldTrump, although with less protections than before.

(with inputs)

Twitter will make Joe Biden's @POTUS account as well as @WhiteHouse account to start afresh with zero followers once he is sworn in as the next president of the United States on January 20.

Twitter will make Joe Biden's @POTUS account as well as @WhiteHouse account to start afresh with zero followers once he is sworn in as the next president of the United States on January 20. The micro-blogging platform will not transfer existing the followers of the existing accounts to the new administration, Rob Flaherty, Biden's digital director, was quoted as saying in media reports on Tuesday. The accounts for @VP, @FLOTUS, @PressSec, @Cabinet, and @LaCasaBlanca will also have their followers gone. While @POTUS currently has 33.2 million followers, @TheWhiteHouse has 26 million followers on Twitter. According to The Verge, this is a reversal from what Twitter did in 2017 when the Trump administration took over accounts from the Obama administration. "Back then, Twitter essentially duplicated the existing accounts, creating an archive of Obama-era tweets and followers and building a new set of accounts for the incoming administration that retained all of those followers without any of the tweets," the report mentioned. The Wall Street Journal reported that there was contention between the Biden team and Twitter over whether followers would transfer over. Twitter said it is "in ongoing discussions with the Biden transition team on a number of aspects related to White House account transfers." The company last month said all existing tweets on those accounts will be archived and it will transfer the accounts -- reset to zero tweets -- to Biden. Donald Trump's @POTUS account will be renamed @POTUS45 and "frozen as-is". Trump will be in control of @realDonaldTrump, although with less protections than before. (with inputs)

Biden won't inherit Trump's millions of Twitter followers

Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris agreement “on day one of my presidency”. He has similarly indicated he would revive the Iran nuclear deal as a top foreign policy objective.

Trump loyalists aim to block Biden's goal to rejoin Iran and Paris agreements

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, has been appointed to fill the Senate seat held by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday, capping months of intense political jockeying among Democratic factions in the state.

The son of Mexican-born immigrants who settled in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, Padilla, 47, will be the first Latino senator from California, where Latinos are about 40% of the population.

“I am honored and humbled by the trust placed in me by Governor Newsom, and I intend to work each and every day to honor that trust and deliver for all Californians,” Padilla said in a statement.

In an interview, Padilla said he was overwhelmed with emotion Monday evening when the governor offered him the position on a Zoom call. “There is a lot of work to get to, of course, but I couldn’t help but think of my parents, who came here from Mexico in pursuit of the American dream,” he said. “All I ever heard as a child was work hard, study hard, and all I ever wanted to do was honor their sacrifices.”

Padilla, an ally of the governor throughout his political career, has held public office since 1999, when he was elected at 26 to the Los Angeles City Council; he went on to serve two terms in the state Senate and then two terms as secretary of state, heading the office that runs California’s elections.

“Through his tenacity, integrity, smarts and grit, California is gaining a tested fighter in their corner who will be a fierce ally in D.C., lifting up our state’s values and making sure we secure the critical resources to emerge stronger from this pandemic,” Newsom said. “He will be a senator for all Californians.”

The decision followed months of deliberation by Newsom and lobbying by California’s myriad political factions for a position whose occupant will need not only the experience to work effectively in Washington but also the money and political base to hold the seat in 2022, when Harris’ term ends.

California progressives had pushed Newsom to appoint Rep. Barbara Lee or another like-minded Democrat. Newsom was also under pressure to appoint a Black woman to take the place of Harris, the only Black woman in the Senate. Rep. Karen Bass and Lee were at the top of that list.

As weeks passed after the presidential election, the back-channel advocacy that had gone on since Harris was chosen as the running mate of President-elect Joe Biden broke into the open with public endorsements, full-page newspaper ads and open letters. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus strongly backed Padilla. The LGBTQ community and Equality California lobbied for Robert Garcia, the mayor of Long Beach. Black Women United, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter and a range of Black elected officials pushed for Bass or Lee.

On Twitter, Lee congratulated Padilla as “a skilled legislator and a steadfast advocate for justice,” Bass cheered “another historic barrier shattered“ and Garcia promised his “100 percent support in his 2022 reelection.”

Nathalie Rayes, president and chief executive of the Latino Victory Fund, which had campaigned for Padilla, called the appointment “a long-overdue milestone for the Latino community” and a “bold step toward having a Senate that looks like the communities it serves.” She added, “His appointment will not only increase Latino representation in the Senate, but it will also open the door for future generations of Latino leaders.”

Leading California Republicans were less impressed. “One of the worst election officials in the nation will go to DC, unelected!!!” tweeted Harmeet Dhillon, a conservative civil rights lawyer and member of the Republican National Committee.

California’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, had endorsed Padilla, who had worked in her field office early in his career and on Tuesday she called the appointment “an excellent choice.” In the run-up to his appointment, some interest groups had called for Feinstein herself to step down, so that the governor could pick two senators — a call that gained traction after a New Yorker article this month suggested that Feinstein, 87, was experiencing cognitive decline.

The elevation of Padilla leaves Newsom with a vacancy in the secretary of state’s office, which was viewed throughout the deliberation as a potential consolation prize for at least one disappointed contender.

On Tuesday afternoon, a person close to the governor’s office said he planned to appoint Shirley Weber, a veteran California assemblywoman and chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus. The daughter of Arkansas sharecroppers, Weber presided last week as the state’s 55 electors sealed the presidency for Biden and had pushed hard for a Black woman to be named as Harris’ replacement.

Newsom will also have to appoint a new attorney general if the Senate confirms Xavier Becerra’s nomination as Biden’s secretary of health and human services.

That state post has in recent years served as a springboard for higher office; besides Becerra, recent attorneys general include Harris and California’s previous governor, Jerry Brown.

Alex Vassar, a legislative historian at the California State Library, said the last California governor to fill three statewide offices was Earl Warren, who in December 1952 and January 1953 appointed a new senator, a state controller and a member of the state Board of Equalization. Pat Brown also made three appointments in 1964 and 1965, Vassar said, but one was simply to speed up an incoming senator’s arrival.

In sending Padilla to the Senate, Newsom chose a Democrat from his own generation who stood by the governor and shored up his Latino support in several critical races. He also chose an experienced candidate who has twice been elected statewide and whose work since 2014 has considerably expanded the ease of voting in California and the size of the electorate.

The middle child of a short-order cook from Jalisco, Mexico, and a housekeeper from Chihuahua, Padilla was raised in Los Angeles and graduated in 1994 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working his way through school with janitorial jobs and work-study programs. Though his degree was in mechanical engineering, his plan to become an aerospace engineer was derailed by the anti-immigrant politics gripping his home state during the 1990s.

Inspired by a summer job helping Latino high school students prepare for college and galvanized by Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative that would have barred immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally from public services including schools and nonemergency health care, Padilla applied for a fellowship with the leadership development program for Coro, a nonprofit organization.

Before that, “I wouldn’t say I had ever dreamed of running for office, but I knew I’d have to do my part, or our community would continue to be scapegoated,” he said in an interview last month.

Padilla worked as a community organizer for Art Torres, who would later lead the state Democratic Party (and who also mentored Becerra). He went on to run legislative campaigns for two Latino politicians in Los Angeles and work in Feinstein’s field office before winning his seat on the Los Angeles City Council, with support from the city’s Latino-dominated labor unions. By 2001, he was the council’s youngest president.

In 2003, when Newsom was running for mayor of San Francisco, Padilla introduced him to Los Angeles contacts and helped buttress his position against a Latino opponent. A few years later, as a member of the state Senate, Padilla ran Newsom’s 2009 bid for governor before Jerry Brown got into the race and Newsom dropped out, running instead for lieutenant governor.

In 2018, he stood by Newsom yet again, endorsing him early in a crowded primary that included former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles.

As secretary of state, Padilla promised to register a million new California voters; the state has added more than 4 million as a result of legislation he backed that registers Californians to vote when they get their driver’s licenses.

As a state legislator, Padilla also supported universal health care, reproductive choice, expanding green manufacturing and solar power, and laws that tracked stolen guns and prevented felons from possessing body armor.

His first order of business in the Senate, he said, would be “COVID, COVID, COVID.” “There are of course big issues at hand, but we can’t fully address them until we get control of this pandemic,” he said.

A father of three, Padilla and his wife, Angela, live in the San Fernando Valley. His mother died three years ago, he said, but he, his father and his siblings live within five miles of one another. His sister works for the Los Angeles public school system, and his younger brother is chief of staff to the president of the Los Angeles City Council.

“We’re all in public service, and to me that’s not a coincidence,” Padilla said. He cited the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on communities of color, inequities in digital literacy and “the long-standing need for comprehensive immigration reform” as issues that he was “eager to play a role in.”

