Tag: Democrats

  • Joe Biden quits the US presidential race, endorses Kamala Harris

    Joe Biden quits the US presidential race, endorses Kamala Harris

    Joe Biden on Sunday dropped out of the US presidential election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s new nominee, in a move that upends the 2024 race for the White House.

    The 81-year-old Biden stepped aside after weeks of pressure from Demo­crats following a disastrous debate performance, throwing the election battle against Republican Donald Trump into unprecedented turmoil.

    “While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a letter on X while recovering from Covid at his beach house in Delaware.

    Biden said he would “speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision”. He later added that he was backing Harris, who is the first female, Black and South Asian vice president in US history, and will now be aiming to become its first female commander-in-chief.

    “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” Biden said on X. “Democrats – it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.” Biden is the first president in US history to pull out so late in an election race, and the first to bow out because of concerns over his mental acuity and health.

    Biden spent more than three weeks resisting calls to step down following the shock of the June 27 debate, at one point insisting that only the “Lord Almighty” could convince him to back out.

    In a bid to show he was up to the job, he gave a number of interviews and what was billed as a “big boy” press conference in which he took numerous questions, but made further gaffes including calling Harris “Vice President Trump”. A tide of voices within his own party calling on him to go, starting with donor and actor George Clooney and ending with former president Barack Obama, sealed his fate.

    Chaotic period for US

    The end finally came shortly after Biden had been diagnosed with Covid, forcing him off the campaign trail and into isolation in Rehoboth Beach.

    Biden’s decision to pull out also caps a tense and chaotic period in the US election, with Trump having survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally on July 13.

    Biden joins a small club of US presidents who have decided to throw in the towel after just one term, with the last being Lyndon Johnson in 1968 — a year also marked by political turmoil and violence.

    Johnson’s replacement as nominee, then-vice president Hubert Humphrey, went on to lose heavily to Richard Nixon. But Democrats are counting on Harris to fare better, and hoping that she can prevent convicted felon Trump from making a sensational comeback to the Oval Office.

    In recent weeks, the Biden campaign has reportedly been quietly carrying out a head-to-head survey of voters measuring how she matched up against Trump.

    While Harris struggled to make an impact in her first years in the White House, she has emerged in the last year as a strong performer on the campaign trail on key messages such as abortion rights. She has also made much of her life story as the first woman in US history to hold the vice presidency, as well as the first person of Black and South Asian origin.

    Barring opposition from her party, Harris is now set to be nominated at the Democratic National Conven­tion in Chicago on August 19 in what promises to be a dramatic moment — and a heartrending one for Biden.

    Biden took office in January 2021 pledging to heal the “soul of America” after four turbulent years under Trump and the shock of the January 6, 2021 Capitol assault by his supporters.

    Overcoming a reputation for verbal flubs, Obama’s former vice president pushed through a massive Covid recovery plan and a green industry scheme.

    US allies welcomed his pledge that “America is back” following Trump’s trampling on international alliances, and his strong support for Ukraine as it battled Russia’s 2022 invasion. But he faced criticism over the catastrophic US withdrawal from Afgha­nistan and inflation that meant overstretched Americans ignored otherwise positive economic numbers.

    Behind it all were the ongoing concerns about his age with a series of senior moments, including tripping up the stairs to Air Force One and falling off his bike, contributing to the doddery image played up by Republicans.

    Biden’s Letter

  • US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar submits resolution against India

    US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar submits resolution against India

    United States (US) Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has submitted a resolution in the House of Representatives on Tuesday in which she condemned the human rights abuses in India.

    The resolution said that the House has expressed grave concern about the “worsening treatment” of religious minorities in India and called on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to designate India as a “country of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

    The resolution includes two reports i.e. a report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and a Report on International Religious Freedom 2021 by the US State Department which was published on June 2, 2022.

    The resolution highlighted that the USCIRF had called for designating India as a country of particular concern for three consecutive years.

