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  • Is Trump Inevitable? Some in the GOP Are Starting To Wonder

    Is Trump Inevitable? Some in the GOP Are Starting To Wonder

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    Christie warned against giving in to such thinking; in fact, the entirety of the former U.S. Attorney’s water-testing stump speech is The Case Against Trump. But in the very hour he was delivering that argument, Trump was on the opposite end of the Eastern Seaboard demonstrating how well-positioned he is at the moment.

    Summoning the House members from Florida who’ve endorsed his candidacy to dinner at Mar-a-Lago, a troll of Ron DeSantis bearded as a toast to Trump, the former president used the dinner to deliberate over how much he should even compete in the Republican primary.

    Going around the table, as he’s wont to do, Trump surveyed the lawmakers about whether they thought he should show up for the first GOP primary debate and lend legitimacy to there being a serious contest for the nomination, an attendee told me. Some of the Republicans wondered out loud about the wisdom of exposing himself to attacks from lesser candidates when he’s so far up in the polls. But there was more support (including among Trump’s advisers in the room) for attending the initial debate, in part because he’d be a punching bag if he skipped it, so why not be there to punch back.

    Before going any further, let’s stipulate that presidential nominations are rarely decided a year before the balloting. And, if I may, there’s been an overcorrection to the post-midterm conventional wisdom that Trump is doomed (the conventions of political speculation, sadly, don’t allow much space between sure thing and roadkill).

    Ok, to-be-sure out of the way, onto where the Republican race stands. It will ring quite familiar to anybody who paid attention to the last two Democratic primaries.

    2024 could look a lot like 2020. That was when we in the political press corps dumped oceans of ink on the ideological differences among the candidates, questions about their specific policy proposals (will Elizabeth Warren release her own healthcare plan, inquiring minds didn’t want to know) only to cover a race that effectively turned on a single question: Who can win the general election? Democrats were effectively single-issue voters and their bet on President Joe Biden paid off in November.

    Four years earlier, in 2016, there was a deeply flawed frontrunner, a proven presidential loser and polarizing figure among the general electorate, who many smart Democrats had misgivings about nominating. But she lined up early endorsements eager to be on the right side of the nominee, much of the party was cowed and she, eventually, did turn out to be inevitable.

    Are today’s Republicans poised to nominate Donald J. Rodham?

    Yes, there are glaring differences between 2016 and 2024, but what alarms so many Republicans (and encourages the fatalism) is another similarity that’s less obvious. Just as progressives privately worried that Hillary Clinton and her party’s moderates would never truly embrace Bernie Sanders if he prevailed, many pessimistic Republicans wonder the same about Trump next year.

    It’s preposterous to imagine him, arms held aloft with DeSantis or whoever beats him, at a Unity Breakfast the morning after the nomination is decided. At best, Trump will be an irritant to who defeats him.

    So why not, as Christie alluded to last week, stop fighting political gravity, submit to Trump and then, if he again loses, begin the Republican reformation in 2025. After all, it took Democrats three consecutive losses in the 1980s for the Democratic Leadership Council to finally gain traction and elevate one of their own in 1992.

    Republicans would only have to suffer two White House defeats to finally move on from Trump and, in the meantime, there’s that Supreme Court majority he helped deliver as the political backstop.

    As a shrewd Republican strategist, and no NeverTrumper, put it to me recently: “We’re just going to have to go into the basement, ride out the tornado and come back up when it’s over to rebuild the neighborhood.”

    This Republican, as with a number of his like, has been hoping for a strong Trump alternative to emerge but has grown more pessimistic, DeSantis’ early stumbles confirming his doubts about the Florida governor. Moreover, there’s the matter of Roe being overturned and the political vise the party is caught in between its unyielding anti-abortion activists and a broader electorate that supports legal abortion. “We’re the dog that caught the car on Trump and abortion.”

    So, yes, there are some doubts in GOP ranks about 2024. And not just from the self-hating type.

    Yet there’s another class of Republicans who look at President Biden’s dismal standing and reject the moping and detest the fatalism about Trump on top of the ticket. They say all that’s needed to put a Republican in the White House is to nominate someone other than Trump.

    Some of these Republicans even have a name: They’re called those who will be on the ballot in swing districts next year.

    One of the most promising freshmen GOP lawmakers, 36-year-old Mike Lawler from upstate New York, is all but begging Republican primary voters not to saddle him with Trump, using all the right code words.

    “Whoever the nominee is going to be needs to be forward-looking and they need to be focused on the American people, not the grievances of the past, and it certainly can’t be about the 2020 election,” Lawler told me.

    I think I know who he means.

    But the challenge Lawler has is that Trump as the nominee can become a self-fulfilling prophecy when the congressman’s colleagues are lining up to take their turn at Mar-a-Lago, wanting to be with the winner (and maybe secure that coveted cabinet gig or endorsement for a future primary).

    No, individual endorsements don’t matter much these days. But the collective validation of Trump by party lawmakers can create a snowball-down-the-mountain effect.

    Lawler is all too aware of this risk — and the threat it poses to him and a House majority that depends on California and New York, states Trump would lose badly. But he won’t name names. “Who’s to say I haven’t had that conversation?” he asked back at me when I wondered if he had carped to any of his colleagues about their early endorsements.

    He did, though, allow that most Republicans are in seats where they’re “more worried about their primary than the general election.” And he noted that lawmakers like him, running in districts Biden carried, will be “the difference between us having the majority or not.”

    The same can be applied to the Senate, at least in the purple-to-blue states Republicans are targeting. Trump is no anchor in the reddest races — Montana, West Virginia and Ohio — but if those don’t fall then Senate Republicans will need states where the former president is anathema to the pivotal suburbanites who decide elections. And if Trump appears destined to lead the ticket, well, let’s just say that some of the potential candidates in these more competitive states aren’t as enthused about running,

    “It makes it harder to get in,” one potential Senate GOP recruit told me about how Trump’s inevitability shapes calculations, grumbling about the lawmakers racing to the former president’s side.

