InternationalNov 08. 2020Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor (left) meets with Secretary of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee Li Xi in Guangzhou, Nov 7, 2020. (PHOTO/HKSAR GOVERNMENT)
By China Daily
HONG KONG – Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor met with leaders of Guangdong province and Shenzhen on Saturday to discuss ways to jointly take forward the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area development and further cooperation between Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
During the meeting with Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China Li Xi and Governor of Guangdong province Ma Xingrui, Lam expressed gratitude to the province for the long-standing support for Hong Kong during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Carrie Lam expressed the hope that cross-boundary travel could resume gradually and orderly for the people of Guangdong and Hong Kong when the SAR further brings the epidemic under control
The Guangdong authorities have helped the city implement anti-epidemic measures at border control points. Majority of the members of the support teams who came to Hong Kong to help with testing in the Universal Community Testing Programme in September were also from Guangdong.
Lam expressed the hope that cross-boundary travel with exemption of quarantine could resume gradually and orderly for the people of Guangdong and Hong Kong when the SAR further brings the epidemic under control.
Lam said that she is confident of the prospects of Guangdong-Hong Kong cooperation down the road, in particular the Bay Area development, given the unique advantages of Hong Kong and the cooperation foundation built over the years between the two places. She expressed the hope that the two governments will work together to contribute to the development of the nation and the Bay Area.
Lam met with the Secretary of the CPC Shenzhen Municipal Committee Wang Weizhong and Shenzhen Mayor Chen Rugui in the afternoon.
Pointing out that Hong Kong made contributions in the course of developments of Shenzhen in the past and was also the beneficiary, Lam said she believes that the close and mutually beneficial relationship can be further strengthened in the future.
Secretary of the CPC Shenzhen Municipal Committee Wang Weizhong pledged to offer full support for Hong Kong to integrate into the nation’s development
She said the HKSAR government is studying policy initiatives recently promulgated by the country on the development of Shenzhen in order to explore further room for collaboration in such areas as promoting innovation and technology, attracting talent and improving people’s livelihoods.
Pointing out that the Ministry of Science and Technology has expressed staunch support for Hong Kong-Shenzhen cooperation on innovation and technology, Lam expressed the hope that while taking forward the development of the Hong Kong/Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park in the Loop, both places can implement enhanced collaborative measures in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Cooperation Zone in Shenzhen as soon as possible to contribute to the development of an international I&T hub in the Bay Area.
She also expressed her gratitude to the Shenzhen municipal government for its support for Hong Kong amid the epidemic, including helping with the construction of community treatment facilities and a temporary hospital as commissioned by the central government.
For his part, Wang pledged to offer full support for Hong Kong to integrate into the nation’s development, according to reports of the Shenzhen branch of People’s Daily.
He expressed the hope that closer cross-boundary cooperation can be conducted in checkpoint construction, technological innovation, modern service industry, education and healthcare, social livelihood and joint prevention and control of pandemic, according to the reports.
India’s economy expected to bounce back from next fiscal, says SBI chairman Khara
InternationalNov 08. 2020State Bank of India chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara
By The Statesman
The corporate sector will become “very careful about borrowings” and use their internal resources initially.
The Indian economy, which has shown resilience to come out from a downturn caused by the pandemic, is expected to bounce back from the next fiscal, State Bank of India chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara said on Saturday.
The SBI chief made the statement while addressing the virtual annual general meeting of Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He said that there will be a “paradigm shift” which will lead to a more matured economy” with economic players learning to contain costs.
“The economy is expected to bounce back from the next fiscal starting from April 2021. The next normal will see a paradigm shift and some of them will be permanent.”
He added that the economy had shown “resilience to come out from the downturn” and some positive traction was witnessed towards the end of the first quarter of the current fiscal.”
According to him, investment demand from corporate will take some time to pick up.
“Average capacity utilisation among the corporations is around 69 per cent. Investment demand from corporate will take some time to pick up. The cash-rich PSUs will initially embark upon capital expenditure plan which will generate investment demand,” he said.
The corporate sector will become “very careful about borrowings” and use their internal resources initially.
He further pointed out the industries such as steel and cement are doing well since the beginning of April 2020 and now they are at a position from where they can tap the export markets.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is set to award the title of national hero posthumously to six Indonesian figures on Heroes Day, which falls on Nov. 10, Social Affairs Minister Juliari Batubara has said.
“There are six national hero awardees this year,” Juliari said on Friday, as quoted by Antara.
Two of the awardees are from the country’s easternmost provinces, namely Sultan Baabullah from North Maluku and Machmud Singgirei Rumagesan from West Papua. The two figures will be the first national heroes from both provinces.
Sultan Baabullah was the seventh sultan of the Ternate Sultanate from 1570 to 1583. His influence reached as far as 72 islands including Mindanao Island in the Philippines and the Papuan Islands.
