Millions join EU vote finale as far right eyes gains

Voting began across Europe on June 9, 2024 on the final — and biggest — day of marathon EU elections, with balloting due in 21 countries, including France and Germany, where support for surging far-right parties is being tested. (AFP)
Voting began across Europe on June 9, 2024 on the final — and biggest — day of marathon EU elections, with balloting due in 21 countries, including France and Germany, where support for surging far-right parties is being tested. (AFP)
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Updated 09 June 2024
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Millions join EU vote finale as far right eyes gains

Millions join EU vote finale as far right eyes gains
  • Twenty-one of the bloc’s 27 countries, including heavy hitters France and Germany, were voting

BRUSSELS: Tens of millions of voters from Vilnius to Madrid were casting ballots Sunday on the final day of elections for the EU’s parliament, with far-right parties eyeing gains at a pivotal time for the bloc.
Twenty-one of the bloc’s 27 countries, including heavy hitters France and Germany, were voting on the election’s biggest day to help shape the European Union’s direction over the next five years.
“In the current world situation, where everyone is trying to isolate each other, it’s important to keep standing up for peace and democracy,” said one voter in Berlin, Tanja Reith, 52.
The election comes as the continent is confronted with Russia’s war in Ukraine, global trade tensions marked by US-China rivalry, a climate emergency and a West that may soon have to adapt to a new Donald Trump presidency.
“Right now we are living in a scenario of uncertainty,” Jaime Bajo, a sports center operator, said as he cast his vote in Madrid.
“I can understand that people feel fear and vote with a hard mindset,” said the 40-year-old, who predicted a “rise of extremist forces” in Europe.
More than 360 million people were eligible to vote in the four-day election, although turnout in EU polls is historically low.
The bloc’s next parliament will help decide who runs the powerful European Commission, with German conservative Ursula von der Leyen — who cast her vote in her home country — vying for a second term.
While centrist parties are predicted to keep most of the legislature’s 720 seats, polls suggest they will be weakened by a stronger far right pushing the bloc toward ultraconservatism.
Preliminary results are expected late Sunday.
European voters, hammered by a high cost of living and some fearing immigrants to be the source of social ills, are increasingly persuaded by populist messaging.
France will be the EU’s high-profile battleground for competing ideologies.
With voting intentions above 30 percent, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) is predicted to handily beat President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal Renaissance party, polling around half that.
A smiling Le Pen voted in her northern French town of Henin-Beaumont, pausing to wave and accept flowers from supporters but making no comment to media.
In the French city of Lyon, 83-year-old voter Albert Coulaudon said Macron was getting “mixed up” in too many international issues such as the war in Ukraine.
“That scares me,” he told AFP.
But in southern Toulouse, Martine Dorian, 76, said: “If tomorrow Europe disappears, there will be no France left either.”
In Germany, the election could also deal a blow to Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who voted accompanied by his wife and stopped to pose for a picture with a young couple and a baby.
Leading the polls in Europe’s biggest economy are the opposition center-right Christian Democrats, with a projected 30 percent of votes.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), on 14 percent, was seen either neck-and-neck or ahead of all three parties in Scholz’s ruling coalition: the SPD, the Greens and the liberal FDP.
In Italy, holding its second day of voting, the far-right ruling Brothers of Italy party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was expected to come out on top.
Meloni is being courted both by von der Leyen — who needs her backing for a second mandate — as well as Le Pen and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who are eyeing the formation of a far-right parliament supergroup.
Unlike Le Pen, however, Meloni aligns with the EU consensus on maintaining military and financial assistance to Ukraine.
In EU countries closest to Russia, the spectre of Russia’s threat loomed large.
“I want security, especially for the Baltic states. And greater support for Ukraine to end the war,” said Ieva Sterlinge, a 34-year-old doctor.
Likewise in Romania’s capital Bucharest, psychologist Teodora Maia said she cast her vote “on “the theme of war, which worries us all, and ecology.”
In Paty, a village outside Budapest, Hungarian voter Ferenc Hamori struck a different tone.
The 54-year-old said he wanted more EU leaders like Orban, who maintains close relations with President Vladimir Putin — even though he expected Orban to remain “outnumbered in Brussels.”
Outside his polling station, Orban framed the vote as a “pro-peace or pro-war election.”
The Hungarian leader — whose government takes on the rotating EU presidency from July — has stoked fears of the Ukraine war expanding to one between the West and Russia, blaming Brussels and NATO.
But there has been some backlash at home, where Orban faces a challenge from former government insider Peter Magyar, who staged mass rallies in the vote run-up.
Polling data compiled by Politico suggest the center-right EPP will win 173 seats in the legislature, with the center-left Socialists and Democrats on 143 and the centrist Renew Europe on 75.
The main far-right grouping, the European Conservatives and Reformists, in which Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party sits, was projected to win 76 seats.
The smaller Identity and Democracy grouping that includes Le Pen’s RN was predicted to get 67.


