Arab and Muslim American campaigners claim further #AbandonBiden successes

Residents leave a polling place after voting in the state’s primary election on April 02, 2024 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (AFP)
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Updated 04 April 2024
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Arab and Muslim American campaigners claim further #AbandonBiden successes

  • In the Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin, a key swing state, 8.3% of voters chose ‘uninstructed’ rather than supporting Joe Biden
  • This could prove significant come November’s presidential election because Biden won Wisconsin by only about 20,000 votes in 2020

CHICAGO: Arab and Muslim American campaigners on Wednesday claimed further successes in their efforts to persuade Democrat voters to withdraw their support for US President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.

The results of Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin, traditionally a key swing state in presidential elections, showed what campaigners hailed as a significant decline in backing for Biden in protest against his support for Israel during its war on Hamas in Gaza.

With almost all of the votes counted by Wednesday evening, 48,098 people had cast an “uninstructed” vote rather than choosing Biden or his challenger, Dean Phillips. This represented an 8.3 percent share of the vote. Biden received 510,450 votes, or 88.6 percent of the total.

Hassan Abdel Salam, national spokesperson for the #AbandonBiden movement in Michigan, told Arab News: “In 2020, Biden won Wisconsin by approximately 20,000 votes, and in (Tuesday’s) primary, 50,000 voted against Biden.

“#AbandonBiden is focused on organizing on nine swing states, one of which is Wisconsin. Overall, Wisconsin's results redeem the #AbandonBiden strategy that emerged in October 2023.”

The #AbandonBiden campaign was put into action during the Democratic primaries in Michigan and Minnesota in late February and early March and has continued in subsequent primaries across the country.

“This campaign has been organized and endorsed by dozens of local and national groups and partners that span a diverse range of backgrounds, and are all united in their call for a ceasefire (in Gaza),” said Salam.

“We congratulate all these groups for their extraordinary efforts to get out the vote. The primary election is set against the backdrop of the ongoing crisis in Gaza, which has tragically claimed the lives of over 30,000 civilians, including 13,000 children.”

Other Arab American leaders also welcomed the “uninstructed” votes in Wisconsin, including Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

“Last night Wisconsin voters sent Joe Biden a strong message,” he told Arab News. “Nearly 50,000 voters cast their ballot as ‘uninstructed’ or ‘uncommitted.’

“ADC is proud to have led digital organizing for the ‘uncommitted’ campaign, contacting over 500,000 voters in Wisconsin, but our work is not done; Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey are next.”

He added that efforts will continue to reach “voters across the country, sending a message to President Biden.”

Referring to the high number of “uninstructed” votes on Tuesday in Wisconsin compared with Biden’s margin of victory in the state at the 2020 presidential election, Ayoub said: “The math tells the story. Supporting genocide is a losing strategy.”

Organizers of the #AbandonBiden campaign also claimed successes in two other Democratic primaries held on Tuesday, in Connecticut and Rhode Island, neither of which is considered a swing state.

In Connecticut, Biden received 55,638 votes (84.9 percent of the total cast), while 7,484 people (11.4 percent) chose “uncommitted.”

In Rhode Island, Biden received 20,906 votes (82.6 percent), while 3,766 people (14.9 percent) chose “uncommitted.”

Biden has already won enough states during the primary process to secure the Democratic Party nomination for president. However, if the apparent anti-Biden protest vote among Arab and Muslim Americans and their allies in a dozen swing states carries through to the presidential election in November, in which Biden is likely to face Republican nominee Donald Trump, it could threaten his reelection prospects.

In Michigan, where Biden won the popular vote in 2020 by the relatively narrow margin of 154,188 votes, more than 130,000 voters chose “uncommitted” in the state’s Democratic primary on Feb. 24. In Georgia, where Biden defeated Trump by only 11,779 votes in 2020, more than 6,000 people cast blank ballots in the primary.

In Washington State, 48,619 voters, nearly 8 percent of the total, chose “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary. However, Biden won the state by 785,000 votes in 2020, so even a protest of a similar scale would be unlikely to threaten him there.

A dozen primary elections remain between now and June 4, when voters in New Jersey, a state with a sizable Arab and Muslim population, will cast their ballots.

Voter turnout in primaries is significantly lower than in the presidential election, in part because voters are required to declare party affiliation. Both Salam and Ayoub said they believe the anti-Biden vote will be even higher in November.


Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre

Updated 03 May 2025
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Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan test-fired Saturday a ballistic missile as tensions with India spiked over last week’s deadly attack on tourists in the disputed Kashmir region.
The surface-to-surface missile has a range of 450 kilometers (about 280 miles), the Pakistani military said.
The launch of the Abdali Weapon System was aimed at ensuring the “operational readiness of troops and validating key technical parameters,” including the missile’s advanced navigation system and enhanced manoeuvrability features, according to a statement from the military.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif congratulated the scientists, engineers and those behind the successful missile test.


Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk

Updated 03 May 2025
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Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk

  • There was no immediate comment from Ukraine

MOSCOW: The mayor of the Russian port city of Novorossiysk declared a state of emergency on Saturday after he said a Ukrainian drone attack had damaged residential buildings and injured at least five people, including two children.
Andrei Kravchenko, the mayor, announced his decision on his official Telegram account which showed him inspecting the damage to apartment buildings and giving orders to officials.
Kravchenko said one of the injured people, a woman, was in hospital in a serious situation.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, whose air force said Russia had attacked Ukraine overnight with 183 drones and two ballistic missiles.


