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Biden likely to remain tough on Chinese tech like Huawei, but with more help from allies

InternationalNov 16. 2020

Joe Biden

By The Washington Post · Jeanne Whalen · BUSINESS, WORLD, TECHNOLOGY, ASIA-PACIFIC 
President Donald Trump set the United States on a new course with his years-long fight against Chinese technology, which he labeled a security threat and a tool for spreading Chinese influence. President-elect Joe Biden will probably tweak that approach, but Beijing shouldn’t anticipate a significant softening, foreign affairs and technology experts say.

Biden is expected to maintain a hard line on most matters, including export restrictions to Huawei, though he will probably enlist more support from international allies and maintain more consistent policies than the ones Trump sometimes announced, and rescinded, via tweet, China watchers say.

Biden is also expected to pursue more funding for basic research and ease some Trump-era restrictions on immigration of the highly skilled, to give the United States more resources to compete in the tech economy.

Biden’s likely course flows from the increasingly bipartisan consensus among members of Congress that overly warm relations with China and tolerance of its unfair trade practices helped fuel a technological rival that now threatens U.S. leadership.

“The United States does need to get tough with China. If China has its way, it will keep robbing the United States and American companies of their technology and intellectual property,” Biden wrote in Foreign Affairs in the spring, echoing many of Trump’s complaints. “It will also keep using subsidies to give its state-owned enterprises an unfair advantage – and a leg up on dominating the technologies and industries of the future.”

But the best way to confront China is by forming a “united front” with allies, he wrote.

“When we join together with fellow democracies, our strength more than doubles. China can’t afford to ignore more than half the global economy.”

That would mark a departure from Trump, who picked trade fights with friends and foes alike, making it harder to enlist allies’ help in confronting Chinese trade practices, or in limiting Western adoption of Chinese tech such as Huawei telecom equipment.

“Trump did the right thing in confronting China. Where he completely did the wrong thing was in alienating the Europeans,” said James Lewis, a longtime diplomat and head of the technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You can force the Chinese to change, but to do that you need the U.S., Japan, Europe, Berlin.”

One approach could be to back a U.K. proposal for a new alliance of 10 democracies, or D-10, to help promote Western technology, including for 5G telecommunications networks.

Biden’s top foreign policy adviser, Tony Blinken, supported that general idea in September, saying the United States must work with allies to set common policies on export controls, investment restrictions and technical standards to ensure an “ecosystem that protects and promotes liberal democratic values.”

“One of the things that we are seeing is a world that is dividing to some extent along a fault line between techno-democracies on the one hand and techno-autocracies on the other hand,” Blinken said during a webinar hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “And techno-democracies have to do a much better job in working together, thinking together, acting together to try to set the standard.”

Some China watchers express skepticism that enlisting allies will yield better results, considering that allies such as Germany depend heavily on exports to China and have appeared reluctant to take a confrontational tone with Beijing.

To win more help from the Europeans, Lewis said, the Biden administration may need to address some of their complaints about U.S. tech companies, which European officials have accused of violating privacy and antitrust laws.

“We don’t want to be captured by China but we don’t want to be captured by the Americans, either,” is a common European refrain, Lewis said.

In a Foreign Affairs article last year, Jake Sullivan, a top Biden adviser and former Obama administration official, suggested that like-minded nations consider banding together to set trade rules on issues “that the World Trade Organization does not currently address,” such as how to deal with state-owned enterprises. Western nations have long complained that China’s state-owned companies receive unfair government support that allows them to flood the market with cheap goods.

Such a trade group could be “layered over the WTO system,” wrote Sullivan and co-author Kurt M. Campbell, an Obama-era diplomat and co-founder of the Asia Group consultancy. “The combined gravitational pull of this community would present China with a choice: either curb its free-riding and start complying with trade rules, or accept less favorable terms from more than half of the global economy,” they wrote.

The president-elect’s team, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, hasn’t communicated its plans for TikTok and WeChat, the Chinese apps the Trump administration sought to ban, before federal courts halted the bans with preliminary injunctions.

In September, Biden mentioned TikTok on the campaign trail, saying it was “a matter of genuine concern that TikTok, a Chinese operation, has access to over 100 million young people, particularly in the United States of America,” Reuters reported.

Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said he doesn’t think the Biden administration will devote much time to the apps because it will have “bigger fish to fry.”

The U.S. semiconductor sector is one of the biggest industries hanging in the balance after the presidential election. The Trump administration banned the export of U.S. chips and other technology to Huawei in May 2019, hoping to undermine its ability to produce equipment for 5G mobile networks. It has tightened the rules several times since, most recently by banning chip factories anywhere in the world from supplying Huawei if they use U.S. manufacturing equipment or chip-design software.

China hawks applauded the latest measure but the U.S. semiconductor industry panned it, saying the prohibitions were broader than necessary to protect national security and would harm an important American industry.

The industry has pushed for some loosening of the rules to allow the sale of more “commoditized” semiconductors to Huawei – the kind used in cellphones and other consumer electronics.

Tech analysts say the Trump administration has issued a few licenses allowing such sales, and that the Biden administration may be open to a bit more relaxation for lower-tech chips. “I expect they’re going to be more precise and narrow the focus, particularly for the chip industry, to allow the sale of chips that are pretty much used for commodity products,” said Adam Segal, a technology and security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But overall, the chip sector isn’t expecting broad changes to China policy under Biden, John Neuffer, chief executive of the Semiconductor Industry Association, said in an interview.

“It’s clear to us there is a continued muscular approach to China in the cards, and what may change, it sounds like the tone may change,” he said.

Biden’s approach will be shaped in part by the need to work with Congress, where many Republicans and some Democrats have called for more curbs on Chinese technology and on trade with China, including a more rigorous review of Chinese investments in the United States.

One big difference China watchers expect from Biden is consistency. Trump often sent mixed messages through his erratic tweets and statements, calling Huawei a security threat one day and then suggesting days later that it was more of a bargaining chip in the U.S-China trade talks.

“The administration’s messaging was significantly hampered by the president, who consistently tried to use Huawei as negotiating leverage for an economic deal, a trade deal,” said Paul Scharre, a former Pentagon official and a fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Likewise, Trump undermined his calls for Canadians and Europeans to view some Chinese technology as a national security threat by also labeling aluminum and steel from those allied regions a national security threat, and then slapping tariffs on them, said the Council of Foreign Relations’ Segal.

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What Will Boris Johnson Do Now Dominic Cummings Has Gone?

InternationalNov 16. 2020Dominic Cummings waits with a box on a London street corner after departing from 10 Downing Street on Nov. 13, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Hollie Adams. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg News · Tim Ross, Alex Morales, Emily Ashton · WORLD, EUROPE

Boris Johnson was livid, and so was Dominic Cummings. After a series of rows that boiled down to who was really running Britain, the prime minister threw his most powerful adviser out of Downing Street on Friday.

With talks on a trade deal with the European Union on the line and the death toll from the coronavirus mounting, the resignation of Cummings marks a seismic rupture in Johnson’s inner circle at a critical time for the country.

Ministers, officials and members of parliament, who spoke privately to give their candid views, regard losing the maverick Cummings as a cause for celebration. Johnson himself knows he must reset relations with his Conservative Party and relaunch his mission to reform the U.K.

For others, the question is what will happen now to the battered government in London, and whether a newly assertive Johnson will succeed in reinventing himself again to win back a public that’s losing faith in his leadership.

After months of missteps, stumbles and damaging arguments, the premier plans to ditch the abrasive style of the Brexit-backing cabal of aides that Cummings led. Yet with that there are risks too. Even Cummings’s detractors regard him as a brilliant campaigner and someone who can bring an obsessive focus to strategy-a quality that Johnson lacks.

