WASHINGTON: Democrats were picking up the pieces Thursday following the collapse of their top-priority voting rights legislation, with some shifting their focus to a narrower bipartisan effort to repair laws Donald Trump exploited in his bid to overturn the 2020 election.
Though their bid to dramatically rewrite US election law failed during a high-stakes Senate floor showdown late Wednesday, Democrats insisted their brinksmanship has made the new effort possible, forcing Republicans to relent, even if just a little, and engage in bipartisan negotiations.
The nascent push is focused on the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law that created the convoluted proces s for the certification of presidential election results by Congress. For more than 100 years, vulnerabilities in the law were an afterthought, until Trump’s unrelenting, false claims that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election culminated in a mob of his supporters storming the Capitol.
An overhaul of the Gilded Age statute could be Democrats’ best chance to address what they call an existential threat to American democracy from Trump’s “big lie” about a stolen election. But with serious talks only beginning in the Senate and dwindling time before this year’s midterm elections, reaching consensus could prove difficult.
“We know history is on the side of voting rights, and we know that forcing leaders to take stands will ultimately move the ball forward,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday.
Just weeks ago, many Democrats were adamant that updating the Electoral Count Act was no substitute for their voting legislation. Updating the 1887 law, they pointed out, would do nothing to counter the Trump-inspired push in 19 states to make it more difficult to vote.
They still hold that position, but after the defeat of their marquee elections bill, they are running out of options. Meanwhile, Trump loyalists are girding for the next election, working to install sympathetic leaders in local election posts and, in some cases, backing political candidates who participated in the riot at the US Capitol.
Biden conceded this week that updating the electoral bill may be Democrats’ best opportunity to pass voting legislation through a 50-50 Senate, where much of his agenda has stalled.
“I predict to you they’ll get something done,” Biden told reporters Wednesday.
Any legislation would have to balance Democrats’ desire to halt what they view as a GOP plan to make it more difficult for Black Americans and other minorities to vote with Republican’s entrenched opposition to increased federal oversight of local elections.
“What other things could be put in there?” said South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat and a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “I want to deal with more than just counting the votes for the president. I want to be sure that we count the votes for everybody else. So voter nullification like they’re doing in Georgia, I think it can be addressed.”
Republicans involved in the effort to update the Electoral Count Act acknowledge that the bill would need a wider focus.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is holding bipartisan talks with Republican Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Mitt Romney of Utah, as well as Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
“It’s such a needed thing,” said Manchin, who added that the narrower scope was “the first place” Democrats “should have started.”
Manchin and Sinema effectively tanked Democrats’ marquee bill Wednesday, joining Republicans in voting against a rule change that would have allowed the party’s voting legislation to pass with a simple majority.
Collins has proposed new protections for poll and elections workers, some of whom received chilling threats to their safety after the 2020 election. She has also called for more funding for local elections. Manchin wants harsh criminal penalties for those convicted of intimidating or threatening poll and election workers.
“It’s a heavy lift, but if we continue to get people to talk there’s a path,” said Tillis, who said tensions over the Democrats’ failed voting bill will need to cool before coalition building can seriously begin. “We are going to have to have more Republicans get on board because there are going to be protest votes.”
But at its core, many Republicans want any legislation to primarily focus on the Electoral Count Act.
“This is directly related to Jan. 6,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said Thursday. “It needs fixing.”
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday called it “an old piece of law, so you can always modernize it.”
The bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is also working on a proposal.
As Trump’s legal appeals and efforts to pressure state and local officials ran out of steam, he began to focus on Mike Pence, who presided over the certification in Congress of the Electoral College results. Trump spent days in a futile bid trying to convince Pence that the vice president had the power to reject electors from battleground states that voted for Biden, even though the Constitution makes clear the vice president’s role in the joint session is largely ceremonial.
Separately, he encouraged Republican lawmakers to take advantage of the low threshold to lodge objections to the outcome. Even after rioters fought in brutal hand-to-hand combat with police as they lay siege to the Capital on Jan. 6, 147 Republican lawmakers later voted to object to Biden’s win.
Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, is working on a bill that would shore up several key vulnerabilities in the Electoral College process.
