WASHINGTON: Joe Biden’s name wasn’t on the ballot, but history will likely remember Kamala Harris’ resounding defeat as his loss too.
As Democrats pick up the pieces following President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory, some of the vice president’s backers are expressing frustration that Biden’s decision to seek reelection until this summer — despite longstanding voter concerns about his age and unease about post-pandemic inflation as well as the US-Mexico border — all but sealed his party’s loss of the White House.
“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Harris’ unsuccessful run. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”
Biden will leave office after leading the US out of the worst pandemic in a century, galvanizing international support for Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion and passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that will impact communities for years to come.
But having run four years ago against Trump to “restore the soul of the country,” Biden will make way after just one term for his immediate predecessor, who overcame two impeachments, a felony conviction and an insurrection launched by his supporters. Trump has vowed to radically reshape the federal government and roll back many of Biden’s priorities.
“Maybe in 20 or 30 years, history will remember Biden for some of these achievements,” said Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University. “But in the shorter term, I don’t know he escapes the legacy of being the president who beat Donald Trump only to usher in another Donald Trump administration four years later.”
The president on Wednesday stayed out of sight for the second straight day, making congratulatory calls to Democratic lawmakers who won downballot races as well as one to Trump, who he invited for a White House meeting that the president-elect accepted.
Biden is set to deliver a Rose Garden address Thursday about the election. He issued a statement shortly after Harris delivered her concession speech on Wednesday, praising Harris for running an “historic campaign” under “extraordinary circumstances.”
Some high-ranking Democrats, including three advisers to the Harris campaign, expressed deep frustration with Biden for failing to recognize earlier in the election cycle that he was not up to the challenge. The advisers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Biden, 81, ended his reelection campaign in July, weeks after an abysmal debate performance sent his party into a spiral and raised questions about whether he still had the mental acuity and stamina to serve as a credible nominee.
But polling long beforehand showed that many Americans worried about his age. Some 77 percent of Americans said in August 2023 that Biden was too old to be effective for four more years, according to a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs.
The president bowed out on July 21 after getting not-so-subtle nudges from Democratic Party powers, including former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He endorsed Harris and handed over his campaign operation to her.
Harris managed to spur far greater enthusiasm than Biden was generating from the party’s base. But she struggled to distinguish how her administration would differ from Biden’s.
Appearing on ABC’s “The View” in September, Harris was not able to identify a decision where she would have separated herself from Biden. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris said, giving the Trump campaign a sound bite it replayed through Election Day.
The strategists advising the Harris campaign said the compressed campaign timetable made it even more difficult for Harris to differentiate herself from the president.
Had Biden stepped aside early in the year, they said, it would have given Democrats enough time to hold a primary. Going through the paces of an intraparty contest would have forced Harris or another eventual nominee to more aggressively stake out differences with Biden.
The strategists acknowledged that overcoming broad dissatisfaction among the American electorate about rising costs in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and broad concerns about the US immigration system weighed heavy on the minds of voters in key states.
Still, they said that Biden had left Democrats in an untenable place.
Harris senior adviser David Plouffe in a posting on X called it a “devastating loss.” Plouffe didn’t assign blame. He noted the Harris campaign “dug out of a deep hole but not enough.”
At the vice president’s concession speech on Wednesday, some Harris supporters said they wished the vice president had had more time to make her pitch to American voters.
“I think that would have made a huge difference,” said Jerushatalla Pallay, a Howard University student who attended the speech at the center of her campus.
Republicans are poised to control the White House and Senate. Control of the House has yet to be determined.
Matt Bennett, executive vice president at the Democratic-aligned group Third Way, said this moment was the most devastating the party has faced in his lifetime.
“Harris was dealt a really bad hand. Some of it was Biden’s making and some maybe not,” said Bennett, who served as an aide to Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. “Would Democrats fare better if Biden had stepped back earlier? I don’t know if we can say for certain, but it’s a question we’ll be asking ourselves for some time.”
Joe Biden gets blamed by Harris allies for the vice president’s resounding loss
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Joe Biden gets blamed by Harris allies for the vice president’s resounding loss
- Biden is set to deliver a Rose Garden address Thursday about the election
At least 5 dead in Thai police plane crash
- The plane was conducting a test flight to prepare for parachute training in Hua Hin district before it crashed around 8 a.m.
The plane was conducting a test flight to prepare for parachute training in Hua Hin district before it crashed around 8 a.m., said Royal Thai Police spokesperson Archayon Kraithong.
Officials did not immediately share the model of the propeller plane, but photos from the scene appear to show a Viking DHC-6 Twin Otter. The plane crashed near Hua Hin Airport, said the public relations department of Prachuab Kiri Khan province.
