WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump frankly acknowledged Thursday that he’s starving the US Postal Service of money in order to make it harder to process an expected surge of mail-in ballots, which he worries could cost him the election.
In an interview on Fox Business Network, Trump explicitly noted two funding provisions that Democrats are seeking in a relief package that has stalled on Capitol Hill. Without the additional money, he said, the Postal Service won’t have the resources to handle a flood of ballots from voters who are seeking to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.
“If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting; they just can’t have it.”
Trump’s statements, including the false claim that Democrats are seeking universal mail-in voting, come as he is searching for a strategy to gain an advantage in his November matchup against Joe Biden. He’s pairing the tough Postal Service stance in congressional negotiations with an increasingly robust mail-in -voting legal fight in states that could decide the election.
In Iowa, which Trump won handily in 2016 but is more competitive this year, his campaign joined a lawsuit Wednesday against two Democratic-leaning counties in an effort to invalidate tens of thousands of voters’ absentee ballot applications. That followed legal maneuvers in battleground Pennsylvania, where the campaign hopes to force changes to how the state collects and counts mail-in ballots. And in Nevada, Trump is challenging a law sending ballots to all active voters.
His efforts could face limits. The US Supreme Court on Thursday rebuffed Republicans who challenged an agreement in Rhode Island allowing residents to vote by mail through November’s general election without getting signatures from two witnesses or a notary.
For Democrats, Trump’s new remarks were a clear admission that the president is attempting to restrict voting rights.
Biden said it was “Pure Trump. He doesn’t want an election.”
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said it was “voter suppression to undermine the safest method to vote during a pandemic, and force Americans to risk their lives to vote.”
Negotiations over a big new virus relief package have all but ended, with the White House and congressional leaders far apart on the size, scope and approach for shoring up households, reopening schools and launching a national strategy to contain the coronavirus.
While there is some common ground over $100 billion for schools and new funds for virus testing, Democrats also want other emergency funds that Trump rejects.
“They want $3.5 billion for something that will turn out to be fraudulent. That’s election money, basically,” Trump said during Thursday’s call-in interview.
Democrats have pushed for a total of $10 billion for the Postal Service in talks with Republicans on the COVID-19 response bill. That figure, which would include money to help with election mail, is down from a $25 billion plan in a House-passed coronavirus measure.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has said that the agency is in a financially untenable position, but he maintains it can handle this year’s election mail. A major donor to Trump and other Republicans, DeJoy is the first postmaster general in nearly two decades who is not a career postal employee.
“Although there will likely be an unprecedented increase in election mail volume due to the pandemic, the Postal Service has ample capacity to deliver all election mail securely and on-time in accordance with our delivery standards, and we will do so,” he told the Postal Service’s governing board last week.
Memos obtained by The Associated Press show that Postal Service leadership has pushed to eliminate overtime and halt late delivery trips that are sometimes needed to ensure mail arrives on time, measures that postal workers and union officials say are delaying service. Additional records detail cuts to hours at post offices, including reductions on Saturdays and during lunch hours.
Democrats, and a handful of Republicans, have sent DeJoy several letters asking him to reverse his changes and criticizing what they say is a lack of openness by he agency. Late Wednesday, Senate Democrats again wrote DeJoy, this time saying postal leadership is pushing state election officials to opt for pricier first-class postage for mail-in ballots to be prioritized.
“Instead of taking steps to increase your agency’s ability to deliver for the American people, you are implementing policy changes that make matters worse, and the Postal Service is reportedly considering changes that would increase costs for states at a time when millions of Americans are relying on voting by mail to exercise their right to vote,” the Democrats wrote.
Separately, in a letter last month, the Postal Service warned Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson that the agency might not be able to deliver ballots in time to be counted under the state’s deadlines for casting mail-in votes.
A spokesman for the Postal Service, David Partenheimer, said in a statement that “certain deadlines concerning mail-in ballots, may be incompatible with the Postal Service’s delivery standards,” especially if election officials don’t pay more for first-class postage.
“To the extent that states choose to use the mail as part of their elections, they should do so in a manner that realistically reflects how the mail works,” he said.
Judy Beard, legislative and political director for the American Postal Workers Union, said postal workers are up to the task of delivering mail-in ballots this year.