Cummings, 48, masterminded the 2016 Brexit vote and some ministers fear the U.K. will now lose its edge as talks with the EU reach the endgame. They worry that an already moribund administration will simply drift without the dynamic Cummings at the center. That’s as the economy recovers more slowly than any other major industrialized country, England remains in lockdown and Scotland jockeys for another vote on independence.

“Cummings brought a real strategic focus to government, an ability to see the bigger picture and to get things done,” said Nicky Morgan, who served as a cabinet minister in Johnson’s government until February. “I suspect the PM will miss Dom’s ability to get Whitehall to sit up and deliver but on the other hand he won’t miss the ever-present controversy around his work and style.”

For Johnson, relations with Cummings never fully recovered after the controversy over his 250-mile trip from London to the northeast city of Durham during lockdown when government rules required people to “stay at home” to “save lives.” He then infamously drove another 25 miles to the town of Barnard Castle to test his eyesight, an excuse that provoked dismay from the public, media and politicians of all stripes.

An angry Johnson used up political capital to keep Cummings, defying calls from within his party to fire the adviser when the news broke in May. Focus groups show voters still view the incident as toxic evidence that elitist Tories have one rule for themselves and another for ordinary people. Now ministers wonder why Johnson bothered.

“The PM felt very upset,” one of Johnson’s colleagues said. “He is very fond of Dom, but we were damaged because of it.”

Johnson’s poll ratings dived, and dozens of MPs realized their views counted for little with the premier.

That bad blood deepened resentment in the party in the months that followed over what MPs regarded as incompetence in Johnson’s team, most recently a decision to initially resist calls by an England soccer star to provide free food for the poorest children in school holidays. It also fueled rebellions over policies ranging from Brexit to lockdown rules.

Johnson already knew things had to change by the summer. He felt that the sense of permanent combat, a government fighting on multiple fronts and losing public goodwill, was failing him in office.

Campaigning is not the same as governing, and ultimately Cummings with his revolutionary zeal could not make that transition, ministers and officials said. “Cummings is brilliant at what he does, but he’s a wartime strategist and we need a strategist for peacetime,” one MP said.

Johnson now wants to refocus his administration on delivering the agenda that won him the biggest Tory majority for more than 30 years at last year’s election. That includes investing in neglected regions of the country, rebuilding the economy around green jobs and adopting a new style of leadership.

“I’m hoping this will be massive reboot and we can get back to the Boris that his supporters want to see,” one long-serving MP said. “Boris is very good at reinventing himself,” a minister added. “A lot depends on who he brings in.”

Yet the moment of change is also dangerous for Johnson. With their former Brexit campaign colleague Lee Cain, a long-serving aide to the premier, Johnson and Cummings formed the trio that took many of the most sensitive political decisions in government. Both are now gone and some Tories worry a vacuum will leave Johnson without a sense of purpose.

The catalyst for Cummings’s eventual departure was his fury at Johnson’s refusal to give their friend Cain the job of chief of staff. Johnson had discussed the idea, while Cummings and Cain pushed hard to support the move.

But their lobbying finally went too far. When Cain’s appointment was leaked to Wednesday’s newspapers-in what Johnson regarded as an attempt to bounce him into confirming it-the premier’s patience ran out. He refused to make Cain chief of staff and then the two aides decided to stand down at the end of the year.

The atmosphere worsened and on Friday, Johnson ordered them both to leave the building for good during a 45-minute showdown over their behavior.

Johnson has now named longstanding adviser Edward Lister as interim chief of staff until a permanent appointment can be made. There is speculation that former chancellor Sajid Javid, who quit in a row with Johnson in February, could even be in the running for a return. Allegra Stratton, a former television journalist, has joined Johnson’s team to reset the tone of the government’s public message. James Slack, a government official rather than Tory staffer who served previously under Theresa May, takes over from Cain as director of communications.

One Tory couldn’t hide his delight at the way the past few days have unfolded. “This is the best week of 2020-Biden wins, there was the news on the vaccine and now Cummings is going,” the MP said. “It’s time to let Boris be Boris.”

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The ending of Trump’s presidency echoes the beginning – with a lie

InternationalNov 16. 2020Supporters of President Donald Trump, including White supremacists and far-right extremists like Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Nicholas Fuentes and Jack Prosobiec, rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14, 2020, to show their alliance in the president’s fight to deny his electoral defeat. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Astrid Riecken 

By The Washington Post · Ashley Parker · NATIONAL, WHITEHOUSE

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is ending as it began: with a lie about crowd size.

A view of the crowd at the U.S. Capitol ahead of the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump on Jan. 20, 2017. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary

On Saturday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted out two overhead photos of President Donald Trump supporters who had gathered for a pro-Trump march in Washington, writing, “AMAZING! More than one MILLION marchers for President @realDonaldTrump descend on the swamp in support.”

McEnany was off by many orders of magnitude – the crowd of thousands was a notable show of force, perhaps, but a far cry from the million marchers she claimed.

Her hyperbolic assertion was reminiscent of another baseless claim made by another Trump press secretary nearly four years ago. Sean Spicer stepped behind the briefing room lectern on his first full day on the job and, at the president’s urging, told falsehoods about the size of Trump’s inauguration crowds.

“The only tragedy about the lie about crowd size is he’s always capable of finding people willing to lie for him,” said Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s communication director for 11 days and has since become an outspoken critic of the president.

McEnany did not respond to requests for comment about how she arrived at the incorrect 1 million figure. Trump himself tweeted Sunday that “tens of thousands” had demonstrated.

The symmetry does not end with the exaggerations about crowd size. Trump’s one-term presidency is poised to come full circle in myriad ways, from a consistent lack of strategic vision to his enduring efforts to delegitimize his political rivals, whoever they might be.

Trump began his political career with the mendacious claim of birtherism – the racist lie that former president Barack Obama was not born in the United States – as part of an effort to delegitimize his predecessor. And he is ending his political career amid false allegations that President-elect Joe Biden won the election only because it was somehow rigged or stolen – part of an effort to delegitimize his successor.

In 2016, despite his electoral college victory, Trump entered office baselessly claiming the election had been rigged, and even set up a presidential commission, co-chaired by Vice President Pence, to examine the voter fraud he claimed had cost him the popular vote. The commission was ultimately disbanded amid accusations of false claims, and after finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Now, Trump is still claiming widespread voter fraud, despite no evidence, and has refused to concede to Biden or begin the formal transition process. The delay not only threatens to undermine public trust in democratic institutions, but could also have grave national security ramifications.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted that Biden only “won because the Election was Rigged,” and called mail-in voting “a sick joke,” before backtracking less than two hours later on even that faint nod at a concession.

“RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN!” Trump wrote, in a duo of tweets. “He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”

“The common thread is these are all attacks on objective reality and facts, whether you’re talking about rigging the election or crowd sizes of the nature of the public challenges in front of us,” said Tim O’Brien, a senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and a Trump biographer who is critical of the president. “It is a core operating principle of Trumpism. If you constantly attack objective reality, you are left as the only trustworthy source of information, which is one of his goals for his relationship with his supporters – that they should believe no one else but him.”

Many in Trump’s orbit say he ran for the White House wanting to see if he could win the presidency – but not actually prepared for the hard work of governing. Now, as he exits, he has largely abdicated many of his governing responsibilities.

Since the election was called for Biden, Trump has spent the past two weekends golfing at his private course in Virginia. And he has all but given up trying to manage the deadly coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 245,000 Americans and sickened millions more on his watch. Despite being on track to lose more than a quarter-million Americans before he leaves the White House, the president has not attended a coronavirus task force meeting in many months.