    According to the resolution, the report mentioned cases of the Indian government’s “repression of religious minority leaders and voices for religious pluralism in India, including the Jesuit human rights defender Father Stan Swamy and the Muslim human rights advocate Khurram Parvez”.

    According to the resolution, the report said: “Many of the incidents [on minorties] were violent, unprovoked, and/or encouraged or incited by government officials.”

    The resolution said that in the International Religious Freedom 2021 report by State Department there are numerous examples of violence and threats of violence against religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, in India throughout 2021.

    It added that while presenting the report, Blinken himself said that “In India, the world’s largest democracy and home to a great diversity of faiths, we’ve seen rising attacks on people and places of worship.”

    In April, Omar made a visit to Pakistan’s part of Kashmir. She said the issue should get more attention from the US which prompted an angry response from India. The congresswoman has always highlighted the Kashmir issue on several platforms.

  • US Senator indirectly urges President Biden to call PM Khan

    United States (US) Senator Bob Menendez said that he has asked US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to urge President Joe Biden to have a conversation with Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan in an effort to rebuild the Pak-US relationship, reports Geo News.

    While addressing a fundraising event, Menendez said, “I think it would serve us well to have such a conversation and, you know when we have these conversations, they are honest, and that means they are also transparent.”

    “Where there is an agreement, we build upon it and where there is disagreement, we talk about how do we get through that disagreement,” said Menendez.

     “I hope, I can expand on it — not just about Pakistan in the context of a military or security dimension, but much greater– talking about an incredibly large population that is very young; there is tremendous opportunity to build upon the economic dynamism that we create,” he told the members of the American-Pakistani Political Action Committee (APPAC).

    US President Joe Biden, who assumed office in January this year, has not yet telephoned PM Khan.

    Earlier this month, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R Sherman on her visit to Pakistan said, “I am sure that this contact [between President Biden and PM Khan] will take place soon, so I don’t think it should mean anything else.”

    However, in August, the premier himself commented on the situation and said he was “not waiting for a phone call from the US President”.

  • Biden wins California, Trump wins Florida; race close in other battlegrounds

    Biden wins California, Trump wins Florida; race close in other battlegrounds

    US President Donald Trump has defeated Democratic rival Joe Biden in the vital battleground state of Florida on Tuesday, while other competitive swing states that will help decide the election, including North Carolina, remained up in the air.

    Florida was widely seen as a must-win state for Trump in his quest for the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency. Electoral College votes are assigned to each state, in part based on their population.

    Biden won California, Oregon and Washington state, while President Donald Trump won Idaho.

    California, Oregon and Washington are all liberal states, while Idaho is conservative.

    California has 55 electoral votes, the biggest haul of any state. It’s also the home of Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris. She served as the San Francisco district attorney and the state’s attorney general before winning election to the Senate in 2016.

    Biden still has multiple paths to the 270 electoral votes he needs without Florida despite having spent lots of time and money trying to flip the state that backed Trump in 2016.

    Early wins

    Soon after the polling time ended, AP reported that President Trump had won Kentucky, and Biden had carried Vermont.

    There were also some predictable victories for each candidate, with Trump taking Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma and Biden winning Massachusetts, his home state of Delaware and Virginia, a former battleground that has become a Democratic stronghold.

    Trump also took West Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nebraska’s 3rd Congressional District, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

    Meanwhile, Biden won Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Mexico, New York, the District of Columbia and Colorado.

    Voters, many wearing masks and maintaining social distancing to guard against the spread of the coronavirus, experienced long lines in a few locales and short waits in many other places. There were no signs of disruptions or violence at polling sites, as some officials had feared.

    The winner — who may not be determined for days — will lead a nation strained by a pandemic that has killed more than 231,000 people and left millions more jobless, racial tensions and political polarisation that has only worsened during a vitriolic campaign.

