F--- you, Kemp!

Trump uses Georgia rally to pressure GOP on Electoral College challenge

The president held the event to help Republicans keep control of the Senate, but he mostly aired his own grievances.

By ANDREW DESIDERIO and MATTHEW CHOI

President Donald Trump came to Georgia on Monday to campaign for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in an attempt to help Republicans retain control of the Senate. But he very quickly revealed another motivation for traveling to this ultra-conservative enclave.

“Hello, Georgia. By the way, there is no way we lost Georgia. There’s no way,” Trump said immediately after taking the stage. “That was a rigged election. But we are still fighting it.”

Indeed, Trump ostensibly visited the state to campaign for the incumbents and, in turn, help the GOP hang on to its only lever of power in the forthcoming Biden era. But at one point, the president seemed to acknowledge the real reason he came to conservative northwest Georgia on Monday night: to pressure other Republicans into supporting his long-shot bid to reverse his November loss, and to assert his post-presidency political power and his long-term influence over the Republican Party.

“People will remember the people who don’t support us,” Trump said of Wednesday’s joint session of Congress, when lawmakers will vote to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College votes.

Speaking at a rally here, Trump berated members of his party who have refused to support his attempt to overturn Biden’s win in November, and continued to promote falsehoods that the election was stolen from him — spending relatively little time talking up the incumbent senators whose runoff elections will take place on Tuesday.

He vowed to campaign against Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2022 because they certified Biden’s win in the state, and he praised Republicans who plan to challenge the Electoral College results in Congress this week.

And while he fit in praise for Loeffler and Perdue, Trump spent most of his time angrily claiming the Nov. 3 election was fraudulent — and firing a warning shot at Republican lawmakers ahead of Wednesday’s vote certification on Capitol Hill.

“We’ve had a lot of corrupt things happen,” the president said. “One thing that I’ve learned about Republicans, they have some difficulties. But you know a difficulty that they don’t have? They never forget. They never forget. And people are going to find that out.”

The crowd that attended the rally, which took place on the tarmac of the municipal airport here, was the most energized when Trump discussed his election challenges and mused about supporting a primary challenger against the governor. At one point, a group of supporters chanted, “F--- you, Kemp!”

Many of Trump’s teleprompter lines were about Loeffler and Perdue, two of his biggest supporters in Congress. But when he went off-the-cuff, it was mostly about his bid to thwart the election outcome.

“I don’t do rallies for other people,” the president later said. “I do them for me.”

It was his second campaign rally since Biden was declared the winner of the election.

“This could be the most important vote you will ever cast for the rest of your life,” Trump said. “It really could be. This is so important.”

He repeatedly attacked Kemp and Raffensperger — fellow Republicans who Trump campaigned for in 2018 and who he has frequently antagonized for rebuffing his efforts to contest the election. The rally came just days after Trump called Raffensperger to push him to “find” additional votes that could tip the state in his favor. The phone call, a recording of which was leaked on Sunday, shocked officials in Washington and Atlanta alike, even leading to talk of criminal investigations.

Trump said Kemp and Raffensperger were “terrified” of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic former Georgia lawmaker who ran for governor against Kemp in 2018. His promise to return to the state to campaign against them solidified the complete 180-degree turn from his support only two years prior. It also put on display his feeling of betrayal by those he thought would stay loyal to him through his election challenge.

Trump also expressed his disappointment in the Supreme Court for refusing to hear a long-shot lawsuit to challenge the election results in a number of key states — particularly since his numerous federal court appointments, including three Supreme Court justices, were a major talking point throughout his reelection campaign.

While introducing Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to the rally stage on Monday, Trump said he was “a little angry” at the senator, who recognized Biden’s electoral win last month.

“I just want Mike Lee to listen to what we’re talking about, because you know what, we need his vote,” Trump said.

Trump even warned Vice President Mike Pence that he’d better “come through for us” when he presides over Congress’ certification of the Electoral College votes on Wednesday.

“Of course, if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him so much,” said Trump, who then tried to soften the remark as a jest.

Trump’s rally was a contrast from a Biden campaign event in the state earlier Monday, in which the Democratic president-elect emphasized the policy priorities at stake in the runoffs. There, Biden tied victories by Democratic candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to pushing through Covid relief legislation, including $2,000 stimulus checks.

But in his praise for Loeffler and Perdue, Trump focused instead on their loyalty. He also lauded other Republicans loyal to his cause, including Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, who have also said they would contest the Electoral College results in Congress.

During Loeffler’s brief appearance on the rally stage, she emphasized that her loyalty to the president was not in question. She announced during the rally that she would join some of her Republican peers in contesting the Electoral College vote on Wednesday, eliciting loud cheers from the audience.

“This president fought for us. We are fighting for him. He put America first,” Loeffler said. “Georgia, we are the firewall to socialism.”

Georgia's runoffs

Senate in the balance: How Georgia's runoffs break down

Democrats are well-positioned, according to early voting data and sparse polling, but Republicans could win with strong Election Day turnout.

By STEVEN SHEPARD

The most tightly divided state in the nation will decide on Tuesday which party controls the Senate — and in true 2020 fashion, we might not know who won on election night.

All signs point to a photo finish in Georgia’s twin Senate runoffs, two months after President-elect Joe Biden carried the state by two-tenths of a percentage point. The limited polling slightly favors Democrats, but most surveys are well inside the margin of error. The early vote has favored Democrats too, but November’s elections demonstrated how strong GOP voting on Election Day can quickly match or erase those advantages.

If Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win both Georgia races — the regular election for a six-year term and a special election for two years in the Senate — they will achieve a 50-50 tie in the chamber and flip the majority once Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is sworn in for her tiebreaking role.