Baabullah defeated the Portuguese colonizers and led Maluku to its peak of glory at the end of the 16th century through free trade in spices and forest products.
Machmud Singgirei Rumagesan was the king of Sekar region, now Fakfak regency, who fought against the Dutch colonial government and later established the Tjendrawasih Revolutionary Movement of West Irian (GTRIB).
The GTRIB called on the Indonesian government to form a local government in Papua, led by native Papuans, as a part of Indonesia to rival the Dutch that still occupied the land after Indonesian independence in 1945.
The other four awardees are first National Police chief Gen. (ret) Raden Said Soekanto Tjokrodiatmodjo from Jakarta, former information minister Arnold Mononutu from North Sulawesi, Youth Congress figure Sutan Mohammad Amin Nasution from North Sumatra and warlord Raden Mattaher from Jambi.
Juliari said the nomination of the six historical figures had gone through a selection process in the Social Affairs Ministry and the Title, Order of Merit and Honors Council.
Soekanto Tjokrodiatmodjo led the National Police from 1945 to 1959. He was mandated by first President Soekarno to build a police institution with nationalism in mind. He was awarded the Bintang Mahaputra medal by President Soeharto in 1968 as a recognition of his professional accomplishments during his service.
Arnold Mononutu was a nationalist involved in the country’s struggle for independence, including supporting the notion of unifying the Dutch-established State of East Indonesia (NIT) with the Republic of Indonesia. Afterward, Arnold was appointed as the information minister. In 1953, he became the first Ambassador of Indonesia to China.
Sutan Mohammad Amin Nasution was an Acehnese-Mandailing lawyer who was also involved in the independence movement. He served as the governor of North Sumatra and later became the first governor of Riau. He was also one of the founders of the Young Indonesians organization, which later held the Second Youth Congress in Oct. 1928.
Raden Mattaher was a warlord of the Jambi Sultanate in the 19th century who also fought against Dutch colonial rule. In 1885, Mattaher and his great uncle Thaha Syaifuddin, the sultan of Jambi who was named a national hero in 1977, sunk a Dutch warship in the Kumpeh Muaro Jambi River. (aly)
Such figures have been unseen since August, and raise concerns of a third wave of infections amid the onset of cooler temperatures.
More than 100 new clusters were discovered over the past week.
“We have to watch the situation with a stronger sense of caution than before,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Friday.
Top government spokesman Katsunobu Kato added that the government was “sparing no effort” to curb the outbreak, though a suspension of the multi-billion dollar Go To Travel campaign to resuscitate the ailing hospitality industry does not appear to be on the cards.
While Japan has avoided the explosive growth in cases elsewhere, it has been one of the hardest-hit in East Asia. It has also, comparatively, been one of the more laissez-faire in its response.
China, where the coronavirus was first detected, reported no local transmissions on the mainland on Friday, with all 33 new cases imported. The tally stands at 86,184.
Outpacing both countries is Japan, with 107,554 cases as of Saturday night. Tokyo, which accounts for nearly one in three cases, reported 294 new cases on Saturday, with several traced to Halloween parties.
Because the Philippine political system has been largely modeled after that of the United States, Filipinos have an abiding interest in knowing how the system is supposed to work. We have always looked to America for lessons on how to improve our own political processes so as to keep them aligned to the democratic ideal.
The arrival in 2016 of Donald Trump as president of the United States, however, made us rethink all that. Almost overnight, America began to look a bit like the Philippines — uncertain about the stability of its institutions, jolted by the deep resentment of many of its citizens against the political establishment, and shocked by the readiness of a president to cater to the darkest and unexamined instincts of a resentful public.
For one, it is the unusually prolonged period for counting the votes, and the public restlessness this has engendered, that has given rise to comparisons of the latest US presidential election with those from fledgling democracies. Part of this delay is due to the decision of a big number of American voters to request for mail-in ballots in view of the risks brought about by the ongoing pandemic.
The unprecedented number of voters opting for this mode of casting their ballots has brought its own problems. Some forgot to sign the form that came with the ballot. Others gave conflicting information that required verification. There were voters who requested mail-in ballots but decided at the last minute to cast their votes in person. Some ballots were postmarked within the allowable period, but failed to arrive on election day. All mail-in ballots had to be “processed” separately before they could be counted. In some states, this was done weeks or days before election day. In others, it could only be done on the day itself.
The electoral commissions of almost every state anticipated most of these possible issues. To assure them the system is working, they enabled all absentee voters to track their mailed ballots in real time. Authorized election volunteers were deployed to contact voters whose ballots needed authentication, and to ask them to help election officials “cure” these so they won’t be invalidated. Decisions were made beforehand as to when and how to process and count the mail-in ballots.