Trump completes swing state sweep by taking Arizona

Trump completes swing state sweep by taking Arizona
Updated 4 sec ago
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Trump completes swing state sweep by taking Arizona

Trump completes swing state sweep by taking Arizona
  • CNN and NBC projected Donald Trump had obtained Arizona’s 11 electoral votes
  • Scale and strength of Trump’s comeback sent shockwaves through the defeated Democratic Party
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump won the state of Arizona in this week’s US presidential election, US TV networks projected on Saturday, completing the Republican’s sweep of all seven swing states.
After four days of counting in the southwest state with a large Hispanic population, CNN and NBC projected Trump had obtained its 11 electoral votes as he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris.
Outgoing President Joe Biden scored a narrow but crucial victory in Arizona in 2020 that condemned Trump to defeat after his first term in office.
The scale and strength of Trump’s comeback, which also saw the real estate tycoon win the popular vote by a margin of around four million votes, has sent shockwaves through the defeated Democratic Party.
The Republicans have already regained control of the Senate and look well set to retain a majority in the House of Representatives thanks to support from white working class voters and a large share of Hispanics.
CNN has called Republican victories for 213 seats in the House, with 218 needed for a majority in the lower chamber.
The networks’ figures show Democrats on 205 seats, although senior party figures are still hoping they can pull off a slim victory that would significantly curtail Trump’s powers.
NBC sees the Republicans with 212 seats so far, and 204 for the Democrats.
The other six swing states won by Trump in the presidential race are Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Georgia.
The latest good news for Trump came as the White House said Biden would meet with the president-elect at the White House on Wednesday.
Trump — who never conceded his 2020 loss — sealed a remarkable comeback to the presidency in the November 5 vote, cementing what is set to be more than a decade of US politics dominated by his hard-line right-wing stance.
This type of meeting between the outgoing and incoming presidents was considered customary, but Trump did not invite Biden for one after making unsubstantiated election fraud claims that culminated in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Trump also broke with precedent by skipping Biden’s inauguration, but the White House has said the Democratic president will attend the upcoming ceremony.
Biden’s meeting with Trump will take place in the Oval Office, the White House said Saturday, with the clock ticking down to the ex-president’s return to power.
Trump, the 78-year-old ex-reality TV star, won wider margins than before, despite a criminal conviction, two impeachments while in office and warnings from his former chief of staff that he is a fascist.
Exit polls showed that voters’ top concerns remained the economy and inflation that spiked under Biden in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ukraine commander says challenges increase in war with Russia

Ukraine commander says challenges increase in war with Russia
Updated 5 min 23 sec ago
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Ukraine commander says challenges increase in war with Russia

Ukraine commander says challenges increase in war with Russia
  • Russian advances focus on two cities in Donetsk region
  • North Korean troops prepare to join Russia’s campaign

KYIV: Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Saturday that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign.
Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than 2-1/2-year-old war with Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a nightly address that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north.
He decried strikes on civilian targets and urged European countries to provide more air defense systems.
Syrskyi, writing on Facebook, said he told General Christopher Cavoli, who heads the US European Command: “The situation remains challenging and shows signs of escalation.
“The enemy, leveraging its numerical advantage, is continuing offensive actions and is focusing its main efforts on the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove directions,” Syrskyi said.
Russian forces, intent on capturing Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, have been regularly capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk.
Ukraine’s general staff, in a late evening report on Saturday, said 40 armed clashes had occurred around villages near Kurakhove.
Both Ukrainian and Russian military bloggers on Friday said Russian forces sought to encircle the city.
The United States, Western European countries and Ukraine say that North Korea, which entered a mutual defense pact with Russia in June, has sent troops to its ally.
“We have numerous reports of North Korean soldiers preparing to participate in combat operations alongside Russian Forces,” Syrskyi said.
Zelensky has said 11,000 North Korean soldiers have arrived in Russia, specifically in the southern Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces staged a large incursion in August.
Both Zelensky and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said this week that North Korean soldiers had already been involved in combat there.
The United States has been by far the biggest contributor of aid and arms to Ukraine, though Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election has raised questions about future policy.
Zelensky was among the first leaders to congratulate Trump after his victory on Tuesday. The Ukrainian president described his telephone conversation with Trump as “wonderful” and said contacts would continue.