In another sign of the bizarre and unusual in these campaigns, one of the Republican incumbents, David Perdue, actually saw his first Senate term expire on Sunday before voters decide whether to extend his tour in Washington in this overtime race. Appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler is the other Republican on the ballot, with the GOP needing one win to maintain control of the Senate.

After more than 3 million early votes, a half-billion dollars in non-stop television ads and 11th-hour visits from both the outgoing and incoming presidents, here’s where the dramatic last act of the 2020 election stands.

The polling

Most of the prominent national polling firms are sitting out the Georgia runoffs, which are coming two months after an election in which the polls again underestimated Trump and Republicans down the ballot.

FiveThirtyEight has collected 27 polls of the runoffs, which average out to show leads of about 2 points each for both Democratic candidates, Ossoff and Warnock.

But greater skepticism should apply, and not just because the polling industry as a whole had trouble in November. Most of the surveys that have been published in Georgia come from pollsters that have less-established track records. Only four of the 27 polls were conducted by firms FiveThirtyEight gives a “B” grade or better.

Who’s already voted

Georgia doesn’t have partisan voter registration, so it’s not clear which party has a turnout advantage going into Tuesday. But most signs point to a stronger Democratic performance in early voting, and a weaker Republican showing: Turnout among Black voters is up slightly. By percentage of general election turnout, the top five congressional districts for early votes are all held by Democrats.

That’s particularly important because most operatives involved in Georgia believe that roughly three-quarters of the total ballots in the race have already been cast. The early turnout of more than 3 million people — a combination of voters who showed up in person for early voting, along with mail ballots that have already arrived and been processed — is already a record for a Georgia runoff election, even before counting Tuesday’s Election Day turnout.

Republicans have always been counting on stronger Election Day turnout, particularly after Trump’s unfounded attacks against Georgia’s election systems — particularly absentee voting —accelerated since he lost Georgia to Biden.

Total turnout in November was roughly 5 million voters, but most strategists expect about 4 million voters will take part in the runoffs — meaning about 1 million votes are left to be cast on Tuesday. Republicans likely need to win them by a significant margin.

Five places to watch — especially where down-ballot Democrats lagged Biden in November

Metro Atlanta: Atlanta has long been a Democratic city, but its suburbs have now shifted to make the region a Democratic bastion.

The counties around Atlanta’s Fulton County have swung sharply away from Republicans in recent years. Of the 10 counties that constitute immediate Metro Atlanta, Mitt Romney won half of them in 2012. Trump carried only two in November 2020.

Despite this movement toward Democrats in the presidential race, Ossoff lagged behind Biden here. Biden ran 3 points better than Ossoff in Fulton County, 2 points better in Cobb County, 2 points in Gwinnett County and 2 points in DeKalb County. In order to win on Tuesday, Ossoff and Warnock need Biden-like margins in Metro Atlanta.

The election will show how much Republican DNA these suburban Atlanta counties still have: If Perdue and Loeffler can outrun Trump the way Perdue did in November, it would be a major boost to the Republicans’ chances.

Columbus: Georgia’s third-largest city, situated alongside the Chattahoochee River and bordering Alabama, hasn’t received a lot of attention in previous statewide races.

That’s changed in the runoffs, with both parties descending on the area, seeking even the slimmest edge in close contests. Biden won 61 percent of the vote in Columbus, and Ossoff captured 60 percent. But Republicans hope they can make inroads in the rural counties outside Columbus.

The “Black Belt”: Running along the state’s midsection from Augusta to the east and Columbus to the west, a collection of rural counties with majority or near-majority Black populations could be decisive in the Senate races.

Trump ran a little better than past Republicans here — buoyed by rural whites and slight increases among Black voters — as did Perdue. Watch Baldwin County (42 percent Black), home to Milledgeville: Biden won it by only a single point, and Perdue carried it by about half a point. Back in 2012, Barack Obama won Baldwin County by 6 points.

Northwest Georgia: Trump’s election-eve rally on Monday night was in Dalton, in the state’s northwest corner near the Tennessee border.

That was no coincidence: Dalton is Trump Country, but Republicans must get a big Election Day turnout there to reach the statewide benchmarks they need.

In November, Trump won 70 percent of the vote in Whitfield County, which includes Dalton, and earned even higher percentages in the surrounding counties. The GOP candidates can expect to earn roughly three out of every four votes from the area.

And there are more votes outstanding there. According to the website Georgia Votes, Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, which includes Dalton and is held by far-right, freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), has the second-fewest number of early and absentee votes compared to November turnout.

The Atlantic Coast: Most of Southeast Georgia is solidly Republican, but Democrats can’t ignore majority-Black Savannah, where Vice President-elect Kamala Harris rallied on Sunday for Ossoff and Warnock, who touts his roots in Savannah.

Chatham County, which includes Savannah, was Warnock’s strongest in the 20-candidate special election in November, and Biden won 59 percent of the vote there.

Farther south, Glynn County is home to Brunswick and some of the tiny seaside towns like Sea Island and St. Simons Island. Trump won 61 percent of the vote in Glynn, but a slightly better benchmark for the Republicans might be Romney’s 63 percent in 2012.

How they’ll count

Back in November, it took days to resolve Georgia’s big-ticket races. It was more than 48 hours after polls closed before news organizations were able to project that the Perdue-Ossoff race would go to a runoff. It took four more days — the Monday after the election — before the presidential race was called for Biden.

But those contests were both extremely close: Perdue finished with 49.7 percent of the vote, just a hair shy of the majority he needed to win outright. And Biden’s margin of victory over Trump was even slimmer: 0.2 points.

If either or both of the Senate runoffs on Tuesday are decided by similar margins, it could be days before we know who won, and there will likely be shifts during the count. In November, Election Day votes were counted earlier and late-arriving mail votes tabulated later, though counties can start counting early and mail votes before Election Day to speed up the process. Moreover, some of the more populous counties in the state typically take longer to count their votes, and those counties lean toward Democrats.