Scaramucci said Trump’s lack of vision on handling the pandemic is consistent with his overall disinterest in governing. “There’s been no formulation or strategy, whether it’s the coronavirus, the economy, our national security interests, who we are as Americans – there’s been nothing,” he said. “So now he’s leaving with no formulation or strategy.”

Scaramucci added that sometimes, amid the chaos of the Trump White House, some allies give the president the benefit of the doubt that he has a master plan, when no such grand ambition exists.

“His die-hard supporters will tell you he’s playing four-dimensional chess,” Scaramucci said, “but all of us really know he’s eating the chess pieces; he’s munching on the chess pieces.”

Tommy Vietor, a former National Security Council spokesman for Obama and co-host of “Pod Save America,” said Trump leaving office amid a swirl of mistruths is in line with his entire foray into politics.

“Trump’s entire political career is built on the racist birther lie, so it’s no surprise that he’s leaving office as a disgraced liar,” Vietor said. “The question is whether the media can turn its gaze away from him, and if the MAGA industrial complex will smell the stench of “loser” wafting off of Trump and look for new leaders.”

Trump is not the first leader whose beginnings seem to mimic their conclusions, albeit in much different ways.

In “A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House,” historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. chronicles Kennedy’s presidency, beginning with his frigid Inauguration Day during a blizzard, and culminating with a scene in late December, a month after his death, when on a similarly “fiercely cold” day the flame from his grave in Arlington National Cemetery was carried at nightfall to the Lincoln Memorial as thousands stood vigil.

“It all ended, as it began, in the cold,” Schlesinger writes.

O’Brien said that although Trump’s single term hardly evokes the beauty of Schlesinger’s prose about Kennedy’s truncated administration, there are some similarities.

“How do you accurately try to bookend the arc of a president’s administration?” O’Brien asked. “And in the modern presidency, this is not one that lends itself to poetry, romance, high-mindedness and social purpose.”

“You basically bookend it with a car crash and a stock car race, and lies and darkness,” he said.

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Government officials are helping Trump supporters hunt for voter fraud

InternationalNov 16. 2020Camilo Sandoval, far left, works in a makeshift war room in Vienna, Va., on Saturday. Sandoval is the federal government’s chief information security officer. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Marvin Joseph 

By The Washington Post · Jon Swaine, Lisa Rein · NATIONAL, TECHNOLOGY, POLITICS

The federal government’s chief information security officer is participating in an effort backed by supporters of President Donald Trump to hunt for evidence of voter fraud in the battleground states where President-elect Joe Biden secured his election victory.

Data specialist Matt Braynard, who worked on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, is leading the Voter Integrity Fund’s efforts. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Marvin Joseph

Camilo Sandoval said in an interview that he has taken a break from his government duties to work for the Voter Integrity Fund, a newly formed Virginia-based group that is analyzing ballot data and cold-calling voters in an attempt to substantiate the president’s outlandish claims about illicit voting.

Sandoval is one of several Trump appointees in the federal government – some in senior roles – who are harnessing their expertise for the project, according to the group’s leader.

The participation of administration officials in the project shows the extent of the efforts by the president’s allies to justify his unfounded allegations of widespread ballot fraud.

Camilo Sandoval and other participants in the project are working

Federal employees are required under ethics rules to keep political activity separate from their government roles. Officials with the Voter Integrity Fund said the political appointees participating in the project are doing it in their personal time.

In an interview on Friday, Sandoval defended his involvement in the endeavor as appropriate, saying he had taken vacation time from his government position, which he started last month. He said he was not using any government resources, such as his work computer or cellphone, while searching for fraud.

“I am doing this in my private capacity, just as many others have done in past elections,” he said. “I think it’s pretty clear that this is acceptable and normal.”

A spokeswoman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, where Sandoval works, said on Friday that Sandoval was on leave, but did not respond when asked if he was continuing to receive his government salary.

Sandoval is part of a hastily convened team led by Matthew Braynard, a data specialist who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign. Another participant is Thomas Baptiste, an adviser to the deputy secretary of the Interior Department, who also took a leave to work on the project.

Braynard said in an interview that several other government officials on leave are also assisting the effort, but he declined to identify them.

The group is analyzing voter rolls and other databases in search of signs that ballots may have been cast illegally, information that Braynard said is being shared with Trump’s campaign. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The group appears to be attempting a makeshift version of an effort already conducted by a nonprofit consortium of states, which uses sophisticated data analysis to root out duplicate voter registrations and registrations of people who have moved or died. A Washington Post analysis of vote-by-mail data from three of the states in the 2016 and 2018 elections found that officials identified 372 possible fraud cases among 14.6 million votes – 0.0025 percent of ballots.

Braynard maintained that his project was pathbreaking, saying they had found that many states do not update their voter rolls “very aggressively or frequently.”

“Nobody’s ever done this before,” he said. “These things have to be done to find potential problems.”

David Becker, who led the creation of the interstate consortium, said it had taken more than three years to develop and relied on sophisticated software and proprietary state data that is unavailable to analysts like Braynard and Sandoval.

Becker said the Voter Integrity Fund appeared to be the latest in a series of “shoddy, fly-by-night” efforts to replicate the project and would inevitably flag numerous false positives based on inadequate data.

“I would put absolutely no stock in their analysis,” said Becker, who is now the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

Braynard said the project’s approach is “novel, transparent, and expansive.”

“It’s disappointing that a scientist like David Becker would make a comment on our investigation without an understanding of what we’re doing,” he said, adding: “While some of our methods, such as an analysis of ‘dead’ voters has not proven fruitful, others that are finding people that are insisting they did not cast ballots that the state says were cast in their name are returning living, breathing results.”

Trump has made unsubstantiated and exaggerated claims about voter fraud for years and repeatedly tried to undermine this year’s election in advance by claiming without evidence that it would be rigged. Since Election Day, the president and his allies have continued to make wild allegations about the voting process in several states. The claims, some false and others lacking evidence, have been amplified by Trump’s supporters in conservative media.

In a statement released on Thursday, federal and state government national security and election officials said that the election was “the most secure in American history.” The group said that despite “unfounded claims” to the contrary, it had “utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections.”

Braynard and Sandoval claim that they have found evidence of possible fraud, but they have yet to make their any detailed findings public.

Braynard also acknowledged that “some of the evidence isn’t terribly compelling,” but said their work was valuable even if it ultimately showed Biden was the winner. “If this was a clean election, we can dispel a lot of the concern out there,” he said.

Sandoval also declined to associate himself with Trump’s repeated claims that he would have won the election if any illegally cast votes were discounted. “I can’t say that right now,” he said.

“But we are going to be asking for weeks and months who really won, and was there fraud, and if I can use my skills to help bring transparency to that, then it is worthwhile,” Sandoval added.

Sandoval, 46, ran a digital marketing technology firm in New York before he joined Trump’s long-shot 2016 campaign as director of data operations. He entered the administration in 2017 as an adviser in the Treasury Department before moving to the Department of Veterans Affairs after a few months.

He was made the department’s acting chief information officer in April 2018 and later became chief technology officer before taking a job in November as president of MCI, an Iowa City-based outsourcing company. MCI’s founder and chief executive, Anthony Marlowe, is a Republican donor and vocal Trump supporter.

Asked whether the Voter Integrity Fund had contracted with MCI for call center services, one of the firm’s major business streams, Sandoval said: “All vendors we work with requested anonymity.” Marlowe did not respond to messages.

Sandoval said on Friday that he rejoined the government six months ago, taking a post at OMB, where he was promoted last month to chief information security officer.

The post was created by the Obama administration in 2016 with the mission to “drive cybersecurity policy, planning, and implementation across the federal government.” His involvement in the Voter Integrity Fund was first reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Sandoval, Braynard and their team are operating from a cramped apartment that Braynard shares with his wife in northern Virginia. Braynard said the group comprises nine people who are working “campaign hours,” starting at 8 a.m. and going on late into the night, fueled by fast food.