US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings

Updated 03 May 2025
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US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration sent termination notices late on Friday to employees of a worker health and safety agency that provides research and services for coal miners, firefighters and others, despite appeals by a lawmaker from Trump’s Republican Party to preserve its programs.
Employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health received reduction-in-force notices that said the job losses were necessary to reshape the workforce of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a copy of the notices reviewed by Reuters.
Nearly all NIOSH employees were placed on administrative leave in February but around 40 who worked on coal-mining and firefighter safety were asked to return temporarily to work several days ago, the union for the agency’s employees said. At least two of those employees have now been notified of termination.
US Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, had lobbied Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore the programs, including the coal-focused work of its Morgantown, West Virginia, office.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIOSH, did not immediately respond to a request for comment after regular business hours. A spokesperson earlier this week said NIOSH’s functions would join the new Administration for a Healthy America, alongside multiple agencies. It was not clear whether any of the terminated employees would be transferred elsewhere.
Reuters reported last month that the halting of NIOSH’s key services ended vital health and safety programs for coal miners, such as mobile health and lung screenings, and a program to relocate miners afflicted with black lung disease to less dusty parts of a mine.
There has been a resurgence of black lung disease in the last decade, including among young coal miners. At the same time, President Donald Trump has led a high-profile campaign to revive coal mining and use, which had been declining in the US. 


Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan

Updated 03 May 2025
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Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan

  • Relations between the neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing an attack in disputed Kashmir region
  • Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs

SAINTH: On India’s heavily fortified border with arch-rival Pakistan, residents of farming villages have sent families back from the frontier, recalling the terror of the last major conflict between the rival armies.
Those who remain in the farming settlement of Sainth, home to some 1,500 people along the banks of the broad Chenab river, stare across the natural division between the nuclear-armed rivals fearing the future.
“Our people can’t plan too far ahead,” said Sukhdev Kumar, 60, the village’s elected headman.
“Most villagers here don’t invest beyond a very basic house,” he added.
“For who knows when a misdirected shell may fall from the other side and ruin everything?”
Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing the worst attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir in years.
Indian police have issued wanted posters for three men accused of carrying out the April 22 attack at Pahalgam — two Pakistanis and an Indian — who they say are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, a UN-designated terrorist organization.
Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs including expelling each other’s citizens.
India’s army said Saturday its troops had exchanged gunfire with Pakistani soldiers overnight along the de facto border with contested Kashmir — which it says has taken place every night since April 24.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, with both governing part of the disputed territory separately and claiming it in its entirety.
Sainth, with its open and lush green fields, is in the Hindu-majority part of Indian-run Jammu and Kashmir.
Security is omnipresent.
Large military camps dot the main road, with watchtowers among thick bushes.
Kumar said most families had saved up for a home “elsewhere as a backup,” saying that only around a third of those with fields remained in the village.
“Most others have moved,” he said.
The region was hit hard during the last major conflict with Pakistan, when the two sides clashed in 1999 in the high-altitude Himalayan mountains further north at Kargil.
Vikram Singh, 40, who runs a local school, was a teenager at the time.
He remembers the “intense mortar shelling” that flew over their heads in the village — with some exploding close by.
“It was tense then, and it is tense now,” Singh told AFP.
“There is a lot to worry since the attack at Pahalgam... The children are scared, the elderly are scared — everyone is living in fear.”
International pressure has been piled on both New Delhi and Islamabad to settle their differences through talks.
The United States has called for leaders to “de-escalate tensions,” neighboring China urged “restraint,” with the European Union warning Friday that the situation was “alarming.
On the ground, Singh seemed resigned that there would be some fighting.
“At times, we feel that war must break out now because, for us, it is already an everyday reality,” he said.
“We anyways live under the constant threat of shelling, so, maybe if it happens, we’d get to live peacefully for a decade or two afterwards.”
There has been a flurry of activity in Trewa, another small frontier village in Jammu.
“So far, the situation is calm — the last cross-border firing episode was in 2023,” said Balbir Kaur, 36, the former village head.
But the villagers are preparing, clearing out concrete shelters ready for use, just in case.
“There were several casualties due to mortar shelling from Pakistan in the past,” she said.
“We’ve spent the last few days checking our bunkers, conducting drills, and going over our emergency protocols, in case the situation worsens,” she added.
Kaur said she backed New Delhi’s stand, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowing “to punish every terrorist and their backer” and to “pursue them to the ends of the Earth.”
Dwarka Das, 65, a farmer and the head of a seven-member family, has lived through multiple India-Pakistan conflicts.
“We’re used to such a situation,” Das said.
“During the earlier conflicts, we fled to school shelters and nearby cities. It won’t be any different for us now.”


Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say

Updated 03 May 2025
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Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say

ATHENS: A woman was killed early Saturday in the northern Greek city of Thessaoloniki when a bomb she was carrying exploded in her hands, police said.
The 38-year-old woman was apparently was carrying the bomb to place it outside a nearby bank around 5 a.m., police said.
Several storefronts and vehicles were damaged by the explosion.
The woman was known to authorities after taking part in several past robberies, according to police, who said they are investigating her possible ties to extreme leftist groups.