That means it’s likely the two Republican candidates will lead the vote count earlier Tuesday night, and Democrats will make gains as the count concludes. That pattern resembles what happened two months ago, when Trump led earlier in the count but slipped behind (and falsely claimed fraud was responsible for the change).

If you think of the election as a race for Republicans to catch up to Democrats' early-voting advantage on Election Day, think of the vote count as the opposite. The GOP incumbents will likely build a lead early in the counting process — can Democrats catch up?

The money

The races have shattered fundraising records: Ossoff and Warnock each raised over $100 million over a two-month stretch from mid-October to mid-December. The GOP candidates haven’t fared too badly either, raising sums that would be historic if they weren’t dwarfed by their opponents.

Republicans have made up the difference in outside spending — a costly venture, given that super PACs pay substantially higher rates for advertising than candidates. And it’s all resulted in an avalanche of TV advertising.

Just in the past two months, Ossoff has spent $86 million on TV ads, easily outpacing Perdue’s $50 million, according to figures compiled by AdImpact. In order to keep pace, GOP-aligned outside groups have spent about $84 million in regular election, compared to only $29.2 million for Democrats.

The outside spending gap is nearly identical in the special election, where Warnock has a smaller but still significant advantage in candidate spending over Loeffler. But some of the Democratic money has gone into field programs, including work by Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight, which raised $22 million in roughly a month late last year.

Legislative priorities

Biden transition hoping for victory but bracing for defeat in Georgia

The president-elect’s team won’t change their legislative priorities. But the runoff results could force them to scale back significantly.

By TYLER PAGER and MEGAN CASSELLA

Joe Biden is eyeing a more ambitious agenda for the first 100 days of his presidency — if, that is, Democrats can win twin upsets in a pair of Georgia Senate runoffs on Tuesday.

But Biden’s advisers are privately skeptical about Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock’s chances, Democrats say. And though confidants say that the incoming team’s core priorities for that 100-day agenda will remain the same regardless of the outcome — the pandemic, the recession, climate change and racial inequality — they concede that the scale of their plans could change dramatically come Tuesday evening.

Biden himself underscored the stakes of the runoffs in a stop in Georgia on Monday when he made the case for the two Democratic challengers by tying the success of his agenda to their candidacies.

“By electing Jon and the Reverend, you can make an immediate difference in your own lives, the lives of people all across the country, because their election will put an end to the block in Washington on that $2,000 stimulus check,” Biden said at a rally in Atlanta. “That money will go out the door immediately."

He added: “If you send [Sens. David] Perdue and [Kelly] Loeffler back to Washington, those checks won’t get there.”

But according to officials close to the transition, the incoming president’s team has been sketching out various tracks for its early legislative agenda — an implicit recognition that their administration will look markedly different depending on the results in Georgia.

"Joe Biden and Kamala Harris broke all records when they received an overwhelming mandate for the bold priorities on which they ran,” Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for the transition, said in a statement. “They've put their all into Georgia and will put their all into fulfilling their agenda every single day they're in office."

Recent history has given Democrats reason to be bearish about their chances in Georgia. A Democrat hasn’t taken a Senate seat in Georgia in more than two decades, and a pair of victories on Tuesday would be, as one person in touch with the transition team put it, “nothing short of a miracle.”

Privately, Biden’s team does not expect to win the races, according to Democratic officials, but they are more optimistic about their chances than they were weeks ago. Though the president-elect narrowly won the state in November, they attribute that to a powerful anti-Trump sentiment that did not translate down the ballot. Perdue received about 88,000 more votes than Ossoff, and the top two Republicans combined got more than 636,000 votes than Warnock in the special election.

One former Democratic official said few Democrats, if any, are preparing for victory. It's not "their organizing principle," the official said of the incoming transition team, adding that their planning has focused on Democrats not having control of the Senate.

But there is a renewed sense of hope that winning is possible both because of President Donald Trump’s actions since the November election and strong early vote turnout numbers that appear to favor Democrats. Trump’s demand for $2,000 stimulus checks as part of a Covid relief bill gave Ossoff and Warnock a new closing argument after Senate Republicans rejected the measure late last year. The president’s unsubstantiated claims that his 2020 election loss was tainted by fraud, alongside his public attacks against Georgia Republicans for not helping overturn the results, could also keep his supporters away from the polls.

“There’s growing hope on our side because Trump has done literally everything he could to sabotage Perdue and Loeffler,” one House Democratic aide said. “It’s hard for me to think of other stuff he could have done to hurt them more.”

For Biden, an unexpected sweep of the races would dramatically change his legislative prospects, giving him 50 votes in the Senate and, with that, opening up a much wider array of opportunities to push a pricier agenda through Congress. It would reduce his need to govern primarily by regulatory or executive action, a path that Biden has made clear he does not want to take.

The Biden camp, in conjunction with the Democratic National Committee, has invested more than $6 million directly into the Georgia races, in addition to the more than $12 million they’ve provided through fundraising efforts. They also shifted roughly 50 staffers from the Biden-coordinated campaign to help the campaigns on the ground in Georgia. In addition to Biden’s stop, which was his second in-person visit to the state since the election, Harris has made two campaign visits to Georgia.

Regardless of the outcome, Biden’s top legislative priority will be a stimulus package aimed at distributing funds for states to vaccinate Americans, among other Covid-related priorities. The incoming president said the $900 billion stimulus package Congress just passed was a “down payment,” and he would quickly ask them to ready another bill for the start of his term. Beyond coronavirus relief, Biden’s transition advisers have developed or are working on multiple proposals on a range of policy ideas, from infrastructure to green jobs to raising the minimum wage.