But, ignoring all these efforts to assure the public of the transparency of the system, President Trump wasted no time in questioning the legitimacy of absentee voting. He said, without showing how, that it opens a large space for committing fraud. During the presidential debates, he claimed that mailed ballots in known Republican strongholds had been seen scattered around garbage dumps, implying that sinister forces were out to sabotage the elections. He gave no proof to substantiate this reckless claim. He expressly told his supporters to vote in person, and took every opportunity to cast doubt on the validity of mailed ballots.
It was as though he was already preparing the ground to declare a failure of elections in battleground states where the presidential race was expected to be close. So familiar is this infuriating tactic to Pinoys that the creative minds among them have recently filled social media with “Hello Garci” memes showing Trump on the phone desperately telling “Garci” to reverse the steady whittling down of his early vote lead.
Like the proverbial local politician who ascribes every defeat to electoral fraud, Trump has predictably gone to court to demand a stop to the counting in places where he is losing. He has impugned the integrity of the electoral process in those counties and states in which the results were not those he expected—even when the local officials who had oversight functions over the elections were from his own party.
He vigorously pushed for the “midnight” appointment of his nominee to the US Supreme Court, in total anticipation of the inevitability that election-related petitions would come before the high court, which he expects to vote along party lines. Asked to affirm his trust in the American electoral process, he refused to make a clear commitment that he would respect the election results. He insisted that he would do so only if he was fully convinced that the voting had been fraud-free—a strange thing for a sitting president to say.
By insinuating, again with no proof, that “they are stealing the elections” and “finding” more votes for his opponent in the crucial battleground states where he was being overtaken, he supplies his most ardent supporters with reasons to “stand by,” ready to defend the vote by their militant presence. In the process, he summons the dangerous dark twin of “people power,” which, in our own post-Edsa politics, has done much to downgrade the idea of active citizenship.
Indeed, no other president in recent American political history has tested the outer limits of democracy in the United States as much as Donald Trump. His rise to the presidency showed the weaknesses of the institutional guardrails that had hitherto kept reckless adventurers like him from entering America’s highest office.
His looming exit from the White House will hopefully energize the pushback against rightwing populism and authoritarianism everywhere. It may, however, take a while before the institutional damage he leaves behind is repaired. For, in many ways, the rise of Trump is a symptom of, as much as it is a reaction to, the failure of the structures of democratic governance to check the excesses of neoliberalism and corporate greed. It will not be enough for his successor to merely aspire to bring back the status quo before Trump.
President Moon Jae-in sent a congratulatory message to US President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, expressing expectations for joint efforts to develop Seoul-Washington ties.
“Congratulations to @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris. Our alliance is strong and the bond between our two countries is rock-solid,” Moon wrote on Twitter.
“I very much look forward to working with you for our shared values,” Moon added. “I have great expectations of advancing and opening up the future development of our bilateral relations.”
He ended the short note with “Katchi Kapshida!,” a Korean expression that means “Let’s go together!”
Moon used his social media account to congratulate the Biden team, instead of a formal diplomatic channel, apparently in consideration that President Donald Trump is not accepting defeat.
Moon is expected to seek to send an official congratulatory letter to Biden or hold phone talks with him after a power transition process gets under way in earnest. (Yonhap)
The Japanese government is preparing to take policy measures in areas such as global warming, with an eye toward a transfer of power in the United States as former Vice President Joe Biden is gaining an advantage as votes are counted in the U.S. presidential election.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga repeatedly emphasized his proactive stance on climate change at a meeting of the House of Councillors’ Budget Committee on Friday.
“Active measures to combat global warming will lead to significant growth by bringing about changes in the industrial structure, the economy and society,” Suga said.
A target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, which Suga set in his first policy speech, was made in anticipation of the possibility of Biden taking office, according to sources close to the prime minister.
Biden has referred to a return to the Paris Agreement, an international framework for combating global warming, from which the U.S. withdrew under President Donald Trump. The Japanese government wants the U.S. and Japan to be in step in the international community.
A senior government official believes that Biden’s foreign and security policies will be moderate toward Japan, and similar views have been spreading throughout the government.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama, with whom Biden worked as vice president, became in 2014 the first U.S. president to explicitly state that the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture are within the scope of Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which obliges the United States to defend Japan. The Japanese government plans to confirm the same stance with the United States as soon as possible, if Biden is elected to the White House.
“[Even after the presidential election,] the Japan-U.S. alliance will continue to be the crux of our foreign and security policy and the foundation of peace, prosperity and freedom for the Indo-Pacific region and the international community,” Suga said at an upper house budget committee meeting on Friday.
In the meantime, even if Biden is reportedly assured of his victory, Suga will not immediately hold congratulatory telephone talks, but instead will wait to see how other countries act.
“It’s not a good idea to provoke Trump, who is claiming irregularities in vote counting,” a senior Japanese official at the Foreign Ministry said.