Any legislation should make clear the vice president holds only a ceremonial role, limit the scope of Congress’ involvement in the certification of the election and narrow the grounds for raising an objection to a state’s results, according to a summary provided by his office.
Civil rights activists don’t object to the revisions. But they question the value of the effort if Republican-controlled states can still enact voting restrictions.
“It doesn’t matter if your votes are properly counted if you cannot cast your vote in the first place,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., who is also pastor at the church Martin Luther King Jr. once led.
US Democrats eye new strategy after failure of voting bill
https://arab.news/24pnt
US Democrats eye new strategy after failure of voting bill
- Biden conceded this week that updating the electoral bill may be Democrats’ best opportunity to pass voting legislation through a 50-50 Senate, where much of his agenda has stalled
Former Australian SAS veteran loses defamation case over media reports of execution in Afghanistan
- Newspapers successfully established that their reports that former SAS corporal Ben Roberts-Smith was involved in execution and murder in Afghanistan were true
The newspapers successfully established that their reports that former SAS corporal Ben Roberts-Smith was involved in execution and murder in Afghanistan were true, said Federal Court judge Anthony Besanko in Sydney.
The case against Roberts-Smith, a Victoria Cross recipient, has put a spotlight on the secretive wartime conduct of Australia’s elite SAS troops.
The papers proved their allegations in relation to four of the murders they accused Roberts-Smith of, but “in light of my conclusions, each (defamation) proceeding must be dismissed,” Besanko said in a summary of his findings.
Publication of his full reasons was delayed until Monday due to national security concerns.
Former special forces corporal Roberts-Smith, 44, had sued the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Canberra Times for portraying him as someone who “broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement” in Afghanistan where he served from 2006 to 2012.
Roberts-Smith won several top Australian military honors, including the Victoria Cross, for his actions during six tours of Afghanistan before carving out a post-military career as an in-demand public speaker and media executive.
But articles by the newspapers from 2018 suggested he went beyond the bounds of acceptable military engagement.
The articles, citing other soldiers who said they were there, said Roberts-Smith had shot dead an unarmed Afghan teenage spotter, and kicked a handcuffed man off a cliff before ordering him to be shot dead.
Roberts-Smith’s lawsuit called the media reports false and based on the claims of failed soldiers who were jealous of his accolades, and sought unspecified damages.
The newspapers sought to defend their reports by proving the claims were true, and presented other soldiers and former soldiers as witnesses in court who corroborated them.
The judgment comes at a time of heightened sensitivity around Australia’s military after a 2020 report said there was credible evidence members of the special forces killed dozens of unarmed prisoners in Afghanistan.
No soldiers were named in the redacted report but about two dozen current and former Australian soldiers were referred for potential criminal prosecution.
Judge Besanko said he would give reasons for his decision on Monday after the federal government applied to delay the proceedings to give government lawyers time to check for national security information being inadvertently divulged.
Three killed in Russian strike on Kyiv
- Moscow’s forces have recently launched a series of aerial assaults on the Ukrainian capital, including an unusual daytime attack on Monday
KYIV: Russia launched an air attack on Kyiv early Thursday, killing at least three people including a child and bringing fresh terror to the city after a week of strikes.
Moscow’s forces have recently launched a series of aerial assaults on the Ukrainian capital, including an unusual daytime attack on Monday that sent residents running for shelter.
Thursday’s attack began around 3:00 a.m. local time (0000 GMT) when cruise and ballistic missiles were fired on the city, killing three people and injuring 12 others, officials said.
“In the Desnyanskyi district: three people died, including one child (born in 2012) and 10 people were injured, including one child,” the Kyiv City Military Administration wrote on Telegram.
“In the Dniprovskyi district: two people were injured.”
Previous official reports had said two children were killed in the strikes.
In Russia’s western Belgorod region, at least two people were wounded Thursday morning in an attack on the town of Shebekino blamed on Ukrainian troops, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.
“This night is tense for Shebekino again. Ukrainian troops were shelling the city for an hour,” he said.
Gladkov previously reported shelling in the same town that injured four people.
On Tuesday, one person was killed and two others were wounded in a strike on a center for displaced people in the region. Several oil depots have also been hit in recent weeks.