    There is another Republican eyeing a 2024 race, however, who isn’t resigned to a Trump threepeat.

    “I think that the majority of the party doesn’t want him,” Christie told me the morning after his appearance at New England College in Henniker.

    Christie will decide whether to run in May, he said, indicating it will largely depend on whether he thinks he can raise the money.

    Christie rejects the idea that there’s only two options, nominate Trump or see the nominee undermined by Trump, arguing that if the former president loses “he’ll be a diminished figure” and “a two-time loser” rather than a MAGA kingpin.

    He said sure nominating Trump is “a guaranteed pathway to lose,” but when I asked if, to borrow a phrase, Republicans had gotten tired of losing yet, he acknowledged it was a good question: “I think we’re going to find out.”

    But when I pressed Christie on whether, were he not to run, he’d work to rally support for an alternative, he didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic or optimistic. “I’m sure I’ll try, yeah, don’t know I’ll find one,” he said. (No, he said, he’s not going to back Trump again, either in the primary or general election.)

    Like a lot of prominent Republicans, Christie has no relationship with DeSantis and harbors evident skepticism about somebody who has led a “very sheltered existence down there in Florida,” as the former governor put it.

    Among the voters I spoke to in New Hampshire, there’s more openness to DeSantis. But already it’s easy to see the bright lines coming into view: The Republicans wanted to hear out DeSantis, but the independents who can vote in (and often shape) New Hampshire primaries were as dead set against DeSantis as they are Trump.

    And if those two anti-Trump constituencies, the time-to-move-on Republicans and the pivotal independents, aren’t aligned, well, we’ve seen that movie before. It was called 2016, and not only did Trump win the New Hampshire primary but it was former Ohio Governor John Kasich who came in second, because he won so many independents and the other, more conservative Republicans split the remaining vote (nearly 50 percent!).

    Christie’s theory is that by confronting Trump directly he can coalesce the two groups — he took care to note in his stump speech that he’s “not some Never Trumper” — and there’s plenty of voters here who are focused on electability, a la Democrats in 2020.

    “I’d like us to get somebody that could win,” Grace Solinsky, a Bedford, N.H., resident, told me at a Christie house party in Bow, N.H., lamenting the “baggage” Trump bears.

    That’s the good news for Christie. The bad news is that those most curious about his candidacy are those who aren’t Republicans, or who, like him, at least say they won’t vote for Trump in a general election.

    More to the point, the biggest group that showed up for his town hall were a group of male undergraduates who took off for the exits the second the event ended like their seats were on fire. When I took off after them to record their impressions, one got straight to the point. They were members of the college baseball team and, by attending Christie’s town hall, had gotten out of running at practice.

    Meanwhile, Trump may be headed to a showdown over the debates that will reveal how much power he holds over his adopted party.

    He’s angry, people close to him tell me, that the Republican National Committee is insistent upon holding the first debate, sponsored by Fox News, in Milwaukee during the dead of summer simply because that coincides with the party’s summer meeting there. Not only is it too early, Trump has told people, but he has questions post-Tucker Carlson defenestration about how friendly Fox may be to him and wonders whether his lead is so significant that there’s no reason to give their news side anchors the draw they crave.

    Trump’s view of the debates, and the GOP broadly, evokes what one of his predecessors once told a young corporal who was directing him to “his helicopter.”

    “Son,” LBJ replied, “they’re all my helicopters.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Starting Tuesday, Trump will stand trial in a lawsuit accusing him of rape

    Starting Tuesday, Trump will stand trial in a lawsuit accusing him of rape

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    And, of course, a civil verdict against Trump would add to his avalanche of legal troubles as he is seeking to regain the presidency while under indictment in an unrelated case and facing the possibility of additional criminal charges in several other investigations.

    The trial is also risky for Carroll, who must convince a jury to believe her accusation against an incredibly high-profile defendant for an incident that allegedly occurred nearly 30 years ago and lacked any eyewitnesses.

    According to Carroll, one night in either late 1995 or early 1996, she bumped into Trump while she was leaving Bergdorf Goodman. He recognized her, she said, because they had met once before and “had long traveled in the same New York City media circles.” Telling her that he was at the store to buy a present for “a girl,” Trump asked Carroll for her advice, and after the two discussed a few ideas, Trump suggested visiting the lingerie department, according to the lawsuit.

    There, on the counter, they saw a lilac gray see-through bodysuit, and the two teased each other about which one of them should try it on, the lawsuit says. According to Carroll, Trump then “grabbed” her arm, “maneuvered” her to the dressing room and closed the door. There were no attendants or other shoppers nearby, Carroll said.

    Once inside the dressing room, Trump pushed her up against the wall, bumping her head and “putting his mouth on her lips,” according to Carroll. After she pushed him back, she said, he “seized both of her arms,” pushed her again and then “jammed his hand under her coatdress and pulled down her tights.”

    After unzipping his pants, “Trump then pushed his fingers around Carroll’s genitals and forced his penis inside of her,” according to the lawsuit.

    After breaking free by raising up her knee and pushing him off, she said she ran out of Bergdorf’s and immediately called a friend, Lisa Birnbach, and told her about the incident. “He raped you,” Birnbach said, according to Carroll. Birnbach encouraged her to call the police, but “still in shock and reluctant to think of herself as a rape victim, Carroll did not want to speak to the police,” the lawsuit says.

    Several days later, Carroll says she disclosed the events to another friend, Carol Martin. Martin advised Carroll to tell no one, advice she says she took.

    Carroll’s attorneys have indicated they likely will call both Birnbach and Martin to testify. Both women backed up her account in media interviews shortly after Carroll went public with her claims in 2019.

