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US Navy's 5th Fleet Seizes Weapons Shipment From Stateless Dhow In Arabian Sea

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="US Navy's 5th Fleet Seizes Weapons Shipment From Stateless Dhow In Arabian Sea" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-05/qosp3814_us-5th-fleet-seizes-weapons-reuters_625x300_09_May_21.jpg" title="US Navy's 5th Fleet Seizes Weapons Shipment From Stateless Dhow In Arabian Sea" /></div>
Thousands of illicit weapons are displayed onboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey
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Cairo:
The US Navy's Fifth Fleet said on Saturday that the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey (CG 61) seized an illicit shipment of weapons from a stateless dhow in international water of the North Arabian Sea on May 6-7.
"The cache of weapons included dozens of advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles, thousands of Chinese Type 56 assault rifles, and hundreds of PKM machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades launchers. Other weapon components included advanced optical sights," the Bahrain-based Fleet said in a statement.
It added that the materiel is in US custody awaiting final disposition, while the original source and intended destination of the materiel is under investigation.
"After all illicit cargo was removed, the dhow was assessed for seaworthiness, and after questioning, its crew was provided food and water before being released," the statement said.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world US Navy's 5th Fleet Seizes Weapons Shipment From Stateless Dhow In Arabian Sea

Thousands of illicit weapons are displayed onboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey Cairo: The US Navy's Fifth Fleet said on...

South Africa Reports 4 Cases Of India Covid Variant

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="South Africa Reports 4 Cases Of India Covid Variant" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-01/53dbipl4_south-africa-coronavirus-afp-650_625x300_24_January_21.jpg" title="South Africa Reports 4 Cases Of India Covid Variant" /></div>
South Africa is at least the fourth country on the continent to pick up the B.1.617.2 variant(FILE)
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Johannesburg:
South Africa's health ministry on Saturday said four cases of a coronavirus variant fuelling a devastating surge of Covid-19 in India had been recorded in the country.
"The four cases of B.1.617.2 have been detected in (the provinces of) Gauteng (2) and KwaZulu-Natal (2) and all have a history of recent arrival from India," Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said in a statement late Saturday.
Eleven cases of another variant first detected in the United Kingdom and known as B.1.1.7 have also been found, the statement added, noting that community transmission of that variant had "already set in".
South Africa is at least the fourth country on the continent to pick up the B.1.617.2 variant, alongside Kenya, Uganda and Morocco.
India is grappling with an explosive coronavirus outbreak widely attributed to the variant, which has now been found in more than a dozen countries worldwide.
South Africa has not yet joined the growing number of countries worldwide that have banned flights from India to limit the spread of its variant.
Mkhize said travel restrictions would "need to be balanced against scientific realities" to protect the economy of Africa's most industrialised nation.
An announcement will be made once the cabinet has consulted on the matter, he added.
South Africa is the continent's worst virus-hit country, accounting for more than 34 percent of all cases in the region.
The country's second coronavirus wave, which peaked earlier this year, was driven by a local, more infectious coronavirus variant known as B.1.351.
Mkhize earlier this week raised the alarm over "a worrying trend of increasing numbers of detected cases" in certain provinces.
He warned of a looming third wave of infections likely to coincide with the upcoming southern hemisphere winter.
To date, the country has recorded more than 1.59 million coronavirus cases, of which more than 54,700 have been fatal.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world South Africa Reports 4 Cases Of India Covid Variant

South Africa is at least the fourth country on the continent to pick up the B.1.617.2 variant(FILE) Johannesburg: South Africa's he...

3 Injured In Shooting At New York's Times Square

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="3 Injured In Shooting At New York's Times Square" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-05/isbi56p_times-square-shooting-afp_625x300_09_May_21.jpg" title="3 Injured In Shooting At New York's Times Square" /></div>
Times Square has changed since theaters all closed in March 2020.
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New York:
A shooting in New York's bustling Times Square has injured two women and a four-year-old girl, in an incident US authorities were still scrambling to understand, police said Saturday.
The incident took place just before 5:00 pm local time (9:00 pm GMT), at the intersection of 7th Avenue and 44th Street, a NYPD spokesperson told AFP.
The three victims were hospitalized in Manhattan, and their lives were not in danger, he added.
No arrests have yet been made, and police said the "investigation is still ongoing," without giving further details.
Times Square, one of New York's tourist hotspots before the pandemic, has changed since theaters all closed in March 2020.
According to a recent report by the Times Square Alliance, the neighborhood business association, the area recorded 25 violent crimes in the first quarter of 2021, up from 17 in the same period of 2020.
At the end of March, a video of an assault on an older woman of Asian descent shocked the neighborhood.
A man with a criminal record, who lived in a hotel near Times Square that had become a reception center for the homeless, was arrested and charged.
Neighborhood theaters are set to start reopening on September 14, however, and the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, recently announced a major campaign to revive tourism from June.
Shootings in New York have sharply increased since the summer of 2020 and the protests against the police violence that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, official data show.
Crime in general was up 30 percent over the same period.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world 3 Injured In Shooting At New York's Times Square

Times Square has changed since theaters all closed in March 2020. New York: A shooting in New York's bustling Times Square has inju...