He has narrated their efforts through a stream of tweets. “Once More, Unto the Breach,” he posted Friday with a photo of several 2016 Trump campaign alumni taking part in the project.

Braynard said the group had contracted several companies to set up call centers for contacting voters in the closely contested states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden has been projected the winner in all six by multiple media outlets.

Braynard said the operation had called approximately half a million voters so far and aimed to make contact with 1.25 million in total.

Callers for the project have left voice mails for voters in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin noting that state authorities were reporting that the recipient had voted in the general election, according to a recording and a transcript obtained by The Post. The callers, who specified that they were from the Voter Integrity Fund, left a number and urged the recipient to call back if that person had not, in fact, cast a ballot.

Not all the group’s calls have been on target. When attempting to verify a ballot cast in Philadelphia by P.C. Nguyen, a branding consultant, the group instead called her younger sister in Los Angeles.

“I thought it was a little creepy,” Nguyen, 43, said in an interview. “They are an official-sounding organization, and I worry people could call back and say something that is misinterpreted.”

Braynard said the group is “specifically asking for the voter of record before we try to identify whether or not they cast a vote.”

According to its fundraising page, the group has raised more than $630,000 in donations using GiveSendGo, which describes itself as the “#1 Free Christian Crowdfunding Site.” Sandoval said the average donation was $75 and the highest was $10,000, but declined to identify the biggest contributor. Braynard said one donor had loaned the group $60,000 to buy data.

After speaking with The Post on Friday, Braynard said in a series of tweets that the group had raised enough money and was not asking for more. The group’s fundraising page says Braynard “will personally receive zero dollars.”

Braynard began raising money last week on GoFundMe, but his fundraising page was taken down by the platform. GoFundMe did not respond to a request for comment. Politico previously reported that GoFundMe said Braynard’s project “attempts to spread misleading information about the election and has been removed from the platform.”

Braynard said his group had obtained from state authorities publicly available lists of people who requested early or absentee ballots, and had also obtained data on who eventually voted. He said the group had paid commercial vendors to provide additional data on these people, such as their dates of birth and telephone numbers. This data was then compared against other databases such as the Social Security Death Index and the U.S. Postal Service’s change-of-address records.

In its hunt for fraud, the group has prioritized calling several distinct groups it has identified in its data, according to Braynard: voters who appear to be deceased, voters who appear to have changed their address to another state, people recorded as having requested a ballot but then not recorded as having voted, and people who cast a ballot despite being rated a “low/inactive voter.”

Braynard said that operatives for the group are following up with people who have disputed records stating they had voted and asking them to sign written accounts of their cases that could potentially be used in legal proceedings.

“The only things I think that will make a difference are affidavits and death certificates,” he said in a video that he posted online to explain the group’s work.

Like other federal employees, Sandoval and the other government officials who have signed on to the voter fraud project are prohibited under the Hatch Act from taking part in political activity while working in their official capacity.

A guidance document published the day after Election Day by the Office of Special Counsel, which monitors compliance with the Hatch Act, noted that federal officials were barred from using their official authority or government agency resources “for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”

The rules mean that officials working for Braynard’s group may not invoke their government titles while they work on the voter fraud investigation and must work on the project only in their personal capacity.

“All it would take is a slip of a few words,” said Nick Schwellenbach, a senior investigator at the nonprofit watchdog group Project on Government Oversight and an Obama-era spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel. “Even if they stay on the right side of the law, they could be treading in dangerous territory.”

Multiple Trump appointees have been accused by ethics watchdog groups of violating the Hatch Act. In June 2019, the Office of Special Counsel recommended the removal of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway for repeated violations of the Hatch Act after she disparaged Democratic candidates while speaking in her official capacity on social media and in television interviews.

Since Election Day, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has made politically charged remarks in numerous media appearances, while stating that she is speaking in her capacity as an adviser to Trump’s campaign rather than as part of her government role.

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Police say groups arrived in D.C. ‘intent on clashing’ as they assess violent end to Trump rallies

InternationalNov 16. 2020Members of Proud Boys march at the Washington Monument on Nov. 14, 2020, in Washington, D.C. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Evelyn Hockstein 

By The Washington Post · Peter Hermann, Lauren Lumpkin · NATIONAL, POLITICS

WASHINGTON – D.C. police said Sunday that nearly two dozen people were arrested, including several on gun charges, as thousands of people converged downtown Saturday for a pro-Trump march and rally. One person was stabbed and four police officers were injured.

Demonstrators confront D.C. police at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Astrid Riecken

For the better part of the day, police managed to keep supporters of President Donald Trump and his opponents apart, save for minor skirmishes during a “Stop the Steal” rally.

Organizers of the event falsely claim that the election won by President-elect Joe Biden was stolen.

Tensions grew as the main march moved from Freedom Plaza to outside the U.S. Supreme Court, and as the final speeches ended, clashes turned into roving street fights that left police struggling to keep up.

Shortly before 8 p.m., members of the extremist group the Proud Boys and other Trump supporters moved through downtown in the area of 12th and F streets NW. At the same time, a group of counterprotesters moved north on 10th Street.

It was not clear whether the groups, which were blocks apart, were initially aware of each other’s location. Police said they were monitoring both as they neared a collision course.

The groups met head-on at H Street near 11th Street. Police in riot gear rushed toward the fray but not quickly enough to stave off a brawl involving dozens, including the Proud Boys, that left participants bloodied and one man stabbed three times in the back and seriously wounded.

“I came here to fight,” a Trump supporter yelled moments before the clash began.

The day’s outcome appeared inevitable despite attempts by hundreds of police dealing with unrest throughout downtown.

Protesters force a Trump supporter out of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Evelyn Hockstein

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said people from both sides – and from outside and inside the region – came “intent on clashing,” and “the police department was put directly in the middle of it.”

Newsham said as opposing groups faced off, “police officers ran and placed themselves between them,” which he said he believed “prevented a much worse outcome.”

“We did our damnedest” to prevent violence, Newsham said. “We were doing the best we could to keep them separated.”

In all, police arrested 21 people, including one juvenile, on charges that include assault, disorderly conduct and inciting violence. Eight firearms were seized and five people were arrested on gun charges, including two Newsham said were linked to a Georgia-based militia group.

Newsham said police found three additional firearms and ammunition in a room linked to the two: Joshua Skillman, 28, and Samantha Falk, 33, both of Georgia. The name of the group was not available.

The others arrested on gun charges were identified as Jason Fisher, 41, of Virginia; Braxton McDonald, 28, of New Jersey; and Kenneth Deberry, 39, of Washington, D.C.

Of the adults arrested, nine are from Washington, three are from Maryland, two are from New York, two are from Georgia and one each are from Virginia, New Jersey, and South Carolina. The residence of one of those arrested was unknown.

Four officers were injured, one seriously when a chemical was sprayed into an eye.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, D, declined to comment Sunday. A spokeswoman said Bowser planned to address the news media and discuss the events on Monday.

On Sunday morning, Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House had returned to relative quiet, though some volatility remained when a group of women started tearing down signs condemning racism, honoring Black people killed by police and denouncing Trump.

The women, who declined to give their names, clawed at the posters and tore them to the ground. A few people who arrived earlier to protect the wall, including 57-year-old software engineer Mike Manos, tried to guard the posters with their bodies.

“You have the right to put it up, we have the right to tear it down!” one woman shouted.

Everett Turner, 62, a mason from Washington, said he was on a bike ride before he stopped near the White House. “It’s sad,” Turner said. “Just get ready for the new president and move on.”