“We definitely know that the president is absolutely wrong concerning vote-by-mail,” she said.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Virginia, chair of the House subcommittee on government operations, said Trump is acknowledging that he wants to hold up funding for the US Postal Service to hinder Americans from voting.
“The president admits his motive for holding USPS funding hostage is that he doesn’t want Americans to vote by mail,” Connolly said in a statement Thursday. “Why? It hurts his electoral chances. He’s putting self-preservation ahead of public safety, for an election he deserves to lose.”
Trump has requested a mail-in ballot for Florida’s primary election Tuesday. Ballots were mailed Wednesday to both the president and first lady Melania Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort, which Trump lists as his legal address, according to online Palm Beach County elections records. Both voted by mail in the presidential preference primary in March, according to records.
Trump admits he’s blocking postal cash to stop mail-in votes
https://arab.news/y5jw9
Trump admits he’s blocking postal cash to stop mail-in votes
- Trump’s statements come as he is searching for a strategy to gain an advantage in his November matchup against Joe Biden
Columbia University student says his detention is indicative of anti-Palestinian racism in US
- Khalil, in the letter released by his attorney on Tuesday, said “I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention – imprisonment without trial or charge – to strip Palestinians of their rights”
NEW YORK: A Columbia University student arrested and threatened with deportation for his role in campus protests against Israel gave his first public statement Tuesday, saying that his detention is indicative of “anti-Palestinian racism” demonstrated by both the Trump and Biden administrations.
In a letter dictated from a Louisiana immigration lockup and released by his attorney, the student, Mahmoud Khalil, said he is being targeted as part of a larger effort to repress Palestinian voices.
“My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention,” he said.
“For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand US laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.”
Khalil and the federal government have been sparring in court over the Trump administration’s move to ship him halfway across the country to the lockup in Louisiana.
The government says he could not be detained at an immigration facility near where he was originally arrested in part because of a bedbug infestation, so they sent him to Louisiana. Khalil says there was no such discussion of bedbugs and he feared he was being immediately deported.
Khalil said in a declaration filed in Manhattan federal court Monday that while he was held overnight at a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, “I did not hear anyone mention bedbugs.”
In court papers over the weekend, lawyers for the Justice Department also blamed his move on overcrowded facilities in the Northeast.
Khalil made the statement about bedbugs in an exhibit attached to court papers in which his lawyers asked that he be freed on bail while the courts decide whether his arrest violated the First Amendment.
The lawyers have also asked a judge to widen the effect of any order to stop the US government from “arresting, detaining, and removing noncitizens who engage in constitutionally protected expressive activity in the United States in support of Palestinian rights or critical of Israel.”
Khalil said in court records that he was put in a van when he was taken away from the Elizabeth facility and he asked if he was being returned to FBI headquarters in Manhattan, where he was taken immediately after his arrest.
“I was told, ‘no, we are going to JFK Airport.’ I was afraid they were trying to deport me,” he recalled.
Of his time spent at the Elizabeth facility, he wrote: “I was in a waiting room with about ten other people. We slept on the ground. Even though it was cold inside the room, there were no beds, mattresses, or blankets.”
Khalil, in the letter released by his attorney on Tuesday, said “I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention – imprisonment without trial or charge – to strip Palestinians of their rights.”
“For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace,” he said.
In the weekend court papers, lawyers for the Justice Department gave a detailed description of Khalil’s March 8 arrest and his transport from Manhattan to Elizabeth and then to Kennedy International Airport in New York the next day for his transfer to Louisiana, where he has been held since.
“Khalil could not be housed at Elizabeth Detention Facility long-term due to a bedbug issue, so he remained there until his flight to Louisiana,” the lawyers wrote. They said he was at the facility from 2:20 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. on March 9.
The lawyers have asked that legal issues be addressed by federal judges in New Jersey or Louisiana rather than New York. A Manhattan federal judge has not yet ruled on the request.
Khalil’s lawyers, who oppose transferring the case, wrote in a submission Monday that the transfer to Louisiana was “predetermined and carried out for improper motives” rather than because of a bedbug infestation.
Despite the bedbug claim, the Elizabeth Detention accepted at least four individuals for detention from March 6 through last Thursday and Khalil himself saw men being processed for detention while he was there, they wrote.