    Trump, for his part, denies the entire episode. He said in 2019 that he had “never met this person in my life” and that she was manufacturing stories about him for the purpose of selling a book in which she detailed the alleged assault. Last year, he repeated the denials on his social media site and again accused her of promoting a “hoax,” adding that, “while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!”

    In court filings, Trump’s attorneys have suggested that his defense may include questioning the plausibility of Carroll’s claim that there were no customers or staff around to witness the incident, drilling into the notion that she can’t pinpoint the date when the attack allegedly occurred and arguing that Carroll is politically and financially motivated.

    Lawyers for Carroll and Trump declined to comment.

    Carroll is suing him for sexual assault under the Adult Survivors Act, a 2022 New York law that gave a one-year window beginning in November of that year for people to sue their alleged assailants even if the statute of limitations had expired, which it had in Carroll’s case. In addition to the sexual-assault claim, Carroll is suing Trump in this week’s trial for defamation over his 2022 comments.

    In a separate lawsuit, she is also suing him for defamation regarding his 2019 comments; the trial for that case is delayed pending a ruling on whether Trump can be sued personally for comments he made while he was president.

    Civil lawsuits arising from sexual assaults are not uncommon. (Trump is not even the first president to be sued for sexual misconduct: Paula Jones famously sued Bill Clinton during his presidency for sexual harassment in a case that reached the Supreme Court.) But the Trump trial will require highly unusual measures. Perhaps most significantly, the judge presiding over the case, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, has ordered an anonymous jury — meaning the names of the jurors will not be disclosed to the public or to Carroll, Trump or their attorneys — due to “a very strong risk that jurors will fear harassment.”

    In his order regarding the unusual step of protecting the juror’s identities, Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, cited a series of alleged threats of violence by Trump, his attacks on jurors in other cases, his encouragement of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and his statement urging his supporters to protest what he predicted would be his arrest in connection with the district attorney’s investigation.

    In another twist, Trump has indicated that he probably won’t attend the trial. In a court filing, his lawyers cited the “logistical burdens” of him appearing in court due to his Secret Service protection, a wrinkle the judge rejected as an adequate reason for failing to appear, while noting that he has no legal obligation to either attend or testify.

    In other ways, however, the case is typical of sexual assault lawsuits. Such cases are commonly brought many years after the incident in question, because victims often take a long time to come to terms with what has happened to them, and often center on a situation witnessed by no one but the plaintiff and the defendant, said Peter Saghir, a lawyer who represented Anthony Rapp in his battery trial against Kevin Spacey, whom Rapp accused of making a “sexual advance” on him in 1986. (A jury found Spacey not liable for battery.)

    “These cases are so difficult because these events are almost always unwitnessed,” Saghir said. “I’m sure Trump is going to be arguing, clearly if I raped someone, why wasn’t she screaming? Why wasn’t she yelling? There’s no video. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. It’s usually one person’s word against the other word.”

    In Carroll’s case, he noted, she does have corroboration from the two friends she says she told contemporaneously.

    Carroll’s case is also likely to hinge on her own testimony and whether a jury believes her story, said Jordan Merson, a lawyer who represents five women suing Bill Cosby for sexual abuse. “It seems like Trump’s legal team is going after her credibility, so her cross examination when she’s on the witness stand is going to be a very important part of the case.”

    Merson noted that cross examination for a sexual assault victim can be “very difficult” because the plaintiff is being challenged on something they typically find painful to talk about under even the most inviting circumstances.

    If the jury does believe Carroll’s story about the alleged rape, Merson said the defamation claim may significantly boost any monetary award she is given. Carroll is seeking unspecified damages — and for Trump to retract the statement he made about her on his social media site.

    “Juries tend to be very sympathetic to survivors of sexual abuse, especially if there’s any type of verbal disparagement thereafter,” Merson said. “If the jury finds for Ms. Carroll, you could be looking at a very significant damages award,” he said. “Many millions of dollars.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Will administer state from Vizag starting Sept: Andhra Pradesh CM

    Will administer state from Vizag starting Sept: Andhra Pradesh CM

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    Plane carrying Andhra Pradesh CM makes emergency landing

    Srikakulam: As part of decentralising administration in Andhra Pradesh, the state government will be functioning from Visakhapatnam starting September, Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy said on Wednesday.

    The Chief Minister made this announcement addressing a public meeting at Naupada village in Srikakulam district’s Sonthabommali mandal on the sidelines of laying the foundation stones for infrastructure projects.

    “Visakhapatnam is an acceptable city for everyone in the state. It has the approval of all the people in the state. As part of decentralisation of administration, from this September, your son (Jagan) will set up his family (kapuram) also in Visakhapatnam,” Reddy said.

    MS Education Academy

    The port city of Visakhapatnam, which is the largest city in the southern state, is key for Reddy’s capital city trifurcation strategy, which involves setting up a legislative capital in Amaravati, judicial capital in Kurnool and executive capital in Visakhapatnam.

    The issue over Amaravati as the current capital of the state and the development of the greenfield city is pending in the Supreme Court.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • The Relentless Campaign to Fix Democracy, Starting in Minnesota

    The Relentless Campaign to Fix Democracy, Starting in Minnesota

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    lede traub fairvote 22

    In the meantime, Donald Trump had happened. However one felt about candidates winning without majorities, ranked choice voting’s potential to reduce extremism and encourage broad-based appeals suddenly made it feel much more urgent. And Minnesota had run out of new cities to enroll. In 2020 Massey approached her board with an audacious plan to identify state legislators and candidates of either party who would embrace ranked choice voting and do everything possible to put them over the top in the coming election.

