Former President Donald Trump is stepping up his demands that the winner of the presidential race be declared shortly after polls close Tuesday, well before all the votes are counted.
Trump set the pattern in 2020, when he declared that he had won during the early morning hours after Election Day. That led his allies to demand that officials “stop the count!” He and many other conservatives have spent the past four years falsely claiming that fraud cost him that election and bemoaning how long it takes to count ballots in the US
But one of many reasons we are unlikely to know the winner quickly on election night is that Republican lawmakers in two key swing states have refused to change laws that delay the count. Another is that most indications are this will be a very close election, and it takes longer to determine who won close elections than blowouts.
In the end, election experts note, the priority in vote-counting is to make sure it’s an accurate and secure tally, not to end the suspense moments after polls close.
“There’s nothing nefarious about it,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The time delay is to protect the integrity of the process.”
Trump’s demand also doesn’t seem to account for the six time zones from the East Coast to Hawaii.
David Becker, an elections expert and co-author of “The Big Truth,” debunking Trump’s 2020 election lies, said it’s not realistic for election officials in thousands of jurisdictions to “instantly snap their fingers and count 160 million multi-page ballots with dozens of races on them.”
Trump wants the race decided Tuesday night
During a Sunday rally in Pennsylvania, Trump demanded that the race be decided soon after some polls begin closing.
“They have to be decided by 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock on Tuesday night,” Trump said. “Bunch of crooked people. These are crooked people.”
It was not clear who he was targeting with the “crooked people” remark.
Timing is one example of why Trump’s demands don’t match the reality of conducting elections in the US By 11 p.m. Eastern time, polls will just be closing in the two Western swing states of Arizona and Nevada.
Trump has led conservatives to bemoan that the US doesn’t count elections as swiftly as France or Argentina, where results for recent races have been announced within hours of polls closing. But that’s because those countries tabulate only a single election at a time. The decentralized US system prevents the federal government from controlling elections.
Instead, votes are counted in nearly 10,000 separate jurisdictions, each of which has its own races for the state legislature, city council, school boards and ballot measures to tabulate at the same time. That’s why it takes longer for the US to count votes.
Declaring a winner can take time
The Associated Press calls races when there is no possibility that the trailing candidate can make up the gap. Sometimes, if one candidate is significantly behind, a winner can be called quickly. But if the margin is narrow, then every last vote could matter. It takes a while before every vote is counted even in the most efficient jurisdictions in the country.
In 2018, for example, Republican Rick Scott won the US Senate race in Florida, a state conservatives regularly praise for its quick tally. But the AP didn’t call Scott’s victory until after the conclusion of a recount on Nov. 20 because Scott’s margin was so slim.
It also takes time to count every one of the millions of votes because election officials have to process disputed, or “provisional,” ballots, and to see if they were legitimately cast. Overseas ballots from military members or other US citizens abroad can trickle in at the last minute. Mail ballots usually land early, but there’s a lengthy process to make sure they’re not cast fraudulently. If that process doesn’t start before Election Day, it can back up the count.
Some states, such as Arizona, also give voters whose mail ballots were rejected because the signatures didn’t match up to five days to prove they actually cast the ballot. That means final numbers simply cannot be available Tuesday night.
Election rules are to blame in some states
Some of the sluggishness is due to state-specific election rules. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two of the most important swing states, election officials for years have pleaded with Republican lawmakers to change the law that prevents them from processing their mail ballots before Election Day. That means mail ballots get tallied late, and frequently the results don’t start to get reported until after Election Day.
Democrats have traditionally dominated mail voting, which has made it seem like Republicans are in the lead until the early hours of the next morning, when Democratic mail votes finally get added to the tally. Experts even have names for this from past elections — the “red mirage” or the “blue shift.” Trump exploited that dynamic in 2020 when he had his supporters demand an abrupt end to vote counts — the ballots that remained untallied were largely mail ones that were for Joe Biden. It’s not clear how that will play out this year, since Republicans have shifted and voted in big numbers during early voting.
Michigan used to have similar restrictions, but after Democrats won control of the state Legislature in 2022 they removed the prohibition on early processing of mail ballots. That state’s Democratic Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, said she hopes to have most results available by Wednesday.
“At the end of the day, chief election officials are the folks who have the ability to provide those accurate results. Americans should focus on what they say and not what any specific candidate or folks who are part of the campaign say,” said Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Trump allies urge him to declare victory swiftly
Some of Trump’s allies say he should be even more aggressive about declaring victory this time around.
Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, who in 2020 predicted the then-president would declare victory before the race was called, advocated for a similar strategy during a recent press conference after he was released from federal prison, where he was serving time for a contempt of Congress conviction related to the investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn his loss in 2020.
“President Trump came up at 2:30 in the morning and talked,” Bannon said. “He should have done it at 11 o’clock in 2020.”
Other Trump supporters have taken a darker tone. His former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, suggested during a recent interview on the right-wing American Truth Project podcast that violence could erupt in states still counting ballots the day after Election Day because people “are just not going to put up with it.”
Trying to project a sense of inevitability about a Trump win, the former president and his supporters have been touting early vote data and favorable polls to contend the election is all but over. Republicans have returned to voting early after largely staying away at Trump’s direction in 2020 and 2022. In some swing states that track party registration, registered Republicans are outvoting Democrats in early voting.
But that doesn’t mean Republicans are ahead in any meaningful sense. Early voting data does not tell you who will win an election because it only records who voted, not how they voted.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has been explicitly targeting Republicans disillusioned by Trump. In each of those states where more Republicans have voted, there also are huge numbers of voters casting early ballots who are not registered with either of the two major political parties. If Harris won just a tiny fraction more of those votes than Trump, it would erase the small leads Republicans have.
There’s only one way to find out who won the presidential election: Wait until enough votes are tallied, whenever that is.
Trump wants the presidential winner to be declared on election night. Why that’s unlikely
https://arab.news/29mvj
Trump wants the presidential winner to be declared on election night. Why that’s unlikely
Chinese nationals fighting for Russia in Ukraine are mercenaries, US officials
- Ukrainian forces had captured two men of Chinese origin in eastern Ukraine, says commander of US forces in the Indo-Pacific
- The mercenaries have no link to the Chinese government, but China had provided Moscow with material support for its war against Ukraine
WASHINGTON: More than 100 Chinese citizens fighting for the Russian military against Ukraine are mercenaries who do not appear to have a direct link to China’s government, two US officials familiar with American intelligence and a former Western intelligence official said.
Chinese military officers have, however, been in the theater behind Russia’s lines with Beijing’s approval to draw tactical lessons from the war, the former official told Reuters.
The head of US forces in the Indo-Pacific, Admiral Samuel Paparo, confirmed on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces had captured two men of Chinese origin in eastern Ukraine after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country had information about 155 Chinese citizens fighting there on Russia’s behalf.
China, which has declared a “no-limits” partnership with Russia and has refrained from criticizing Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, had called Zelensky’s remarks “irresponsible” and said China was not a party to the war.
The US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Chinese fighters appear to have minimal training and are not having any discernable impact on Russia’s military operations.
The CIA, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Security Council, as well as China’s embassy in Washington, did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
The former Western intelligence official with knowledge of the issue told Reuters there were about 200 Chinese mercenaries fighting for Russia with whom the Chinese government has no link.
But Chinese military officers have, with Beijing’s approval, been touring close to Russia’s frontlines to draw lessons and tactics from the war. The officers “are absolutely there under approval,” the former official said.
China has for years provided Moscow with material support to help aid its war against Ukraine, primarily in the shipment of dual-use products – components needed to maintain weapons such as drones and tanks.
Beijing has also supplied Russia with lethal drones to use on the battlefield. In October, the Biden administration sanctioned for the first time two Chinese companies for providing the weapons systems to Moscow.
Volunteers from Western countries, including the US, have been fighting for Ukraine since the early days of the war, and North Korea has deployed more than 12,000 troops to support Russian forces, thousands of whom have been killed or injured in combat.
Tufts student from Turkiye details arrest, crowded detention conditions in new court filing
- Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or have been stopped from entering the US
- They were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians amid Israel's attacks on Gaza
A Tufts University doctoral student from Turkiye is demanding her release after she was detained by immigration officials near her Massachusetts home, detailing how she was scared when the men grabbed her phone and feared she would be killed.
Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, who has since been moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana, provided an updated account of what happened to her as she walked along a street on March 25, in a document filed by her lawyers in federal court Thursday.
Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or have been stopped from entering the US after they were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians.
‘I felt very scared and concerned’
“I felt very scared and concerned as the men surrounded me and grabbed my phone from me,” Ozturk said in the statement. They told her they were police, and one quickly showed what might have been a gold badge. “But I didn’t think they were the police because I had never seen police approach and take someone away like this,” she said.