By The Washington Post Amy B Wang, Meryl Kornfield, Shayna Jacobs, Susan Svrluga, Maura Ewing, Christine Spolar, Jared Goyette Almost as soon as television networks called the presidential race Saturday morning for former vice president Joe Biden, his supporters began flocking to the streets.
The celebrations that ensued – unbridled jubilation, dancing, singing and chanting – represented a release of emotions after an excruciating four-day wait for the election results, but also of a release of four years of pent-up frustration and anger at President Donald Trump, some said.
The widespread sound of cheering, honking, pot-banging and more erupted in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, Minneapolis and other largely Democratic cities Trump has disparaged. Some rejoiced at the imminent departure of Trump from the White House, while others touted the historic ascendancy of Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, who will become the nation’s first Black and first Asian American woman vice president.
“No more years! No more years!” a crowd of hundreds chanted in Philadelphia.
Frankie Rowles, 32, was in a downtown Philadelphia food hall when the news broke. He ran into the streets and joined a growing crowd of celebrators across the street from the city’s convention center, where votes were tallied this week.
He immediately drew his cellphone and started live-streaming himself jumping up and down.
“Yeah we did it, Philadelphia! Aaaagh!”
He crouched down for a minute, gathering his thoughts. “I’m so proud of us,” he said.
A pro-Trump camp was set up across the street, blaring country music from a loudspeaker. Biden supporters danced to the music, strangers hugged, everyone cheered.
Adrienne Trice, 55, hugged her 11-year-old daughter Laila Williamson and swayed to the tunes.
A tear streamed down Laila’s cheek. As a young Black girl, she said she was heartened to see a Black woman take such a powerful seat.
“It’s about time,” she said.
Across the street, the mood was somber. “This is fraud, we know it’s fraud,” said a Trump supporter who declined to give his name. “We’re going to take it to the mat.”
A growing crowd of Biden supporters – about 100 at noon – chanted: “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye!”
In the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, people rushed into one intersection shortly after 1 p.m., hoisting American flags and bursting out loud with laughter. Marie Norman, 55, was among those celebrating.
“I’ve been waiting four years for this,” she said. “It’s been misery for four years, and people can finally feel relief.”
Ivan Frank, 82, said he had made 2,800 phone calls to rally voters to support Biden. He beamed at the corner of Murray and Forbes avenues as people danced around him and dashed into the center of the intersection, American flags flying.
“How about it?” he said. “We did it!”
In New York, the show of support was especially reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic, when residents poured out of their apartments nightly to applaud hospital workers and first responders risking their lives to treat coronavirus patients. Shouting and music could be heard from rooftops across the city.
By the afternoon, a sea of people congregated in Times Square celebrating the Biden victory – a startling scene in a tourist hub that has been largely empty since the start of the pandemic. Broadway theaters have been dark since March and are not slated to reopen until late next year. A performer in head-to-toe tie-dye blared “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” from “The Wizard of Oz” from a speaker fixed to his bicycle.
Jason Olson and Sarah Young, 44 and 32, a couple from Harlem, left their house in pajamas to join a celebration in their neighborhood that began almost immediately after news organizations called the race.
“When we left there was a group of people opening champagne in the street,” Young said. The widespread display of joy reminded the couple of an event they witnessed when they used to live in California: the San Francisco Giants winning the World Series.
Young, a stage director whose career as been affected by the pandemic and who never left the city during the height of the coronavirus spread, said Trump “utterly failed us and the rest of the country.”
Outside of Trump International Hotel in Columbus Circle, a large crowd waved signs and cheered as drivers in traffic pounded their horns and raised their fists.
A woman wearing a T-shirt that read “Nasty Woman,” a throwback to Trump’s famous Hillary Clinton insult, danced with a pink feather boa atop a parked black SUV. While drivers honked, passengers hung out car windows, some with “Biden/Harris” signs and others shouting obscenities aimed at Trump.
Some cars blared the rap song “FDT,” an acronym for an expletive and the president’s name. People throughout the city had looks of joy, evident even with most faces covered by masks.
The results came a week after people in the city waited in line for as long as five hours to submit ballots during an overwhelmed early voting period, the first in the state during any presidential contest.
In Washington, the sounds of honking and cheering echoed across the Mall, where the merriment over Trump’s displacement could be heard near the White House. Revelers near the Capitol banged on pots with wooden spoons, cheering. “Kamala!” some joggers shouted to them, raising their fists in the air.
At one point, a group of two dozen bicyclists cruised down East Capitol Street NE, blasting Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.”
In the afternoon, as Trump’s motorcade returned to the White House from his golf course in Sterling, Va., where he had spent the morning, crowds celebrating Biden and Harris’s win booed loudly.
In Minneapolis, a coalition of progressive groups had organized a march Saturday morning that was intended to focus on demanding that every vote be counted. The gathering took on a festive atmosphere when news of the race being called for Biden spread among the crowd.