“I love public service and I’ve been doing it for more than 20 years, and I’d like to continue as long as I’m effective and they’ll continue to have me,” he said.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, has been appointed to fill the Senate seat held by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday, capping months of intense political jockeying among Democratic factions in the state.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, has been appointed to fill the Senate seat held by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday, capping months of intense political jockeying among Democratic factions in the state. The son of Mexican-born immigrants who settled in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, Padilla, 47, will be the first Latino senator from California, where Latinos are about 40% of the population. “I am honored and humbled by the trust placed in me by Governor Newsom, and I intend to work each and every day to honor that trust and deliver for all Californians,” Padilla said in a statement. In an interview, Padilla said he was overwhelmed with emotion Monday evening when the governor offered him the position on a Zoom call. “There is a lot of work to get to, of course, but I couldn’t help but think of my parents, who came here from Mexico in pursuit of the American dream,” he said. “All I ever heard as a child was work hard, study hard, and all I ever wanted to do was honor their sacrifices.” Padilla, an ally of the governor throughout his political career, has held public office since 1999, when he was elected at 26 to the Los Angeles City Council; he went on to serve two terms in the state Senate and then two terms as secretary of state, heading the office that runs California’s elections. “Through his tenacity, integrity, smarts and grit, California is gaining a tested fighter in their corner who will be a fierce ally in D.C., lifting up our state’s values and making sure we secure the critical resources to emerge stronger from this pandemic,” Newsom said. “He will be a senator for all Californians.” The decision followed months of deliberation by Newsom and lobbying by California’s myriad political factions for a position whose occupant will need not only the experience to work effectively in Washington but also the money and political base to hold the seat in 2022, when Harris’ term ends. California progressives had pushed Newsom to appoint Rep. Barbara Lee or another like-minded Democrat. Newsom was also under pressure to appoint a Black woman to take the place of Harris, the only Black woman in the Senate. Rep. Karen Bass and Lee were at the top of that list. As weeks passed after the presidential election, the back-channel advocacy that had gone on since Harris was chosen as the running mate of President-elect Joe Biden broke into the open with public endorsements, full-page newspaper ads and open letters. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus strongly backed Padilla. The LGBTQ community and Equality California lobbied for Robert Garcia, the mayor of Long Beach. Black Women United, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter and a range of Black elected officials pushed for Bass or Lee. On Twitter, Lee congratulated Padilla as “a skilled legislator and a steadfast advocate for justice,” Bass cheered “another historic barrier shattered“ and Garcia promised his “100 percent support in his 2022 reelection.” Nathalie Rayes, president and chief executive of the Latino Victory Fund, which had campaigned for Padilla, called the appointment “a long-overdue milestone for the Latino community” and a “bold step toward having a Senate that looks like the communities it serves.” She added, “His appointment will not only increase Latino representation in the Senate, but it will also open the door for future generations of Latino leaders.” Leading California Republicans were less impressed. “One of the worst election officials in the nation will go to DC, unelected!!!” tweeted Harmeet Dhillon, a conservative civil rights lawyer and member of the Republican National Committee. California’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, had endorsed Padilla, who had worked in her field office early in his career and on Tuesday she called the appointment “an excellent choice.” In the run-up to his appointment, some interest groups had called for Feinstein herself to step down, so that the governor could pick two senators — a call that gained traction after a New Yorker article this month suggested that Feinstein, 87, was experiencing cognitive decline. The elevation of Padilla leaves Newsom with a vacancy in the secretary of state’s office, which was viewed throughout the deliberation as a potential consolation prize for at least one disappointed contender. On Tuesday afternoon, a person close to the governor’s office said he planned to appoint Shirley Weber, a veteran California assemblywoman and chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus. The daughter of Arkansas sharecroppers, Weber presided last week as the state’s 55 electors sealed the presidency for Biden and had pushed hard for a Black woman to be named as Harris’ replacement. Newsom will also have to appoint a new attorney general if the Senate confirms Xavier Becerra’s nomination as Biden’s secretary of health and human services. That state post has in recent years served as a springboard for higher office; besides Becerra, recent attorneys general include Harris and California’s previous governor, Jerry Brown. Alex Vassar, a legislative historian at the California State Library, said the last California governor to fill three statewide offices was Earl Warren, who in December 1952 and January 1953 appointed a new senator, a state controller and a member of the state Board of Equalization. Pat Brown also made three appointments in 1964 and 1965, Vassar said, but one was simply to speed up an incoming senator’s arrival. In sending Padilla to the Senate, Newsom chose a Democrat from his own generation who stood by the governor and shored up his Latino support in several critical races. He also chose an experienced candidate who has twice been elected statewide and whose work since 2014 has considerably expanded the ease of voting in California and the size of the electorate. The middle child of a short-order cook from Jalisco, Mexico, and a housekeeper from Chihuahua, Padilla was raised in Los Angeles and graduated in 1994 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working his way through school with janitorial jobs and work-study programs. Though his degree was in mechanical engineering, his plan to become an aerospace engineer was derailed by the anti-immigrant politics gripping his home state during the 1990s. Inspired by a summer job helping Latino high school students prepare for college and galvanized by Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative that would have barred immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally from public services including schools and nonemergency health care, Padilla applied for a fellowship with the leadership development program for Coro, a nonprofit organization. Before that, “I wouldn’t say I had ever dreamed of running for office, but I knew I’d have to do my part, or our community would continue to be scapegoated,” he said in an interview last month. Padilla worked as a community organizer for Art Torres, who would later lead the state Democratic Party (and who also mentored Becerra). He went on to run legislative campaigns for two Latino politicians in Los Angeles and work in Feinstein’s field office before winning his seat on the Los Angeles City Council, with support from the city’s Latino-dominated labor unions. By 2001, he was the council’s youngest president. In 2003, when Newsom was running for mayor of San Francisco, Padilla introduced him to Los Angeles contacts and helped buttress his position against a Latino opponent. A few years later, as a member of the state Senate, Padilla ran Newsom’s 2009 bid for governor before Jerry Brown got into the race and Newsom dropped out, running instead for lieutenant governor. In 2018, he stood by Newsom yet again, endorsing him early in a crowded primary that included former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles. As secretary of state, Padilla promised to register a million new California voters; the state has added more than 4 million as a result of legislation he backed that registers Californians to vote when they get their driver’s licenses. As a state legislator, Padilla also supported universal health care, reproductive choice, expanding green manufacturing and solar power, and laws that tracked stolen guns and prevented felons from possessing body armor. His first order of business in the Senate, he said, would be “COVID, COVID, COVID.” “There are of course big issues at hand, but we can’t fully address them until we get control of this pandemic,” he said. A father of three, Padilla and his wife, Angela, live in the San Fernando Valley. His mother died three years ago, he said, but he, his father and his siblings live within five miles of one another. His sister works for the Los Angeles public school system, and his younger brother is chief of staff to the president of the Los Angeles City Council. “We’re all in public service, and to me that’s not a coincidence,” Padilla said. He cited the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on communities of color, inequities in digital literacy and “the long-standing need for comprehensive immigration reform” as issues that he was “eager to play a role in.” “I love public service and I’ve been doing it for more than 20 years, and I’d like to continue as long as I’m effective and they’ll continue to have me,” he said.

Alex Padilla will replace Kamala Harris in the US Senate

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday Moscow was not expecting "anything good" from US President-elect Joe Biden, accusing members of his future administration of "Russophobia". &nbsp;

"We are definitely not expecting anything good. And it would be strange to expect good things from people, many of whom made their careers on Russophobia and throwing mud at my country," Ryabkov said in an interview with news agency Interfax.

The interview was released days after the US accused Russia of a major cyber attack on government agencies.

Biden on Tuesday said the attack cannot go "unanswered", promising to retaliate once he takes office on January 20.&nbsp;

Ryabkov said Moscow should move to a "total containment" approach in relations with the United States, retaining "selective dialogue" on subjects that are of interest to Russia.&nbsp;

The deputy foreign minister said that Russia would not initiate any contacts with Biden's transition staff, and would also not make any "unilateral concessions".&nbsp;

He added that if the US continued approaching Russia as a "strategic rival" then Moscow would "treat them in a similar way".&nbsp;

Referring to fresh US sanctions imposed earlier this week on 45 Russian organisations over their military connections, Ryabkov said the outgoing administration was trying to "loudly slam the door".&nbsp;

"We are going from bad to worse. This was very typical for the past four years and so far there is no feeling that this trend has outlived its usefulness," Ryabkov said.&nbsp;

 
&nbsp;

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday Moscow was not expecting "anything good" from US President-elect Joe Biden, accusing members of his future administration of "Russophobia".

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday Moscow was not expecting "anything good" from US President-elect Joe Biden, accusing members of his future administration of "Russophobia". "We are definitely not expecting anything good. And it would be strange to expect good things from people, many of whom made their careers on Russophobia and throwing mud at my country," Ryabkov said in an interview with news agency Interfax. The interview was released days after the US accused Russia of a major cyber attack on government agencies. Biden on Tuesday said the attack cannot go "unanswered", promising to retaliate once he takes office on January 20. Ryabkov said Moscow should move to a "total containment" approach in relations with the United States, retaining "selective dialogue" on subjects that are of interest to Russia. The deputy foreign minister said that Russia would not initiate any contacts with Biden's transition staff, and would also not make any "unilateral concessions". He added that if the US continued approaching Russia as a "strategic rival" then Moscow would "treat them in a similar way". Referring to fresh US sanctions imposed earlier this week on 45 Russian organisations over their military connections, Ryabkov said the outgoing administration was trying to "loudly slam the door". "We are going from bad to worse. This was very typical for the past four years and so far there is no feeling that this trend has outlived its usefulness," Ryabkov said.

Russia says not expecting 'anything good' from Biden administration

With just a month left for his White House inauguration, Biden took the opportunity to urge all Americans to get the vaccine as soon as it becomes available.

U.S. president-elect Joe Biden get coronavirus vaccine live on tv

The analysis comes as the list of US agencies, private companies and other entities affected by the hacking campaign continues to increase.

What led to the worst cyber attack in the U.S.

President-elect Joe Biden’s team will consider several options to punish Russia for its suspected role in the unprecedented hacking of U.S. government agencies.

Joe Biden's options for Russian hacking punishment: sanctions, cyber retaliation

US&nbsp;Attorney General William&nbsp;Barr&nbsp;on Monday&nbsp;rejected several of President Donald Trump's inflammatory and unfounded statements regarding the presidential election, saying&nbsp;he has no plans&nbsp;to name special counsels to investigate Hunter Biden or election fraud.

Hunter Biden disclosed earlier this month the US&nbsp;Attorney’s Office in Delaware is investigating his tax affairs.

Barr said Monday that a probe into the younger Biden, believed to be linked to tax-related issues over his business dealings in China, is being handled “responsibly” by Justice Department prosecutors. In what may be his final public briefing before stepping down on Wednesday, Barr said he has no plans to appoint a special counsel.

“To this point, I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” Barr told reporters at what may have been his final public appearance before stepping down.

Barr also said he sees no reason to appoint a special counsel to look into election fraud, standing by his previous statement that there’s been no evidence of widespread fraud that would overturn Joe Biden’s November&nbsp;3 election win. Trump continues to claim without evidence that the vote was “rigged.”

“If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, I would name one, but I haven’t and I’m not going to,” Barr said. The attorney general said he also sees “no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government,” something Trump has&nbsp;reportedly&nbsp;inquired about.