Ozturk said she was afraid because her name, photograph and work history were published earlier this year on the website Canary Mission, which describes itself as documenting people who “promote hatred of the USA., Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.”
She said the men didn’t tell her why they were arresting her and shackled her. She said at one point, after they had changed cars, she felt “sure they were going to kill me.” During a stop in Massachusetts, one of the men said to her, “We are not monsters,” and “We do what the government tells us.”
She said they repeatedly refused her requests to speak to a lawyer.
Hearing scheduled on Ozturk’s case in Vermont
A petition to release her was first filed in federal court in Boston and then moved to Burlington, Vermont, where a hearing on her case to resolve jurisdictional issues is scheduled on Monday.
Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process. They have asked that she be released from custody.
US Justice Department lawyers say her case in New England should be dismissed and that it should be handled in immigration court. Ozturk “is not without recourse to challenge the revocation of her visa and her arrest and detention, but such challenge cannot be made before this court,” government lawyers said in a brief filed Thursday.
She recalled that the night she spent in the cell in Vermont, she was asked about wanting to apply for asylum and if she was a member of a terrorist organization. “I tried to be helpful and answer their questions but I was so tired and didn’t understand what was happening to me,” she stated.
Ozturk, who suffers from asthma, had an attack the next day at the airport in Atlanta, as she was being taken to Louisiana, she said. She was able to use her inhaler, but unable to get her prescribed medication because there was no place to buy it, she said she was told.
Ozturk says she wasn’t let outside for a week
Once she was put in the Louisiana facility, she was not allowed to go outside during the first week and had limited access to food and supplies for two weeks. She said she suffered three more asthma attacks there and had limited care at a medical center.
Ozturk said she is one of 24 people in a cell that has a sign stating capacity for 14.
“When they do the inmate count we are threatened to not leave our beds or we will lose privileges, which means that we are often stuck waiting in our beds for hours,” she said. “At mealtimes, there is so much anxiety because there is no schedule when it comes. … They threaten to close the door if we don’t leave the room in time, meaning we won’t get a meal.”
Ozturk said she wants to go back to Tufts so she can finish her degree, which she has been working on for five years.
Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
A senior Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said federal authorities detained Ozturk after an investigation found she had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” The department did not provide evidence of that support.
Ozturk is supported by coalition of Jewish groups
A coalition of 27 Jewish organizations from across the United States is objecting to Ozturk’s arrest and detention.
The organizations say those actions and possible deportation of Ozturk for her protected speech “violate the most basic constitutional rights,” such as freedom of expression.
“The government … appears to be exploiting Jewish Americans’ legitimate concerns about antisemitism as pretext for undermining core pillars of American democracy, the rule of law, and the fundamental rights of free speech and academic debate on which this nation was built,” the groups say in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Friday in her case.
Russian air defenses down 13 Ukrainian drones in 30 minutes, ministry claims
Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defense units had destroyed 13 Ukrainian drones within a space of 30 minutes late on Friday.
A ministry statement on Telegram said that between 10 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. (1900-1930 GMT), nine drones were destroyed in Rostov region on Ukraine’s eastern border and four in Kursk region, on Ukraine’s north border.
European countries vow billions in military support for Ukraine as US envoy meets Putin
- British Defense Secretary John Healey said that new pledges of military aid totaled over 21 billion euros ($24 billion)
- Ukraine has endorsed a US ceasefire proposal, but Russia has effectively blocked it by imposing far-reaching conditions
BRUSSELS: European countries vowed Friday to sends billions of dollars in further funding to help Ukraine keep fighting Russia’s invasion, as a US envoy pursued peace efforts in a trip to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid growing questions about the Kremlin’s willingness to stop the more than three-year war.
Russian forces hold the advantage in Ukraine, with the war now in its fourth year. Ukraine has endorsed a US ceasefire proposal, but Russia has effectively blocked it by imposing far-reaching conditions. European governments have accused Putin of dragging his feet.
“Russia has to get moving” on the road to ending the war, US President Donald Trump posted on social media. He said the war is “terrible and senseless.”
In Russia, the Kremlin said Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin in St. Petersburg. Witkoff, who has been pressing the Kremlin to accept a truce, initially met with Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, footage released by Russian media showed.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Witkoff during his visit to Russia was discussing efforts to end the war with Putin and other officials. “This is another step in the negotiating process toward a ceasefire and an ultimate peace deal,” she said.
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti said Witkoff’s meeting with Putin lasted 4 1/2 hours, and cited the Kremlin as saying that the two discussed “aspects” of ending the war, without providing any details.