A few moments later, Turner got into a screaming match with a woman wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

“Go back to Europe or somewhere!” Turner, who is Black, shouted.

“Your ancestors sold you!” the White woman screamed back.

Police officers moved between the groups and admonished the women tearing down the posters to stop, though they did not physically intervene. Newsham said officers try to avoid getting involved in the destruction of signs, worried that their intervention could escalate tensions, and that it might not be illegal to remove signs placed on public property.

However, by Sunday evening, police had cordoned off a section of the plaza that had been vandalized, in what appeared to be an effort to prevent more destruction.

Trump – who in September refused to denounce the Proud Boys and instead urged them to “stand back and stand by” – appeared to relish the mayhem. In one tweet, Trump wrote, “Antifa SCUM ran for the hills today when they tried attacking the people at the Trump rally, because these people aggressively fought back.”

The outgoing president also tweeted for D.C. police to “Get going – do your job and don’t hold back!!!” in arresting counterprotesters. He accused Bowser of “not doing her job!” as he linked to a video of an older man dressed in pro-Trump regalia being hit in the face from behind and falling to the pavement, bleeding and unconscious.

But the video showed only part of the incident. A longer video posted online shows the man pushing a counterdemonstrator to the ground, stomping on his head and shaking his fist at people. Police said they arrested four people at that scene, including one charged in the assault. Newsham said the incident remains under investigation and could lead to charges filed against the older man.

Black Lives Matter DC, in turn, blamed Trump supporters for instigating the violence, and alleged in a tweet that “MPD has been protecting the Proud Boys and white nationalists all night,” and that police only put on riot gear and fired chemical irritants at city residents.

“They allowed white supremacists to spend the day in our City doing whatever they want while not wearing Masks,” the group said.

Another anti-Trump group, All Out DC, took to Twitter to complain that not enough of their supporters turned out, and said, “The people who stayed home today enabled fascist violence.”

No arrest was made in the stabbing, which injured a man who police said provided them with home addresses in the District and in Maryland. The incident occurred near 10th Street and New York Avenue NW during a brawl that had erupted nearby. A police report says the victim did not cooperate with investigators.

Police said that among the arrests were people – one from New York, the other from the District – who are charged with beating a person with a flagpole after that person tried to steal a sign. Another person was charged with throwing a firework at several people.

The individuals with firearms-related charges could make initial appearances in D.C. Superior Court on Monday.

Newsham said that “the majority of people left after the sun went down,” which was around the time the events at the Supreme Court had ended. There were still sporadic clashes that appeared isolated, some outside hotels where Trump supporters were staying.

Anticipating crowds and potential violence, police had blocked traffic from a wide swath of downtown, and as the formal event ended and people departed from the Supreme Court, police sealed off Black Lives Matter Plaza for a time to prevent rival groups from heading there.

One group of Trump supporters marched while tearing down Black Lives Matter signs from buildings, which police said they intervened to stop, as another group paraded a large blue and white banner with the slogan, “Trump law and order.”

By 12:30 a.m., there were few if any counterprotesters left, and the group with the Trump banner split. Many ducked into the Trump International Hotel, as a few people with the banner continued on into the now-quiet night.

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Michigan, Washington state order new restrictions as U.S. passes 11 million coronavirus cases

InternationalNov 16. 2020

By The Washington Post · Paulina Firozi, Hannah Knowles · NATIONAL, HEALTH, HEALTH-NEWS

Coronavirus cases reported in the United States passed 11 million on Sunday, as the nation shatters records for hospitalizations and daily new infections and as leaders turn to new, painful restrictions to stem the pandemic’s long-predicted surge.

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The milestone came one week after the country hit 10 million cases, a testament to just how rapidly the virus is spreading – the first 1 million cases took more than three months. This new wave has increased covid-19 hospitalizations past the peaks seen in April and July, straining health-care systems and pushing some reluctant Republican governors to enact statewide mask mandates for the first time.

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Other states are reenacting stay-at-home orders and store closures. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D, on Sunday announced sweeping new limits on gatherings for three-weeks – including a ban on indoor dining at restaurants and bars, and a halt to in-person classes at high schools and colleges. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, D, also laid out a slew of new rules, which prohibit indoor social gatherings with people outside one’s household and indoor service at restaurants, bars and more.

“As hard as those first months were for our state, these next few are going to be even harder,” Whitmer said at a news conference, as health experts fear that winter weather driving people indoors will accelerate the crisis.

Inslee acknowledged that slowing the virus would come at a steep price for struggling businesses, even as the state works to distribute millions more in aid. He and Whitmer both appealed to the federal government to step in with more help. Congress remains deadlocked on a stimulus package, and President Donald Trump – still denying his election loss – largely has tuned out the pandemic’s surge; his refusal to concede is also stalling the transition to a new administration, including the formal transfer of information on the nation’s pandemic response.

Whitmer said that Trump has “an opportunity to meet the needs of the people of this country” and emphasized the importance of his final months in office. Inslee was already looking ahead to the administration of President-elect Joe Biden.

“All of us who feel, as I do, the pain of the small-business people ought to be pounding the doors of the Congress and the new president, who I’m glad we’re going to have, to really get this job done,” Inslee said.

Washington’s restrictions are not as tough as its stay-at-home order issued in March but extend into nearly every aspect of daily life. Wedding and funeral receptions are forbidden. Religious services and in-store retail are forced to operate at reduced capacity. Even outdoor social gatherings must be kept to a maximum of five people from outside one’s household.

Inslee and other leaders in the state emphasized the need to intervene early amid spiraling statistics, even as Washington posts some of the lowest numbers for new coronavirus infections in the country. The number of hospital patients with covid-19 recently rose about 40 percent in a week, officials said, and Seattle’s mayor said that nearly a fifth of the city’s cases have come just in the past two weeks.

Clint Wallace, an ICU nurse in Spokane, joined Inslee at Sunday’s news conference to plead with residents for their help. He called the ICU “as busy as I’ve seen it.”

“We are exhausted,” Wallace said of health-care workers around the state.

State and local officials nationwide are reinstating restrictions to fight the virus. New Mexico and Oregon on Friday ordered extensive new statewide shutdowns, while the Navajo Nation – devastated early on by the virus – reissued its stay-at-home order for at least three weeks. The Navajo Nation said cases threaten to swamp the health system on the southwestern reservation without immediate action.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, R, on Friday issued a statewide mask mandate and new capacity limits on businesses, less than a week after Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, R, announced a similar mask order in the face of overwhelmed hospitals warning that they might have to ration care.

“Our situation has changed, and we must change with it,” Burgum said in a late-night video message.

But state rules are just one piece of the puzzle, and some leaders are looking to Congress and the incoming president to take stronger action.

Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s incoming chief of staff, said Sunday it’s critical for the president-elect’s transition team to start working with Trump administration officials to ensure “nothing drops in this change of power” that could imperil the distribution of a potential coronavirus vaccine.

“Joe Biden is going to become president of the United States in the midst of an ongoing crisis. That has to be a seamless transition,” Klain said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”

The Trump White House is blocking the administration from formally cooperating with Biden, forcing the president-elect’s transition team to continue preparations with recently departed government officials and other experts. That means Biden’s team has not heard from Trump’s about vaccine development and other work to combat the pandemic.

A health expert on Biden’s covid-19 advisory board said there’s “a lot of information that needs to be transmitted. It can’t wait until the last minute.”

It is in the nation’s interest that the transition team get the threat assessments that the team knows about, understand the vaccine distribution plans, need to know where the stockpiles are, what the status is of masks and gloves,” said Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School, on ABC News’s “This Week.”

Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, compared the process Sunday to “passing a baton in a race.”