An Aztec dance group in full traditional regalia and a robust drum section led the group of about 1,000 people in a march that started near the remains of what was once the Minneapolis 3rd Precinct police station – which had been burned down in the unrest following the killing of George Floyd – and proceeded to Powderhorn Park. A DJ played sets from a stage set up on the back of a truck.
“Today it feels really good, it feels like spring,” said Aurin Chowdhury, 23, of Minneapolis. “I’ve been so stressed out this whole year, especially this month. It feels relieving, like I’m taking a breath of fresh air.”
Juwaria Jarma, 16, filmed the celebrations with her phone. She said the march reflected the demands progressive groups would have of a Biden administration moving forward.
“People are energized, people want to do the work and are invested in it,” said Jarma, who showed up to represent the group Minneapolis Youth Climate Strike.
Susana De León, an immigration lawyer, said she had seen firsthand the pain caused by the Trump administration’s immigration policies. She noted that it was important her group was there to represent indigenous culture as the event was occurring on what was once Dakota land.
“We came here to demand our votes be counted, but now we are here to celebrate,” she said.
In Chicago late Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people gathered along Wacker Drive to celebrate. The crowd stretched from Michigan Avenue in front of Trump Tower and across all of the Chicago River bridges.
People played drums, sang, waved flags, and otherwise enjoyed the almost summerlike temperatures. Many sang the Queen song “We Are the Champions” in front of Trump’s hotel and condo development.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters Saturday that she hoped Trump would concede soon.
“He will get there. I certainly hope he will get there, whether he says those words or not. The time has come for the transition to start,” she said.
Lightfoot said she considered Harris’s win “historic” and that it showed young people of color that “in America truly so many things are possible.”
“The news of the finality of this electoral process opens up boundless of possibilities of science, the rule of law, respect for civil rights, and respect for our most vulnerable residents and communities,” she said. “There is a reason people all over world breathed huge sigh of relief today. Make no mistake, America is back.”
Despite Biden’s tally, Trump’s supporters insist the election is not yet over
InternationalNov 08. 2020In Atlanta, 16-year-old Chandler Crump speaks at a pro-Trump event at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Saturday. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post
By The Washington Post · Hannah Knowles, Mark Berman, Nick Miroff · NATIONAL, POLITICS PHOENIX – Activists and supporters of President Donald Trump insisted Saturday that the presidential election was not finished, displaying defiance after Joe Biden secured victory in the closely fought race.
From here in the Arizona desert to Philadelphia, Trump backers echoed the president’s attacks on the integrity of the election, which continued Saturday with his statement that “this election is far from over.” They made baseless allegations of voter fraud and pledged to keep fighting in court while claiming Biden did not legitimately win.
“We know the election is being stolen,” said Michael Breitenbach, a 47-year-old construction manager in Philadelphia who was holding a Trump flag Saturday morning not long after news outlets called the race. “When the count is fair and legal, Donald Trump will have won by a landslide, and you can bank on that.”
Trump’s supporters have only considered him a winner – in business, as a celebrity, and ultimately as president of the United States. The election results, revealed Saturday after days of waiting for straggling states to tally their returns, indicated otherwise this time: Biden has won at least 279 electoral votes, enough to claim the presidency. He also garnered 74.5 million individual votes – the most in the nation’s history and more than 4 million above Trump’s total.
Instead of accepting those results, the president’s devotees spurned them. They gathered at so-called “Stop the Steal” rallies at state capitols across the country to claim, without evidence, that ballot counts favorable to Biden stem from a sprawling, multistate conspiracy to hijack the vote through fraud. It is unclear how widespread such views are beyond these events and high-profile conservative figures, and some GOP figures have pushed back on claims of a rigged election.
In big, largely Democratic cities across the country, many of which were rocked by somber demonstrations against racial injustice this year, Biden’s victory spurred joyous celebrations and collective relief. In other places, though, it fueled pockets of protest from those refusing to acknowledge Trump had lost.
“I won’t accept it as legitimate,” said Leonard Horner, 51, during a pro-Trump rally at the Arizona Capitol.
More than 300 people gathered in Salem, Ore., outside the state capitol to wave Trump flags and decry the outcome of the election. Among them were members of the far-right Proud Boys and numerous people affiliated with self-styled militia groups who were armed with assault-style rifles.
Don Thomas, 64, of McMinnville, Ore., said he believes Democrats are ignoring the legal challenges Trump has mounted in pivotal states, and he wants to make sure “all those question marks are answered” before there is an official winner.
“A lot of places are voting by mail for the first time, and because of the newness of the system, we have to make sure it’s being done right,” Thomas said. “If we lose legally, I’ll accept that. But there’s so many ways this can be done wrong.”