After chairing a meeting of Ukraine’s Western backers in Brussels, British Defense Secretary John Healey said that new pledges of military aid totaled over 21 billion euros ($24 billion), “a record boost in military funding for Ukraine, and we are also surging that support to the frontline fight.”
Healey gave no breakdown of that figure, and Ukraine has in the past complained that some countries repeat old offers at such pledging conferences or fail to deliver real arms and ammunition worth the money they promise.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said last week that Ukraine’s backers have provided around $21 billion so far in the first three months of this year. European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Friday that more than $26 billion have been committed.
Ahead of the “contact group” meeting at NATO headquarters, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said a key issue was strengthening his country’s air defenses.
Standing alongside Healey at the end of it, Umerov described the meeting as “productive, effective and efficient,” and said that it produced “one of the largest” packages of assistance Ukraine has received. “We’re thankful to each nation that has provided this support,” he said.
Britain said that in a joint effort with Norway just over $580 million would be spent to provide hundreds of thousands of military drones, radar systems and anti-tank mines, as well as repair and maintenance contracts to keep Ukrainian armored vehicles on the battlefield.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has renewed his appeals for more Patriot systems since 20 people were killed a week ago, including nine children, when a Russian missile tore through apartment buildings and blasted a playground in his home town.
Zelensky joined Friday’s meeting by video link.
Russia holds off agreeing to ceasefire
The Russian delay in accepting Washington’s proposal has frustrated Trump and fueled doubts about whether Putin really wants to stop the fighting while his bigger army has momentum on the battlefield.
“Russia continues to use bilateral talks with the United States to delay negotiations about the war in Ukraine, suggesting that the Kremlin remains uninterested in serious peace negotiations to end the war,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an assessment late Thursday.
Washington remains committed to securing a peace deal, even though four weeks have passed since it made its ceasefire proposals, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said.
“It is a dynamic that will not be solved militarily. It is a meat grinder,” Bruce said Thursday about the war, adding that “nothing else can be discussed … until the shooting and the killing stops.”
Observers expect a new Russian offensive
Ukrainian officials and military analysts believe Russia is preparing to launch a fresh military offensive in coming weeks to ramp up pressure and strengthen the Kremlin’s hand in the negotiations.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that his country would provide Ukraine with four IRIS-T short- to medium-range systems with missiles, as well as 30 missiles for use on Patriot batteries. The Netherlands plans to supply a Hawkeye air defense system, an airborne early warning aircraft.
Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said that his country is monitoring the world armaments market and sees opportunities for Ukraine’s backers to buy more weapons and ammunition.
Pevkur said he believes Putin might try to reach some kind of settlement with Ukraine by May 9 — the day that Russia marks victory during World War II — making it even more vital to strengthen Kyiv’s position now.
“This is why we need to speed up the deliveries as quickly as we can,” he said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was absent from the forum that the United States created and led for several years, although he spoke via video.
At the last contact group meeting in February, Hegseth warned Ukraine’s European backers that the US now has priorities elsewhere — in Asia and on America’s own borders — and that they would have to take care of their own security, and that of Ukraine, in future.
Judge says US can deport pro-Palestinian student protester
- Immigration judge rules that Mahmoud Khalil is removable under US immigration law
JENA, United States: An immigration judge ruled Friday that a pro-Palestinian student protester, a US permanent resident detained by the Trump administration, can be deported, US media and a legal rights group said.
Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans said the government had met its burden to prove it had grounds to deport him, Fox News reported.
“An immigration judge ruled immediately after a hearing today that Mahmoud Khalil is removable under US immigration law,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.
Khalil, a prominent face of the protest movement that erupted in response to Israel’s war in Gaza who is married to a US citizen, was arrested and taken to Louisiana earlier this month, sparking protests. Several other foreign student protesters have been similarly targeted.
Comans had ordered the government to spell out its case against Khalil, who the government is seeking to deport on the grounds that his protest activities are a threat to national security.
In a letter to the court, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted that Khalil’s activism could hurt Washington’s foreign policy.
But he declined to argue formally that the Algeria-born Palestinian student was Hamas-aligned, as officials have told journalists.
The undated letter instead referred to Khalil’s “participation and roles” in allegedly “anti-Semitic protests and disruptive activities which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”
It made no reference to any alleged crime.
Ahead of the hearing, one of Khalil’s lawyers Marc Van Der Hout said Thursday that he would “be contesting the evidence.”