“I’ve been through multiple transitions now, having served six presidents for 36 years, and it’s very clear that transition process that we go through . . . is really important in a smooth handing over of the information,” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Of course it would be better if we could start working with them,” he added when asked whether working with Biden’s team would serve the public interest.

On “Meet the Press,” Klain said there is “not that much Joe Biden can do right now to change things,” because he is not yet president.

“Right now we have a crisis that’s getting worse,” Klain said. “We had never had a day with 100,000 cases in a single day until last week. By next week, we may see 200,000 cases in a single day.”

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Many places that prospered under Trump voted for Biden, bucking the standard assumption of how people vote

InternationalNov 15. 2020

By The Washington Post · Andrew Van Dam, Heather Long · NATIONAL, POLITICS 
Are you better off than you were four years ago? That question has been at the heart of presidential campaigns since President Ronald Reagan first asked it in 1980.

The general thinking has been that voters who are doing well would vote to re-elect a sitting president. That’s not what happened in 2020.

This time around, those who were better off voted for a change in the White House.

The parts of America that have seen strong job, population and economic growth in the past four years voted for Joe Biden, economic researchers found. In contrast, President Donald Trump garnered his highest vote shares in counties that had some of the most sluggish job, population and economic growth during his term.

Trump fared well among voters who said the economy was their top concern, and he even won votes in places that didn’t fare particularly well under his presidency. This is perhaps a continuation of the 2016 election, when Trump won a huge share of places that had struggled under President Barack Obama. Democrats tended to view the 2020 election more as a referendum on Trump, especially his response to the pandemic.

These trends help explain why Biden was able to flip the counties that contain Phoenix, Fort Worth and Jacksonville, Fla., all of which are growing and prosperous urban hubs. And it helps explain why Trump did better than expected in Osceola County and Miami-Dade counties, the two Florida counties with some of the state’s highest unemployment rates.

“Counties where voters feel better off today than four years ago swung toward Biden,” said James Chung, co-founder of StratoDem Analytics, which studies local economic trends. “Counties that declined over the past four years were more likely to shift even more to Trump.”

To be sure, Chung found that – as exit polls have shown – education and race most strongly explained voting patterns, but they were followed closely by a county’s economic performance. The economy often decides elections, but the surprise in this case was that good economic performance didn’t appear to favor the incumbent.

What occurred in 2020 appears to be part of a larger shift in U.S. politics and economics that has been in motion since the turn of the century. In almost every election since 2000, Democrats increased their share of votes in urban areas that are densely populated and prosperous, while Republicans have increasingly become the dominant party for voters in smaller cities and rural areas.

The transformation has been swift – and stark. In the 2000 election, Republican George W. Bush won 2,417 counties that drove 45 percent of the U.S. economy, while Democrat Al Gore won 666 counties that made up to 55 percent of the economy, a fairly even split of the economic map.

In 2020, Biden won 477 counties that account for 70 percent of the U.S. economy, while Trump won 2,497 counties amounting to just shy of 30 percent of the economy, according to an analysis by Mark Muro, who directs the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, and his team. (A handful of counties are still awaiting final election results.) For Democrats, it was a notable increase from 2016, when Hillary Clinton won counties amounting to 64 percent of the U.S. economy.

The United States is transforming into a knowledge and digital economy, and the political map appears to be shifting with it. Some call it the urban versus rural divide, but it is also a digital versus blue-collar split.

Increasingly, blue America is diverse, college-educated and heavily invested in professional and tech businesses. In contrast, red America is more White, less likely to have gone to college and reliant on blue-collar sectors like manufacturing, construction and energy.

“It’s a fundamentally different economic geography than we saw 30 years ago, and our politics seem to be following pretty closely,” said John Lettieri, president of the Economic Innovation Group. “Democrats are consistently and increasingly capturing the most economically productive and vibrant areas of the country.”

Some warn this political divide could heighten the gridlock in Congress. If the parties are looking out for such different types of industries and workers, they are unlikely to agree on where to invest money and what policies to prioritize.

This is “not a scenario for economic consensus,” Muro warns.

Muro notes that Biden flipped half of the 10 most “economically significant” counties that Trump won in 2016, including Maricopa County, Ariz. (which includes Phoenix), Tarrant County, Texas (which includes Fort Worth), Duval County, Fla. (which includes Jacksonville), Morris County, N.J. (a New York City suburb) and Pinellas County, Fla. (which includes St. Petersburg).

A Washington Post analysis of Labor Department data found counties that suffered economically under Obama’s second term flocked to the Trump in 2016, while prosperous counties moved toward Obama’s Democrat successor, Hillary Clinton. Contrast that with 2020, when the gaps were smaller, but Biden saw the biggest shift in his favor in counties that saw the fastest job growth in the four years of the Trump presidency through March. Meanwhile, the largest shift to Trump in 2020 came from counties that saw the least job growth over his term.

In an analysis for The Post, StratoDem Analytics found that three variables best explained voting shifts form 2016 to 2020: educational attainment, race and ethnicity, and county-level economic performance. Rapidly growing counties around Austin and Dallas turned more blue, primarily because they attracted higher educated workers who are more likely to vote Democratic.

An analysis from the Economic Innovation Group came to a similar conclusion, finding that counties won by Biden have stronger recent growth than counties won by Trump. The EIG team focused on employment growth, wage growth and growth in the number of businesses in a county from 2018 to the first quarter of 2020 – just before the pandemic caused a devastating downturn.

“Democrats need to figure out what their positive and inclusive vision is that speaks to rural America,” said Kenan Fikri, research director at EIG. “Democrats really didn’t make inroads into rural America this time around.”

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Harris’s allies wonder anxiously: Will she have real clout?

InternationalNov 15. 2020Vice President-elect Kamala Harris speaks Nov. 10 on the Affordable Care Act in Wilmington, Del. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman 

By The Washington Post · Chelsea Janes, Sean Sullivan · NATIONAL, POLITICS, RACE 
When Kamala Harris stepped onstage for the first time as vice president-elect recently, she spoke emotionally of “Black women, who are often – too often – overlooked, but so often prove that they are the backbone of our democracy.”

But while Black activists remain excited about Harris’s ascent, many now worry that the administration will not deliver much beyond her historic election – a fear sharpened by Democrats’ disappointing performance in congressional races, which has dramatically limited Biden’s maneuvering room.

Their worries are underlined by the ongoing uncertainty over what exactly Harris’s portfolio will be in the Biden administration, and how much freedom she will have to chart her own course on issues like racial justice and immigration. 

“I really want her to be a transformative leader. I don’t want her to be transactional,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. “What I am hoping is she becomes the lightning rod.”

Brown conceded that will be a challenge amid emerging signs that President-elect Joe Biden’s longtime advisers will hold an array of influential positions in his administration. “The entire political landscape has been dominated by White, male-centered power,” Brown said. “I certainly think there’s going to be a strain within the administration. I think there’s going to be a strain within government.”

All indications are that Harris and Biden are cementing a strong personal relationship. They talk frequently, most often through phone calls and text messages, according to a person familiar with the dynamic, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interactions. Their connection is built partly on a shared belief in the importance of family, this person said, and on Harris’s friendship with Biden’s late son Beau, who served with Harris when both were state attorneys general.

But it is far from clear how that personal relationship will translate to official roles. Biden has not announced a portfolio for Harris, the way Biden handled the economic stimulus for Obama, and Harris’s allies are watching anxiously to see if she will be allowed to choose her top staffers or if Biden loyalists will be installed.

Many Black activists are not waiting to find out. Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Movement for Black Lives, has written a letter on the group’s behalf to Biden and Harris requesting a meeting to convey their demands.

“Black people won this election,” Cullors wrote. “Alongside Black-led organizations around the nation, Black Lives Matter invested heavily in this election. … We want something for our vote. We want to be heard and our agenda to be prioritized.”