Khalil, in the letter released by his attorney on Tuesday, also referenced a wave of Israeli strikes across Gaza — ending the ceasefire on Monday night — and called it a “moral imperative” to continue push for freedom for Palestinians.
“With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs,” he said. “It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.”
Judge rules DOGE’s USAID dismantling likely violates the Constitution
- Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper”
WASHINGTON: The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency likely violated the Constitution, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as he indefinitely blocked DOGE from making further cuts to the agency.
The order requires the Trump administration to restore email and computer access to all employees of USAID, including those put on administrative leave, though it appears to stop short of reversing firings or fully resurrecting the agency.
In one of the first DOGE lawsuits against Musk himself, US District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rejected the Trump administration’s position that Musk is merely President Donald Trump’s adviser.
Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.”
The judge acknowledged that it’s likely that USAID is no longer capable of performing some of its statutorily required functions.
“Taken together, these facts support the conclusion that USAID has been effectively eliminated,” Chuang wrote in the preliminary injunction.
The lawsuit filed by USAID employees and contractors argued that Musk and DOGE are wielding power the Constitution reserves only for those who win elections or are confirmed by the Senate. Their attorneys said the ruling “effectively halts or reverses” many of the steps taken to dismantle the agency.
The administration has said that DOGE is searching for and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, consistent with the campaign message that helped Trump win the 2024 election. The White House and DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
Musk, his team and Trump political appointee Pete Marocco have played a central role in the two-month dismantling of USAID. In one instance in early February, the administration placed the agency’s top security officials on forced leave after they tried to block DOGE workers from accessing USAID’s classified and sensitive documents.
The administration, with Musk’s and DOGE’s support, went on to order all but a fraction of the agency’s staffers off the job through forced leaves and firings, and terminated what the State Department said was at least 83 percent of USAID’s program contracts.
The moves were part of a broader push by Musk and the Trump administration to eradicate the six-decade-old foreign assistance agency and most of its work overseas.
Trump on Inauguration Day issued an executive order directing a freeze of foreign assistance funding and a review of all US aid and development work abroad, charging that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda.
Democratic lawmakers and other supporters of USAID have argued Trump had no authority to withhold funding that Congress already approved.
Chuang said DOGE’s and Musk’s fast-moving destruction of USAID likely harmed the public interest by depriving elected lawmakers of their “constitutional authority to decide whether, when and how to close down an agency created by Congress.”
The lawsuit was filed by the State Democracy Defenders Fund. Norm Eisen, the nonprofit’s executive chair, said the ruling is a milestone in pushback to DOGE and the first to find that Musk’s actions violate the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which mandates presidential approval and Senate confirmation for certain public officials.
“They are performing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel, harming not just the people USAID serves but the majority of Americans who count on the stability of our government,” he said in a statement.
Oxfam America’s Abby Maxman in a statement urged all staffing and funding to be reinstated. “The funding freeze and program cuts are already having life or death consequences for millions around the world,” said the chief executive of the humanitarian group.
UK welcomes ‘progress’ by Trump toward Russia-Ukraine ceasefire
- “This process must lead to a just and lasting peace for Ukraine,” a spokesperson said
LONDON: The British government on Tuesday welcomed the “progress” made by US President Donald Trump toward negotiating a ceasefire in Ukraine following a call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
“This process must lead to a just and lasting peace for Ukraine,” a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said after Trump spoke Putin about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes to ensure Russia can never launch an illegal invasion again.”
Fear at Antarctica base as researcher assaults colleague and makes threats
- ‘His behavior has escalated to a point that is deeply disturbing,’ said an email sent to South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper
CAPE TOWN: A member of a South African research team that is confined for more than a year at an isolated Antarctica base was put under psychological evaluation there after he allegedly assaulted and sexually harassed colleagues, government officials said.
The problems at the SANAE IV base were first reported by South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper, which said it had seen an email from a team member to authorities last month claiming the man had attacked the base leader and made threats.
The email pleaded for help.
“His behavior has escalated to a point that is deeply disturbing,” the email said, according to The Sunday Times. “I remain deeply concerned about my own safety, constantly wondering if I might become the next victim.” The report said the man allegedly made a death threat.
