RACINE: Andrea Dyess, 57, was already a Joe Biden fan, but after meeting him in her neighborhood of Racine, Wisconsin, in May, she has been talking to anyone who will listen about giving him four more years in the White House.
Dyess was on a street corner with her two young grandchildren trying to catch a glimpse of Biden’s motorcade, when a campaign worker invited her to join the president at a nearby community center.
Biden listened attentively as she told him about surviving cancer and how the Affordable Care Act, which Biden helped push as Barack Obama’s vice president, saved her life.
“I told him, just keep fighting the fight,” she said,
Since then, Dyess says she has shared her “once in a lifetime moment” directly with dozens of friends and relatives, at a church revival, at her grandkids’ school and on her neighborhood walks. She’s also been urging her 20-year-old son’s friends to register to vote.
Campaign officials say the encounter is exactly what they are hoping to replicate around the country with a series of small-scale campaign events.
Biden, 81, has spent decades honing his ‘retail’ politician style of wooing voters. Big, thundering speeches have never been his style but he lights up when meeting people one-on-one, thumping shoulders, hugging strangers and FaceTiming people’s moms.
In sharp contrast to the
mass rallies
hosted by Republican rival Donald Trump — heavy on stagecraft with classic rock playlists, anti-immigration rhetoric and mostly white audiences — Biden meets with small, more diverse groups of voters for personal conversations.
Those
smaller events
are arranged with friendly invitation-only audiences, and often publicized only at the last minute to avoid pro-Palestinian protests that have dogged Biden’s appearances for months.
It’s part of a broader campaign strategy that includes celebrity endorsements, a slew of political surrogates, traditional ads and official events to showcase Biden’s support for NATO, infrastructure funding and other key policies.
The campaign is under heavy pressure as Biden wobbles in the polls.
Despite strong economic growth and stock market highs, his approval ratings are near two-year lows, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed, and other polls show Trump ahead in several of the battleground states that Biden narrowly won in 2020.
Campaign and Democratic party officials say that is in part because voters are still smarting from higher prices and don’t know enough about what Biden has done to reduce costs of prescription drugs and other essentials, or his backing of unions fighting for higher wages.
They say US media is too “fractured” to be an effective way of reaching voters on these issues. So they’re enlisting friend networks, super-surrogates, small business groups, podcasts, new media and TikTok stars who they hope will talk issues and policies as they try to convince millions of Americans to back Biden in November.
Charles Franklin, who directs polling at Wisconsin’s Marquette University Law School, said that because Biden doesn’t have “groupies” like Trump, these smaller events are a better bet. “If they both got the same stadium and did back to back events, [I’m] pretty confident that Trump would have the bigger turnout for that,” Franklin said.
Republicans, who ridiculed Biden’s 2020 campaign for being run “from his basement,” say the lack of big Biden rallies in 2024 is further evidence of his physical and political fragility.
Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, described Biden’s strategy as “tiny, staged, 15-minute snooze-fests,” and said “Team Trump’s campaign events will continue to get bigger and better.”
Before events like the one in Racine, the campaign combs its databases for local people who care about a specific issue Biden’s policies have addressed or are part of a demographic he hopes to reach, and invites them to meet Biden. Sometimes they find unexpected guests like Dyess.
The interactions are filmed by the campaign for YouTube video and campaign ads, and followed by local and national media. Ideally, participants make their own social media posts and those go viral, reaching more voters, the campaign says.
“One of the strategies around any visit is not just to have the perfect room and create the conditions for serendipity, but also to make sure that what happens in the room doesn’t stay in the room,” said Ben Wikler, head of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party.
In Milwaukee in March, for example, Biden met 9-year-old Harry Abramson, who had written to Biden about his stutter.
Biden, who stuttered as a child, shared his strategy for dealing with difficult words. The interaction was picked up by the local Fox affiliate and other TV stations, digital and print media, and Biden’s campaign put it on Facebook and other accounts. It went viral, bouncing around chat rooms, TikTok and Reddit.
“Grandpa’s gonna Grandpa. Imagine telling your friends you got speech lessons from the president of the United States,” one Reddit user wrote under a video of the interaction on “Made Me Smile,” a group with 9.5 million members.