The attacks have come as Kyiv says it is preparing for a major offensive against Moscow’s forces.
More than a year since its Ukraine invasion, Russia has suffered stepped-up attacks on its soil, including a drone attack on Moscow Tuesday.
“The situation is quite alarming,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Russia said Wednesday it was evacuating hundreds of children from villages due to the intensifying attacks.
The first 300 evacuated children would be taken to Voronezh, a city about 250 kilometers further into Russia, Governor Gladkov said. Over 1,000 more children would be moved to other provinces in the coming days, he added.
A correspondent for state-run agency RIA Novosti working near Voronezh said buses had arrived with about 150 people on board.
The Kremlin has accused Ukraine — and its Western backers — of being behind the increasing number of reported attacks.
On Tuesday, the foreign ministry said the West was “pushing the Ukrainian leadership toward increasingly reckless acts” after a drone attack on residential areas of Moscow.
At least three buildings were lightly damaged, including two high-rise residential buildings in Moscow’s affluent southwest.
Ukraine, which has seen almost nightly attacks on its capital, denied any “direct involvement.”
Tensions between Russia and the West escalated further Wednesday, when Germany announced it would drastically reduce Moscow’s diplomatic presence on its soil in reply to a similar move from the Kremlin.
Berlin said it had ordered four of Russia’s five consulates in Germany to close.
The move comes after Moscow put a limit of 350 on the number of German government personnel allowed in Russia, a decision that Berlin says would force hundreds of civil servants and local employees to leave the country.
Moscow called Germany’s decision “ill-thought-out” and vowed a response.
And in the United States, the Pentagon announced a new $300 million arms package for Ukraine, including air defense systems and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition.
The United States said it did not support any attack inside Russia, instead providing Kyiv with equipment and training to reclaim its territory.
The fresh aid shipments would bring the total value of US security assistance to Ukraine to $37.6 billion since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, the Defense Department said.
Last week saw the biggest armed incursion into Russia from Ukraine since the offensive began, with two days of fighting in the Belgorod region.
AFP journalists went to the regional capital city, which is also called Belgorod, over the weekend.
Residents confessed a certain amount of worry, but a sense of fatalism prevailed.
“What can we do? We just shout ‘Oh! and ‘Ah!’. What will that change?” said 84-year-old Rimma Malieva, a retired teacher.
Most people AFP spoke to said they trusted the authorities to fix the weaknesses laid bare by the latest raid.
Evgeny Sheikin, a 41-year-old builder, still said “it should not have happened.”
At least five people were killed and 19 wounded in a nighttime bombardment in Ukraine’s Lugansk region, Russia-installed officials said Wednesday.
The Russian army also said it destroyed a Ukrainian navy warship, the Yuri Olefirenko, in Odesa, a claim AFP could not independently confirm.
BRICS ministers meet in push to establish group as counterweight to West
- Talks a prelude to an August summit in Johannesburg that has already created controversy
- BRICS has in recent years taken more concrete shape, driven initially by Beijing
CAPE TOWN: Foreign ministers from the BRICS countries are meeting in South Africa from Thursday as the five-nation bloc seeks to forge itself into a counterweight to Western geopolitical dominance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The talks are a prelude to an August summit in Johannesburg that has already created controversy because of the possible attendance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the target of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant.
It accused him in March of the war crime of forcibly deporting children from Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine. Moscow denies the allegations. South Africa had already invited Putin in January.
South African authorities confirmed that foreign ministers from Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa are attending Thursday’s meeting in Cape Town. A deputy minister is representing China.
No agenda has been made public, but analysts said discussions would aim to deepen ties among existing members and consider an expansion of the group.
“BRICS is positioning itself as an alternative to the West and as a way to make space for emerging powers,” said Cobus van Staden of the South African Institute of International Affairs.
Once viewed as a loose, largely symbolic association of disparate emerging economies, BRICS has in recent years taken more concrete shape, driven initially by Beijing and, since the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022, with added impetus from Moscow.
Discussions of BRICS’ New Development Bank, which stopped funding projects in Russia to comply with sanctions, were expected on Thursday, a South African foreign ministry source said.