Not everyone agrees. Some Democrats argue that while Black voters were crucial to Biden’s win, his ability to attract White centrists – who often vote Republican – was equally important. That’s sparked tensions within the party.

Cullors said she had not received a response to her letter. “The fact that we have to ask for a seat at the table, after the way we showed up, shows that Democrats have a lot of work to do when it comes to rewarding and listening to the Black folks that made this victory possible,” she said.

Another complication is that some of Biden’s powerful African American backers, such as Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., are also forceful critics of the most far-reaching demands of Black Lives Matter protesters, such as calls to “defund the police.”

All of this has created a swirl of often-conflicting hopes, pressures and expectations around Harris, 56, who will be a vice president like no other.

As a youthful woman of color and daughter of immigrants, she represents an increasingly diverse, liberal Democratic Party – while serving a president who reflects an older, whiter, more centrist America.

In addition, many Democrats are unsure whether the 77-year-old Biden will – or should – seek a second term in 2024. That makes Harris a possible successor and a source of excitement as potentially the first female president, but Biden’s team will want her to focus loyally on his agenda and not her own political future. 

Few of these complications have manifested themselves publicly yet, a little over a week after Biden and Harris declared victory in an election their opponent has yet to concede. 

Biden has already given Harris unusual prominence. She spoke before him on the night he declared victory – an event usually dedicated solely to highlighting the president-elect. Harris also addressed reporters during a joint event Tuesday on the importance of the Affordable Care Act, and she has participated in internal briefings all week.

Harris’s personal relationship with Biden has been up-and-down. He initially felt close to her because of her friendship with Beau, but when she attacked his record on racial issues at a June 2019 Democratic debate, he and his family felt betrayed. 

When Biden was looking for a running mate, he was facing pressure to choose a Black woman – leaving it unclear whether the decision to pick Harris was driven more by confidence or political necessity. But since then, Harris has worked tirelessly for his candidacy, serving as an ambassador of sorts to the Black community, and by all accounts their relationship has solidified.

A spokeswoman for Harris said it is too early to know what influence she will have in the administration or what her portfolio might include, and her own comments on the subject have been vague. “I will strive to be a vice president like Joe was to President Obama – loyal, honest and prepared, waking up every day thinking of you and your family,” she said in her victory speech.

Some Black activists hope that Harris, a former California attorney general, will focus on racial inequities in the criminal justice system. In the 2 1/2 months she spent campaigning for the Biden-Harris ticket, she made repeated trips to cities – Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit – where turnout from Black voters contributed to Biden’s victory.

“I think Joe Biden will be very wise to have Vice President-elect Harris have a say in all of his major decisions,” said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who has represented the families of victims of police violence including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. 

Rashad Robinson, spokesman for the Color of Change PAC, said he “absolutely sees Harris as an ally.” Both he and Crump said they have been in touch with Biden’s transition team and have urged it to stress diversity in the administration.

But the prospect of Harris carving out her own identity within the administration would be a departure from the traditional role of the vice president as a low-profile servant of the president, one without a separate agenda.

Sen. Robert Casey Jr., D-Pa., who campaigned alongside Harris in the final stretch and is in touch with Biden, predicted she would play a “vital role,” but one that fits the traditional mold of 21st-century presidencies. 

“I think the job of the presidency in the modern era has gotten so much more complicated and even more difficult than it was years ago,” Casey said in an interview. “Presidents have had to offload responsibility on the vice president. … I would expect that model or that relationship to continue.”

Those who have different hopes for Harris argue that these are not traditional times and she is not a traditional figure. Recent vice presidents – including Biden, Dick Cheney and Vice President Mike Pence – were all chosen by inexperienced presidents to reassure voters they would govern with competence and, in Trump’s case, ideological consistency. 

Many Democrats are also say Biden’s diversity efforts should go far beyond Harris. They are pushing for a Black woman to serve as attorney general, for example, and for figures like Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., a top Biden ally, to get senior White House roles.

Biden has promised that his government will look like the country, but for now he relies on a small clutch of mostly White, male advisers who have long been at his side. Ronald Klain was recently named his chief of staff, and advisers Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon are seen in Biden’s orbit as likely to receive high-level White House posts. 

Still, civil rights leaders say Biden’s aides have reached out to consult on potential appointees. “The transition team has been in touch and we have had conversations about our suggestions,” said Robinson, declining to provide details of names he and others are advocating.

Others said they were cautiously optimistic. Aimee Allison, head of the organization She the People, said Harris has reached out to Black women on social media and elsewhere in an unprecedented way. “I’ve never experienced that as a Black woman in my lifetime, and I think anyone’s lifetime,” she said. 

Allison also praised the work of two female Black advisers to Biden’s transition team, the Rev. Leah Daughtry, former CEO of the Democratic National Convention, and longtime Democratic strategist Minyon Moore. 

Longtime White House watchers say a critical question is whether Harris is allowed to assemble her own senior staff. During her presidential run, disagreements among Harris’s aides sometimes spilled into public view, prompting concerns in the party about her abilities to manage such a team. 

But after dropping out of the primaries, Harris slimmed down her operation as she competed to be Biden’s running mate. When she joined the ticket, her longtime aide Rohini Kosoglu helped run her campaign.

One of Harris’s closest allies is her sister Maya, who co-chaired her presidential campaign, served as a policy adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential effort and has deep ties in Black activists circles. 

When Harris was running for president, Maya often served as an emissary to activists concerned that Harris’s background as a prosecutor meant she would not support needed reforms to the criminal justice system. It remains unclear if Maya Harris will reprise that role, or any role, in the Biden administration. 

As Biden was contemplating whom to choose as his running mate earlier this year, his inner circle was split over Harris. Some worried she would seize any opportunity to advance her own career, citing her attack on Biden’s record on race during the Democratic primary.

Others disagreed, arguing that Harris had invaluable experience in the glare of the national spotlight and would serve Biden well. Now that the administration is taking shape, there are at least small signs that the two have forged a comfortable relationship.

Biden often described his goal of finding a running mate with whom he was “simpatico,” citing his closeness with Obama, whom he publicly called “Barack.” He is already in the habit of referring to Harris as “Kamala.”

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No breakthrough in sight for wartime labor issue despite Japan-S. Korea talks

InternationalNov 15. 2020

By The Japan News

Amid the continued tense bilateral relationship between Japan and South Korea, the two countries have increased reciprocal visits by high-profile politicians and government officials in attempts to smooth the rough edges. Of particular interest is the unresolved issue of lawsuits involving South Korean former wartime requisitioned workers.

On Friday, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and South Korean lawmakers including Kim Jin-pyo, who leads the South Korea-Japan Parliamentarians Union, met at the Prime Minister’s Office in Tokyo. However, no clue for a thaw was found.

“The relationship between Japan and South Korea has been in a very difficult situation,” Suga told Kim and other members of the South Korean delegation at the meeting on Friday.

According to a person present at the meeting, Suga asked them to relay the message to South Korean President Moon Jae-in that Seoul should first create an opportunity to resolve the issue.

Since Suga took office, the two countries have accelerated moves to mend the stalled bilateral relationship.

Takeo Kawamura, secretary-general of a nonpartisan parliamentary league that promotes the Japan-South Korea relationship, Shigeki Takizaki, director-general of the Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, and other high-profile people recently visited South Korea in succession. From South Korea, officials such as National Intelligence Service Director Park Jie-won have visited Japan. And on Thursday, Vice Foreign Minister Takeo Akiba held phone talks with South Korea’s first vice foreign minister.