    Maureen Reed, a retired physician who chairs the board, recognized the logic. “I was not an emergency room physician,” she told me over lunch in the Rathskeller, the vaulted basement restaurant of Minnesota’s stately Capitol. “I did internal medicine and geriatric care. I was trying to keep people healthy.” In her own search for root causes, Reed had migrated from medicine to public health to public policy. Her own work on health care had convinced her that “the rhetoric of hyper-partisanship has led to gridlock.” The board authorized Massey’s plan. The organization received large gifts for its lobbying and education program from local, regional and national foundations; by far the biggest, $1,755,000 over three years plus $150,000 for More Voices Minnesota, FairVote’s PAC, came from John Arnold, a Houston hedge fund manager and philanthropist. Arnold is indeed located out-of-state, but the funds were publicly disclosed. He does not appear to have any connection to George Soros.

    The Covid-era election of 2020 proved to be a warm-up exercise. In the 2022 election, FairVote dispensed $140,000 in political donations to Democratic candidates, a significant sum for statewide races, while also conducting its energetic door-knocking campaign. Ranked choice voting was hardly the chief issue that year; abortion and criminal justice issues in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death mattered far more. But FairVote’s money and energy helped flip the state Senate and produced a “trifecta” — a Democratic House, Senate and governor. Many of those Democrats have reason to feel grateful to FairVote. While I was trailing Massey across the State Capitol, I asked why state Sen. Heather Gustafson had agreed to speak at the rally the next day. “She’s a big supporter,” Massey explained. “We targeted swing districts” — including hers. (Gustafson did not, in fact, show up for the rally.)

    The trifecta made ranked choice voting legislation possible — but just barely. Though prominent moderate Republicans in the state, including former U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger and ex-Gov. Arne Carlson, endorsed the idea, the Minnesota GOP, like the party almost everywhere, has become both more conservative and more truculent. Today’s Republicans treat almost all facially neutral political reforms, whether eliminating gerrymandering, reducing the influence of money or instituting nonpartisan primaries, as a plot to elect Democrats. It’s no surprise, then, that not a single Republican legislator in the state has publicly supported ranked choice voting.

    When I asked Mark Koran, a Republican member of the state House and leading critic, why he opposed the bill, he first told me about the out-of-state dark money, though without repeating the Soros canard. Koran disputed the ranked choice voting talking points. “There’s a claim that we can create a kinder, gentler electoral system,” he said. But in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, he said, progressive candidates had run inflammatory campaigns. Minnesota already had high turnout and a wide diversity of candidates, he added. Why fix what isn’t broke? If there was a problem, he said, it was “transparency.” Outside dark money, he claimed, had been deployed to defeat county prosecutors prepared to investigate vote fraud. Koran told me about the 2008 U.S. Senate race in which Democrat Al Franken had defeated Republican Norm Coleman thanks, he said, to “11,000 fraudulent votes,” including 340 ineligible felons. That was the real electoral issue — and no one was looking at it.

    Jeanne Massey had lined up a star witness for the House Elections Committee hearing — Mary Peltola, the Alaska Democrat who had defeated Palin for Congress last year. Peltola had won only 10 percent of the votes in the state’s open primary, but that had been enough to vault her into the general election, where she defeated Palin largely because 15,000 people who had voted for more moderate Republican Nick Begich had listed Peltola rather than Palin as their second choice. At the same time, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who had voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, finished in a virtual dead heat with Trumpist Kelly Tshibaka and then retained her seat thanks to votes she received after a Democrat was eliminated. Alaska was providing proof of concept — and vindication of the fears on the right.

    The room in which the committee met had tables, chairs and microphones in the center with seats rising up on either side. As if by an unspoken prior design, the blue shirts filled one set of seats and the oranges the other. The hearing thus bore an odd resemblance to a college football game, though refs do not typically have to silence fans as the presiding member did to the blues during testimony from an ranked choice voting opponent. Democratic state Rep. Cedrick Frazier, the sponsor of the bill in the House, spoke first. Frazier, who is Black, argued that ranked choice voting encourages ethnic and racial minorities, as well as other outsiders, to run for office since they might win in later rounds.

    Then Peltola took a seat beside him. A native Yup’ik, Peltola has a warm smile and an air of gentle dignity. She spoke of the lawn-placard dynamics of ranked choice voting. “I could not afford to alienate my opponents’ supporters,” she said, “because second- and third-choice voters were critical in determining who would win. I could not take any vote for granted or write any voter off.” In testimony later that morning before a state Senate Committee, Peltola made a striking point about nonpartisan primaries. “I would not have made it out of a primary,” she said, “because I’m not liberal enough.” With partisan primaries, she complained, “We go farther to the right and farther to the left.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • U.S. wants allies to line up against China. Europe is starting to listen.

    U.S. wants allies to line up against China. Europe is starting to listen.

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    The Biden administration is also sharing hosting duties this year with the Netherlands, Costa Rica, South Korea and Zambia to emphasize the breadth of the democratic coalition. And it comes three weeks after the Netherlands joined hands with the U.S. to limit the export of advanced semiconductor technologies to China.

    But solidifying alliances with countries in regions beyond Europe has proved just as difficult, if not more so.

    The Solomon Islands — a longtime U.S. ally on strategically vital sealanes linking Australia with Hawaii — turned a deaf ear to Biden’s democracy rhetoric by inking a controversial security pact with Beijing in 2021.

    Parts of Africa have also been a hard sell, particularly because so many countries there have benefited from China’s large infrastructure investments. While 27 African countries voted in favor of a March 2022 U.N. resolution against Russia’s aggression, 16 others — including South Africa — abstained from the vote while Eritrea voted against it.

    In Latin America, Costa Rica is the sole country that joined U.S. sanctions against Russia. And the region’s Mercosur trade grouping denied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request to speak to the body in July.

    China is taking its own multipronged approach to courting the globe.

    On Ukraine, Beijing is trying to show its friendlier side — but to both Russia and the West. Xi’s visit with Putin produced multiple “strategic cooperation” deals that included an increase in Russian gas sales to Beijing as well as agreements to expand cross-border transport links by building new bridges and roads.