Frustrated Americans await the economic changes they voted for with Trump

Frustrated Americans await the economic changes they voted for with Trump
Updated 10 November 2024
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Frustrated Americans await the economic changes they voted for with Trump

Frustrated Americans await the economic changes they voted for with Trump
  • In returning Trump to power, tens of millions of Americans expressed their confidence that he can restore the low prices and economic stability they recall from his first term
  • Inflation has since plummeted and is nearly back to normal. Yet Americans are frustrated over still-high prices

WASHINGTON: Fed up with high prices and unimpressed with an economy that by just about any measure is a healthy one, Americans demanded change when they voted for president.
They could get it.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to topple many of the Biden administration’s economic policies. Trump campaigned on promises to impose huge tariffs on foreign goods, slash taxes on individuals and businesses and deport millions of undocumented immigrants working in the United States.
With their votes, tens of millions of Americans expressed their confidence that Trump can restore the low prices and economic stability they recall from his first term — at least until the COVID-19 recession of 2020 paralyzed the economy and then a powerful recovery sent inflation soaring. Inflation has since plummeted and is nearly back to normal. Yet Americans are frustrated over still-high prices.
“His track record proved to be, on balance, positive, and people look back now and think: ‘Oh, OK. Let’s try that again,’ ” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former White House economic adviser, director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the conservative American Action Forum think tank.
Since Election Day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has skyrocketed more than 1,700 points, largely on expectations that tax cuts and a broad loosening of regulations will accelerate economic growth and swell corporate profits.
Maybe they will. Yet many economists warn that Trump’s plans are likely to worsen the inflation he’s vowed to eradicate, drive up the federal debt and eventually slow growth.
Trump policies could boost inflation
The Peterson Institute for International Economics, a leading think tank, has estimated that Trump’s policies would slash the US gross domestic product — the total output of goods and services — by between $1.5 trillion and $6.4 trillion through 2028. Peterson also estimated that Trump’s proposals would drive prices sharply higher within two years: Inflation, which would otherwise come in at 1.9 percent in 2026, would instead jump to between 6 percent and 9.3 percent if Trump’s policies were enacted in full.
Last month, 23 Nobel-winning economists signed a letter warning that a Trump administration “will lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.”
“Among the most important determinants of economic success,” they wrote, “are the rule of law and economic and political certainty, and Trump threatens all of these.’’
Trump is inheriting an economy that, despite frustratingly high prices, looks fundamentally strong. Growth came in at a healthy 2.8 percent annual rate from July through September. Unemployment is 4.1 percent — quite low by historic standards.
Among wealthy countries, only Spain will experience faster growth this year, according to the International Monetary Fund’s forecast. The United States is the economic “envy of the world,” the Economist magazine recently declared.
The Federal Reserve is so confident that US inflation is slowing toward its 2 percent target that it cut its benchmark rate in September and again this week.
Americans are deeply unhappy with prices
Consumers, though, still bear the scars of the inflationary surge. Prices on average are still 19 percent higher than they were before inflation began to accelerate in 2021. Grocery bills and rent hikes are still causing hardships, especially for lower-income households. Though inflation-adjusted hourly wages have risen for more than two years, they’re still below where they were before President Joe Biden took office.
Voters took their frustration to the polls. According to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide, 3 in 10 voters said their family was “falling behind’’ financially, up from 2 in 10 in 2020. About 9 in 10 voters were at least somewhat worried about the cost of groceries, 8 in 10 about the cost of health care, housing or gasoline.
“I don’t think it’s either deep or complicated,’’ Holtz-Eakin said. “The real problem is the Biden-Harris team made people worse off, and they were very angry about it, and we saw the result.’’
The irony is that mainstream economists fear Trump’s remedies will make price levels worse, not better.
Tariffs are a tax on consumers
The centerpiece of Trump’s economic agenda is taxing imports. It’s an approach that he asserts will shrink America’s trade deficits and force other countries to grant concessions to the United States. In his first term, he increased tariffs on Chinese goods, and he’s now promised much more of the same: Trump wants to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to 60 percent and impose a “universal’’ tax of 10 percent or 20 percent on all other imports.
Trump insists that other countries pay tariffs. In fact, American companies pay them — and then typically pass along their higher costs to their customers via higher prices. Which is why taxing imports is normally inflationary. Worse, other countries usually retaliate with tariffs on American goods, thereby hurting US exporters.
Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely of the Peterson Institute have calculated that Trump’s proposed 60 percent tax on Chinese imports and his high-end 20 percent tariff on everything else would impose an after-tax loss on a typical American household of $2,600 annually.
The economic damage would likely spread globally. Researchers at Capital Economics have calculated that a 10 percent US tariff would hurt Mexico hardest. Germany and China would also suffer. All of that depends, of course, on whether he actually does what he said during the campaign.
Deportations would rattle the US job market
Trump has threatened to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, potentially undermining one of the factors that allowed the United States to tame inflation without falling into recession.
The Congressional Budget Office reported that net immigration — arrivals minus departures — reached 3.3 million in 2023. Employers needed the new arrivals. After the economy rebounded from the pandemic recession, companies struggled to hire enough workers, especially because so many native-born baby boomers were retiring.
Immigrants filled the gap. Over the past four years, 73 percent of those who entered the labor force were foreign born.
Economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project found that by raising the supply of workers, the influx of immigrants allowed the United States to generate jobs without overheating and accelerating inflation.
The Peterson Institute calculates that the deportation of all 8.3 million immigrants believed to be working illegally in the United States would slash US GDP by $5.1 trillion and raise inflation by 9.1 percentage points by 2028
Big tax cuts could swell the federal deficit
Trump has proposed extending 2017 tax cuts for individuals that were set to expire after 2025 and restoring tax breaks for businesses that were being reduced. He’s also called for ending taxes on Social Security benefits, overtime pay and tips as well as further reducing the corporate income tax rate for US manufacturers.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates that Trump’s tax policies would i ncrease budget deficits by $5.8 trillion over 10 years. Even if the tax cuts generated enough growth to recoup some of the lost tax revenue, Penn Wharton calculated, deficits would still increase by more than $4.1 trillion from 2025 through 2034.
The federal budget is already out of balance. An aging population has required increased spending on Social Security and Medicare. And past tax cuts have shrunk government revenue.
Holtz-Eakin said he worries that Trump has little appetite for taking the steps — cuts to Social Security and Medicare, tax increases or some combination — needed to bring the federal budget meaningfully closer to balance.
“It’s not going to happen,” Holtz-Eakin said.


