President-elect Joe Biden (right) and vice-president-elect Kamala Harris.
As it approached midnight on Tuesday, November 3, Michelle Jawando, a voting rights attorney, sat at her Maryland, United States, home watching the presidential election results. Joseph R. Biden Jr, the Democratic Party candidate, and Kamala Harris, his vice-presidential running mate, were trailing the incumbent, Donald J. Trump.
Jawando has had a long history of political involvement – including having served as general counsel and senior adviser to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) – and she knew this would be among the most challenging elections she’d ever experience. She also expected that “the story on election night was not going to be the story of the election” because of the high number of mail-in ballots. So she “prayed and hoped” for patience and calm among Biden supporters. But was she calm?
Greenpeace USA
by Jane Fonda
Everything you need to talk to friends, family, and even strangers about climate change.
Actress, Entertainer, Writer and Greenpeace Activist Jane Fonda participates in the youth-led climate strike. People in Los Angeles and across the U.S. left their homes, workplaces, and schools for a youth-led Global Climate Strike. They marched and rallied to demand transformative action to address the climate crisis, and called on leaders to choose to side with young people, not fossil fuel executives polluting the planet for profit.
The September 20-27 global week of action is the beginning of a reckoning for the fossil fuel industry that will launch a growing movement of millions of people through the 2020 election toward a more just, green, and peaceful future for all.
CREDIT: Hani Mohammed / AP
Meet General Lloyd Austin
President-elect Joe Biden is set to nominate retired Army general Lloyd Austin as Defense Secretary. After retiring from the military in 2016, Austin joined the board of Raytheon. The defense manufacturer has sold billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Saudi coalition that’s been pummeling Yemen with bombs for years.
“After the Yemen war began in 2015 and the Obama administration made a hasty decision to back the Saudis, Raytheon booked more than $3 billion in new bomb sales, according to an analysis of available U.S. government records,” reported the
New York Times earlier this year, “Intent on pushing the deals through, Raytheon followed the industry playbook: It took advantage of federal loopholes by sending former State Department officials, who were not required to be registered as lobbyists, to press their former colleagues to approve the sales.”