Two years have passed since the South Korean Supreme Court ordered Japanese companies to pay compensation to the former requisitioned workers. Procedures are being taken to convert the companies’ seized assets into cash. Japan and South Korea are both aware that the time left to prevent this action is limited.

However, efforts by the both countries have produced no major positive results.

At a press conference on Friday, Lee Nak-yon, leader of the South Korean ruling Democratic Party, said, “I don’t think they [the delegation members] brought a solution proposal” for the wartime labor issue.

A senior official of the Japanese Foreign Ministry also said: “The South Korean side didn’t present [any solution proposals at the meeting with Suga]. We’ve got nothing.”

As Moon has taken a victim-oriented approach, he has not changed his position that the Japanese companies should pay redress to the victims in one way or another. According to South Korean government sources, the Moon administration intends to hold a Japan-South Korea summit on the sidelines of a Japan-China-South Korea leaders summit being arranged in South Korea by the end of this year. Moon intends to take advantage of the bilateral summit to issue a joint declaration that will collectively resolve pending issues, including the wartime labor and Japan’s tightening of export controls, the sources said.

On the other hand, Tokyo has ruled out the court rulings that ordered the Japanese firms to pay compensation, saying that the wartime labor issue was settled under the 1965 Agreement on the Settlement of Problems concerning Property and Claims and on Economic Cooperation between Japan and South Korea.

Frustration apparently has grown on the Japanese side as the South Korean side, including the lawmakers who visited Japan, did not present realistic proposals to resolve the issue.

“There wasn’t anything that sat well with us,” a senior Japanese government official said.

The Japanese side has taken a stance not to agree to hold even the trilateral summit if the situation remains unchanged. During the meeting Friday, Suga expressed caution after Kim asked him to visit South Korea.

If South Korea acts to cash in the seized assets, the Japanese government is expected to take strong countermeasures.

If that happens, a senior official of the Japanese Foreign Ministry said, “Further deterioration in the bilateral relationship will be unstoppable.”

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30397977?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

A trade pact nearly 10 years in the making: 5 things to know about RCEP

InternationalNov 15. 2020The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will eliminate as much as 90 per cent of the tariffs on imports between its parties.(ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG) 

By Straits Times

SINGAPORE – Almost 10 years after it was conceived at the Asean Summit in Bali in 2011, the world’s largest trade pact – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – is set to be signed on Sunday (Nov 15).

Involving the 10 Asean members, plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, the RCEP bloc covers nearly one-third of the world’s population, and contributes around 30 per cent of its gross domestic product.

It will eliminate as much as 90 per cent of the tariffs on imports between its parties within 20 years of coming into effect, and will improve market access for goods and services within the region.

It also aims to establish a common set of trade rules and covers non-traditional areas which are not in some existing agreements, such as e-commerce, competition policy, and intellectual property.

Here are five key things to note about the mega trade deal.

1. The Covid-19 factor

While online talks have made legal scrubbing – a process in which lawyers, translators and staff review and edit the text of the agreement – more cumbersome, the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic was a motivating factor to finalise the deal, given the benefits of its cuts to tariffs and trade barriers.

A joint statement by ministers, released after online talks in August, said the signing of the agreement would enhance business confidence, as well as demonstrate the region’s support for an open, inclusive and rules-based multilateral trading system.

“The ministers also underscored the significant role that the RCEP Agreement could play in post-pandemic recovery efforts, as well as in contributing to the growth and stability of the regional and global economy,” the statement said.

Outgoing United States President Donald Trump’s tariff-raising trade war with China has also given extra impetus in recent years to push ahead with the RCEP, which had otherwise progressed only sluggishly since negotiations began in 2012.

2. Who benefits?

All parties to the RCEP stand to gain.

Assistant professor of international studies at China’s Renmin University Jason Ji said Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam could see an increase in GDP and export volumes under the pact.

Key sectors he sees benefiting include Thailand’s construction sector, Singapore and Malaysia’s processed food industries, and Laos’ manufacturing sector.

Singapore University of Social Sciences senior lecturer Pan Zhengqi said a significant result of the RCEP is that it helps to facilitate complex supply chains, which would also boost South Korea’s electronics sector.

As for Vietnam, he said, the lower trade barriers and enhanced market access would benefit its telecommunications, textile and footwear sectors.

Dr Pan added that China, being the world’s largest trading nation, stands to gain the most from the pact. Both its manufacturing and service sectors would see a boost, given the country’s large export and import capacities, he said.

He added that exchanges of technical know-how under the agreement would also help China move up the value chain.

3. India’s withdrawal

There will be 15 instead of 16 participants after India announced in November last year that it would pull out of the talks.

It had major concerns over trade imbalances, as it had trade deficits with 11 of the 15 nations involved in the RCEP. Fearing that the deal could result in a flood of manufacturing and agricultural products into its market, India was unwilling to remove tariffs on many sensitive industries.

However, the door remains open for India to rejoin, a point several Asean leaders made at their summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last Thursday.

Associate professor of practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy James Crabtree said India’s decision not to come on board was a setback for the agreement but a “historic blunder” for India itself.

“It might well have made the agreement easier to finalise, but it also left it dominated by China, to the disappointment of South-east Asia in particular,” he said.

“For India, it signalled a more fundamental turn away from economic openness, leaving New Delhi outside both of the economic blocs that will define Asia’s future: RCEP and the 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).”

Renmin University’s Prof Ji said India’s withdrawal is not irreversible, nor will its absence significantly impact the scope and quality of the agreement, as the bulk of the negotiations were already concluded with India’s participation.

“That said, RCEP becomes a smaller mega-FTA because of India’s absence, temporary or otherwise.”

4. Where does the CPTPP fit in?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which originally included the US was seen as a counterweight to RCEP, and RCEP’s inclusion of India was meant to balance China. But neither scenario has panned out in the way it was envisioned.

The CPTPP, which evolved from the TPP after Mr Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in one of his first acts as president, was concluded in 2018 among 11 countries, seven of which are also in the RCEP: Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. The other CPTPP members are Canada, Chile, Mexico and Peru.

The CPTPP involves greater elimination of tariffs and also includes provisions on labour and environmental standards, unlike the RCEP.

But few are holding their breath that the US, which is still emerging from the throes of a bitterly contested presidential election, will return to the table any time soon.

“The RCEP provides China with much-needed reprieve from the US-China trade war and rising global protectionism,” says SUSS’ Dr Pan.

However, both the CPTPP and RCEP are seen as building blocks of a much-larger free trade vision spanning the Pacific Ocean: The Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), which members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation have alluded to as early as 2004. Malaysia is hosting this year’s Apec leaders summit later this week.

5. Will Australia-China tensions affect the deal?

After Australia incurred the wrath of its largest trading partner, China, in April by leading calls for a probe into the origins of the coronavirus, the Chinese government ordered a halt to imports of Australian products such as coal, barley, and wine.

Some say the ongoing trade spat could stymie cooperation under the RCEP. But SUSS’ Dr Pan said the trade pact can be useful in de-escalating tensions between Australia and China in one major way: It constrains the actions of both countries within a rules-based framework.

“As such, participating countries – even major powers such as China – might not readily use trade as a strategic leverage,” he said, pointing out that China’s behaviour within RCEP will shape its reputation and credibility as well as alter the behaviour of other states towards it.

By supporting frequent dialogues among members, the trade pact will also decrease information asymmetries and foster cooperation, he added.

Notwithstanding these issues, analysts agree that the key now is to demonstrate that the RCEP is useful.

“RCEP will not supersede pre-existing FTAs like Asean-Plus agreements per se,” said Renmin University’s Prof Ji, referring to agreements which Asean has signed separately with major economies such as China, Japan, and South Korea.

“But it improves upon them and facilitates an orderly and negotiated convergence of these agreements in terms of trading rules and customs procedures.”