Barr, who is set to leave office Wednesday, also broke with Trump by publicly blaming Russia for a massive cyberattack that has affected more than a half-dozen government agencies and an untold number of private companies, even as the president pointed the finger at China over the weekend and sought to downplay the breach.

"From the information I have, I agree with Secretary Pompeo’s assessment," Barr said, referring to State Department chief Mike Pompeo.&nbsp;"It certainly appears to be the Russians, but I’m not going to discuss it beyond that."

Trump has accused the media of inflating the seriousness of the cyberattacks and deflected blame from Russia, undermining his own administration’s warning last week that the cyberattacks believed to be tied to Russia continue to pose a “grave risk” to government networks and the private sector.

Biden’s transition team announced on December&nbsp;9 that Hunter Biden was under a federal criminal tax investigation. The Bidens have repeatedly insisted no wrongdoing was committed.

Hunter Biden has been the target of more than one federal criminal investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter.

According to a US Senate Committee report,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-elections-2020-trump-applauds-selfs-approach-towards-covid-calls-bidens-approach-anti-science-329852">Joe Biden's</a>&nbsp;son Hunter was paid $50,000 a month to serve as the board of Burisma which is a Ukrainian natural gas company with a corrupt owner while his father was the US vice president&nbsp;during the Obama administration.

The report said the Treasury records accessed by Chairman Grassley and Chairman Johnson showed Hunter<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/us-election-2020-facebook-removes-fake-pages-created-in-china-targeting-trump-biden-329641">&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;</a>and his family including his associates were involved in "potential criminal activity relating to transactions with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals."

The Senate Committee report claimed that that Hunter Biden and his family were involved in a "vast financial network that connected them to foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe", while adding that Hunter and Archer formed "significant and consistent financial relationships with the corrupt oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky during their time working for Burisma and their firms made millions of dollars from that association while Joe Biden was the vice president."&nbsp;

"Rosemont Seneca Thornton, an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden received $3.5 million in wire transfer from Elena Baturina who allegedly received illegal construction contracts from her husband, the former mayor of Moscow," it said.

"In particular these documents show that Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from foreign sources as a result of business relationships that he built during the period when his father was the vice-president of the US," the report claimed.

The report said Biden and Archer found "willing partners in Chinese nationals connected to the Communist regime", adding that "their work began in China in 2009 with the creation of Rosemont Seneca Partners with Heinz, the stepson of the then secretary of state John Kerry.

"Hunter Biden's connections and financial associations appear to have accelerated significantly after he associated himself with Ye Jianming who had deep connections with the Communist regime and PLA," it said.

Last week,&nbsp;Barr's successor, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen,&nbsp;in a interview declined to say if he would appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden or election issues.

US Attorney General William Barr on Monday rejected several of President Donald Trump's inflammatory and unfounded statements regarding the presidential election, saying he has no plans to name special counsels to investigate Hunter Biden or election fraud.

US Attorney General William Barr on Monday rejected several of President Donald Trump's inflammatory and unfounded statements regarding the presidential election, saying he has no plans to name special counsels to investigate Hunter Biden or election fraud. Hunter Biden disclosed earlier this month the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware is investigating his tax affairs. Barr said Monday that a probe into the younger Biden, believed to be linked to tax-related issues over his business dealings in China, is being handled “responsibly” by Justice Department prosecutors. In what may be his final public briefing before stepping down on Wednesday, Barr said he has no plans to appoint a special counsel. “To this point, I have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” Barr told reporters at what may have been his final public appearance before stepping down. Barr also said he sees no reason to appoint a special counsel to look into election fraud, standing by his previous statement that there’s been no evidence of widespread fraud that would overturn Joe Biden’s November 3 election win. Trump continues to claim without evidence that the vote was “rigged.” “If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, I would name one, but I haven’t and I’m not going to,” Barr said. The attorney general said he also sees “no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government,” something Trump has reportedly inquired about. Barr, who is set to leave office Wednesday, also broke with Trump by publicly blaming Russia for a massive cyberattack that has affected more than a half-dozen government agencies and an untold number of private companies, even as the president pointed the finger at China over the weekend and sought to downplay the breach. "From the information I have, I agree with Secretary Pompeo’s assessment," Barr said, referring to State Department chief Mike Pompeo. "It certainly appears to be the Russians, but I’m not going to discuss it beyond that." Trump has accused the media of inflating the seriousness of the cyberattacks and deflected blame from Russia, undermining his own administration’s warning last week that the cyberattacks believed to be tied to Russia continue to pose a “grave risk” to government networks and the private sector. Biden’s transition team announced on December 9 that Hunter Biden was under a federal criminal tax investigation. The Bidens have repeatedly insisted no wrongdoing was committed. Hunter Biden has been the target of more than one federal criminal investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter. According to a US Senate Committee report, Joe Biden's son Hunter was paid $50,000 a month to serve as the board of Burisma which is a Ukrainian natural gas company with a corrupt owner while his father was the US vice president during the Obama administration. The report said the Treasury records accessed by Chairman Grassley and Chairman Johnson showed Hunter Biden and his family including his associates were involved in "potential criminal activity relating to transactions with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals." The Senate Committee report claimed that that Hunter Biden and his family were involved in a "vast financial network that connected them to foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe", while adding that Hunter and Archer formed "significant and consistent financial relationships with the corrupt oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky during their time working for Burisma and their firms made millions of dollars from that association while Joe Biden was the vice president." "Rosemont Seneca Thornton, an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden received $3.5 million in wire transfer from Elena Baturina who allegedly received illegal construction contracts from her husband, the former mayor of Moscow," it said. "In particular these documents show that Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from foreign sources as a result of business relationships that he built during the period when his father was the vice-president of the US," the report claimed. The report said Biden and Archer found "willing partners in Chinese nationals connected to the Communist regime", adding that "their work began in China in 2009 with the creation of Rosemont Seneca Partners with Heinz, the stepson of the then secretary of state John Kerry. "Hunter Biden's connections and financial associations appear to have accelerated significantly after he associated himself with Ye Jianming who had deep connections with the Communist regime and PLA," it said. Last week, Barr's successor, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, in a interview declined to say if he would appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden or election issues.

Hunter Biden probe: Attorney General Barr finds no reason to name special counsel for investigation

WASHINGTON — For Sudan, agreeing to normalize relations with Israel was the price of removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

A similar diplomatic deal with Israel sealed Morocco’s demand for the United States to recognize its sovereignty over the Western Sahara region.

Watch |&nbsp;

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-trumps-parting-gifts-to-israel-349171/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

United Arab Emirates officials who wanted to buy stealthy F-35 fighter jets from the United States first had to sign on to the Abraham Accords, the product of President Donald Trump’s campaign to foster stability between Israel and estranged or even hostile Muslim states.

In each case, the incentives that the Trump administration dangled in exchange for the détente could fall through — either rejected by Congress or reversed by the administration of President-elect Joe Biden.

That puts at risk not only the series of regional agreements for rapprochement but also exacerbates a worldview that the United States cannot be depended upon to hold up its end of diplomatic deals.

The Abraham Accords, Trump’s signature foreign policy achievement, have either newly brokered or restarted economic and political ties for Israel with Bahrain, the UAE, Sudan and Morocco. Officials familiar with the administration’s efforts said Oman and Tunisia might be the next states to join, and the warming could be expanded to nations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa even after Trump leaves office in January.

Formally easing tensions between Israel and its regional neighbors is a success, to be sure, that past Republican and Democratic presidents alike have long sought to foment.

“All diplomacy is transactional, but these transactions are mixing things that ought not to have been mixed,” said Robert Malley, president and chief executive of the International Crisis Group, who is close to Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for secretary of state.

Malley predicted that the incoming Biden administration would try to walk back or dilute parts of the normalization deals that defy international norms, as in the case of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, or otherwise challenge long-standing U.S. policy, like the F-35 sales to the UAE.

Congress has also shown alarm at the deal-making.

The Senate last week narrowly accepted the UAE’s purchase of the stealth jets, drones and other precision weapons, signaling concern over expanded arms deals to the Persian Gulf. That could be reversed if Democrats take control of the chamber after runoff elections in Georgia next month; regardless, the move will be reviewed by the Biden administration to ensure that the $23 billion sale to the UAE does not dull Israel’s military edge in the region.

A day after the Senate vote, the Republican chair of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, said it was “shocking and disappointing” that the Trump administration had decided to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara and predicted that it would be reversed. The United Nations, the European Union and the African Union all view the Western Sahara as disputed territory.

“I am saddened that the rights of the Western Saharan people have been traded away,” Inhofe said in a statement. “The president has been poorly advised by his team; he could have made this deal without trading the rights of a voiceless people.”

Saad Eddine el-Othmani, Morocco’s prime minister, said Tuesday that his government “didn’t want it to be an exchange.”

“We don’t bargain with the Sahara,” Othmani said in an interview with Al-Jazeera. “But the victory in this battle required the concomitance.”

Nowhere has the diplomatic deal proven more delicate than for Sudan.

A seemingly unrelated issue — immunity in U.S. courts from terrorism lawsuits — was indirectly tied to a condition of Sudan reluctantly signing on to the peace accords with Israel in October.

The State Department had already decided to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for the country compensating victims of the 1998 bombings against U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. As part of those negotiations, Sudan’s transitional government had demanded the dismissal of all other terrorism lawsuits that it faced from attacks carried out in the 27 years it was on the list.

The State Department agreed and countered last summer with a condition of its own: that Sudan begin to thaw a half-century of hostilities with Israel.

Only Congress, however, can grant Sudan the legal peace it seeks. Over the past several months, lawmakers have been deadlocked over doing so, given that it would deny families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks their day in court.

“We have always wanted all terrorists to be held accountable for their acts on 9/11,” Kristen Breitweiser, a lawyer whose husband was killed in the attacks on New York, said in a statement issued last week during furious negotiating in Congress.

Sudan insists it is not liable for the 9/11 attacks, given that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden left his sanctuary in the country five years before they were carried out. But the congressional compromise that was hammered out, according to officials and others close to the negotiations, allows the 9/11 lawsuits to continue, potentially making Sudan liable for billions of dollars in victims’ compensation.