Biden visited the Fitts’ family home in North Carolina in January, part of a ‘kitchen table’ visit to regular families in swing states. Afterward, teenaged Christian Fitts posted a video on TikTok showing the President admiring school photos on his refrigerator and sharing french fries at the kitchen table.
The post got over one million “likes” and thousands of comments that attracted millions more views. Many were incredulous, rather than outright endorsements of Biden. “HIM JUST STANDING AT THE FRIDGE IS SENDING ME” one user wrote. Nearly 50,000 people liked the comment.
Tracking the digital impact of this strategy is difficult, political experts say. New tools to track TikTok content are still not reliable, most Facebook posts are private, and there’s no way to know how many of those who comment will actually vote.
Teddy Goff, co-founder of marketing firm Precision Strategies, believes the smaller events are a smart play.
“They’re going to wind up in the local news, local newspaper, local TV, and in all likelihood, will get seen by more people than might have been to that Trump rally,” said Goff, digital director of former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, referring to an April rally by Trump in Green Bay that drew a crowd of 3,200.
Relying on individuals to share the Biden message can be unpredictable.
Sheree Robinson, a Black mother of five from Racine who says funding from Biden’s American Rescue Plan helped her earn her a High School Equivalency Diploma, was invited to ride in Biden’s limousine during his May Wisconsin visit.
She posted a video on Facebook showing her smiling next to a bemused-looking Biden, as he gets detailed instructions on what to expect at the next event. In her comment, she used an obscenity to tout herself as a “big ... deal,” without any praise of Biden.
Later, however, she called into a local radio program to share what she called an “awesome” experience, and plugged Biden’s policy that helped her get a degree. The Wisconsin Democratic party is featuring her in digital ads it will use around the state.
Social media tends to embrace more negative or awkward moments, like a stumble or fall, Goff noted, rather than a tiny event like the recent one in Racine.
Biden’s campaign is outspending Trump’s on digital media in Wisconsin, according to an analysis by Priorities USA. It spent $2.2 million on digital ads in the state alone since January, compared to $1,500 spent by Trump.
So far, though, a FiveThirtyEight compilation of Wisconsin polls still shows Trump with a slight lead in the state.
Biden campaign taps friend groups, social media, with unpredictable results
https://arab.news/v6wa7
Biden campaign taps friend groups, social media, with unpredictable results
- Biden listened attentively as she told him about surviving cancer and how the Affordable Care Act, which Biden helped push as Barack Obama’s vice president, saved her life
Australia detains Palestinian grandmother who fled Gaza
- Maha Almassri, 61, was taken away during a pre-dawn raid on her son’s home in Sydney
- Government official cancels her visa over concerns she is a ‘security risk’
LONDON: A Palestinian grandmother who fled the war in Gaza has been detained in Australia by immigration officers after they raided her son’s home in Sydney.
Maha Almassri, 61, was taken away in a pre-dawn raid on Thursday by 15 members of the Australian Border Force, her family said.
She was told her visa has been canceled after she failed a character test, Guardian Australia reported.
Almassri left Gaza via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in February 2024 and arrived in Australia, where many of her family live, on a tourist visa soon afterwards, her cousin Mohammed Almassri said.
She had been staying with her son in western Sydney, where the raid took place at 5.30 a.m. She was taken to a nearby police station and transferred to Villawood detention center, Mohammed told the Guardian.
Her visa was canceled by the assistant minister for citizenship and cultural affairs Julian Hill, who “reasonably suspects that the person does not pass the character test” and was “satisfied that the cancelation was in the national interest,” a document seen by the newspaper and SBS News said.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization assessed Almassri to be “directly or indirectly a risk to security,” it said.
Mohammed said that his cousin was in poor health, frightened, and struggled to talk over the phone because she was so upset.
He said that the Australian and Israeli authorities carried out security checks before she was cleared to leave Gaza, where almost 58,000 people have been killed in a 21-month Israeli onslaught.
“She’s an old lady, what can she do?” Mohammed said. “What’s the reason? They have to let us know why this has happened. There is no country, no house, nothing (to go back to in Gaza).”
A spokesperson for Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told SBS News that the government would not comment on the case.
“Any information in the public domain is being supplied by the individual and is not necessarily consistent with the information supplied by our intelligence and security agencies,” the spokesperson said.