Democrats concede the scope of the agenda is dependent on the Georgia results. Items that stand a chance of passage under a Democratic Senate, such as an ambitious government ethics reform package previously crafted by House Democrats, will go nowhere if the Senate is still run by Sen. Mitch McConnell, top party officials acknowledge.

“I think [the Biden team] will push for the same kinds of things,” said a senior official at a top Democratic outside group, who has been in touch with Biden’s transition team. “The question is, what will we get? They need more money for vaccine distribution and to help schools. All of that becomes doable and easier with a Democratic Senate. If they don't get it, they're looking for alternatives for how to get that stuff done.”

One of the earliest effects of Democrats winning Georgia’s races could simply be to give Biden a boost of momentum before he takes office. Beyond the impact on policy, Democratic control of the Senate schedule would mean a quicker confirmation process for his Cabinet nominees. And the faster they enter office, the faster his Cabinet secretaries can begin executing their own agendas at individual agencies.

But beyond that, even with two Democratic victories on Tuesday, “I don’t think the agenda is changing,” the former Democratic official said. “It’s the ease in which you might be able to execute the agenda, or get the agenda done.”

Legal brief was lodged

Georgia fights latest Trump suit to overturn November election

The legal brief was lodged just as the president took the stage in Georgia on the eve of Senate runoff elections.

By KYLE CHENEY and JOSH GERSTEIN

Attorneys for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday lit into a “thirteenth hour” effort by President Donald Trump to decertify the results of the state’s Nov. 3 election, calling it a belated bid to nullify the ballots of millions of voters.

“There have been numerous suits filed since the November 3, 2020, general election, challenging most of the issues set forth in [Trump’s] motion. In all resolved suits, the claims have been flatly rejected,” lawyers from Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr’s office said in a filing on behalf of the state leaders.

“Plaintiff nevertheless seeks to disenfranchise millions of Georgia voters at the thirteenth hour — despite Plaintiff’s own dilatory and confusing actions,” the state’s brief continued.

Trump’s lawsuit, filed on New Year’s Eve, marked his latest attempt to overturn the results in a key state won by President-elect Joe BIden. But the state’s first filing in the case comes amid an explosive scandal over Trump’s attempt to privately pressure Raffensperger to embrace his claims of fraud and “find” thousands of additional votes to flip the outcome.

The legal brief was also lodged just as Trump took the stage in Georgia on the eve of Senate runoff elections that will determine control of the U.S. Senate. Trump wasted little time before attacking Kemp and Raffensperger at the rally intended to boost the Senate campaigns of David Perdue and Sen. Kelly Loeffler to assail the presidential election results even further.

“I’m going to be here in a year and a half,” Trump said, “and I’m going to be campaigning against your governor and your crazy secretary of state.”

Trump has baselessly alleged widespread fraud and misconduct by election officials, charges he reiterated repeatedly on his hourlong Saturday call with Raffensperger, despite the secretary’s forceful pushback and rejection of his claims. Since the tape of their extraordinary call came out Sunday in the Washington Post and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Raffensperger has also conducted TV interviews in which he defended his handling of the Nov. 3 election process. Monday night’s brief reinforced his arguments.

“The people, the Secretary, and the Governor all complied with and discharged their obligations under Georgia and federal law — as have the ... properly certified presidential electors,” the state’s brief says.

With Trump and his supporters having filed about 60 lawsuits in various states, winning almost no relief, the new submission from Georgia officials contains little in the way of free-form legal argument. Instead, after forcefully rejecting Trump’s claims, the brief strings together quotes from the slew of court decisions — many written by Trump appointees — turning down the earlier challenges.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark Cohen has set a hearing Tuesday morning on the Trump campaign’s suit and the plea for emergency relief. However, the judge dinged the president’s lawyers for not teeing up the case more quickly.

“Although Plaintiffs’ counsel could have requested ... an immediate hearing over this past holiday weekend, and obtained a hearing before the duty district Judge, counsel did not do so,” Cohen wrote, while noting Trump wants to appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary by Wednesday, the day Congress is set to assemble to count the electoral votes.

South Korean tanker

Iranian forces storm South Korean tanker

The military raid on Monday on the MT Hankuk Chemi was at odds with Iranian explanations.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Armed Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops stormed a South Korean tanker and forced the ship to change course and travel to Iran, the vessel's owner said Tuesday, the latest maritime seizure by Tehran amid heightened tensions with the West over its nuclear program.

The military raid on Monday on the MT Hankuk Chemi was at odds with Iranian explanations that they stopped the vessel for polluting the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, it appeared the Islamic Republic sought to increase its leverage over Seoul ahead of negotiations over billions of dollars in Iranian assets frozen in South Korean banks amid a U.S. pressure campaign targeting Iran.

An Iranian government spokesman, when asked on Tuesday about the seizure, offered Tehran's bluntest acknowledgement yet of a link with the frozen assets.

“If anybody is to be called a hostage taker, it is the South Korean government that has taken our more than $7 billion hostage under a futile pretext,” spokesman Ali Rabiei said.

Iran on Monday also began enriching uranium up to 20%, a small technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%, at its underground Fordo facility. That move appeared aimed at pressuring the U.S. in the final days of President Donald Trump's administration, which unilaterally withdrew from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.

Later comments Tuesday by the head of Iran's civilian nuclear program suggested Tehran's current production of uranium enriched to 20% wouldn't reach levels needed for a nuclear weapon for over two years, potentially giving time for negotiations under President-elect Joe Biden.

An official at DM Shipping Co. Ltd. of Busan, South Korea, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorized to talk to journalists, offered details of the Hankuk Chemi's seizure. The vessel had been traveling from Jubail, Saudi Arabia, to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates when Iranian forces reached the ship and said they would board it.