South Africa’s Ministry of Environment, which oversees the research missions, said in a statement that the alleged assault on the base leader was reported on Feb. 27, and officials and counselors intervened remotely “to mediate and restore relationships at the base.” They were speaking with team members almost daily, it said.
“The alleged perpetrator has willingly participated in further psychological evaluation, has shown remorse and is willingly cooperative,” the ministry said, adding that he had written a formal apology to the victim of the alleged assault. It said the allegations were being investigated. No one was identified.
The nine-member team, which includes scientists, a doctor and engineers, is expected to stay at the base for about 13 months until next year, authorities said, living in close quarters through the hostile Antarctic winter, whose six months of darkness begin in June.
The base is on a cliff in Queen Maud Land and is surrounded by a glacial ice sheet, more than 4,000 km, from South Africa.
The next planned visit by a supply ship is in December, according to the South African National Antarctic Program. It takes the ship around 10 days to travel from Cape Town.
Authorities said they had decided not to evacuate anyone from SANAE IV, where the onset of unpredictable weather conditions meant the team was now confined to the base.
The ministry said all team members had undergone evaluations ahead of the trip to ensure they can cope with the “extreme nature of the environment in Antarctica” and the isolation and confinement, and no problems were identified.
“It is not uncommon that once individuals arrive at the extremely remote areas where the scientific bases are located, an initial adjustment to the environment is required,” it said.
Previous problems have been reported at another of South Africa’s remote research bases on Marion Island, a South African territory near Antarctica.
In 2017, a member of a research team there smashed a colleague’s room with an ax over an apparent love triangle, according to a report to South Africa’s parliament. Lawmakers said it appeared the researchers were living in highly stressful conditions.
The National Science Foundation, the federal agency that oversees the US Antarctic Program, published a report in 2022 in which 59 percent of women in the US program said they’d experienced harassment or assault while on research trips in Antarctica.
Ukraine would back ceasefire on energy attacks, Zelensky says
- “Our side (would) support this,” Zelensky told reporters
- Zelensky said he would back any proposal that led to a “stable and just peace“
KYIV: President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday Ukraine would support a US proposal to stop its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, but warned that Russia was trying to delay the US-led negotiations and weaken Kyiv by making new demands.
The White House said earlier that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to US President Donald Trump’s proposal for a month-long halt on strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, as the two leaders spoke by phone on Tuesday.
“Our side (would) support this,” Zelensky told reporters during a quickly-organized online briefing, when asked about the idea of a moratorium on energy strikes.
Ukraine has used long-range combat drones to pound Russian oil infrastructure such as refineries in an effort to hurt its much larger foe, which has rained down missiles and drones far behind the front lines in Ukraine since the February 2022 full-scale invasion.
In particular, Russian strikes have hammered Ukrainian power stations, causing large-scale blackouts, and more recently also natural gas production sites.
Zelensky said he would back any proposal that led to a “stable and just peace.”
Moscow stopped short of giving Washington the full unconditional 30-day ceasefire it had sought.
Zelensky said he believed Russia was clearly opposed to the proposal, which Kyiv agreed to in principle at last week’s talks with US officials in Jeddah.
Zelensky told reporters that Russia had launched more than 1,300 guided bombs, eight missiles and nearly 600 long-range strike drones at Ukraine since the talks in Saudi Arabia.
Ukraine itself proposed the idea of ceasefire on energy infrastructure during the talks, he added.
“This was part of our proposal for the sky and for the sea. With the mediation of the American side, if they are the guarantors of control over the implementation of this ceasefire,” he said.
PHONE CALL DIPLOMACY
Zelensky said after the Putin-Trump phone call he spoke by telephone with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, both key European allies.
“I think it will be right that we will have a conversation with President Trump and we will know in detail what the Russians offered the Americans or what the Americans offered the Russians,” he said.
He also told reporters that he hoped Kyiv’s partners would not cut vital military assistance for Ukraine.
“We are in constant communication. I am confident that there will be no betrayal from our partners and that the assistance will continue,” he said.
He made the remark when asked about an earlier comment by Putin, who emphasized that any resolution of the conflict would require an end to all military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine.
Zelensky said the demand by Putin, as well as another seeking to curtail Ukraine’s campaign to draft civilians into the armed forces, looked aimed at weakening Ukraine.