Amid the growing geopolitical polarization resulting from the war in Ukraine, BRICS leaders have said they are open to admitting new members, including oil producing countries.
Venezuela, Argentina, Iran, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are on a list of those who have either formally applied to join or expressed interest, officials said.
“If they can bring in the oil producer countries that will be key, given the petrodollar system,” said William Gumede, a South African political analyst who has written extensively on BRICS.
South Africa, though the bloc’s smallest member, is among its biggest champions.
Its preparations for the Aug. 22-24 summit, however, have been complicated by the ICC announcement on Putin.
As an ICC member South Africa would face pressure to arrest Putin, were he to attend the meeting in Johannesburg.
Putin has not confirmed his plans, with the Kremlin only saying Russia would take part at the “proper level.”
South Africa’s position is unclear. Pretoria has said it will honor its obligations under its ICC membership, but the government is still weighing the possibility of hosting Putin or even moving the summit to China.
Independent political analyst Nic Borain said the government was caught between its support for BRICS and friendship with Russia on one side and the looming backlash from vital Western economic partners on the other.
“Obviously, the best solution for South Africa is if Putin decided not to come.”
Militants kill Pakistani soldier guarding polio team
- Attempts to eradicate polio in Pakistan have been hit by attacks targeting inoculation teams that have claimed hundreds of lives
- Extremist opposition to all forms of inoculation grew after the CIA organized a fake vaccination drive to help track down Al-Qaeda’s former leader Osama Bin Laden
ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani soldier was killed on Wednesday when militants opened fire on a polio vaccination team, the country’s military said, in the latest attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.
Attempts to eradicate polio in Pakistan have been hit by attacks targeting inoculation teams that have claimed hundreds of lives in over a decade.
“Terrorists attempted to disrupt the ongoing polio campaign by firing on the members of the polio team,” the military said in a statement about the assault in the former tribal areas that border Afghanistan.
A soldier deployed to protect the vaccination team was killed during an exchange of fire, it added.
Extremist opposition to all forms of inoculation grew after the US Central Intelligence Agency organized a fake vaccination drive to help track down Al-Qaeda’s former leader Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which is waging a campaign against security forces, claimed the attack in a statement to media.
Pakistan is grappling with an uptick in militancy since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in neighboring Afghanistan.
North Waziristan has historically been a hive of militancy and was the target of a long-running Pakistani military offensive and US drone strikes during the post-9/11 occupation of Afghanistan.
Iraqi killed fighting for Russia’s Wagner in Ukraine, says group founder
- Abbas Abuthar Witwit died on April 7, a day after arriving at a Wagner hospital in the Russian-controlled, eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk
- Prigozhin confirmed he had recruited Witwit from prison, saying he was not the first native of an Arab country to have joined from jail
LUHANSK, Ukraine: An Iraqi citizen fighting with Russia’s Wagner mercenary force was killed in Ukraine in early April, the first confirmed case of a Middle East native dying in the conflict, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin told Reuters on Wednesday.
Abbas Abuthar Witwit died on April 7, a day after arriving at a Wagner hospital in the Russian-controlled, eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, the RIA FAN news site earlier reported.
Much of the fighting for Bakhmut was done by convict fighters, recruited by Wagner from prisons on the promise of a pardon if they survived six months at the front in Ukraine.
In response to a Reuters request for comment, Prigozhin confirmed he had recruited Witwit from prison, saying he was not the first native of an Arab country to have joined from jail.
Witwit, he said, had fought well and “died heroically.”
RIA FAN said Witwit had been wounded in Bakhmut, the city in Donetsk province that Prigozhin said Wagner had taken in mid-May, after a battle that had raged since last year.
Prigozhin previously said the whole conflict had cost 20,000 of his men’s lives.
In video published by RIA FAN, a man identified as Witwit’s father is shown receiving awards posthumously given to his son, and that he had supported his decision to enlist in Wagner as a “volunteer.”
“Abbas always pursued his freedom and wanted to be a man who defends his freedom and himself, and he told me he found his freedom in Russia,” he is shown saying.
According to court papers seen by Reuters, Witwit was sentenced to four and a half years in prison on drug charges in July 2021 by a court in the Russian city of Kazan. The documents said Witwit was a first year student at a technical university.