The photos show the plane in the sea about 100 meters offshore. The body of the plane appeared to be broken in two.
There were six people on board, all police officers, Archayon said. He initially said that five people died at the scene and one died at the hospital, but later revised the death toll to five, saying the officer who was sent to the hospital remained in critical condition but alive.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Archayon said officials are gathering evidence including data from the plane’s black box.
Trump says Boeing ‘should default China’ for not taking planes
- Chinese customers started rejecting Beoing jet deliveries amid a trade war sparked by Trump
- Boeing poised to resell rejected jets, with Air India in talks with the planemaker to take 10 Max 737s
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Thursday criticized China for backing out of a deal to buy new Boeing planes due to tariffs imposed in the rivals’ trade war.
“Boeing should default China for not taking the beautifully finished planes that China committed to purchase,” Trump wrote on social media, without giving more details.
“This is just a small example of what China has done to the USA, for years,” he added.
US aviation giant Boeing’s CEO Kelly Ortberg said Wednesday confirmed that Chinese customers had stopped taking delivery of aircraft due to the “tariff environment.”
His remarks signaled growing disruption caused by tit-for-tat levies exchanged between the world’s largest economies this month.
New US tariffs have reached 145 percent on many Chinese products, while Beijing has responded with fresh 125 percent duties on imports from the United States.
The tariff blitz — which Trump says is retaliation for unfair trade practices, as well as a bid to restore US manufacturing prowess — has rattled markets and raised fears of a global recession.
Beijing on Thursday threw cold water on Trump’s apparent optimism about a US-China deal to lower tariffs, saying that suggestions of ongoing talks were “groundless.”
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that his country would have a “fair deal with China,” adding when asked if Washington was talking to Beijing that “everything’s active.”
Industry sources said the comments were seen as a signal to Beijing and Washington that the tariff conflict between the world’s two largest economies risked damage as Chinese airlines scramble for capacity and Boeing is left with a new stockpile.
Washington had previously signalled openness to de-escalating the trade war, stating earlier this week that high tariffs between the US and China were not sustainable.
Boeing is one of the largest US exporters and historically sent a quarter of its planes to China, though the share of Chinese airlines in its order backlog now stands at 10 percent after European rival Airbus increased market share.
Airbus has been in on-off negotiations for at least a year to try to grab a huge order of up to 500 jets, though China usually treads carefully over all major purchase decisions at times of geopolitical uncertainty, industry sources said.
Airbus said it never comments on commercial discussions that may or may not be happening.
Potential alternative markets for Boeing jets include India, Latin America and Southeast Asia but discussions have barely begun because of their complexity and uncertainty over who might blink in the tariff standoff, industry sources said.
Reselling
Amid the delivery standoff, Boeing said it is looking to resell potentially dozens of planes locked out of China by tariffs.
The move to prevent a repeat of the costly build-up of undelivered jets seen during past safety and trade crises comes as the planemaker seeks to prevent tensions undercutting its efforts to save cash and pay down debts.
Boeing took the rare step of publicly flagging the potential aircraft sale during an analyst call on Wednesday, saying there would be no shortage of buyers in a tight jet market.
“Customers are calling, asking for additional airplanes,” CFO Brian West said. Such negotiations are usually kept tightly under wraps.
Two sources, who declined to be named as the discussions are private, said Air India was seeking around 10 narrowbody planes from Boeing for its budget carrier Air India Express, which has a fleet of more than 100 aircraft.
Air India, Air India Express and Boeing did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Air India is very interested ... if the deal goes through, the planes are expected to be added to the fleet by end of the year,” the first person said, adding the talks were in early stages.
Air India Express has previously taken white tail aircraft — or jets manufactured for one customer but acquired by another.
A third source familiar with talks between Air India and Boeing said any difference in jet configuration between its fleet and the incoming planes meant for Chinese customers may be factored into price negotiations.
The move could be a boost to Air India’s expansion plans as the group’s growth has been constrained by a lack of new aircraft.
Last month, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said the airline was a “victim of circumstance,” referring to delivery delays plaguing Boeing and Airbus.
Complex negotiations
However, experts warned that carrying out the threat to divert jets to other buyers would not involve a simple switch.
Finding new customers after planes have been built “can be a costly endeavour,” industry publication Leeham News said.
Experts say many components, such as cabins, are picked by airlines and switching configurations could cost millions of dollars. Doing so may also create a tangle of contractual commitments and need the co-operation of the original buyer.
For its part, China has urged Washington to abandon the tariffs but its airlines are seen as hungry for new planes to meet demand and stay within domestic aircraft age restrictions.