Representatives for the Sudanese Embassy in Washington declined to comment but have previously said the country might exit the peace accords with Israel if it is not given immunity from the terrorism lawsuits. As the Trump administration tries to keep the deal from falling apart, an official confirmed a Bloomberg report that the United States had offered Sudan a $1 billion loan to help clear its arrears and obtain as much as $1.5 billion in annual development assistance. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is expected to visit Sudan, Israel and the UAE in a high-level delegation to the region next month.

Bahrain appears to be a lone exception among the countries that were offered incentives as part of normalization agreements with Israel, although this week the State Department designated the Iranian-linked Saraya al-Mukhtar as a terrorist group, in part for its goal to overthrow the tiny Sunni monarchy.

That has also fueled concern among current and former government officials and conflict analysts that the United States will designate Houthi rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization, in part to convince Saudi Arabia to sign on to the accords with Israel.

Officials close to the decision said that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was inclined to issue the designation to cut off Iran’s support of the Houthis, who have seized control of most of Yemen, ousted its government and attacked neighboring Saudi Arabia in their five-year border war. It could also prohibit the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemen’s major ports — most of which are controlled by the Houthis — and, in turn, exacerbate a famine in one of the world’s poorest countries.

It is doubtful, however, that the terrorism designation alone would persuade Saudi Arabia — the most powerful monarchy in the Middle East — to normalize relations with Israel. That thaw could take years, if it happens at all, and by then might be driven more by a rising number of young adults in the kingdom who are more concerned with jobs and economic stability at home than a generations-old conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, said a secretive trip that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel made to Saudi Arabia last month to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was a bold signal of the détente.

“These Arab countries want to be friends with Israel,” Haley told the Israeli-based DiploTech Global Summit on Wednesday.

Even if they disapprove of Trump’s transactional diplomacy, Biden and Blinken will also be wary of appearing to back away from Israel, which is the strongest U.S. ally in the Middle East and holds considerable political sway over U.S. evangelical and Jewish voters.

“I think President-elect Biden will try to continue with the momentum because it’s beneficial for the U.S., it’s beneficial for the allies of the U.S., and I think that will be the right thing to do,” said Danny Danon, who retired this year as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.

WASHINGTON — For Sudan, agreeing to normalize relations with Israel was the price of removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. A similar diplomatic deal with Israel sealed Morocco’s demand for the United States to recognize its sovereignty over the Western Sahara region.

WASHINGTON — For Sudan, agreeing to normalize relations with Israel was the price of removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. A similar diplomatic deal with Israel sealed Morocco’s demand for the United States to recognize its sovereignty over the Western Sahara region. Watch | United Arab Emirates officials who wanted to buy stealthy F-35 fighter jets from the United States first had to sign on to the Abraham Accords, the product of President Donald Trump’s campaign to foster stability between Israel and estranged or even hostile Muslim states. In each case, the incentives that the Trump administration dangled in exchange for the détente could fall through — either rejected by Congress or reversed by the administration of President-elect Joe Biden. That puts at risk not only the series of regional agreements for rapprochement but also exacerbates a worldview that the United States cannot be depended upon to hold up its end of diplomatic deals. The Abraham Accords, Trump’s signature foreign policy achievement, have either newly brokered or restarted economic and political ties for Israel with Bahrain, the UAE, Sudan and Morocco. Officials familiar with the administration’s efforts said Oman and Tunisia might be the next states to join, and the warming could be expanded to nations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa even after Trump leaves office in January. Formally easing tensions between Israel and its regional neighbors is a success, to be sure, that past Republican and Democratic presidents alike have long sought to foment. “All diplomacy is transactional, but these transactions are mixing things that ought not to have been mixed,” said Robert Malley, president and chief executive of the International Crisis Group, who is close to Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for secretary of state. Malley predicted that the incoming Biden administration would try to walk back or dilute parts of the normalization deals that defy international norms, as in the case of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, or otherwise challenge long-standing U.S. policy, like the F-35 sales to the UAE. Congress has also shown alarm at the deal-making. The Senate last week narrowly accepted the UAE’s purchase of the stealth jets, drones and other precision weapons, signaling concern over expanded arms deals to the Persian Gulf. That could be reversed if Democrats take control of the chamber after runoff elections in Georgia next month; regardless, the move will be reviewed by the Biden administration to ensure that the $23 billion sale to the UAE does not dull Israel’s military edge in the region. A day after the Senate vote, the Republican chair of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, said it was “shocking and disappointing” that the Trump administration had decided to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara and predicted that it would be reversed. The United Nations, the European Union and the African Union all view the Western Sahara as disputed territory. “I am saddened that the rights of the Western Saharan people have been traded away,” Inhofe said in a statement. “The president has been poorly advised by his team; he could have made this deal without trading the rights of a voiceless people.” Saad Eddine el-Othmani, Morocco’s prime minister, said Tuesday that his government “didn’t want it to be an exchange.” “We don’t bargain with the Sahara,” Othmani said in an interview with Al-Jazeera. “But the victory in this battle required the concomitance.” Nowhere has the diplomatic deal proven more delicate than for Sudan. A seemingly unrelated issue — immunity in U.S. courts from terrorism lawsuits — was indirectly tied to a condition of Sudan reluctantly signing on to the peace accords with Israel in October. The State Department had already decided to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for the country compensating victims of the 1998 bombings against U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. As part of those negotiations, Sudan’s transitional government had demanded the dismissal of all other terrorism lawsuits that it faced from attacks carried out in the 27 years it was on the list. The State Department agreed and countered last summer with a condition of its own: that Sudan begin to thaw a half-century of hostilities with Israel. Only Congress, however, can grant Sudan the legal peace it seeks. Over the past several months, lawmakers have been deadlocked over doing so, given that it would deny families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks their day in court. “We have always wanted all terrorists to be held accountable for their acts on 9/11,” Kristen Breitweiser, a lawyer whose husband was killed in the attacks on New York, said in a statement issued last week during furious negotiating in Congress. Sudan insists it is not liable for the 9/11 attacks, given that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden left his sanctuary in the country five years before they were carried out. But the congressional compromise that was hammered out, according to officials and others close to the negotiations, allows the 9/11 lawsuits to continue, potentially making Sudan liable for billions of dollars in victims’ compensation. Representatives for the Sudanese Embassy in Washington declined to comment but have previously said the country might exit the peace accords with Israel if it is not given immunity from the terrorism lawsuits. As the Trump administration tries to keep the deal from falling apart, an official confirmed a Bloomberg report that the United States had offered Sudan a $1 billion loan to help clear its arrears and obtain as much as $1.5 billion in annual development assistance. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is expected to visit Sudan, Israel and the UAE in a high-level delegation to the region next month. Bahrain appears to be a lone exception among the countries that were offered incentives as part of normalization agreements with Israel, although this week the State Department designated the Iranian-linked Saraya al-Mukhtar as a terrorist group, in part for its goal to overthrow the tiny Sunni monarchy. That has also fueled concern among current and former government officials and conflict analysts that the United States will designate Houthi rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization, in part to convince Saudi Arabia to sign on to the accords with Israel. Officials close to the decision said that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was inclined to issue the designation to cut off Iran’s support of the Houthis, who have seized control of most of Yemen, ousted its government and attacked neighboring Saudi Arabia in their five-year border war. It could also prohibit the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemen’s major ports — most of which are controlled by the Houthis — and, in turn, exacerbate a famine in one of the world’s poorest countries. It is doubtful, however, that the terrorism designation alone would persuade Saudi Arabia — the most powerful monarchy in the Middle East — to normalize relations with Israel. That thaw could take years, if it happens at all, and by then might be driven more by a rising number of young adults in the kingdom who are more concerned with jobs and economic stability at home than a generations-old conflict between Israel and Palestine. Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, said a secretive trip that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel made to Saudi Arabia last month to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was a bold signal of the détente. “These Arab countries want to be friends with Israel,” Haley told the Israeli-based DiploTech Global Summit on Wednesday. Even if they disapprove of Trump’s transactional diplomacy, Biden and Blinken will also be wary of appearing to back away from Israel, which is the strongest U.S. ally in the Middle East and holds considerable political sway over U.S. evangelical and Jewish voters. “I think President-elect Biden will try to continue with the momentum because it’s beneficial for the U.S., it’s beneficial for the allies of the U.S., and I think that will be the right thing to do,” said Danny Danon, who retired this year as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Trump incentives for signing peace accords with Israel could be at risk

The incoming White House chief of staff said on Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden`s response to the massive hacking campaign uncovered last week would go beyond sanctions. 
 
Ron Klain said Biden was mapping out ways to push back against the suspected Russian hackers who have penetrated half a dozen U.S. government agencies and left thousands of American companies exposed. 
 
"It`s not just sanctions. It`s steps and things we could do to degrade the capacity of foreign actors to engage in this sort of attack," Klain said on CBS` "Face the Nation."

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/russia-dismisses-hacking-allegations-as-russophobia-336674" hreflang="en">Russia dismisses hacking allegations as 'Russophobia'</a> 
 
Options being mulled by the Biden administration to punish Moscow over its alleged role include financial penalties and retaliatory hacks on Russian infrastructure, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters. 
 
The Kremlin denies any role in the hacking. Speaking at an event to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Russia`s SVR foreign intelligence agency, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised its work, saying he was impressed by the "difficult professional operations that have been conducted." 
 
Biden, who becomes president on Jan. 20, would likely have bipartisan support for a muscular reaction to the espionage campaign, lawmakers indicated on Sunday. 
 
Republican Senator Mitt Romney said the data breach was "extraordinarily damaging" on NBC`s "Meet the Press." 
 
"This demands a response," he said. "This is something we have to address as soon as possible." 
 
U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on ABC that the hack could still be going on and that officials had yet to determine its full scope. But he stopped short of the aggressive language used by Romney, who called the hack "an invasion".