Initially, Iranian forces said they wanted to run an unspecified check on the ship, the official said. As the vessel's captain spoke to company security officials back in South Korea, armed Iranian troops stormed the tanker as an Iranian helicopter flew overhead, the official said. The troops demanded the captain sail the tanker into Iranian waters over an unspecified investigation and refused to explain themselves, the official added.

The company has since been unable to reach the captain, the official said. Security cameras installed on the ship that initially relayed footage on the scene on the deck to the company are now turned off, the official said.

After the company lost contact with the captain, the company received an anti-piracy security alert notice, suggesting the captain activated an onboard warning system, the official said. It remains unclear if the ship tried to call for outside assistance.

The U.S. Navy's Mideast-based 5th Fleet routinely patrols the area along with an American-led coalition monitoring the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world's oil passes. A separate European-led effort also operates there as well.

The official denied the vessel had been polluting the waters.

In past months Iran has sought to escalate pressure on South Korea to unlock some $7 billion in frozen assets from oil sales earned before the Trump administration tightened sanctions on the country’s oil exports.

The head of Iran’s central bank recently announced that the country was seeking to use funds tied up in a South Korean bank to purchase coronavirus vaccines through COVAX, an international program designed to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to participating countries.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it plans to dispatch a delegation of officials to Iran for talks on securing the early release of the ship and its crew members. The crew included sailors from Indonesia, Myanmar, South Korea and Vietnam, according to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it was sending its anti-piracy unit to near the Strait of Hormuz — a 4,400-ton-class destroyer with about 300 troops.

South Korea’s presidential office said Tuesday it views Iran’s ship seizure “very gravely.”

Foreign Ministry's spokesman Choi Young-sam said Iranian officials have assured South Korea that the ship’s crew were all safe. He said an Iran-based South Korean diplomat has been dispatched to the location of the detained ship.

The U.S. State Department joined South Korea in calling for the tanker’s immediate release, accusing Iran of threatening “navigational rights and freedoms” in the Persian Gulf in order to “extort the international community into relieving the pressure of sanctions.”

Last year, Iran similarly seized a British-flagged oil tanker and held it for months after one of its tankers was held off Gibraltar.

Meanwhile in Tehran, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran told state television that the Islamic Republic's current production of 20%-enriched uranium would be around 9 kilograms (20 pounds) a month.

The comments by Ali Akbar Salehi mean that Iran would need over two years at that rate to have the 240 kilograms (530 pounds) experts say is needed to reprocess to weapons-grade levels of 90%. Salehi said Iran also was working to install newer, faster centrifuges at its facilities.

Also Tuesday, the Iranian military began a wide-ranging, two-day aerial drill in the country's north, state media reported, featuring combat and surveillance unmanned aircraft, as well as naval drones dispatched from vessels in Iran's southern waters. State TV broadcast footage of scores of drones on a runway in the northern province of Semnan near the vast Kavir Desert.

Iran has previously conducted drills with military drones; it routinely releases footage from surveillance drones of U.S. aircraft carriers passing through the Persian Gulf. This week's drill also incorporates modern “suicide drones" that hover over a battlefield before diving down to a target, the TV report said.

Never in our history has so many appointed officials done so much to destroy the country!

Delay, dismantle, resist: DeVos leaves a legacy like no other Education secretary

Betsy DeVos relentlessly promoted school choice and ended many Obama-era rules. She shares few similarities with her likely successor, Connecticut state education chief Miguel Cardona.

By NICOLE GAUDIANO and CAITLIN EMMA

Betsy DeVos will soon step down from her perch as Education secretary, ending her four-year run as the most polarizing person to have led the department.

The Michigan billionaire, education philanthropist and staunch supporter of school choice will be remembered as a Cabinet secretary who successfully delayed and dismantled Obama-era rules at all levels of education. Her nomination to the Education Department’s top office in 2016 attracted more opposition than almost any other nominee and confrontations with public education advocates persisted throughout her term, especially during the coronavirus crisis, when she aggressively pushed for schools to reopen.

If confirmed, the next Education Secretary will be a departure from DeVos. Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona is a longtime educator who won unions' support to be the nation's next top education official, even though they have at times sparred with their state chief.

Like DeVos, Cardona pressed for schools to remain open for in-person lessons during the pandemic, but ultimately left the decision up to local decision-makers and issued statewide rules about masks and other precautions for schools.

DeVos has won favor on the right with swipes at teachers unions as anti-student and by speaking out against federal bureaucracy and overreach.

"Be the resistance," DeVos told her agency's career staff on how they should approach the incoming Biden administration, urging them to put students first as she said she always has, according to a recording of her remarks obtained by POLITICO. In a letter to Congress on Monday, DeVos noted her time in her post is finite and encouraged urged lawmakers to reject much of Biden’s education agenda in the coming years.

"Sadly, too many politicians heed the shrill voices of the education lobby and ignore the voices of children, parents, teachers and health experts who are begging to get our students back to learning," she said in October at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan. "As for me, I fight for America’s students. I fight for their parents. And I fight against anyone who would have government be the parent to everyone."

Yet she applied less scrutiny to for-profit colleges than her predecessor and revamped rules for handling sexual misconduct on campus, and she departed from the Obama administration’s approach to civil rights protections for students.

And federal judges have repeatedly rebuked DeVos’ handling of a program providing debt relief to defrauded students — among her most politically contentious higher education moves over the past four years. Biden wants to cancel $10,000 of student loan debt and a department led by Cardona is likely to accelerate help for defrauded borrowers.

DeVos’ desire to expand access to programs that provide scholarships for private school tuition died in Congress. Instead, her tenure has been marked by deregulation, school choice advocacy and relentless criticism of traditional public schools, turning her into the ultimate bogeyman for Democrats, civil rights activists and teachers unions.