Biden, Trump to meet at White House ahead of historic return

Biden, Trump to meet at White House ahead of historic return
Updated 10 November 2024
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Biden, Trump to meet at White House ahead of historic return

Biden, Trump to meet at White House ahead of historic return
  • Biden had promised an orderly transfer of power back to the Republican he beat in elections just four years ago
  • When Biden beat Trump in the 2020 election, the Republican refused to concede defeat, claming falsely that he was cheated

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden will meet with President-elect Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday after the US leader pledged an orderly transfer of power back to the Republican he beat in elections just four years ago.
Trump — who never conceded his 2020 loss — sealed a remarkable comeback to the presidency in the November 5 vote, cementing what is set to be more than a decade of US politics dominated by his hard-line right-wing stance.
This type of meeting between the outgoing and incoming presidents was considered customary, but Trump did not invite Biden for one after making unsubstantiated election fraud claims that culminated in the January 6 Capitol riot.
Trump also broke with precedent by skipping Biden’s January 20, 2021 inauguration, but the White House has said the president will attend the ceremony.
The Democrat’s meeting with Trump will take place in the Oval Office, the White House said Saturday, with the clock ticking down to the ex-president’s return to power.
Biden in January will join the tiny club of US presidents to return power to their White House predecessor — with the one previous instance coming when president Benjamin Harrison handed back to Grover Cleveland in the 19th century.
The 78-year-old ex-reality TV star won wider margins than before, despite a criminal conviction, two impeachments while in office and warnings from his former chief of staff that he is a “fascist.”
Exit polls showed that voters’ top concerns remained the economy and inflation that spiked under Biden in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
Biden, who dropped out of the race in July over concerns about his ability to continue at the age of 81, called Trump on Wednesday to congratulate him after his election win.