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/us-election-2020-white-house-official-expresses-concern-over-hacking-on-day-of-voting-333397" hreflang="en">US election 2020: White House official expresses concern over hacking on day of voting</a> 
 
"This is in that gray area between espionage and an attack," Warner said. Still, he backed Romney`s call for retaliation, saying Washington needed to make clear to adversaries "that if you take this kind of action we and others will strike back." 
 
Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also said the United States would "have to deter and respond" - but also invest more in cyber defenses. 
 
He told MSNBC that, in some cases, the digital cleanup of U.S. networks "may mean burning down the whole system in order to make sure when we rebuild it they`re not present." 
 
Officials and cybersecurity professionals across the United States are still struggling to get their hands around the scale of the hacking campaign, which used U.S. tech company SolarWinds as a springboard to infect the Texas firm`s clients - including the Departments of Treasury, Commerce and Energy. 
 
Up to 18,000 customers were left open to the hackers, but CEO Kevin Mandia - whose company FireEye helped uncover the hacking - told CBS that he estimated "only around 50 organizations or companies, somewhere in that zone," were "genuinely impacted." 
 
Klain told CBS much was still unknown. 
 
"I think there`s still a lot of unanswered questions about the purpose, nature, and extent of these specific attacks," he said.

The incoming White House chief of staff said on Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden`s response to the massive hacking campaign uncovered last week would go beyond sanctions.

The incoming White House chief of staff said on Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden`s response to the massive hacking campaign uncovered last week would go beyond sanctions. Ron Klain said Biden was mapping out ways to push back against the suspected Russian hackers who have penetrated half a dozen U.S. government agencies and left thousands of American companies exposed. "It`s not just sanctions. It`s steps and things we could do to degrade the capacity of foreign actors to engage in this sort of attack," Klain said on CBS` "Face the Nation." Also read: Russia dismisses hacking allegations as 'Russophobia' Options being mulled by the Biden administration to punish Moscow over its alleged role include financial penalties and retaliatory hacks on Russian infrastructure, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters. The Kremlin denies any role in the hacking. Speaking at an event to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Russia`s SVR foreign intelligence agency, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised its work, saying he was impressed by the "difficult professional operations that have been conducted." Biden, who becomes president on Jan. 20, would likely have bipartisan support for a muscular reaction to the espionage campaign, lawmakers indicated on Sunday. Republican Senator Mitt Romney said the data breach was "extraordinarily damaging" on NBC`s "Meet the Press." "This demands a response," he said. "This is something we have to address as soon as possible." U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on ABC that the hack could still be going on and that officials had yet to determine its full scope. But he stopped short of the aggressive language used by Romney, who called the hack "an invasion". Also read: US election 2020: White House official expresses concern over hacking on day of voting "This is in that gray area between espionage and an attack," Warner said. Still, he backed Romney`s call for retaliation, saying Washington needed to make clear to adversaries "that if you take this kind of action we and others will strike back." Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also said the United States would "have to deter and respond" - but also invest more in cyber defenses. He told MSNBC that, in some cases, the digital cleanup of U.S. networks "may mean burning down the whole system in order to make sure when we rebuild it they`re not present." Officials and cybersecurity professionals across the United States are still struggling to get their hands around the scale of the hacking campaign, which used U.S. tech company SolarWinds as a springboard to infect the Texas firm`s clients - including the Departments of Treasury, Commerce and Energy. Up to 18,000 customers were left open to the hackers, but CEO Kevin Mandia - whose company FireEye helped uncover the hacking - told CBS that he estimated "only around 50 organizations or companies, somewhere in that zone," were "genuinely impacted." Klain told CBS much was still unknown. "I think there`s still a lot of unanswered questions about the purpose, nature, and extent of these specific attacks," he said.

President-elect Biden's chief of staff says hack response will go beyond 'just sanctions'

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is rushing to approve a final wave of large-scale mining and energy projects on federal lands, encouraged by investors who want to try to ensure the projects move ahead even after President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

In Arizona, the Forest Service is preparing to sign off on the transfer of federal forest land — considered sacred by a neighboring Native American tribe — to allow construction of one of the nation’s largest copper mines.

In Utah, the Interior Department may grant final approval as soon as next week to a team of energy speculators targeting a remote spot inside an iconic national wilderness area — where new energy leasing is currently banned — so they can start drilling into what they believe is a huge underground supply of helium.

In northern Nevada, the department is close to granting final approval to construct a sprawling open-pit lithium mine on federal land that sits above a prehistoric volcano site.

And in the East, the Forest Service intends to take a key step next month toward allowing a natural gas pipeline to be built through Jefferson National Forest in Virginia and West Virginia, at one point running underneath the Appalachian Trail.

These projects, and others awaiting action in the remaining weeks of the Trump administration, reflect the intense push by the Interior Department, which controls 480 million acres of public lands, and the Forest Service, which manages another 193 million acres, to find ways to increase domestic energy and mining production, even in the face of intense protests by environmentalists and other activists.

When he takes office Jan. 20, Biden, who has chosen a Native American — Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M. — to lead the Interior Department, will still have the ability to reshape, slow or even block certain projects.

Some, like a planned uranium mine in South Dakota, will require further approvals. Others, like the planned helium drilling project in Utah, face lawsuits seeking to stop them. Still others, like the lithium mine in Nevada, will have the final federal permit needed before construction can begin and will be hard for the next administration to stop.

Whether they are the final word or not, the last-minute actions are just the latest evidence of how the far-reaching shift in regulatory policy under President Donald Trump has altered the balance between environmental concerns and business, giving substantial new weight to corporate interests.

Trump chose former industry executives to run major federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, and industry executives and lobbyists who cycled in and out of government positions were granted substantial influence in setting regulations.

For four years, Trump’s team and its allies have raced to roll back federal rules intended to protect federal lands and the nation’s air and water as well as other safety rules in agencies across the government. The changes were often made in direct response to requests from lobbyists and company executives who were major donors to Trump and frequent patrons at his hotels and resorts.

The final push on the mining and energy projects has come in part from senior Trump administration officials, including the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, a steel industry investor before joining Trump’s Cabinet.

Ross’ calendar shows at least three appointments with top executives at Rio Tinto, the Australia-based mining giant backing the Resolution Copper mine planned for construction in Arizona next to the San Carlos Apache reservation. Ross also made a trip to the mine site this year.

“This is a disaster,” said Wendsler Nosie Sr., a former San Carlos Apache tribal leader who in recent weeks has been camping out at the proposed mine site inside Tonto National Forest to protest the pending decision.

Backers of these projects say they are committed to minimizing the effect on public lands, sacred Native American sites and wildlife.

“Our science-based decisions are legally compliant and based on an extensive process involving input from career subject matter experts and the public,” said Richard Packer, an Interior Department spokesperson, adding that the agency “continues to balance safe and responsible natural resource development with conservation of important surface resources.”

The administration has been seeking to promote more mining of key minerals — including uranium, copper and lithium — to allow the United States to be less dependent on imports.

But the environmental consequences of these projects, if they move ahead as planned, will be considerable.

Last month, the EPA gave its final approval for the construction of a new uranium mine called the Dewey-Burdock project, spread over 12,613 acres near the Black Hills region of South Dakota.

The project would inject a chemical called lixiviant into more than 1,461 wells, sending the chemical into an underground water supply. The chemical would cause uranium trapped in sandstone below the surface to leach into the aquifer, contaminating the water but allowing the uranium to be captured, extracted and transformed into so-called yellow cake that can be used to fuel nuclear power plants.

Nationally, just 174,000 pounds of uranium was produced last year in the United States. The South Dakota project alone would have the potential to produce as much as 1 million pounds of uranium a year, although it is unclear whether there will ever be sufficient demand to justify production at that level, given that there is already excess capacity at uranium mines in the country.

The Oglala Lakota Nation, whose 2.8 million-acre reservation is adjacent to the proposed uranium mine, has sued to block the project. The mine would be built on property that the Sioux tribe has long claimed was illegally taken by the United States.

“The voice of Indigenous people needs to be heard — and federal Indian policy has made us invisible and dehumanized us,” said Kyle White, 34, a member of the Lakota tribe and former director of its natural resources regulatory agency.

A small piece of the project is on Interior Department land. The department has not yet approved the mine and will not act until after Trump leaves office, one of several ways that the Biden administration could slow or block the project.

Azarga Uranium, the Canada-based backer of the project, did not respond to a request for comment.

For the proposed Resolution Copper Mine, east of Phoenix in Tonto National Forest, adjacent to Apache tribal land, the Forest Service is expected to issue its long-awaited final environmental assessment by mid-January.

Sixty days after the assessment is released, a 2,422-acre chunk of the Tonto forest, an area called Oak Flat, will automatically be transferred to the mining companies in exchange for land nearby, a deal mandated by Congress in 2014.

The Interior Department’s National Register of Historic Places lists the Oak Flat area as “a holy place and ancestral homeland to the Western Apache Indians” that is also “a venue for ongoing Apache participation in traditional social activities, and is associated with traditions rooted in the history” of the tribe.

Under the current Forest Service plan, much of Oak Flat would eventually be destroyed. Starting about six years after underground blasting and extraction at the mine begins, the mine will gradually start to cave in on itself, forming a crater nearly 2 miles wide and as much as 1,100 feet deep, according to federal estimates.

The project would create 3,700 jobs and supply as much as 1 billion pounds of copper per year, one-quarter of the current annual demand in the United States.

“That was one of the major reasons why President Trump moved so aggressively to reduce the red tape involved in such projects,” Ross said in remarks during his visit to the site in October.

The companies running the project — Rio Tinto and BHP, also based in Australia — have promised to build a campsite outside the mine area to replace one traditionally used by Native Americans in the Oak Flat area. Rio Tinto said it was also working to ensure there was no damage to a nearby area called Apache Leap where, according to tribal legends, Native Americans being chased by U.S. Cavalry troops in the late-1800s jumped to their deaths.

But the ire of some members of the local San Carlos Apache Tribe toward Rio Tinto only intensified after the company admitted using dynamite to destroy a 46,000-year-old sacred Indigenous site in Australia as it expanded an iron ore mine.