Under DeVos’ leadership, the Education Department revoked Obama-era guidance allowing transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms in alignment with their gender identity. The department has also exerted pressure against transgender athlete policies the Trump administration says violate federal sexual discrimination laws.

After the Parkland, Fla., school shootings in 2018 that killed 17 people, DeVos took charge of a federal school safety commission that hardly touched on the role of guns in deadly shootings. Instead, at the commission’s recommendation, DeVos scrapped civil rights guidance aimed at curbing increased expulsions and suspensions among minority students, saying the policy threatened "the safety of students and teachers."

During the Hillsdale speech, she spoke out against her own department, saying the "building" focuses not on students but on "rules and regulations, staff and standards, spending and strings." She said "the state replaces the family" when people in Washington think they can make decisions for parents.

Even on the issue of tracking coronavirus cases in K-12 schools, DeVos said in October that she was not sure the department had a role, drawing criticism from Democratic senators.

DeVos is “the most-sued secretary” in the Department’s 41-year history, according to an October analysis by the education-focused news organization The 74. The secretary and her department have been the target of more than 455 lawsuits in less than four years, compared with 356 lawsuits against the department during the Obama administration’s eight years, the analysis found.

Education Department spokesperson Angela Morabito, however, noted that DeVos' Title IX sexual misconduct rule has withstood legal challenges. The rule codifies sexual harassment "as the sex-based discrimination that it is" and legally requires K-12 schools to respond when any employee has notice of sexual misconduct, she said.

President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to undo the rule on sexual misconduct, which has been criticized for its protections for the accused, but unraveling it could take years.

Pushing schools to reopen

DeVos was among a half-dozen of Trump’s original Cabinet members to serve throughout the president’s first term, in addition to Vice President Mike Pence.

The outgoing secretary joined Trump in issuing hollow threats to yank federal funding from schools that did not physically reopen during the pandemic, even though she has long been a proponent of virtual learning. “Why do students have to go to a school building in the first place?” she asked in 2018.

DeVos froze monthly payments on federal student loans, setting their interest rate to zero, and quickly made available $13 billion in emergency relief funding under the CARES Act for K-12 schools, Morabito said.

But federal judges blocked some of DeVos’ goals for coronavirus relief funding. Her department in August said it was considering making changes to a rule barring undocumented students, international students and immigrants who do not have green cards from emergency pandemic relief to help students cover expenses such as housing and food. Judges blocked enforcement of the rule in Massachusetts and for students at California community colleges.

The secretary also abandoned her effort to force public schools to share a greater portion of the relief funding with private school students after a federal judge struck down her plan as illegal.

A school choice star

Morabito highlighted DeVos' work on elevating apprenticeships, dual enrollment programs and other "practical learning opportunities." She published program-specific debt and earnings data in the College Scorecard and streamlined the Federal Student Aid process so that borrowers "will finally be treated like valued customers at a world-class financial institution."

DeVos, a former Michigan Republican Party chair, is a star among fans of school choice and conservatives. Her travels leading up to the 2020 presidential election included the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa and Florida as she promoted the reopening of schools during the pandemic.

"[Education Secretary] DeVos kept school choice in the lime light, and that shored up policymakers and parents to expand existing programs, to introduce new programs, which increased during her time," Jeanne Allen, the founder and chief executive of the Center for Education Reform, wrote in an email. DeVos was also successful in "keeping Washington's heavy hand out of people's way," she wrote.

Allen added, "It’s rare you find a Cabinet Secretary who is willing to go out on a limb time and time again without regard to approval from the ruling classes."

The exiting secretary has repeatedly called for education funding to follow students and has blasted grim results on national K-12 assessments as confirmation that U.S. schools are falling short and failing kids, particularly the most disadvantaged.

Morabito said DeVos "changed the national conversation about what K-12 education should and can be."

Her top K-12 reform proposal was aimed at expanding options for families. It would have created federal tax credits for donations to scholarship-granting organizations to pay for students to attend private schools or expand their public education options. It never advanced in Congress, even after Trump featured the program in his 2020 State of the Union Address. Trump had cited school choice as a top priority for his second term.

When the latest coronavirus relief package excluded school choice provisions she sought, President Donald Trump signed an eleventh-hour executive order in December allowing states to use funding from a federal anti-poverty program to provide vouchers to help “disadvantaged families” pay for private school tuition, homeschooling or other educational expenses during the pandemic.

"We want parents to have the freedom, the choices, and the funds to make the best decisions for their children," she said at Hillsdale. "The 'Washington knows best' crowd really loses their minds over that."

Biden has called for greater scrutiny of all charter schools — which are publicly funded and independently run — and eliminating federal spending on for-profit charter schools.

DeVos also used the Hillsdale speech to blast the "unholy mob" that she said thinks economies need redistributing, the Constitution needs rewriting and families need restructuring. Without naming Black Lives Matter, she referenced their statement about disrupting "Western-prescribed nuclear family structure," likening it to Marxism. The statement now has been removed from their website, but Politifact noted that the group's full statements call for supporting individuals beyond the nuclear family.

"Let’s begin by reasserting this fundamental truth: The family is the 'first school,'" DeVos said. "If we recognize that, then we must also reorder everything about education around what the family wants and what the family needs."

Remember the grizzly bears?

Polls have shown DeVos as one of the administration’s most unpopular Cabinet members. She is also the only Education secretary to have the protection of U.S. Marshals — a task that has cost taxpayers $24 million over the past four years — after encountering protesters while visiting a D.C. school. DeVos — who is married to Dick DeVos, the son of the co-founder of the Amway Corporation — flew on her private jet for official business and paid for her own travel expenses, as well as the travel costs of the federal marshals who accompany her, POLITICO reported when the arrangement began.