    At the same time, China has gone on a global public relations push to paint itself as the country advocating for peace in Ukraine. Beijing is marketing a 12-point potential peace plan. And Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang assured Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in a phone call earlier this month that Beijing wants “a constructive role” in ending the conflict.

    China also hosted its very own International Forum on Democracy last week, claiming 300 participants from 100 countries. The group discussed “diverse forms of democracy, slamming monistic and hegemonic narratives on the subject,” Chinese state media reported.

    “We uphold true multilateralism, work for a multi-polar world and greater democracy in international relations, and make global governance more just and equitable,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said earlier this month.

    That rhetoric underscores Beijing’s shift from blanket rejection of criticism of its political system to a semantic redefinition of democracy and human rights.

    “What the Chinese are trying to do is not fight against democracy and human rights and reject them — they’re trying to pick Biden’s pocket and co-opt them by defining them as what China does,” said Daniel Russel, Obama’s former assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

    Asked about the Biden administration’s democracy summit, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in D.C., Liu Pengyu, said the U.S. is “trying to divide the world into ‘democratic’ and ‘non-democratic’ camps based on its criteria, and openly provoke division and confrontation.”

    As much as Beijing wants to keep trade lanes open with Europe, it is also getting more aggressive toward trading partners that turn against it. China imposed a trade embargo against Lithuania in 2021 after Taiwan set up a diplomatic office in the EU country. More recently, it threatened the Netherlands with possible retaliations for siding with the U.S. on semiconductors.



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    #U.S #allies #line #China #Europe #starting #listen
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • DSEK rebuts news published in some local dailies regarding starting of new Academic Session from April 20

    DSEK rebuts news published in some local dailies regarding starting of new Academic Session from April 20

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    Srinagar, Mar 20: The Director School Education Kashmir (DSEK) today strongly refuted the news item published in some local dailies wherein it has been stated that the New Academic Session in schools shall commence from 20th April 2023.

    In an official handout issued here, Dr. Tassaduq Hussain, DSEK said that the news item is baseless and all the stakeholders including Heads of the Institutions have already been placed under strict instructions to complete the process of examination for classes 1st to 7th and 9th up to 20th March 2023 and start new classes immediately after culmination of the examinations vide Letter No: DSEK/NEP/227-231/23 Dated: 23-02-2023.

    The statement read that the instructions have been made with an aim so that not a single day of the students is wasted.

    It also mentioned that the Department of school Education is committed to provide quality Education in schools and to kick start the Academic session at the earliest all the preparations are already in place.(GNS)

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    ( With inputs from : roshankashmir.net )

  • Big Update : JKSSB Postponed all CBT starting from 16 March

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    JKSSB Postponed all CBT starting from 16 March

    Jammu and Kashmir Service Selection Board JKSSB Postponement of Computer Based Examinations.

    It is hereby notified that the Computer Based Examinations for various posts scheduled from 16th March, 2023 to 5th April, 2023 are hereby deferred till further intimation.

    Due to apparent controversy regarding hiring of a previously blacklisted\scompany for administering the recruitment exams and ongoing protests by the job aspirants, Jammu and Kashmir Services Selection Board

    (JKSSB) has postponed all computer-based written examinations (CBT) scheduled to start from March 16th.

     

     

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  • Biden says the U.S. and Ukraine are united. Cracks are starting to show.

    Biden says the U.S. and Ukraine are united. Cracks are starting to show.

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    Publicly, there has been little separation between Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, an alliance on full display last month when the American president made his covert, dramatic visit to Kyiv. But based on conversations with 10 officials, lawmakers and experts, new points of tension are emerging: The sabotage of a natural gas pipeline on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean; the brutal, draining defense of a strategically unimportant Ukrainian city; and a plan to fight for a region where Russian forces have been entrenched for nearly a decade.

    Senior administration officials maintain that unity between Washington and Kyiv is tight. But the fractures that have appeared are making it harder to credibly claim there’s little daylight between the U.S. and Ukraine as sunbeams streak through the cracks.

    For nine months, Russia has laid siege to Bakhmut, though capturing the southeastern Ukrainian city would do little to alter the trajectory of the war. It has become the focal point of the fight in recent weeks, with troops and prisoners from the mercenary Wagner Group leading the combat against Ukrainian forces. Both sides have suffered heavy losses and reduced the city to smoldering ruins.

    Ukraine has dug in, refusing to abandon the ruined city even at tremendous cost.

    “Each day of the city’s defense allows us to gain time to prepare reserves and prepare for future offensive operations,” said Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces. “At the same time, in the battles for this fortress, the enemy loses the most prepared and combat-capable part of his army — Wagner’s assault troops.”

    Multiple administration officials have begun worrying that Ukraine is expending so much manpower and ammunition in Bakhmut that it could sap their ability to mount a major counteroffensive in the spring.

    “I certainly don’t want to discount the tremendous work that the Ukrainians’ soldiers and leaders have put into defending Bakhmut — but I think it’s more of a symbolic value than it is a strategic and operational value,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

    Kyiv, for now, has ignored Washington’s input.

    Meanwhile, an assessment by U.S. intelligence suggested that a “pro-Ukraine group” was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last fall, shedding light on a great mystery. The new intelligence, first reported by The New York Times, was short on details but appeared to knock down a theory that Moscow was responsible for sabotaging the pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Europe.

    Intelligence analysts do not believe Zelenskyy or his aides were involved in the sabotage, but the Biden administration has signaled to Kyiv — much like it did when a car bomb in Moscow killed the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist last year — that certain acts of violence outside of Ukraine’s borders will not be tolerated.