A Forest Service employee working on the Arizona project acknowledged to community leaders in a recent conference call that pressure to get the evaluation of the project done quickly was “coming from the highest level,” mentioning the Agriculture Department, which oversees the service.

Federal records show that the environmental study until recently was expected to continue until the middle of 2021. It is now slated to be finished by mid-January. An agency spokesperson did not respond when asked to comment on claims that the process was being rushed. But Andrew Lye, project manager for Resolution Copper, said the review had actually taken longer than expected and been very thorough.

“It is not being fast-tracked, and Resolution Copper has not sought to apply for programs that are available to expedite projects,” Lye said.

Another mining project expecting imminent action by the Trump administration is in rural Nevada, where Canada-based Lithium Americas intends to build one of the world’s largest lithium mines on 5,500 acres of federal land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.

Lithium is a vital ingredient in myriad batteries, including for cellphones and electric cars, but almost none of it is produced in the United States.

The project was listed in July by the Interior Department as one that it intended to “fast-track,” and it planned to take the final step in early January, meaning construction of the mine could begin soon.

But the Bureau of Land Management’s own environmental assessment acknowledges that the project will cause harm, including to the habitat of a threatened bird species known as sage grouse. Local ranchers and other families have expressed concern in comments to the agency that the project could cut the available local water supply and create other environmental problems.

The push to approve some of the projects has involved sustained lobbying and legal efforts by hired consultants with close ties to the Trump administration.

Those include Rebecca Watson, who served as the top Interior Department official in charge of oil and gas leasing during the Bush administration, working at the time alongside David Bernhardt, who is now the interior secretary.

Watson worked with other industry players over several years to urge lawmakers and senior officials at the Interior Department to change rules to allow her clients, now including Colorado-based Twin Bridges, to extract helium for more than a decade from federal lands, including land Twin Bridges has leased in Utah.

Watson said in an interview that increasing the supply of helium was critical to the nation. “Helium has a lot of strange little uses that people are not even familiar with, but they’re really important,” she said.

With time running out on the Trump administration, senior Interior Department officials were so determined to see the permit approved that they took control of the project from the local Utah office. Final action is now expected as soon this coming week, two agency officials said, even though the agency itself again acknowledged that the project will harm the area. Environmentalists filed a lawsuit Dec. 14 to try to block it.

David Wallace, an executive at Twin Bridges, said the project could ultimately generate hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of royalty and tax payments to federal, state and local governments.

“We also love these lands and are committed to our project enhancing, and not detracting from, them,” he said in a statement.

Opponents of the projects are keeping up pressure to try to stop them. That includes Nosie, who is camping out most nights on the sacred Oak Flat that could soon be transferred to Rio Tinto.

“As far as I am concerned, this is an invasion by a foreign power,” Nosie said. “We cannot afford to lose our identity and our history. Imagine if the biblical Mount Sinai became a location for mining, and it caved in and disappeared. You would not stand by and watch.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is rushing to approve a final wave of large-scale mining and energy projects on federal lands, encouraged by investors who want to try to ensure the projects move ahead even after President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is rushing to approve a final wave of large-scale mining and energy projects on federal lands, encouraged by investors who want to try to ensure the projects move ahead even after President-elect Joe Biden takes office. In Arizona, the Forest Service is preparing to sign off on the transfer of federal forest land — considered sacred by a neighboring Native American tribe — to allow construction of one of the nation’s largest copper mines. In Utah, the Interior Department may grant final approval as soon as next week to a team of energy speculators targeting a remote spot inside an iconic national wilderness area — where new energy leasing is currently banned — so they can start drilling into what they believe is a huge underground supply of helium. In northern Nevada, the department is close to granting final approval to construct a sprawling open-pit lithium mine on federal land that sits above a prehistoric volcano site. And in the East, the Forest Service intends to take a key step next month toward allowing a natural gas pipeline to be built through Jefferson National Forest in Virginia and West Virginia, at one point running underneath the Appalachian Trail. These projects, and others awaiting action in the remaining weeks of the Trump administration, reflect the intense push by the Interior Department, which controls 480 million acres of public lands, and the Forest Service, which manages another 193 million acres, to find ways to increase domestic energy and mining production, even in the face of intense protests by environmentalists and other activists. When he takes office Jan. 20, Biden, who has chosen a Native American — Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M. — to lead the Interior Department, will still have the ability to reshape, slow or even block certain projects. Some, like a planned uranium mine in South Dakota, will require further approvals. Others, like the planned helium drilling project in Utah, face lawsuits seeking to stop them. Still others, like the lithium mine in Nevada, will have the final federal permit needed before construction can begin and will be hard for the next administration to stop. Whether they are the final word or not, the last-minute actions are just the latest evidence of how the far-reaching shift in regulatory policy under President Donald Trump has altered the balance between environmental concerns and business, giving substantial new weight to corporate interests. Trump chose former industry executives to run major federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, and industry executives and lobbyists who cycled in and out of government positions were granted substantial influence in setting regulations. For four years, Trump’s team and its allies have raced to roll back federal rules intended to protect federal lands and the nation’s air and water as well as other safety rules in agencies across the government. The changes were often made in direct response to requests from lobbyists and company executives who were major donors to Trump and frequent patrons at his hotels and resorts. The final push on the mining and energy projects has come in part from senior Trump administration officials, including the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, a steel industry investor before joining Trump’s Cabinet. Ross’ calendar shows at least three appointments with top executives at Rio Tinto, the Australia-based mining giant backing the Resolution Copper mine planned for construction in Arizona next to the San Carlos Apache reservation. Ross also made a trip to the mine site this year. “This is a disaster,” said Wendsler Nosie Sr., a former San Carlos Apache tribal leader who in recent weeks has been camping out at the proposed mine site inside Tonto National Forest to protest the pending decision. Backers of these projects say they are committed to minimizing the effect on public lands, sacred Native American sites and wildlife. “Our science-based decisions are legally compliant and based on an extensive process involving input from career subject matter experts and the public,” said Richard Packer, an Interior Department spokesperson, adding that the agency “continues to balance safe and responsible natural resource development with conservation of important surface resources.” The administration has been seeking to promote more mining of key minerals — including uranium, copper and lithium — to allow the United States to be less dependent on imports. But the environmental consequences of these projects, if they move ahead as planned, will be considerable. Last month, the EPA gave its final approval for the construction of a new uranium mine called the Dewey-Burdock project, spread over 12,613 acres near the Black Hills region of South Dakota. The project would inject a chemical called lixiviant into more than 1,461 wells, sending the chemical into an underground water supply. The chemical would cause uranium trapped in sandstone below the surface to leach into the aquifer, contaminating the water but allowing the uranium to be captured, extracted and transformed into so-called yellow cake that can be used to fuel nuclear power plants. Nationally, just 174,000 pounds of uranium was produced last year in the United States. The South Dakota project alone would have the potential to produce as much as 1 million pounds of uranium a year, although it is unclear whether there will ever be sufficient demand to justify production at that level, given that there is already excess capacity at uranium mines in the country. The Oglala Lakota Nation, whose 2.8 million-acre reservation is adjacent to the proposed uranium mine, has sued to block the project. The mine would be built on property that the Sioux tribe has long claimed was illegally taken by the United States. “The voice of Indigenous people needs to be heard — and federal Indian policy has made us invisible and dehumanized us,” said Kyle White, 34, a member of the Lakota tribe and former director of its natural resources regulatory agency. A small piece of the project is on Interior Department land. The department has not yet approved the mine and will not act until after Trump leaves office, one of several ways that the Biden administration could slow or block the project. Azarga Uranium, the Canada-based backer of the project, did not respond to a request for comment. For the proposed Resolution Copper Mine, east of Phoenix in Tonto National Forest, adjacent to Apache tribal land, the Forest Service is expected to issue its long-awaited final environmental assessment by mid-January. Sixty days after the assessment is released, a 2,422-acre chunk of the Tonto forest, an area called Oak Flat, will automatically be transferred to the mining companies in exchange for land nearby, a deal mandated by Congress in 2014. The Interior Department’s National Register of Historic Places lists the Oak Flat area as “a holy place and ancestral homeland to the Western Apache Indians” that is also “a venue for ongoing Apache participation in traditional social activities, and is associated with traditions rooted in the history” of the tribe. Under the current Forest Service plan, much of Oak Flat would eventually be destroyed. Starting about six years after underground blasting and extraction at the mine begins, the mine will gradually start to cave in on itself, forming a crater nearly 2 miles wide and as much as 1,100 feet deep, according to federal estimates. The project would create 3,700 jobs and supply as much as 1 billion pounds of copper per year, one-quarter of the current annual demand in the United States. “That was one of the major reasons why President Trump moved so aggressively to reduce the red tape involved in such projects,” Ross said in remarks during his visit to the site in October. The companies running the project — Rio Tinto and BHP, also based in Australia — have promised to build a campsite outside the mine area to replace one traditionally used by Native Americans in the Oak Flat area. Rio Tinto said it was also working to ensure there was no damage to a nearby area called Apache Leap where, according to tribal legends, Native Americans being chased by U.S. Cavalry troops in the late-1800s jumped to their deaths. But the ire of some members of the local San Carlos Apache Tribe toward Rio Tinto only intensified after the company admitted using dynamite to destroy a 46,000-year-old sacred Indigenous site in Australia as it expanded an iron ore mine. A Forest Service employee working on the Arizona project acknowledged to community leaders in a recent conference call that pressure to get the evaluation of the project done quickly was “coming from the highest level,” mentioning the Agriculture Department, which oversees the service. Federal records show that the environmental study until recently was expected to continue until the middle of 2021. It is now slated to be finished by mid-January. An agency spokesperson did not respond when asked to comment on claims that the process was being rushed. But Andrew Lye, project manager for Resolution Copper, said the review had actually taken longer than expected and been very thorough. “It is not being fast-tracked, and Resolution Copper has not sought to apply for programs that are available to expedite projects,” Lye said. Another mining project expecting imminent action by the Trump administration is in rural Nevada, where Canada-based Lithium Americas intends to build one of the world’s largest lithium mines on 5,500 acres of federal land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. Lithium is a vital ingredient in myriad batteries, including for cellphones and electric cars, but almost none of it is produced in the United States. The project was listed in July by the Interior Department as one that it intended to “fast-track,” and it planned to take the final step in early January, meaning construction of the mine could begin soon. But the Bureau of Land Management’s own environmental assessment acknowledges that the project will cause harm, including to the habitat of a threatened bird species known as sage grouse. Local ranchers and other families have expressed concern in comments to the agency that the project could cut the available local water supply and create other environmental problems. The push to approve some of the projects has involved sustained lobbying and legal efforts by hired consultants with close ties to the Trump administration. Those include Rebecca Watson, who served as the top Interior Department official in charge of oil and gas leasing during the Bush administration, working at the time alongside David Bernhardt, who is now the interior secretary. Watson worked with other industry players over several years to urge lawmakers and senior officials at the Interior Department to change rules to allow her clients, now including Colorado-based Twin Bridges, to extract helium for more than a decade from federal lands, including land Twin Bridges has leased in Utah. Watson said in an interview that increasing the supply of helium was critical to the nation. “Helium has a lot of strange little uses that people are not even familiar with, but they’re really important,” she said. With time running out on the Trump administration, senior Interior Department officials were so determined to see the permit approved that they took control of the project from the local Utah office. Final action is now expected as soon this coming week, two agency officials said, even though the agency itself again acknowledged that the project will harm the area. Environmentalists filed a lawsuit Dec. 14 to try to block it. David Wallace, an executive at Twin Bridges, said the project could ultimately generate hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of royalty and tax payments to federal, state and local governments. “We also love these lands and are committed to our project enhancing, and not detracting from, them,” he said in a statement. Opponents of the projects are keeping up pressure to try to stop them. That includes Nosie, who is camping out most nights on the sacred Oak Flat that could soon be transferred to Rio Tinto. “As far as I am concerned, this is an invasion by a foreign power,” Nosie said. “We cannot afford to lose our identity and our history. Imagine if the biblical Mount Sinai became a location for mining, and it caved in and disappeared. You would not stand by and watch.”