“This will be extremely complicated. Everyone is flexing muscle but nobody completely has the upper hand,” said a senior aircraft finance industry source who requested anonymity.
Boeing’s public stand follows a threat from tariffs to the aerospace industry’s decade-old duty-free trading status. Senior industry officials say, however, there is no clear evidence of a reported official Chinese government ban on US jets.
The move to repatriate and re-market jets stands in contrast to a build-up seen during an almost five-year import freeze on 737 MAX jets into China and previous trade tensions.
“We’re not going to continue to build aircraft for customers who will not take them,” Ortberg told analysts.
Two jets ferried to China in March for delivery to Xiamen Airlines returned to Boeing in Seattle in the past week.
A third 737 MAX flew from Boeing’s Zhoushan completion center near Shanghai to the US territory of Guam on Thursday, Flightradar24 data showed. Guam is one of the stops Boeing delivery flights make on the journey across the Pacific.
The third plane was initially built for Air China , according to Aviation Flights Group. The flag carrier did not respond to a request for comment.
Boeing had planned to deliver around 50 new planes to China over the rest of this year, West said. It is studying options for re-marketing 41 that are already built or in production.
Rulings coming fast and furious in lawsuits over Trump’s policies on immigration, elections and DEI
- The legal disputes playing out across the country are far from over though as administration attorneys are pushing back
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration was handed a rapid-fire series of court losses Wednesday night and Thursday in lawsuits filed over its policies on immigration, elections and its crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools.
But the legal disputes playing out across the country are far from over, and administration attorneys pushed back, asking the federal appellate courts and the US Supreme Court to overturn some of the unfavorable decisions.
Here’s a look at the latest developments in some of the more than 170 lawsuits filed over President Donald Trump’s executive orders.
DEI
Judges blocked the administration from enforcing its diversity, equity and inclusion crackdown in education in at least two lawsuits Thursday. The decisions came ahead of a Friday deadline that the Education Department set for states to sign a form certifying they would not use “illegal DEI practices.”
A federal judge in New Hampshire blocked a series of directives from the Education Department, including a memo ordering an end to any practice that differentiates people based on their race, and another asking for assurances that schools don’t use DEI practices deemed discriminatory.
Judges in Maryland and Washington, D.C., also halted portions of the department’s anti-DEI efforts.
Elections
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from immediately enacting certain changes to how federal elections are run, including adding a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form. Still, the judge allowed other parts of Trump’s sweeping executive order on US elections — including a directive to tighten mail ballot deadlines — to go forward for now.
US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington sided with voting rights groups and Democrats, saying that the Constitution gives the power to regulate federal elections to states and Congress — not the president. She noted federal lawmakers are currently working on their own legislation to require proof of citizenship to vote.
Immigration
The Trump administration is appealing a judge’s order barring it from deporting people from Colorado under a rarely used 1798 law.
Attorneys for the administration filed the appeal in the 10th US Circuit Court, arguing that Denver-based US District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney lacks jurisdiction and that it is legally sound to invoke the Alien Enemies Act against the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
In another case out of Maryland, the Trump administration was ordered to facilitate the return of a man who was deported to El Salvador last month despite having a pending asylum application. US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland said the government violated a 2019 settlement agreement when it deported the 20-year-old man, a Venezuelan native identified only as Cristian in court papers. Gallagher cited another federal judge’s order for the government to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland and was accidentally deported the same day as Cristian.
In a Texas lawsuit, a court document from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official was unsealed, revealing that migrants subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act are only getting about 12 hours to decide if they want to contest their planned deportation to a prison in El Salvador. Earlier this week, government attorneys in a different Alien Enemies Act lawsuit told a judge in Colorado that migrants were being given 24 hours to make the decision.
The American Civil Liberties Union says the time period violates a Supreme Court order that allowed the Trump administration to continue deportations but required the government give detainees a “reasonable time” to argue to a judge that they should not be removed.
Yet another federal judge based in San Francisco barred the Trump administration from denying federal funds to “sanctuary” cities that limit immigration cooperation.
US Judge William Orrick said the temporary ban is appropriate because the executive orders are unconstitutional, just like they were in 2017 when Trump announced a similar order. Orrick said the administration can’t freeze any federal funds in San Francisco and more than a dozen other municipalities until the lawsuit brought by those cities is resolved.
Transgender rights
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow enforcement of a ban on transgender people in the military, while lawsuits over the ban move forward in court. The high court filing follows a brief order from a federal appeals court that kept in place a court order blocking the policy nationwide.