    There has also been, at times, frustration about Washington’s delivery of weapons to Ukraine. The United States has, by far, sent the most weapons and equipment to the front, but Kyiv has always looked ahead for the next set of supplies. Though most in the administration have been understanding about Kyiv’s desperation to defend itself, there have been grumblings about the constant requests and, at times, Zelenskyy not showing appropriate gratitude, according to two White House officials not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

    “I do think the administration is split, the National Security Council split” on what weapons to send to Ukraine, said McCaul, who’s in constant touch with senior Biden officials. “I talk to a lot of top military brass and they are, in large part, supportive of giving them the ATACMS.”

    The administration hasn’t provided those long-range missiles because there are few to spare in America’s own arsenal. There’s also fear that Ukraine might strike faraway Russian targets, potentially escalating the war.

    A recent report that the Pentagon was blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence of possible Russian war crimes with the International Criminal Court also put another dent in the unity narrative. White House officials were dismayed when the New York Times story came out, fearful it would damage the moral case the U.S. has made for supporting Ukraine against Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    The administration definitively declared the alliance between the United States — and its allies — and Kyiv remained strong, and that it would last as long as the war raged.

    National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the White House is “in constant communication with Ukraine as we support their defense of their sovereignty and territorial integrity.” She added that with Putin showing no signs of ceasing his war, “the best thing we can do is to continue to help Ukraine succeed on the battlefield so they can be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table for when that time comes.”

    But the growing disconnects may foreshadow a larger divide over the debate as to how the war will end.

    Though Biden has pledged steadfast support, and the coffers remain open for now, the U.S. has been clear with Kyiv that it cannot fund Ukraine indefinitely at this level. Though backing Ukraine has largely been a bipartisan effort, a small but growing number of Republicans have begun to voice skepticism about the use of American treasure to support Kyiv without an end in sight to a distant war.

    Among those who have expressed doubt about support for the long haul is House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has said that the U.S. would not offer a “blank check” to Ukraine and rejected Zelenskyy’s invitation to travel to Kyiv and learn about the realities of war.

    “There is always some friction built in,” said Kurt Volker, a special presidential envoy for Ukraine during the Trump administration. “Zelenskyy also stepped in it a bit with McCarthy — coming across as needing to ‘educate’ him, rather than work with him.”

    But many observers credit remarkable transatlantic unity, praising the alliance holding firm despite the economic and political toll the war has taken.

    “I see the little fissures, but those have existed with points of disagreement and varied views between the U.S. and Ukraine even before the big February invasion, and since then,” said Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “Zelenskyy has made pointed remarks before toward the U.S., and the White House has expressed disagreement with him — publicly and privately — on specific aspects, but that hasn’t shifted or eaten away at the overall U.S. support and partnership.”

    Points of crisis still hover on the horizon. Zelenskyy’s insistence that all of Ukraine — including Crimea, which has been under Russian control since 2014 — be returned to Ukraine before any peace negotiations begin would only extend the war, U.S. officials believe. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has signaled to Kyiv that Ukraine’s potential recapture of Crimea would be a red line for Putin, possibly leading to a dramatic escalation from Moscow.

    Moreover, the Pentagon has consistently expressed doubts whether Ukraine’s forces — despite being armed with sophisticated Western weapons — would be able to dislodge Russia from Crimea, where it has been entrenched for nearly a decade.

    For now, Biden continued to stick to his refrain that the United States will leave all decisions about war and peace to Zelenskky. But whispers have begun across Washington as to how tenable that will be as the war grinds on — and another presidential election looms.

    “There has never been a war in history without setbacks and challenges,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), an Army veteran and HFAC member. “The question is not whether Ukrainians have setbacks, but how they respond and overcome them. Ukraine will overcome, defeat Russia and remain free.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • The GOP Is Starting to Plot Against Donald Trump

    The GOP Is Starting to Plot Against Donald Trump

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    It is also a conversation reminiscent of one many had before. Back in 2016, senior Republicans fretted that putting Trump on top of the ticket would spell certain doom. “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” later Trump acolyte Lindsey Graham notoriously tweeted. “And we will deserve it.” Those concerns proved to be unfounded, of course, as Trump prevailed over a split Republican field and then went on to defeat Hillary Clinton while Republicans held the House and Senate. But this time around, few Republicans think Trump can pull it off again, not after spending the last three years nursing his grievances over 2020, and especially not after his hand-picked candidates were walloped in the midterms.

    Back in 2020, the buzzword among Democrats was “electability,” as the need to defeat Trump came to outweigh any other concerns or considerations including those of ideology, vision, competence and style. And the winner of the “electability” primary, at least for donors and liberal pundits, was Joe Biden, which led to most of his competitors dropping out and endorsing him when he was still trailing in the delegate count to Bernie Sanders. Republicans are now hoping that a similar dynamic plays out on their side this year and that even Trump loyalists will understand the stakes. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

    “I don’t think it is fair to call Donald Trump a damaged candidate,” said Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser who has been calling on the party to move on from Trump since the 2020 election and the uprising at the Capitol. “He is a metastasizing cancer who if he is not stopped is going to destroy the party. Donald Trump is a loser. He is the first president since Hoover to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in a single term. Because of him Chuck Schumer is the Leader Schumer, and the progressive agenda is threatening to take over the country. And he is probably the only Republican in the country, if not the only person in the country, who can’t beat Joe Biden.”

    The big fear among donors like Levine and other party players is that, like in 2016, a number of challengers to Trump will jump into the primary and linger too long, splitting the field and allowing Trump to win. And some of these top Republicans are meeting with potential candidates and telling them that if they want to run, they should by all means do so — but that they should also be prepared to drop out well before voting begins in order to make sure that the GOP puts their best candidate forward against Biden.

    “I am worried about this, but experience is a good teacher, and there is no education in the second kick of a mule,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and longtime adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell. “My hope is that those exploring a race [for president] right now are asking themselves what is best for the party.”