In last rush, Trump grants mining and energy firms access to public lands

US President-elect Joe Biden told Mexico's president Saturday he was committed to addressing the root causes of poor Latino migrants crossing the border into America.

Outgoing President Donald Trump made tightening the southern frontier against what he called the free and dangerous flow of people entering the US from Mexico and Central America a key pillar of his US-centric policy on immigration, including his fitful plan to build a border wall.

Biden spoke Saturday with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and emphasized "the need to reinvigorate US-Mexico cooperation to ensure safe and orderly migration," the Biden transition team said in a statement.

"The two leaders noted a shared desire to address the root causes of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and southern Mexico and to build a future of greater opportunity and security for the region," the team said.

The border is a major crossing point for migrants fleeing poverty, drug-related violence and other woes in Mexico and Central America.

Lopez Obrador, a leftist, had cordial relations with Trump but it was only this week that he finally congratulated Biden on his win in the November 3 US election.

US President-elect Joe Biden told Mexico's president Saturday he was committed to addressing the root causes of poor Latino migrants crossing the border into America.

US President-elect Joe Biden told Mexico's president Saturday he was committed to addressing the root causes of poor Latino migrants crossing the border into America. Outgoing President Donald Trump made tightening the southern frontier against what he called the free and dangerous flow of people entering the US from Mexico and Central America a key pillar of his US-centric policy on immigration, including his fitful plan to build a border wall. Biden spoke Saturday with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and emphasized "the need to reinvigorate US-Mexico cooperation to ensure safe and orderly migration," the Biden transition team said in a statement. "The two leaders noted a shared desire to address the root causes of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and southern Mexico and to build a future of greater opportunity and security for the region," the team said. The border is a major crossing point for migrants fleeing poverty, drug-related violence and other woes in Mexico and Central America. Lopez Obrador, a leftist, had cordial relations with Trump but it was only this week that he finally congratulated Biden on his win in the November 3 US election.

Biden and Mexico leader discuss migration

Social media giants like Twitter and Facebook have been put under immense pressure to weed out fake news and misinformation, especially to set the stage for a peaceful transition of power from incumbent US President Donald Trump to President-elect Joe Biden.

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/nationwide-march-in-support-of-donald-trumps-poll-claims-349459/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Trump has never been shy to show his disdain - on Twitter on in the real world. He has referred to the election results as rigged, without offering any evidence of the same.

Earlier, Twitter had begun labelling Trump’s tweets that contained “manipulated media” or carried unverified claims. Since then, Twitter has doubled down on its crackdown on fake news, especially coming from big leaders.

Now, the company fact-checked Trump once again. But this time, it went a step further.&nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/cyber-hack-under-control-says-trump-plays-down-russias-reported-role-351058" hreflang="en">Cyber hack 'under control', says Trump; plays down Russia's reported role</a>

In a tweet, Trump made more claims about election fraud. However, this time it came with a new label - “Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the U.S. Presidential election.”&nbsp;

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
....discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!). There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. <a href="https://twitter.com/DNI_Ratcliffe?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DNI_Ratcliffe</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/SecPompeo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SecPompeo</a>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1340333619299147781?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 19, 2020</a></blockquote>
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According to Twitter, this is a minute addition to its earlier labels, with the goal to provide latest information.&nbsp;

The previous label claimed the following - “Multiple sources called this election differently”.

But things are different now - The electoral college has voted and Biden is looking at the next four years in the White House, making all Trump’s claims misleading.

Facebook too, is doing the same, by labelling posts with a disclaimer.

As US officials investigate the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/explained-what-is-massive-cyberattack-in-us-all-about-350566">hacking</a>&nbsp;of various government departments, President Donald&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/russia-link-as-trump-remains-mum-on-cyber-attack-us-authorities-scamper-to-investigate-350996">Trump</a>&nbsp;said: "everything is well under control".

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/russia-link-as-trump-remains-mum-on-cyber-attack-us-authorities-scamper-to-investigate-350996" hreflang="en">Russia link? As Trump remains mum on cyber attack, US authorities scamper to investigate</a>

The cyber hack is far greater in the fake news media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed," the US President asserted.

"Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be&nbsp;China&nbsp;(it may!)," he said.

Social media giants like Twitter and Facebook have been put under immense pressure to weed out fake news and misinformation, especially to set the stage for a peaceful transition of power from incumbent US President Donald Trump to President-elect Joe Biden.

Social media giants like Twitter and Facebook have been put under immense pressure to weed out fake news and misinformation, especially to set the stage for a peaceful transition of power from incumbent US President Donald Trump to President-elect Joe Biden. Trump has never been shy to show his disdain - on Twitter on in the real world. He has referred to the election results as rigged, without offering any evidence of the same. Earlier, Twitter had begun labelling Trump’s tweets that contained “manipulated media” or carried unverified claims. Since then, Twitter has doubled down on its crackdown on fake news, especially coming from big leaders. Now, the company fact-checked Trump once again. But this time, it went a step further. Also read: Cyber hack 'under control', says Trump; plays down Russia's reported role In a tweet, Trump made more claims about election fraud. However, this time it came with a new label - “Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the U.S. Presidential election.” ....discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!). There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. @DNI_Ratcliffe @SecPompeo — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2020 × According to Twitter, this is a minute addition to its earlier labels, with the goal to provide latest information. The previous label claimed the following - “Multiple sources called this election differently”. But things are different now - The electoral college has voted and Biden is looking at the next four years in the White House, making all Trump’s claims misleading. Facebook too, is doing the same, by labelling posts with a disclaimer. As US officials investigate the hacking of various government departments, President Donald Trump said: "everything is well under control". Also read: Russia link? As Trump remains mum on cyber attack, US authorities scamper to investigate The cyber hack is far greater in the fake news media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed," the US President asserted. "Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!)," he said.

Twitter is now declaring Biden as election winner - on Trump's own tweets about fraud

US President-elect Joe Biden has introduced key members of his environmental team -- tasked with fighting against global warming in what can be called a pillar of his drive to rebuild the pandemic-hit US economy.

Biden, a Democrat who will be inaugurated on January 20, has vowed to make tackling climate change a top priority. But with a slim majority in the House of Representatives and control of the Senate still undecided, his agenda may see little success in Congress and instead rely on rules from his regulatory agencies to enact sweeping change.

The nominees introduced Saturday include Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico to&nbsp;be Interior Secretary -- the first Native American to hold a Cabinet position.

Biden said these nominees would lead his administration's ambitious plan&nbsp;to address an existential threat of our time -- climate change.

"Folks, we're in a crisis," Biden said at the event in Wilmington, Delaware. "Just like we need to be a unified nation to respond to Covid-19, we need a unified national response to climate change."

Biden said his administration would work to modernise water, transportation and energy infrastructure to make it better equipped to resist extreme weather conditions -- and create many jobs along the way.

Biden also said he wanted to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations and 1.5 million energy-efficient homes and public housing units.

The president-elect repeated he would rejoin the Paris climate accord, which outgoing president Donald Trump abandoned, and restore a slew of Obama-era environmental regulations.

Biden's team includes Gina McCarthy, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency administrator, to lead a new White House Office of Climate Policy.

He has also tapped Michael Regan, North Carolina's top environmental regulator, to run the Environmental Protection Agency and&nbsp;Brenda Mallory, an environmental attorney, to direct the Council on Environmental Quality.&nbsp;

Biden's Cabinet will feature six African Americans.

Michael Regan would become the first Black man to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) if confirmed by the Senate. Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm will be Biden's energy secretary if confirmed.

"Today's nominees are ready on day one, which is essential because we literally have no time to waste," Biden said.

Biden wants the United States to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which would require the world's second-largest emitter to transform its economy including transportation, power generation and farming.

US President-elect Joe Biden has introduced key members of his environmental team -- tasked with fighting against global warming in what can be called a pillar of his drive to rebuild the pandemic-hit US economy.