In Harrisburg, Pa., one of the events drew about 200 people, with large Trump 2020 flags and “Legal Votes Matter” signs waving as they milled near the state capitol. Some said they thought there should be a recount or even another vote entirely.
“I’m here for the integrity of the election, no matter whether you’re a Republican or Democrat,” said Nicole, a 39-year-old from Hegins, Pa., who declined to give her last name.
Postings shared on social media advertised “Stop the Steal” events that called for “peaceful protests” in key American cities, though it was not clear how many people would turn out for all of them.
The “steal” calls have been amplified on social media by Donald Trump Jr. and promoted by conservative activists such as Amy Kremer, a former congressional candidate in Georgia and co-founder of the group Women for Trump.
Earlier in the week, Kremer used a Facebook page with more than 100,000 followers called Women for America First to channel traffic to a “Stop the Steal” group, which quickly collected more than 360,000 members before it was shut down Thursday for violating the site’s rules.
At the “Stop the Steal” event in the Pennsylvania capital, Amy Lee, a 55-year-old who had been a poll watcher in Pittsburgh, said she was upset about not being allowed closer to the counting.
“I’m here to support Trump,” she said. “I believe Biden stole the election.”
When asked how, Lee said she thought it was “mathematically impossible” given the size of the pro-Trump events, trains and flotillas compared with Biden’s events, which often adhered to coronavirus-focused public health restrictions.
Trump 2020 flags flew over the ornate steps of the Michigan Capitol in Lansing, while several hundred Trump supporters denied the results and chanted: “We won.” Speakers used a megaphone to denounce the vote as fraudulent; passing trucks honked their horns in apparent support.
While they were demonstrating, members of Michigan’s legislature gathered inside for a special Saturday meeting as they began an inquiry into the election’s handling, which Michigan officials have repeatedly defended as legitimate, accurate and fair. Biden won Michigan by about 148,000 votes, an about-face after Trump won the state by a slim margin in 2016.
Other Trump backers were more sanguine about the outcome. Paul Ritz rode his motorcycle Saturday to a bar in New Hudson, Mich. The 53-year-old, who works in construction, said he loves Trump but was tired of politics and was relieved the election is over.
“I want to move on and I want to see other things,” Ritz said, his tattooed arms resting on the New Hudson Inn’s finished wood bar as he drank a Dos Equis. “I’m tired of best friends being enemies.”
Jack Marcinick, a lifelong Republican who twice voted for Trump, said he was disappointed at the results and has questions about how absentee ballots were handled. But he still accepted what happened.
“Do I think elections are clean? No,” said the 71-year-old in Butler County, Pa. “But my opinion is: It’s done. It’s over. We will live with the decision.”
Here in Phoenix, demonstrators outside a Maricopa County, Ariz., vote-counting center insisted the race had not been called. A man wearing a “Q” cape – a reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory – told a gathering of dozens of people that they should not believe the media or “the liars” inside the elections facility, where workers were still counting ballots. As of Saturday night, Biden was leading in Arizona by just more than 20,000 votes, but the state had not yet been called for either side.
“It’s not official yet,” John Ryer, a 53-year-old Scottsdale resident at the gathering, said of Biden’s win.
As media outlet after media outlet called the election for Biden, Neianne Castro was disappointed but not surprised.
“People will vote for Biden because they hate Trump,” she said while grabbing lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix after picking up family at the airport.
The 46-year-old office manager said, in her view, the counting is still going and the race isn’t over, and she questioned the election workers counting ballots.
“I mean, how much do we really know about the people who are taking our votes in and how trustworthy they really are?” she said.
Pro-Trump demonstrators gathered Saturday in Austin, outside the Texas Capitol. Kevin Rollins, 57, said Trump supporters “feel cheated” and will “be out here every Saturday until we get it resolved.”
Pennsylvania, one of the pivotal states that decided the election’s outcome, has drawn intense scrutiny from Trump supporters and allies, who have repeatedly questioned the vote-counting process this week in public statements and demonstrations outside a vote-counting site in Philadelphia.
On Thursday night, Philadelphia police arrested two armed men near where votes were being tallied. Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney, said police had been told the men were coming from Virginia for reasons potentially related to the vote count; authorities charged both men with weapons violations.
People who know the two men defended their actions, saying they went to the city to view the scene. Both had been associated with a group called “Vets for Trump,” and one worked in professional private security. The mother of one of the men said he “loved Trump very much” and “didn’t want Trump to lose.”
Just minutes after the election was called Saturday, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney and the former mayor of New York mayor, said the Trump campaign would file a lawsuit alleging voter fraud in Pennsylvania.
Before Giuliani spoke at a Philadelphia landscaping company, Trump supporters had gathered outside the company’s gates to argue with Biden supporters. The Trump supporters learned that news outlets had projected Biden would win Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes from their phones and people in passing cars, one of whom shouted the outcome at them.