    Bob Vander Plaats, the president of The Family Leader, a socially conservative advocacy group, is one of the most sought-after endorsers in the Iowa Caucus. He said that he is speaking with every potential candidate about the need to not overstay their welcome in the race.

    “I tell them that there is an open and fair playing field here in the state of Iowa, and that we will introduce you to our base, and we will give you all kinds of opportunities for you to introduce yourself. And if you have the call in your heart to run for president, I am the last person to tell you to not to.

    “But,” he also tells them. “Do not listen to your consultants, who have a vested interest in you staying in. I can help you decide if you should stay in or not.”

    “They all agree right away,” he added.

    Leading donors who have spoken with the top-non-Trump contenders like Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence say that all get it, that none of them are looking to play the spoiler and are aware of the dangers to the party, if not the country, of a Trump Redux. For evidence, these donors point to the potential candidate’s public statements and recent memoirs, in which all are critical of Trump in one way or another.

    “Does Mike Pence really want his legacy to be that he got four percent of the vote and helped elected Donald Trump?” asked one adviser to a major Republican giver. “Same goes for [Mike] Pompeo, same goes for [Nikki] Haley. They want to get traction, of course, but there is a higher motivation to pull out more quickly based on what it would mean for the country and the party.”

    Yet if the Haleys and Pompeos of the world end up running, they are doing so to win, and despite what they tell donors now, once they start getting a warm reception on the stump it can be hard to stop. “Everybody on every campaign says, ‘Why is it our responsibility to keep Donald Trump from winning?’” said GOP strategist Dave Carney. “You have some people that are just running to sell books, but most of the folks that are looking at this are doing so because they think there is a path for them to win.”

    Trump seems to recognize how the prospect of a crowded field would help him, keeping quiet even as some of his former closest aides consider their own campaigns, and training his fire instead on Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is leading him in some polls. Trump has been reluctant to take the bait as his former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, taunts her former boss by calling for a “new generation” of leadership. Trump is Trump, so he has hit back occasionally, but has also said publicly that Haley “should do it,” a sign that, as former chair of the South Carolina Republican Party Katon Dawson put it, “Trump has a solid 31 [percent]. And if it’s a big field a solid 31 can carry you to the nomination. The only way to defeat him is if some of these folks team up.”

    The question is how, and on this, even some of the Republican rich are at a loss on how to proceed. No more are there party bosses with the power to clear the field. The rise of online fundraising means that even the effect of the donor class can be limited. And while leaders of religious and grassroots groups hold sway, they have their own politics to think about, and can’t very well step much beyond where their members want to go.

    “I don’t even know who would be having these kinds of conversations,” said Jennings. “There is no convening authority. You just hope the candidates figure it out and we don’t come in to next January with another John Kasich running around dividing the field.”

    On the Democratic side, back in 2016, the party’s donors and senior leadership united well before the primaries behind Hillary Clinton only to see the folly of that approach when her weaknesses as a candidate revealed themselves as she struggled to fend off a challenge from Bernie Sanders.

    For Republicans, the likeliest beneficiary of any similar effort would be DeSantis, who is outpacing Trump in some head-to-head polls. DeSantis has advantages, not least among them the fact that he just raised over $200 million for his reelection bid, and that he has a knack for using his perch in the Florida statehouse to hammer Democrats over culture war issues. But he is untested on the national stage, and there are persistent whispers that he can be clumsy about the normal give-and-take of politics. Many party bigwigs say they would rather watch the process play out for at least a year before picking favorites, with the understanding that if candidates now polling in the single digits don’t see their prospects improve, they move to consolidate behind one Not Trump after the first couple of primaries. “The great hope for DeSantis is that he breaks through quickly, and that convinces everyone else there is no path,” said one former Trump adviser who now thinks the former president can’t win.

    One oddity of the current moment is that the weaker Trump seems, with federal and local investigations piling up and his campaign launch landing with a thud, the higher the chances that more possible candidates will launch their own bids, seeing a path to victory more likely. And the more candidates enter, the easier it becomes for Trump to win with an increasingly smaller share of the vote.

    There may be no convening authority, but there are conversations among donors and party activists who point to how on the other side of the aisle, in 2020, nearly the entire remaining Democratic field dropped out almost at the same time and endorsed Biden. Republicans fret that there is no equivalent of a Nancy Pelosi or a Jim Clyburn in their party who can apply pressure to the dreams of would-be presidents. Still, donors are talking now about pooling money together once the primary gets under way in earnest and a true Trump alternative emerges.

    “Donors have wised up,” said Liam Donovan, a GOP strategist. “That is the main control mechanism. There is not going to be oxygen for a lot of these guys, and there are not going to be resources.”

    There is already some movement along these lines.

    “I don’t see a big bunch of donors coming behind Trump at this point,” said Andy Sabin, a metal mogul who gave over $100,000 to Trump over the years and who opened his Hamptons estate for a Trump fundraiser in 2019. “I wouldn’t give Trump a fucking nickel, and that hasn’t changed. As we get closer Trump is going to see the handwriting on the wall. Now, he may not care if he fucks everybody up. Trump worries only about Trump, so he may not care if we lose as long as he has his day in the park, but I don’t know any donor that wants to give a red nickel to Trump.”

    Sabin isn’t alone. Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone who donated $3.7 million to Trump and Trump affiliated groups over the last several years, said after the midterms that “It is time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders, and I intend to support one of them in the presidential primaries.” Ken Griffin, the CEO of Citadel who gave $60 million to Republican candidates and campaigns in the 2022 cycle, also said after the midterms that “I’d like to think that the Republican Party is ready to move on from somebody who has been for this party a three-time loser,” and announced his support for DeSantis.