Democrats have been pointing fingers over who is to blame for Harris’s decisive loss, with Biden himself coming in for much of the blame.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told The New York Times that “had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race.”
“Because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different,” added Pelosi, who is reported to have played a key role in persuading Biden to step aside.
As the Democrats weigh what went wrong, Trump has begun to assemble his second administration by naming campaign manager Susie Wiles to serve as his White House chief of staff.
She is the first woman to be named to the high-profile role and the Republican’s first appointment to his incoming administration.
The other frontrunners for a place in the Trump 2.0 administration reflect the significant changes it is likely to implement.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading figure in the anti-vaccine movement for whom Trump has pledged a “big role” in health care, told NBC News on Wednesday that “I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines.”
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, could also be in line for a job auditing government waste after the right-wing SpaceX, Tesla and X boss enthusiastically backed Trump.
Trump is expected to axe many of Biden’s signature policies. He returns to the White House as a climate change denier, poised to take apart Biden’s green policies with his pledge to “drill, baby, drill” for oil.
The president-elect announced Saturday that his inaugural committee will be led by close Trump associate Steve Witkoff and ex-senator Kelly Loeffler.
 


Lithuania’s defense minister proposes ways for smoother relations between Europe and Trump

Lithuania’s defense minister proposes ways for smoother relations between Europe and Trump
Updated 10 November 2024
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Lithuania’s defense minister proposes ways for smoother relations between Europe and Trump

Lithuania’s defense minister proposes ways for smoother relations between Europe and Trump
  • Trump has repeatedly taken issue with US aid to Ukraine, made vague vows to end the war and has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin

PRAGUE: European nations should not repeat the mistake of creating a barrier between them and President-elect Donald Trump but instead cooperate on issues of common interest, Lithuania’s defense minister said Saturday.
Assuming that Trump will again apply what Laurynas Kasčiūnas called “his contract approach to our relations,” Kasčiūnas outlined areas where Europe and the new president could join forces: more investment in defense, European acquisition of American weapons and cooperation on containing China and Iran.
“What we did a little bit wrong last time when he was elected (by defeating) Hillary Clinton, and it was unexpected, we built against him a moral wall,” Kasčiūnas told The Associated Press.
“I think it was not a correct way,” Kasčiūnas said. He was speaking on the sidelines of a three-day gathering in Prague focusing on European and transatlantic military capabilities.
During his first 2017-2021 term, Trump pushed NATO’s European members to spend more on defense, up to and beyond 2 percent of gross domestic product, and to be less reliant on US military cover.
That’s what the allies have been doing. A total of 23 members are expected to meet the 2 percent target his year, compared to just three 10 years ago, according to NATO. Lithuania has already surpassed 2.5 percent with a goal of reaching 4 percent, which would be more than the United States.
Europe’s defense industry managed to increase output of some products after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 but European countries also donated their own weapons to Ukraine, and “remain dependent on the US for some important aspects of their military capability,” a report published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies at the Prague event said.
Lithuania, which borders Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave to the west and Belarus to the east, remains the largest buyer of US arms among the three Baltic states.
The minister, whose country was in a spat with China over Taiwan, also spoke in favor of European Union sanctions on Iran.
However, Russia’s war against Ukraine has been divisive.
Trump has repeatedly taken issue with US aid to Ukraine, made vague vows to end the war and has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kasčiūnas insisted that Europe’s military aid to Ukraine has to continue and Russia should not dictate the conditions for peace while a limited ceasefire would not make sense because it would only help Russian troops recover from losses and strike again.
“We need a just peace, credible peace,” he said.
During his election campaign, Trump also threatened actions that could have groundbreaking consequences for nations across Europe, from a trade war with the EU to a withdrawal of NATO commitments.