    Control of the Senate is at stake, too: Democrats needed to net three seats if Biden captured the White House to gain control of all of Washington for the first time in a decade. The House was expected to remain under Democratic control.

    A new anti-scaling fence was erected around the White House, and in downtowns from New York to Denver to Minneapolis, workers boarded up businesses lest the vote lead to unrest.

    With the worst public health crisis in a century still fiercely present, the pandemic — and Trump’s handling of it — was the inescapable focus for 2020.

    For Trump, the election stood as a judgment on his four years in office, a term in which he bent Washington to his will, challenged faith in its institutions and changed how America was viewed across the globe.

    Rarely trying to unite a country divided along lines of race and class, he has often acted as an insurgent against the government he led while undermining the nation’s scientists, bureaucracy and media.

    At the White House on Tuesday night, more than 100 family members, friends, donors and staff were set to watch returns from the East Room.

    Trump was watching votes come in upstairs in the residence with a few close aides. Most top campaign officials were monitoring returns from a “war room” set up in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

    Biden spent the day last-minute campaigning in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was born, and in Philadelphia with a couple of local stops in Wilmington, Delaware, where he was spending Election Night.

    The president began his day on an upbeat note, predicting that he’d do even better than in 2016. But during a midday visit to his campaign headquarters, he spoke in a gravelly, subdued tone.

    “Winning is easy,” Trump told reporters. “Losing is never easy, not for me it’s not.”

    Trump left open the possibility of addressing the nation on Tuesday night, even if a winner hadn’t been determined. Biden was also scheduled to give a nighttime speech from Wilmington.

    “I’m superstitious about predicting what an outcome’s gonna be until it happens […] but I’m hopeful,” said Biden. “It’s just so uncertain […] you can’t think of an election in the recent past where so many states were up for grabs.”

    With the coronavirus now surging anew, voters ranked the pandemic and the economy as top concerns in the race between Trump and Biden, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate.

    Voters were especially likely to call the public health crisis the nation’s most important issue, with the economy following close behind. Fewer named health care, racism, law enforcement, immigration or climate change

    The survey found that Trump’s leadership loomed large in voters’ decision-making. Nearly two-thirds of voters said their vote was about Trump — either for him or against him.

    The momentum from early voting carried into Election Day, as an energised electorate produced long lines at polling sites throughout the country.

    Voters braved worries of the coronavirus, threats of polling place intimidation and expectations of long lines caused by changes to voting systems, but appeared undeterred as turnout appeared it would easily surpass the 139 million ballots cast four years ago.

    A report said that the US is on course to see the highest voter turnout in more than a century.

    No major problems arose on Tuesday, outside the typical glitches of a presidential election: Some polling places opened late, robocalls provided false information to voters in Iowa and Michigan, and machines or software malfunctioned in some counties in the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas.

    The cybersecurity agency at the Department of Homeland Security said there were no outward signs by midday of any malicious activity.

    The record-setting early vote — and legal skirmishing over how it would be counted — drew unsupported allegations of fraud from Trump, who had repeatedly refused to guarantee he would honor the election’s result.

    Referendum on Trump

    Supporters of both candidates called the election a referendum on Trump and his tumultuous first term. No US president has lost a re-election bid since Republican George H.W. Bush in 1992.

    Among the most closely contested states that are expected to determine the outcome are Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia, with Democrats hoping that Biden may even threaten Trump in states that once seemed certain to go Republican such as Ohio, Iowa and Texas.

    Trump is seeking another term in office after a chaotic four years marked by the coronavirus crisis, an economy battered by pandemic shutdowns, an impeachment drama, inquiries into Russian election interference, US racial tensions and contentious immigration policies.

    Biden is looking to win the presidency on his third attempt after a five-decade political career including eight years as vice president under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

    Biden has promised a renewed effort to fight the public health crisis, fix the economy and bridge America’s political divide. The country this year was also shaken by months of protests against racism and police brutality.