That DeVos would become such a well-known face of the administration was all the more remarkable considering she was barely known outside Michigan political circles and the school choice community at the time of her nomination. She rose in notoriety during her Senate confirmation hearing, where she seemed confused about special education policy and suggested guns were used in schools “to protect from potential grizzlies.”

Fact checking

Fact checking Trump's call with Georgia's secretary of state

By Holmes Lybrand, Tara Subramaniam and Daniel Dale

In the now-notorious phone call between President Donald Trump, Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and staff, the President repeated multiple false claims in an effort to claim victory in Georgia, a state he lost to President-elect Joe Biden.

Trump has been tossing out debunked conspiracy theories over the election in Georgia -- a state that flipped from Trump in 2016 to Biden -- since just days after he lost. The state has certified its election results three times under Raffensperger's leadership and found no mass voter fraud.

In one of the most striking moments of the call, which was obtained by CNN and first reported by The Washington Post, Trump said, "I just want to find 11,780 votes" -- one more than he lost by -- and proposed several areas where Biden's total might be reduced.

Here's a look at the facts.

Dead people voting?

Trump alleged in the call that 5,000 dead people had voted in Georgia.

"The other thing, dead people," Trump said. "So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters."

Facts First: There is no evidence of any large number of dead people in Georgia having ballots cast in their name. Raffensperger responded to Trump on the call that they'd found two votes cast in the name of dead people, not 5,000.

CNN has previously debunked three specific Trump campaign false claims of dead people supposedly voting in Georgia, which turned out to have benign explanations like a living voter sharing a name with a dead voter. We have also debunked similar claims in Michigan and Pennsylvania touted by the Trump campaign and his allies.

Mystery ballot drops?

Trump claimed that there were hundreds, or hundreds of thousands, of ballots "dropped" in Georgia.

"We have at least 2 or 3 — anywhere from 250 to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls," Trump said.

Facts First: False. There was no giant mystery ballot drop in Georgia.

What Trump is potentially referring to when he complains about big ballot drops or dumps in various swing states are votes counted and reported after midnight on Election Day, which is completely legal. This year in particular, many states expected delays reporting votes given the large increase in mail-in ballots and different states' rules about the timeline for counting them.

To support his claim, Trump pointed to one alleged example of poll workers in Georgia pulling out votes from under a table with no poll watchers or law enforcement present. However, state and county officials determined the poll workers' actions were part of the normal process, not fraud, after reviewing footage of the polling station in question. You can read a longer fact-check here.

Fraud with Dominion voting machines?

In the call, Trump touted a rumor that there were shredded ballots in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, and that voting machines were nefariously removed from there.

Trump asked if it was possible "that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their machinery" and asked if the company "moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts."

He also said "we think we found tremendous corruption with the Dominion voting machines."

The questions from Trump represent a long line of wild conspiracy theories -- which CNN has debunked -- around Dominion Voting Systems from the President's allies, some even involving false suggestions of secret, communist plots and deleted votes.

Facts First: Trump's claims on the Dominion voting machines are false.

On the call, Raffensperger's general counsel, Ryan Germany, told Trump there was no evidence that Dominion voting machines were being removed or parts were being replaced.

Germany told Trump that "No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County."

Germany also said parts of the machines had not been replaced.

"Are you sure, Ryan?" Trump asked.

"I'm sure. I'm sure, Mr. President."

Furthermore, the Trump administration's own election security arm issued a statement on November 12 saying "there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

Signatures

Trump has repeatedly claimed a signature audit of the absentee ballot envelopes in Georgia would uncover "massive voter fraud."

On the call, he directed his attention to one Georgia county in particular: Democratic stronghold Fulton County.

Trump said, "We think that if you check the signatures — a real check of the signatures going back in Fulton County — you'll find at least a couple of hundred thousand of forged signatures of people who have been forged."

Facts First: It's false to suggest that a "real check" of the signatures hasn't already been done. Signature matching has already been done -- twice, in many cases. Further, Trump is wrong to suggest that "a couple hundred thousand" ballots, forged or otherwise, could be found in the county as fewer than 150,000 mail ballots were even cast there.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation audited more than 15,000 signatures in Cobb County and found no fraudulent ballots.

Nice Day...

 

New low........

'A new low': Republicans chastise Trump over his Raffensperger call

Multiple House and Senate Republicans hit Trump over his "deeply troubling" call with Georgia's secretary of state.

By MARIANNE LEVINE and MELANIE ZANONA

Multiple congressional Republicans on Monday chided President Donald Trump over his attempt to privately pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” ballots that would overturn Joe Biden’s win.

While no Republicans went so far as to describe Trump’s behavior as criminal or an impeachable offense, as some Democrats have, several GOP lawmakers did not hold back their criticism and made clear they were uncomfortable with Trump’s phone call.

Sen. Pat Toomey, who is retiring in 2022, described the hourlong conversation as a “new low in this whole futile and sorry episode.”

“I commend Republican election officials across the country who have discharged their duties with integrity over the past two months while weathering relentless pressure, disinformation, and attacks from the president and his campaign,” Toomey said.

The bombshell audio — first obtained by the Washington Post — is just the latest example of how Trump’s long-shot push to remain in power has splintered his own party ahead of two crucial runoff races in Georgia that will determine whether Republicans keep their Senate majority.

GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican who frequently calls out the president, said the recording is “deeply troubling” and urged people “to listen to the full hour of it.”

And Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of the most vocal Trump critics in recent months, labeled the recorded conversation as “absolutely appalling.”

“To every member of Congress considering objecting to the election results, you cannot - in light of this - do so with a clean conscience,” he tweeted.