The confrontations were largely verbal, not physical – except for when Jada Carter, a 23-year-old recent Hofstra graduate, dropped to her hands and feet and twerked at a Trump supporter, laughing at him.
“If you don’t like it, you can leave!” she yelled.
Biden plans immediate flurry of executive orders to reverse Trump policies
InternationalNov 08. 2020Supporters wave to others driving past as they celebrate the victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in a parking lot near the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., on Saturday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys
By The Washington Post · Matt Viser, Seung Min Kim, Annie Linskey · NATIONAL, POLITICS President-elect Joe Biden is planning to quickly sign a series of executive orders after being sworn into office on Jan. 20, immediately forecasting that the country’s politics have shifted and that his presidency will be guided by radically different priorities.
He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on immigration from many Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing “dreamers,” who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.
Although transitions of power can always include abrupt changes, the shift from Trump to Biden – from one president who sought to undermine established norms and institutions to another who has vowed to restore the established order – will be among the most startling in American history.
Biden’s top advisers have spent months quietly working on how best to implement his agenda, with hundreds of transition officials preparing to get to work inside various federal agencies. They have assembled a book filled with his campaign commitments to help guide their early decisions.
Biden is planning to set up a coronavirus task force on Monday, in recognition that the global pandemic will be the primary issue that he must confront. The task force, which could begin meeting within days, will be co-chaired by former surgeon general Vivek Murthy and David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner.
But there has also been a recognition of those around him that he may have to lean more on executive actions that he had once hoped. He can reorient various federal agencies and regulations, and he can adopt a different posture on the world stage.
But pushing major legislation through Congress could prove to be a challenge.
Although the Democrats will hold a narrowed majority in the House, the final makeup of the Senate is not yet clear. That will be decided on Jan. 5, with two runoff elections in Georgia. Democrats would need to win both races to effectively have control of the Senate – with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote – while Republicans would retain a narrow advantage by winning at least one.
“The policy team, the transition policy teams, are focusing now very much on executive power,” said a Biden ally who has been in touch with his team who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “I expect that to be freely used in a Biden administration at this point, if the Senate becomes a roadblock.”
A Republican-held Senate – or even one with a narrow Democratic majority – probably will affect Biden’s Cabinet picks given the Senate’s power to confirm nominees.
One option being discussed is appointing Cabinet members in an acting capacity, a tactic that Trump also used.
“Just by virtue of the calendar and how many positions are filled, that’s always a possibility,” the person said. “Because the Senate moves so slowly now, so much more slowly than it used to.”
On Saturday afternoon, about two hours after networks called Biden the winner of the election, the president-elect had a brief call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who called to congratulate Biden on a “tremendous victory,” according to two Democratic officials.
Schumer called while en route to a celebration in Brooklyn, holding his flip phone out the window so that Biden could hear the cheering crowd.
If Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., stays as majority leader, he would be trying to manage a conference torn between two factions with different interests, but neither necessarily eager to help Biden – one with senators running for reelection in swing states in 2022, and another with those seeking the national spotlight as they vie for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“In the old days, the mandate meant that the other side would be more amenable, or feeling they had an impetus to work,” said Sen. Robert Casey Jr., D-Pa. “I’m not sure that applies any longer.”
It is unclear whether Biden has communicated with McConnell yet directly; aides have not commented on any conversation.
A closely divided Congress could hamper Biden’s efforts to do sweeping legislative actions on immigration reform. He has also said he would send a bill to Congress repealing liability protections for gun manufacturers, and close background-check loopholes. He has pledged to repeal the Republican-passed tax cuts from 2017, an effort that could be stymied if Republicans hold the Senate majority.
Without congressional cooperation, however, Biden has said that he plans to immediately reverse Trump’s rollback of 100 public health and environmental rules that the Obama administration had in place.
He would also institute new ethics guidelines at the White House, and he has pledged to sign an executive order the first day in office saying that no member of his administration could influence any Justice Department investigations.
Biden has long pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accords by executive order, but he has also said that he would attempt to convince other nations to adopt higher standards in an attempt to curb the impacts of climate change.
Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., a longtime Biden ally who holds the seat Biden had for 36 years, offered a broad overview of Biden’s initial agenda: “Get us out of this pandemic that’s been made far worse by Trump’s bungled mishandling of it, rebuild our economy in a way that’s more sustainable and more inclusive, and deal with division and inequality.”
He noted that Biden’s style will be quite different, saying that Trump and Pelosi haven’t spoken in more than a year.
Coons suggested that Biden would promptly being reaching out to leaders in both parties.
The coronavirus response has been foremost on Biden’s mind, and it is seen inside his campaign as a chief reason for his victory. He has previously said that even before the inauguration he would reach out to Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease expert, asking him for advice.