Almassri had reportedly been granted a bridging visa in June last year after applying for a protection visa.
Last year, Amnesty International accused Australia of rejecting more than 7,000 Palestinian visa applications since the Israeli offensive on Gaza started in 2023.
Palestine Action protests aim to make UK ban ‘unenforceable’
- Hundreds expected at demonstrations in London, Cardiff, Manchester after group proscribed under Terrorism Act
- Founder: ‘We’re a force to be reckoned with when we act together’
LONDON: Palestine Action supporters say they will make the ban on the group “unenforceable” after it was proscribed as a terrorist organization by the UK government.
On Thursday, the group’s founder Huda Ammori, 31, encouraged over 200 people in a Zoom meeting to protest the move this weekend in London and elsewhere, The Times reported on Friday.
“My faith in people like you all is at an all-time high,” she said. “We’re a force to be reckoned with when we act together.
“The most effective route is through actions like the ones Defend Our Juries are leading the way on, in terms of making this ban unenforceable.”
Defend Our Juries is a group originally set up to convince juries not to convict climate activists engaged in disruptive behavior in the UK.
In the Zoom meeting attended by Ammori, a Defend Our Juries member encouraged people to be arrested, saying the police take “a soft approach” to conscientious protests.
“People will be thinking, ‘is that the end of it, has that repression worked to silence us?’ Imagine if it’s the opposite effect and there are double (the number) of us in Parliament Square on Saturday, and there are similar actions in Cardiff and Manchester,” the Defend Our Juries member said.
The call to protest comes a week after 29 demonstrators were arrested for supporting Palestine Action with placards in Westminster, including an elderly female Church of England priest.
“The Met (Police) commissioner has now got an excruciating dilemma. He was being hauled over the coals for wasting public money, for arresting an 83-year-old priest with a sign opposing genocide,” the Defend Our Juries member said.
“He’s either got to double down on that, leaving him looking like he’s not listening, or he’s got to leave it be, which is to admit the law is mad and unenforceable. He’s got no good option. As long as we turn up in numbers, we expose this.”
Palestine Action was outlawed on July 5 after members of the group broke into a Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton and vandalized military aircraft. Under the terms of the ban, support for the group could lead to a 14-year prison sentence.
Protesters, though, are using encrypted messaging platforms such as Signal to plan further demonstrations in other UK cities, The Times reported.
Ammori, of Palestinian-Iraqi heritage, has backed the protests to cause major disruption in the UK court system if hundreds of people are arrested under the Terrorism Act.
The first of these, in London, will be held in Parliament Square on Saturday at 1 p.m., and attendees were told via Zoom that they would be provided with placards, solicitors’ information and prepared statements to read to police if arrested.
A nine-page document was also issued with instructions to communicate via burner phones and on what to do when arrested, including to “go floppy” when manhandled by police to “add to the visual drama of the action” of “civil resistance.”
Another activist with over 100 arrests to their name told the Zoom call: “The worst thing we can do is to be scared. We have to become active … You will find it wonderful to do, important to do.
“If any of you have been getting depressed about issues recently, it’s a great antidote to depression.”
Ammori will appear before the High Court on July 21 after a judicial review of the ban on Palestine Action was called, with moves to prevent its proscription rejected by the Court of Appeal.
UN warns of ‘chaotic’ Afghan refugee-return crisis and calls for urgent international action
- More than 40,000 people arriving from Iran each day, reaching a high of 50,000 on July 4, as more than 1.6m refugees return from there and Pakistan so far this year
- ‘Handled with calm, foresight and compassion, returns can be a force for stability. Handled haphazardly, they will lead to instability, unrest and onward movements,’ agency says
NEW YORK CITY: With more than 1.6 million Afghans returning to their home country from Iran and Pakistan so far this year, the UN Refugee Agency warned on Thursday that the scale and intensity of the mass returns are creating a humanitarian emergency in a country already gripped by poverty, drought and insecurity.
Arafat Jamal, UNHCR’s representative in Afghanistan, on Friday described the situation as “evolving and chaotic,” as he urged countries in the region and the wider international community to urgently commit resources, show restraint and coordinate their efforts to avoid further destabilization of Afghanistan and the region.