News of Trump’s recorded conversation comes as the GOP is preparing for an intraparty showdown on Jan. 6, when Congress is slated to certify the Nov. 3 election results. Dozens of House Republicans, led by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala), and at least 12 Senate Republicans plan to object to Biden’s win, following Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

The president has been relatively quiet about the call to Raffensperger, but on Monday he dubbed those Republicans unwilling to challenge Biden’s electoral win as the “surrender caucus.”

Most of the Republicans who were critical of Trump’s call are the same lawmakers planning to oppose the anti-certification effort. But even some of its supporters acknowledged Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger is doing the GOP no favors.

"One of the things, I think, that everyone has said is that this call was not a helpful call,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) on Fox and Friends. Blackburn is one of the 12 Senate Republicans planning to object to Biden’s victory on Wednesday.

Other Republicans, however, came to Trump’s defense or shrugged off the episode entirely. While House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to answer questions from reporters in the Capitol about the call, he seemed to downplay the conversation during an interview on Fox News.

“The president's always been concerned about the integrity of the election,” said McCarthy, a close Trump ally. “And the president believes that there are things that happened in Georgia, and he wants to see the accountability for it.”

Meanwhile, libertarian Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — who is not planning to challenge the election results, based on constitutional reasons — quipped that Trump’s call with Raffensberger was “pretty mild compared to the calls I've received” from the president before.

Congressional Democrats, for their part, have also begun strategizing for Wednesday’s lengthy session. House Democrats held a caucus call Monday, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged members to be “dignified” throughout the whole process.

Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), who was tapped by the Biden administration to be White House engagement director, also advised his colleagues to have cool heads ahead of the GOP’s Electoral College gambit.

"You don't argue with fools, because at a distance you can’t tell who the fool is," Richmond told members, according to multiple people on the call.

The Raffensperger call, however, has renewed calls from some Democrats to impeach Trump, who has 16 days left in office. But House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) made clear at his weekly presser that that’s not an avenue the House will pursue.

“We’re not looking backward, we’re looking forward,” he said.

Minister imposes harsh lockdown

UK Prime Minister imposes harsh lockdown as new Covid-19 variant spreads

By Tara John, Luke McGee and Nada Bashir

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson reimposed a lockdown in England on Monday as a more transmissible variant of Covid-19 fuels a surge in infections and hospitalizations in the country.

"It is clear that we need to do more to bring this new variant under control," Johnson said. "That means the government is once again instructing you to stay at home."

During his televised address to the nation, Johnson reimposed measures seen during the first lockdown last spring, including closures of secondary and primary schools to all except the children of key workers and vulnerable children. People will be allowed to leave their homes for limited reasons like shopping for essentials, exercise, and medical assistance.

Johnson also said people could still leave home "to escape domestic abuse" -- an issue that arose earlier during the pandemic, as isolation and lockdown conditions exacerbated barriers to escape for victims of domestic violence.

Outdoor sports venues will have to close. But unlike spring's lockdown, nurseries will not be shuttered, elite sports can go ahead, and places of worship will remain open on the basis that attendees adhere to social distancing rules.

The lockdown is expected to remain in place at least through the middle of February.

Hours before, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced a lockdown that will begin on midnight, Tuesday, local time. Wales and Northern Ireland -- the other nations of the UK -- are already in lockdown.

The UK is back in crisis mode as new daily Covid-19 cases soared above 50,000 cases for nearly a week, and hospitalizations exceed April's peak.

According to Johnson, there was 30% more Covid-19 patients in hospitals in England on Monday than a week earlier.

UK Chief Medical Officers and the NHS England Medical Director have advised that the country enter the highest coronavirus alert level for the first time in the pandemic, he added. The measure is in response to hospitalizations that could overwhelm the country's National Health Service (NHS) in the next 21 days.

"Many parts of the health systems in the four nations are already under immense pressure. There are currently very high rates of community transmission, with substantial numbers of COVID patients in hospitals and in intensive care," UK Chief Medical Officers said in a statement on Monday.

"We are not confident that the NHS can handle a further sustained rise in cases and without further action there is a material risk of the NHS in several areas being overwhelmed over the next 21 days," UK Chief Medical Officers said, adding that the new variant, believed to have originated in the UK, has led to rising cases "almost everywhere."

Mounting anger

Johnson's announcement follows mounting calls from public health experts, teachers' unions and lawmakers for a more stringent lockdown.

British teachers unions criticized the "chaotic reopening" of schools this week, "while the rate of infection is so high is exposing education sector workers to serious risk of ill-health and could fuel the pandemic," the Educations unions' joint statement said.

Students in the UK were due to return to school from the Christmas break on Monday. But less than a week ago, the government announced the return to school would be delayed by two weeks for almost all high-schoolers and some primary (elementary) school children. Learning will move online.

UK opposition leader Keir Starmer impored Johnson to take tougher measures to tackle the surge "ideally today," he told CNN affiliate ITV News, adding that Britain's tiered system approach to restrictions "isn't working.'

Ruling Conservative party lawmaker Jeremy Hunt, who was the former health secretary, said it was "time to act" ahead of Johnson's speech. "We need to close schools, borders, and ban all household mixing RIGHT AWAY," he wrote.

The UK government is pinning its hopes for a route out of this disaster through its Covid-19 vaccination program, which began last month. But the country is long way from vaccinating the millions in the top priority groups mentioned by Johnson, including people "over the age of 70, all frontline health workers and everyone who is clinically vulnerable".

Johnson suggests those groups are expected to have been offered their first doses by mid-February. But since the beginning of December, when the UK became the first in the world to administer the clinically approved Pfizer/BionTech vaccaine, more than 1 million people have received the immunization, according to a government press release.

"Thanks to the miracle of science, not only is the end in sight, but we know exactly how we will get there. But for now we must, I am afraid, stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives," Johnson said as he concludied his speech on Monday.