Biden also wants to quickly appoint a supply commander to oversee production and distribution of testing – and, when ready, vaccines – as well as materials such as masks and gowns.
The coronavirus – and Biden’s response to it – could also significantly impact the traditional spectacle that surrounds the transfer of power. Inaugural balls could be altered. And while Biden has previously said he wouldn’t envision wearing a mask while being sworn in, he has said they could try to limit the traditional throngs that fill the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
Much of Biden’s early agenda – including which pieces of legislation to prioritize – will be determined in the coming weeks as his transition team begins taking on a far more prominent role.
Biden’stransitioneffort is being overseen by Ted Kaufman, one of his closest advisers. Kaufman, who was appointed to replace Biden in the Senate when Biden became vice president in 2009, also helped co-write an update to the law governing the transition process, which was passed in 2015 and signed by President Barack Obama.
Biden’s transition team has been given government-issued computers and iPhones for conducting secure communications, and 10,000 square feet of office space in the Herbert C. Hoover Building in Washington, although most of the work is being done virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. His advisers have been granted temporary security clearances and undergone FBI background checks to fast-track the processing of personnel who can receive briefings on intelligence.
But one important next step is for the head of the Government Services Administration to rule that the election results are final, enabling Biden’s transition team to expand its work and gain access to government funds. Biden officials are prepared for legal action if that administrator – Emily Murphy, a Trump political appointee – delays that decision, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Trump has so far not conceded defeat, falsely claiming Saturday that he won the election.
Pamela Pennington, a GSA spokeswoman, said that Murphy would ascertain “the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.” Until that decision is made, she said, the Biden transition team would continue to receive limited access to government resources.
The transition from Trump to Biden would have few historic parallels, rivaled perhaps only by 1860-61, when southern states seceded before Abraham Lincoln took office, and 1932-33, when Herbert Hoover sought to undermine Franklin D. Roosevelt and prevent him from implementing his New Deal policies.
The last time there was a prolonged delay in a transfer of power was in 2000, when uncertainty over the results in the contest between then-Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat, and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, a Republican, stretched out until the Supreme Court ended a Florida recount that gave Bush the victory on Dec. 12.
The Bush administration’s sluggish start and lack of qualified personnel in place was cited by the 9/11 Commission Report as a critical vulnerability to U.S. national security for the attacks that occurred less than eight months after the inauguration. That prompted changes to the law and the granting of access at an earlier date following the political conventions.
“When George W. Bush left he made clear to his Cabinet that this is going to be the best transition of power that’s ever occurred. Because we weren’t treated very well when we came into power,” said Michael Leavitt, who at the time was the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services. “Barack Obama to his credit said the same thing. There was a spirit of cooperation that went on and needs to continue. Whether it will or not I don’t know. But we’re better prepared.”
Chris Lu, the executive director of the Obama-Biden transition in 2008, said that within two hours of the election being called in 2008 he had a formal letter beginning the transition process.
“We literally at 9 a.m. the next morning walked into a transition office and had access to it,” he said. “It was the model for the smoothest transition of power.”
Making a clear break from the Trump administration’s adversarial posture toward the civil service is also a top priority for the Biden transition team.
The Trump administration’s suspicion of career officials and early calls for them to “get with the program” or “go” created tensions with incoming political appointees that never dissipated. Biden officials are hoping to create a positive atmosphere by avoiding some of the terminology and labels they think contributed to the mistrust.
The teams of campaign staffers and other aides that first embed themselves into government agencies after an election have historically been called “landing teams” and “beachhead teams,” summoning the memory of the storming of Normandy during World War II.
To avoid any associations with war, some Biden aides are sticking to soberingly bureaucratic terms, referring to landing teams as “ARTs” or Agency Review Teams, and beachhead team members as “temporary employees.”
So far, Trump administration officials have reviewed succession plans for department officials, planning for which civil servants would take on acting roles amid vacancies. Briefing materials are slated to be delivered over the next several days to Biden’s transition team.
Leavitt, who oversaw transition planning in 2012 for Republican nominee Mitt Romney and has worked with Kaufman to change the law governing presidential transitions, said there are a range of moves the Biden team could make even without cooperation from Trump’s campaign. Cabinet members and other top White House staff could be picked, and key priorities for the start of the administration could be lined up.
“The current moment always seems like it’s the extreme, and often they are. But we get through them. The country survives,” he said. “The internal strength of the United States allows us to get through these things.”
Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor (left) meets with Secretary of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee Li Xi in Guangzhou, Nov 7, 2020. (PHOTO/HKSAR GOVERNMENT) 
State Bank of India chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara 
President Jokowi Widodo 
President Moon Jae-in (Yonhap) 
In Atlanta, 16-year-old Chandler Crump speaks at a pro-Trump event at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Saturday. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post 
Supporters wave to others driving past as they celebrate the victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in a parking lot near the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., on Saturday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys 