US President-elect Joe Biden has introduced key members of his environmental team -- tasked with fighting against global warming in what can be called a pillar of his drive to rebuild the pandemic-hit US economy. Biden, a Democrat who will be inaugurated on January 20, has vowed to make tackling climate change a top priority. But with a slim majority in the House of Representatives and control of the Senate still undecided, his agenda may see little success in Congress and instead rely on rules from his regulatory agencies to enact sweeping change. The nominees introduced Saturday include Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico to be Interior Secretary -- the first Native American to hold a Cabinet position. Biden said these nominees would lead his administration's ambitious plan to address an existential threat of our time -- climate change. "Folks, we're in a crisis," Biden said at the event in Wilmington, Delaware. "Just like we need to be a unified nation to respond to Covid-19, we need a unified national response to climate change." Biden said his administration would work to modernise water, transportation and energy infrastructure to make it better equipped to resist extreme weather conditions -- and create many jobs along the way. Biden also said he wanted to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations and 1.5 million energy-efficient homes and public housing units. The president-elect repeated he would rejoin the Paris climate accord, which outgoing president Donald Trump abandoned, and restore a slew of Obama-era environmental regulations. Biden's team includes Gina McCarthy, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency administrator, to lead a new White House Office of Climate Policy. He has also tapped Michael Regan, North Carolina's top environmental regulator, to run the Environmental Protection Agency and Brenda Mallory, an environmental attorney, to direct the Council on Environmental Quality. Biden's Cabinet will feature six African Americans. Michael Regan would become the first Black man to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) if confirmed by the Senate. Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm will be Biden's energy secretary if confirmed. "Today's nominees are ready on day one, which is essential because we literally have no time to waste," Biden said. Biden wants the United States to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which would require the world's second-largest emitter to transform its economy including transportation, power generation and farming.

Biden unveils environment team tasked with tackling 'existential threat'

President-elect <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a> has not yet sworn in, but it seems that his job by no means will be easy.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic that has continued to rise at an alarming pace in the United States, the cyberattack has struck the nation.

Watch |&nbsp;

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And now satellite images show that Iran has begun building an underground nuclear facility.&nbsp;

Also read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/iran-begins-construction-at-underground-nuclear-facility-amid-us-tensions-350678">Iran begins construction at underground nuclear facility amid US tensions</a>

Images hovering over Fordo, the highly sensitive nuclear site in Iran, have picked up some clues.

They suggest that from August to November, there has been activity at the site.&nbsp;

In September, Iran started to increase Uranium enrichment at Fordo in a response to US President Donald Trump's decision to walk out of the nuclear deal.&nbsp;

An image from December 11 shows that the Iranian government has dug a foundation for a building with dozens of pillars.&nbsp;

<h2>Why is Iran constructing the facility now?</h2>

Iran knows its move will make its neighbours nervous.&nbsp;

It also wants to send a message that the Islamic Republic has the money, resources and talent to keep the nuclear program running.&nbsp;

It is also posturing to resume talks with the US once Biden takes charge and is telling the world that the killing of its top scientist has not hurt its program.&nbsp;

The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was seen as a body blow to Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the country has ensured that its Uranium stockpile continues to grow in the wake of his death.&nbsp;

Tehran has also raised the budget of its nuclear research group by 256 per cent.&nbsp;

The satellite images come just before a foreign ministers' meet on Monday where plans for a joint US-Iran recommitment to the nuclear deal are up for discussion.&nbsp;

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says Tehran is ready to return to its commitments.&nbsp;

Biden has expressed his intent to re-enter the nuclear deal with Iran, but with some demands.&nbsp;

He reportedly wants to extend the duration of certain restrictions on materials used to make a nuclear bomb.&nbsp;

Tehran can also be asked to curb the activities of its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.&nbsp;

The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has endorsed the idea of a new deal.&nbsp;

The development suggests that the days of Trump's maximum pressure policy on Iran and over and the upcoming Biden administration seems keen to talk.

However, Tehran is hedging its bets and with the construction of his underground facility wants to gain some negotiating power before starting a dialogue.&nbsp; 
&nbsp;

President-elect Joe Biden has not yet sworn in, but it seems that his job by no means will be easy. Amid the coronavirus pandemic that has continued to rise at an alarming pace in the United States, the cyberattack has struck the nation.

President-elect Joe Biden has not yet sworn in, but it seems that his job by no means will be easy. Amid the coronavirus pandemic that has continued to rise at an alarming pace in the United States, the cyberattack has struck the nation. Watch | And now satellite images show that Iran has begun building an underground nuclear facility. Also read | Iran begins construction at underground nuclear facility amid US tensions Images hovering over Fordo, the highly sensitive nuclear site in Iran, have picked up some clues. They suggest that from August to November, there has been activity at the site. In September, Iran started to increase Uranium enrichment at Fordo in a response to US President Donald Trump's decision to walk out of the nuclear deal. An image from December 11 shows that the Iranian government has dug a foundation for a building with dozens of pillars. Why is Iran constructing the facility now? Iran knows its move will make its neighbours nervous. It also wants to send a message that the Islamic Republic has the money, resources and talent to keep the nuclear program running. It is also posturing to resume talks with the US once Biden takes charge and is telling the world that the killing of its top scientist has not hurt its program. The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was seen as a body blow to Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the country has ensured that its Uranium stockpile continues to grow in the wake of his death. Tehran has also raised the budget of its nuclear research group by 256 per cent. The satellite images come just before a foreign ministers' meet on Monday where plans for a joint US-Iran recommitment to the nuclear deal are up for discussion. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says Tehran is ready to return to its commitments. Biden has expressed his intent to re-enter the nuclear deal with Iran, but with some demands. He reportedly wants to extend the duration of certain restrictions on materials used to make a nuclear bomb. Tehran can also be asked to curb the activities of its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has endorsed the idea of a new deal. The development suggests that the days of Trump's maximum pressure policy on Iran and over and the upcoming Biden administration seems keen to talk. However, Tehran is hedging its bets and with the construction of his underground facility wants to gain some negotiating power before starting a dialogue.

What does underground construction of nuclear plant in Iran suggest?

President-elect Joe Biden will get the coronavirus vaccine as soon as next week, transition officials said on Wednesday, as U.S. authorities try to build public confidence in a measure that promises to stanch the deadly pandemic.

Joe Biden to get COVID-19 vaccine next week

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence receives the COVID-19 vaccine at the White House in Washington, U.S., December 18, 2020.

US Vice President Mike Pence gets vaccinated

The soon-to-be FLOTUS, Jill Biden, was recently subjected to controversy where a writer penned down an opinion piece calling her a 'kiddo.

Wife of incoming US President, <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>, Jill claims her doctorate is one of her biggest personal achievements and therefore the opinion piece, published in a leading US national newspaper, was a "surprise" for her.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/joe-biden-backs-son-hunter-after-us-tax-probe-revealed-350659" hreflang="en">Joe Biden backs son Hunter after US tax probe revealed</a>

"That was such a surprise," she said in a televised interview. "It was really the tone of it … He called me ‘kiddo’. One of the things that I’m most proud of is my doctorate. I mean, I worked so hard for it."

Joseph Epstein, a former adjunct professor at Northwestern University, claimed Biden's Doctorate in Education from the University of Delaware does not give her the right to use "Dr" in front of her name.

Epstein, with an undefined logic, claimed Jill Biden's doctorate degree "feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic" and also reasoned his argument of her not having the right to use "Dr' by saying she was not medically qualified for it.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-sexist-article-attacks-dr-jill-biden-349805">WATCH|</a>&nbsp;

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Jill Biden has authored her Doctorate thesis on maximising student retention in community colleges and is also a holder of two Masters degree.

Dismissing the claims made in the highly-criticised opinion piece, Dr Biden said she is looking forward to teaching even when she is the First Lady, just like she did when her husband was US' Vice President in the Obama administration.

"I’m really looking forward to being the first lady and doing the things that I did as the second lady. Carrying on with military families and education and free community college, cancer [research] that, you know, Joe and I have both worked on. And then I’m going to teach as well," she said.

She also added that while this opinion piece came as a 'surprise', she has chosen to take the 'high road', and is thankful to everyone who spoke in support of her. "Look at all the people who came out in support of me," she said. "I mean, I am so grateful and I was, you know, I was just overwhelmed by how gracious people were."

The soon-to-be FLOTUS, Jill Biden, was recently subjected to controversy where a writer penned down an opinion piece calling her a 'kiddo. Wife of incoming US President, Joe Biden, Jill claims her doctorate is one of her biggest personal achievements and therefore the opinion piece, published in a leading US national newspaper, was a "surprise" for her.

The soon-to-be FLOTUS, Jill Biden, was recently subjected to controversy where a writer penned down an opinion piece calling her a 'kiddo. Wife of incoming US President, Joe Biden, Jill claims her doctorate is one of her biggest personal achievements and therefore the opinion piece, published in a leading US national newspaper, was a "surprise" for her. Also read| Joe Biden backs son Hunter after US tax probe revealed "That was such a surprise," she said in a televised interview. "It was really the tone of it … He called me ‘kiddo’. One of the things that I’m most proud of is my doctorate. I mean, I worked so hard for it." Joseph Epstein, a former adjunct professor at Northwestern University, claimed Biden's Doctorate in Education from the University of Delaware does not give her the right to use "Dr" in front of her name. Epstein, with an undefined logic, claimed Jill Biden's doctorate degree "feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic" and also reasoned his argument of her not having the right to use "Dr' by saying she was not medically qualified for it. WATCH| × Jill Biden has authored her Doctorate thesis on maximising student retention in community colleges and is also a holder of two Masters degree. Dismissing the claims made in the highly-criticised opinion piece, Dr Biden said she is looking forward to teaching even when she is the First Lady, just like she did when her husband was US' Vice President in the Obama administration. "I’m really looking forward to being the first lady and doing the things that I did as the second lady. Carrying on with military families and education and free community college, cancer [research] that, you know, Joe and I have both worked on. And then I’m going to teach as well," she said. She also added that while this opinion piece came as a 'surprise', she has chosen to take the 'high road', and is thankful to everyone who spoke in support of her. "Look at all the people who came out in support of me," she said. "I mean, I am so grateful and I was, you know, I was just overwhelmed by how gracious people were."

Jill Biden surprised with 'kiddo' remark but prefers to take 'high road'

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