    These public clarion calls, donors and party leaders say, are all part of a larger strategy to raise an alarm on Trump’s weaknesses; they hope that GOP primary voters start prioritizing electability like their Democratic counterparts did four years ago. Republicans tend to get enthralled with several candidates throughout the course of a presidential primary. The hope this year, senior strategists said, is that voters’ minds stay focused on who can best beat Biden, so that even if DeSantis — or whomever the frontrunner of the moment is — stumbles, attention and affection coalesces around the next Non-Trump in the field.

    There is a concerted effort afoot to reach out even to some of Trump’s most loyal voters. Evangelical leaders have said they are reminding their voters about comments Trump made after the midterms in which he seemed to blame evangelicals for the disappointing results and accused them of “disloyalty” for not already lining up behind his ’24 effort. Plus, they say, even the evangelical movement needs to start thinking long term, and Trump would come into office an immediate lame duck.

    “Trump can only offer four more years,” said Dave Wilson, the president of the Palmetto Family Council, an influential evangelical group in South Carolina. “How are we going to build a movement that goes beyond the next four years to the next eight years to the next twenty years, that parallels what we have seen over on the progressive side?”

    For many party leaders however, such sentiments are just a hope. There is as of now no real effort to consolidate the field, no real plan among the donor class to pull their billions behind a single non-Trump candidate. There is a belief that somehow the Republican collective consciousness has learned from 2016 and that candidates, donors and party leaders will move in concert behind the right person once the process starts to play out.

    “Republicans are very motivated to defeat Joe Biden,” said Tom Rath, a longtime Republican hand in New Hampshire. “The Trump people aren’t at the table for them, but there are already discussions happening about what we do. If we get in a situation where Trump is winning primaries with 40 percent of the vote and losing badly to Biden, I think you are going to see those discussion begin to accelerate, to say the least. We just hope it’s not too late by then.”

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    #GOP #Starting #Plot #Donald #Trump
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Starting with pay parity, Binny-led BCCI sets gold standards

    Starting with pay parity, Binny-led BCCI sets gold standards

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    New Delhi: Under BCCI President Roger Binny’s leadership, Indian cricket has seen big developments since the newly-elected office-bearers took over in October 2022.

    Pay parity for international cricketers was initiated, which means the match fees for women’s players are now at par with their male counterparts across formats.

    Recently, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) led the way for the formation and selling of franchises as well as media rights for the upcoming Women’s Premier League, to be held in March 2023. It has made the five-team WPL the second-most valuable women’s sports league in the world, behind only the 12-team Women’s NBA in the US.

    There was also the adoption and upgradation of a new digital interface, which would help the state associations approve and recommend to the BCCI release of fees to players digitally.

    Also, an inaugural U-15 girls one-day tournament has been started from this season to unearth more hidden talent and nurture them to rise through the ranks in women’s cricket. The present structure of the BCCI does give an indication that the future looks bright for the sport in the country.

    The BCCI also runs all the state cricket associations in the country.

    The state associations, in turn, select their representatives who in turn elect the BCCI President — currently Binny, the 1983 World Cup-winning all-rounder.

    The other key post-holders are Jay Shah, Secretary; Rajeev Shukla, Vice-President; Devajit Saikia, Joint Secretary; and Ashish Shelar, Treasurer.

    In 2013, when the Indian Premier League (IPL) was mired in spot-fixing allegations, the Supreme Court had intervened and put in place the Committee of Administrators (CoA), which would run day-to-day affairs of the BCCI and implement the recommendations of the Justice R.M. Lodha panel.

    The CoA was led by ex-CAG Vinod Rai, along with former India women’s cricketer Diana Edulji as one of the members in the four-member panel, which would eventually become three.

    It ran for 33 months before an elected panel of office-bearers with former India captain with Sourav Ganguly as President took over.

    The term of every BCCI office-bearer is three years and no person can be an office-bearer for more than three terms in all.

    An office-bearer who has held any post for two consecutive terms either in the state or in BCCI is not eligible to contest elections after completing a three-year cooling off period, which came in via Lodha Committee Recommendations.

    The President has powers to preside in all meetings of the General Body and the Apex Council. He is also one of the three persons to sign audited annual accounts and other financial statements made by the BCCI. In his absence, all these functions are carried out by the Vice-President.

    The Secretary is in charge of keeping minutes of the AGM, SGM, Apex Council and other committee meetings. He is also in charge of maintaining the records, convening all meetings and circulating the statements made by the treasurer.

    The Joint Secretary has to assist the Secretary in all matters related to functioning of the BCCI.

    The Treasurer has to keep account of all subscriptions and donations received and expended by the BCCI and prepare statements of all accounts. He is also in charge of placing annual balance sheets, statements of accounts by the BCCI and the annual budget too, apart from coordinating with the CEO/Treasurer to see if the funds sent to the members are being fully utilised.

    In December 1928, the BCCI was formed. R.E. Grant Govan, a New Delhi-based British industrialist, was elected as its first President and Anthony de Mello as Secretary. Presently, BCCI is an autonomous body and does not receive any grants or fundings from the Centre.

    As per the BCCI constitution, all powers of governance, management and decision making “shall vest” in the General Body, which shall also have the power “to collect funds and wherever necessary borrow, with or without security, for purposes of the BCCI and to raise loans with or without security and to purchase, redeem or pay off any such activity”.

    The General Body also has the powers to frame, alter, amend or add to Laws of Cricket in India wherever desirable or necessary, direct and control the governing council; lend oversight and assistance to organising IPL and ensure that interests of players as well as franchises are protected.

    Many politicians from multiple political parties have held different positions in the BCCI. But after Lodha Committee’s pathbreaking guidelines, which barred an incumbent minister or Member of Parliament from holding office in the BCCI or in the state associations, politicians found an alternate way to bypass it, by placing their sons, brothers on the posts.

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    #Starting #pay #parity #Binnyled #BCCI #sets #gold #standards

    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )