“It wasn’t clear if the monster missile was active or simply a shell, but the unprecedented spectacle less than a month ahead of the U.S. presidential election could raise the specter of coming North Korean weapons tests.
North Korea hasn’t tested an ICBM in almost three years. And the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, conducted three high-wattage meetings with President Trump after the flight of Hwasong-15, a missile believed to be capable of reaching the U.S.
This year, North Korea has taken a hostile posture toward the U.S., airing grievances and declaring its aversion to nuclear negotiations with Washington.
A military display was not unexpected on Saturday, the 75th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party, and Kim didn’t directly criticize the U.S. during the festivities.
But the event stood out for size of the possible new missile, which appeared much larger than the Hwasong-15, and for the parade’s timing in the small hours of Saturday morning local time.
“This was most unusual,” Sung-Yoon Lee, a Korea expert at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told the Daily News. “The amount of electricity they must have spent — in a country that lacks electricity even in the capital city — shows you they went all-out.””
“In Phoenix, Trump supporters converged on a county recorder’s office to demand that all votes be counted — while officials were inside, busily counting votes in a state where Democratic nominee Joe Biden was ahead.
In Detroit, meanwhile, a pro-Trump crowd demanded that authorities stop counting votes in the state, arguing that their poll observers had been unfairly treated.”
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“while activist groups have led demonstrations around the country calling for those results to be tabulated fairly, the president has pursued a strategy of trying to stop counts in swing states where he looks ahead (and in some cases where he doesn’t), while issuing baseless allegations of fraud in places where he’s been declared the loser.”
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“A limited number of certified poll challengers of both parties were also allowed inside the center, where some say Republican challengers intimidated ballot counters by taking their masks off, getting too close, and demanding that they stop counting.”
“Michigan voters Tuesday night had a message for police: Get a warrant. Yes, for their phones, too.
Voters overwhelmingly approved Michigan Proposal 2. The referendum, put to the ballot by lawmakers, amends the state constitution to add “electronic data and electronic communications” to the state’s search and seizure laws.”
“An abysmal showing by Democrats in state legislative races on Tuesday not only denied them victories in Sun Belt and Rust Belt states that would have positioned them to advance their policy agenda — it also put the party at a disadvantage ahead of the redistricting that will determine the balance of power for the next decade.”
“Even as dozens of states were expanding mail-in voting eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump spent months on the campaign trail telling his supporters not to cast their ballots that way.
“It shouldn’t be mail-in voting. It should be you go to a booth and you proudly display yourself,” Trump said in April, one of the first times that he spoke publicly on the issue. “You don’t send it in the mail where people pick up—all sorts of bad things can happen by the time they sign that, if they sign that, by the time it gets in and is tabulated. No. It shouldn’t be mailed in.”
He beat that same drum for the next six months. Mail-in voting was risky and dangerous, he said. It would allow postal workers or other nefarious forces to alter or lose ballots. “Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed,” he tweeted in May.
The result, unsurprisingly, is that Trump’s supporters voted mostly in person on Election Day. As a result, the piles of mail-in ballots that are now being counted and that may prove to be decisive in several key states tend to favor former Vice President Joe Biden”
“Along with frequent campaign and surrogate trips, including at least four from the president himself in the final weeks, Team Trump’s winning formula included a heavy dose of messaging that sought to brand Democrats as socialists and anti-police, a focus on opening the economy despite the coronavirus pandemic, generous spending on a traditional ground game, and the buildout of a coalition that Trump in the past had paid little attention to, according to nearly a dozen Florida Republicans and campaign officials.”
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“Trump’s largest base of support was, again, with white voters, who helped him outperform his 2016 showing in 32 mostly rural, white counties across the state. That support squeezed an additional 153,000 votes out of areas of the state that already backed Trump by wide margins.
But Trump also sliced into Democratic support in Hispanic-heavy Miami-Dade County, where Biden failed to muster even a fourth of Hillary Clinton’s 30-point margin in 2016.
Biden’s collapse in Miami-Dade drew particular ire from embittered Democrats, but it was only part of the demographic picture that helped Trump carry Florida a second time.”
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“Exit polling showed Biden at roughly 38 percent with white voters, an improvement on Clinton’s abysmal 33 percent, but below what public polling averages had predicted.
Had white support held for Biden, he would have won Florida, Odio said.”
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“Miami-Dade County is politically complex, heavily influenced by its Venezuelan, Cuban and Nicaraguan communities, where many people have fled or have family who fled leftist strongman regimes in their native countries.
The cohort is particularly influenced by political messaging that casts Democrats as part of a plot to implement socialist policies. On Tuesday, it proved once again to be a solid line of attack in South Florida, where Democrats expected the strategy but were unable to counter it.”
“Mississippians have voted in favor of the ballot initiative Measure 3 and will replace their controversial state flag with a new one, according to the New York Times and the Associated Press.
The new flag, named the “In God We Trust” flag, will put to rest a decades-long debate over the flag that the state used for 126 years, which features a Confederate emblem.
The new design was commissioned and approved by the Commission to Redesign the Mississippi State Flag, set up by the state legislature after the body voted to do away with the old flag. It prominently features a magnolia flower — the state flower — encircled by 20 white stars, a nod to Mississippi’s status as the 20th state to join the US. A larger yellow star sits directly above the flower to represent the Choctaw origins of the state, and all the icons sit on a dark blue and red striped background. The design was selected from just under 3,000 other submissions.”
“Proposition 22, created to decide the future of the California gig economy, has passed.
The proposition concerned whether app-based drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft are employees or independent contractors. And its success, which the Associated Press called before midnight Wednesday PT, means those companies will effectively be exempted from a California law that would have pushed such drivers to be classified as employees.
“Florida voters have said yes to increasing the state’s minimum wage to $15.
They did so by approving Amendment 2, which increases the state’s minimum wage from $8.56 to $15 by September 30, 2026, according to the New York Times and the Associated Press. The change is incremental, with employers being asked to increase wages, essentially, by $1 a year. The amendment also specifies that as of September 30, 2027, Florida must adjust its state minimum wage based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), meaning wages will be adjusted up or down as consumer prices change. The same measure is used to calculate changes in Social Security benefits.”