“We are calling for restraint, for resources, for dialogue and international cooperation,” he said.
“Handled with calm, foresight and compassion, returns can be a force for stability. Handled haphazardly, they will lead to instability, unrest and onward movements.”
According to UNHCR figures, more than 1.3 million people have returned from Iran alone since the start of this year, many of them under coercive or involuntary circumstances.
In recent days, arrivals at the Islam Qala crossing on the border with Iran have peaked at more than 40,000 people a day, with a high of 50,000 recorded on July 4.
Jamal warned that many of the returnees, often born abroad and unfamiliar with Afghanistan, arrive “tired, disoriented, brutalized and often in despair.” He raised particular concern about the fate of women and girls who arrive in a country where their fundamental rights are severely restricted.
Iran has signaled its intention to expel as many as 4 million Afghans, a move UNHCR predicts could double the number of returnees by the end of the year. Jamal said the agency is now preparing for up to 3 million arrivals this year. Afghanistan remains ill-equipped to absorb such large numbers.
“This is precarity layered upon poverty, on drought, on human-rights abuses, and on an unstable region,” Jamal said, citing a UN Development Programme report that found 70 percent of
Afghans live at subsistence levels, and a recent drought alert from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
UNHCR’s humanitarian response is severely underfunded, with just 28 percent of its operations financed so far this year. Jamal described agonizing decisions being made in the field, including reductions of food rations and other aid supplies: “Should we give one blanket instead of four to a family? One meal instead of three?”
Despite the strained resources, Jamal said the agency is still providing emergency food and water, shelter and transportation at reception centers, and working with partners such as UNICEF to address the needs of unaccompanied children, about 400 of whom were reportedly deported from Iran in just over two weeks.
Pressed on how the UN can support peace and development in a country where women face widespread discrimination, and access to education and healthcare is limited, Jamal acknowledged the severe challenges but defended the organization’s continued engagement.
“Yes, this is the worst country in the world for women’s rights,” he said. “Yet with adequate funding, the UN is able to reach women. We’ve built women-only markets, trained midwives, and supported women entrepreneurs.
“We must invest in the people of Afghanistan, even in these grim circumstances.”
He added that the Taliban, despite their own restrictions and resource constraints, have so far welcomed the returnees and facilitated UN operations at the border.
UNHCR is now appealing for a coordinated regional strategy and renewed donor support. Jamal highlighted positive examples of regional cooperation, such as trade initiatives by Uzbekistan, as potential models for this.
He also welcomed a recent UN General Assembly resolution calling for the voluntary, safe and dignified return of refugees, and increased international collaboration on the issue.
“Billions have been wasted on war,” he said. “Now is the time to invest in peace.”
Philippine president to meet Trump in Washington this month
- Security, tariff issues will be priorities when Marcos meets Trump, expert says
- Manila, Washington have increasingly boosted defense engagements in recent years
MANILA: President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will visit Washington this month, the Philippine Foreign Ministry said on Friday, making this the first trip of a Southeast Asian leader since Donald Trump took office.
The trip, which follows Trump’s tariffs announcement earlier this week, will take place from July 20 to 22, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, adding that details of the visit are not yet finalized.
Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez told reporters that Marcos is the “first ASEAN head of state invited by Trump,” referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Trade and security will likely be the focus of discussions, according to Prof. Ranjit Sing Rye, president of OCTA Research.
“I think it’s a very significant meeting of both leaders of the Philippines and the US, especially at this time when there’s so much dynamics in the … South China Sea,” Rye told Arab News.
“It signifies and symbolizes the broadening and deepening of US-Philippine relations under the Trump administration.”
Tensions have continued to run high between the Philippines and China over territorial disputes in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which billions of dollars of goods pass each year.
Manila and Beijing have been involved in frequent maritime confrontations in recent years, with China maintaining its expansive claims of the area, despite a 2016 international tribunal ruling the historical assertion to it had no basis.
The US has a seven-decade-old mutual defense treaty with the Philippines and Washington has repeatedly warned that a Chinese attack on Filipino ships could trigger a US military response.
Philippine and US forces have increasingly upped mutual defense engagements, including large-scale combat exercises in the Philippines.