Trump signed an executive order a week into his term that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness. In response, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy that presumptively disqualifies transgender people from military service.
But in March, US District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma, Washington, ruled for several long-serving transgender military members who say the ban is insulting and discrimin
More than 1,800 migrants expelled from Algeria into Niger, rights group says
- The UK government is struggling to stop undocumented migrants embarking on dangerous boat journeys across the Channel from France
- Ukrainian and Afghan migrants face uncertainty under new policies
ALGIERS: Algerian authorities rounded up more than 1,800 migrants and left them at the Nigerien border in a record expulsion earlier this month, a Niger-based migrant rights group said Thursday.
Alarmphone Sahara, which monitors migration across the region, said the migrants were bused to a remote desert area known as “Point Zero” after being apprehended in Algerian cities.
Abdou Aziz Chehou, the group’s national coordinator, told The Associated Press on Thursday that 1,845 migrants without legal status in Algeria had been counted, arriving in Niger’s border town of Assamaka after the April 19 mass expulsion.
That pushed the total number of expelled migrants arriving in Assamaka this month beyond 4,000, he said.
The figure does not include those who may attempt to return north into Algeria, Chehou added.
The mass deportations come amid rising tensions between Algeria and its southern neighbors, all now led by military juntas that ousted elected governments previously aligned with Algiers. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger withdrew their ambassadors from Algeria earlier this month over border security disputes.
For migrants fleeing poverty, conflict or climate change, Algeria serves as a transit point en route to Europe. Many cross vast stretches of the Sahara en route before attempting dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean. But reinforced maritime patrols have stranded increasing numbers in transit countries with checkered human rights records and limited humanitarian aid.
In 2024, Alarmphone Sahara recorded more than 30,000 migrants expelled from Algeria. Similar pushbacks have also been reported in neighboring Morocco, Tunisia and Libya.
Neither Algerian nor Nigerien officials have commented on the latest expulsions, which are rarely reported in Algerian press. In the past, Nigerien authorities have said such actions appear to violate a 2014 agreement that allows only Nigerien nationals to be deported across the border.
US Congress Republicans seek $27 billion for Golden Dome in Trump tax bill
- Measure adds $150bn to the already approved $886bn national security budget for 2025, with $27bn going to Golden Dome missile defense shield
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two partners are frontrunners to win a crucial part that would track incoming missiles as part of the Golden Dome program
WASHINGTON: Republicans in the US Congress plan to introduce a sweeping $150 billion defense package that will give an initial $27 billion boost to President Donald Trump’s controversial Golden Dome missile defense shield and bolstering shipbuilding, according to a document and a congressional aide.
The measure would supercharge the national defense budget with new money to build 14 warships and lift homeland security spending. This will add $150 billion to the already approved $886 billion national security budget for 2025. It will be part of Trump’s sweeping tax cuts bill, which will cut taxes by about $5 trillion and add approximately $5.7 trillion to the federal government’s debt over the next decade.
The Republican leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees hammered out the legislation that will be unveiled as soon as Friday evening, Republican Senator Roger Wicker told Reuters in an interview. He is chairman of the Senate committee.
The measure, details of which have not been previously reported, includes a $27 billion investment in Golden Dome to build more missile interceptors and purchase Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) antiballistic missile batteries, according to the congressional aide. THAAD is made by Lockheed Martin.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part that would track incoming missiles as part of the Golden Dome program, Reuters reported last week.
The bill’s focus on strengthening the country’s military presence, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, is a key component of a broader strategy to prevent conflict.
“Strength, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, will make China less eager to break the status quo, which has led to a vast global prosperity among people who’ve never had it before. This is part of a plan to prevent war.”
He said it was designed to address the military’s most pressing needs, with a focus on supercharging key areas such as naval shipbuilding, missile defense, and space sensing.
The bill includes a range of provisions aimed at enhancing the country’s military capabilities. The largest item is $29 billion for the procurement of 14 new ships, and a “historic” investment in unmanned ships, according to the document seen by Reuters.
The legislation also provides significant funding for the development of innovative technologies, including a $5 billion investment in autonomous systems, a substantial increase from the $500 million allocated by the Biden administration.
Additionally, the package includes $20 billion in funding for the production of new munitions, the expansion of the country’s supplier base, and the replenishment of critical minerals stockpiles.
Notably, much of the funding allocated in this package will not expire at the end of the fiscal year, providing a significant boost to the country’s defense capabilities.
The measure will move forward through the process of reconciliation, a parliamentary procedure that allows Congress to pass budget-related bills with a simple majority vote, bypassing the usual 60-vote threshold required for most legislation.