Manila is also sending trade officials to the US next week to hold further negotiations on tariffs, after Trump raised a planned tariff on Philippine exports to the US to 20 percent from 17 percent.
It is not immediately clear if the Marcos visit will coincide with that of Manila’s tariff-negotiating team.
“Over the next three years, there will be, in my view, a broadening and deepening of US-Philippine relations on many levels, not just economic, not just socioeconomic, but also in trade, but also in security relations,” Rye said.
“And maybe some of these details will be threshed out during that meeting.”
This will be Marcos’ third visit to the US since he became president in 2022.
His last trip was in April 2024, when he met with then President Joe Biden and former Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the first trilateral summit among the treaty allies.
Thousands gather in Srebrenica to mark 30 years since genocide against Bosniak Muslims
- Thousands gather to mark massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim boys and men in Europe’s only genocide since WWII
- Seven newly identified victims of the 1995 massacre, including two 19-year-old men, were laid to rest
SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Thousands of people from Bosnia and around the world gathered in Srebrenica to mark the 30th anniversary of a massacre there of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim boys and men — an atrocity that has been acknowledged as Europe’s only genocide after the Holocaust.
Seven newly identified victims of the 1995 massacre, including two 19-year-old men, were laid to rest in a collective funeral at a vast cemetery near Srebrenica Friday, next to more than 6,000 victims already buried there. Such funerals are held annually for the victims who are still being unearthed from dozens of mass graves around the town.
Relatives of the victims, however, often can bury only partial remains of their loved ones as they are typically found in several different mass graves, sometimes kilometers (miles) apart. Such was the case of Mirzeta Karic, who was waiting to bury her father.
“Thirty years of search and we are burying a bone,” she said, crying by her father’s coffin which was wrapped in green cloth in accordance with Islamic tradition.
“I think it would be easier if I could bury all of him. What can I tell you, my father is one of the 50 (killed) from my entire family,” she added.
July 11, 1995, is the day when the killings started after Bosnian Serb fighters overran the eastern Bosnian enclave in the final months of the interethnic war in the Balkan country.
After taking control of the town that was a protected UN safe zone during the war, Bosnian Serb fighters separated Bosniak Muslim men and boys from their families and brutally executed them in just several days. The bodies were then dumped in mass graves around Srebrenica which they later dug up with bulldozers, scattering the remains among other burial sites to hide the evidence of their war crimes.
The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide on the July 11 anniversary.
Scores of international officials and dignitaries attended the commemoration ceremonies and the funeral. Among them were European Council President Antonio Costa and Britain’s Duchess of Edinburgh, Sophie, who said that “our duty must be to remember all those lost so tragically and to never let these things happen again.”
Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said he felt “humbled” because UN troops from the Netherlands were based in Srebrenica when Bosnian Serbs stormed the town.
“I see to what extent commemorating Srebrenica genocide is important,” he said.
In an emotional speech, Munira Subasic, who heads the Mothers of Srebrenica association, urged Europe and the world to “help us fight against hatred, against injustice and against killings.”
Subasic, who lost her husband and youngest son in Srebrenica along with more than 20 relatives, told Europe to “wake up.”
“As I stand here many mothers in Ukraine and Palestine are going through what we went through in 1995,” Subasic said, referring to ongoing conflicts. “It’s the 21st century but instead of justice, fascism has woken up.”
On the eve of the anniversary, an exhibition was inaugurated displaying personal items belonging to the victims that were found in the mass graves over the years.
The conflict in Bosnia erupted in 1992, when Bosnian Serbs took up arms in a rebellion against the country’s independence from the former Yugoslavia and with an aim to create their own state and eventually unite with neighboring Serbia. More than 100,000 people were killed and millions displaced before a US-brokered peace agreement was reached in 1995.
Bosnia remains ethnically split while both Bosnian Serbs and neighboring Serbia refuse to acknowledge that the massacre in Srebrenica was a genocide despite rulings by two UN courts. Bosnian Serb political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, along with many others, were convicted and sentenced for genocide.
Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic expressed condolences on X while calling the Srebrenica massacre a “terrible crime.”
“There is no room in Europe — or anywhere else — for genocide denial, revisionism, or the glorification of those responsible,” European Council President Costa said in his speech. “Denying such horrors only poisons our future.”