Barack Obama's Family Dog Bo, A Star Of The White House, Dies

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Barack Obama's Family Dog Bo, A Star Of The White House, Dies" src="https://i.ndtvimg.com/mt/2009-04/ObamaBostory.jpg" title="Barack Obama's Family Dog Bo, A Star Of The White House, Dies" /></div>
Bo, a black-and-white Portuguese water dog, was a gift to the Obamas from senator Edward Kennedy
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Washington:
Barack Obama's family dog Bo, who became a popular resident of the White House, died on Saturday from cancer, the former president said, remembering him as "a constant, gentle presence in our lives."
Obama had promised his young daughters Malia and Sasha that they could get a dog after the 2008 election, and Bo joined the family soon after they moved into the president's official residence.
"Today our family lost a true friend and loyal companion," Obama said on Twitter, sharing photographs of him and Bo running down a White House corridor and Bo being petted by children.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Today our family lost a true friend and loyal companion. For more than a decade, Bo was a constant, gentle presence in our lives—happy to see us on our good days, our bad days, and everyday in between. <a href="https://t.co/qKMNojiu9V">pic.twitter.com/qKMNojiu9V</a>
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) <a href="https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1391106025269440516?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 8, 2021</a></blockquote>
"For more than a decade, Bo was a constant, gentle presence in our lives -- happy to see us on our good days, our bad days, and everyday in between," Obama wrote.
"He tolerated all the fuss that came with being in the White House, had a big bark but no bite, loved to jump in the pool in the summer, was unflappable with children, lived for scraps around the dinner table, and had great hair."
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He tolerated all the fuss that came with being in the White House, had a big bark but no bite, loved to jump in the pool in the summer, was unflappable with children, lived for scraps around the dinner table, and had great hair. <a href="https://t.co/1x4VOMsLGR">pic.twitter.com/1x4VOMsLGR</a>
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) <a href="https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1391106033922318340?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 8, 2021</a></blockquote>
Bo, a black-and-white Portuguese water dog, was a gift to the Obamas from senator Edward Kennedy, and was chosen due to the breed's hypoallergenic coat.
He appeared regularly at White House events, particularly the annual Easter Egg Roll, met the Pope, visited children in hospital and flew on Air Force One.
"As a family, we will miss Bo dearly," former first lady Michelle Obama wrote on Instagram. "But we are thankful that he lived such a joyful life full of snuggles, games of fetch, and evenings spent lying on the couch."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world Barack Obama's Family Dog Bo, A Star Of The White House, Dies

Bo, a black-and-white Portuguese water dog, was a gift to the Obamas from senator Edward Kennedy Washington: Barack Obama's family ...

Sadiq Khan, London's Feisty Mayor, Wins Second Term

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In his victory speech, Sadiq Khan described himself as "a Londoner through and through".(FILE)
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London:
London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who won re-election Saturday, has risen from humble roots to spar with prime ministers and presidents since taking charge of the British capital five years ago.
The 50-year-old politician from the main opposition Labour party, a former human rights lawyer brought up on a London public housing complex, won a second stint at City Hall with victory over Conservative rival Shaun Bailey.
This continues a remarkable journey for the Pakistani immigrant bus driver's son, who became the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when initially elected in 2016.
He has made a name for himself as a vocal critic of Brexit and successive Conservative prime ministers, including his mayoral predecessor Boris Johnson, as well as for a feud with former US president Donald Trump.
The pair became embroiled in an extraordinary war of words, after Khan criticised Trump's controversial travel ban on people from certain Muslim countries.
In a series of bizarre attacks, Trump accused Khan of doing a "very bad job on terrorism" and called him a "stone cold loser" and a "national disgrace".
The mayor in turn allowed an infamous blimp of Trump dressed as a baby in a nappy to fly above protests in Parliament Square during his 2018 visit to Britain.
"He once called me a stone cold loser. Only one of us is a loser, and it's not me," a typically combative Khan told AFP as he campaigned ahead of Thursday's poll.
Street fighter
Born in London in 1970 to parents who had recently arrived from Pakistan, Khan was the fifth child out of seven brothers and one sister.
He grew up in public housing in Tooting, an ethnically mixed residential area in south London, and slept in a bunkbed until he was 24.
His modest background plays well in a city that is proud of its diversity and loves a self-made success story.
In his victory speech on Saturday, Khan described himself as "a Londoner through and through".
"I grew up on a council estate, a working class boy, a child of immigrants, but I'm now the Mayor of London," he said.
Khan still regularly recalls how his father drove one of London's famous red buses, and his mother was a seamstress. One of his brothers is a motor mechanic.
He is a handy boxer, having learnt the sport to defend himself in the streets against those who hurled racist abuse at him, and two of his brothers are boxing coaches. He also ran the London Marathon in 2014.
At school, he wanted to study science and become a dentist. But a teacher spotted his gift for verbal sparring and directed him towards law.
He gained a law degree from the University of North London and started out as a trainee lawyer in 1994 at the Christian Fisher legal firm, where he was eventually made a partner.
He specialised in human rights, and spent three years chairing the civil liberties campaign group Liberty.
He represented Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam movement, and Babar Ahmad, a mosque acquaintance who was jailed in the United States after admitting providing support to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Muslim PM?
Khan joined Labour aged 15 when Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher was in her pomp.
He became a local councillor for Tooting in the Conservative-dominated Wandsworth local borough in 1994, and its member of parliament in 2005.
He still lives in the area with his lawyer wife Saadiya and their two teenage daughters.
Then prime minister Gordon Brown made him the communities minister in 2008 and he later served as transport minister, becoming the first Muslim minister to attend Cabinet meetings.
In parliament, he voted for gay marriage -- which earned him death threats.
As mayor, he vowed to focus on providing affordable homes for Londoners and freezing transport fares, but -- like many in power around the world -- saw his agenda engulfed by the pandemic.
Khan has said his priority for a second term will be "jobs, jobs, jobs" as he bids to keep London on its perch as a top world city while tackling the crisis and the fallout from Brexit, which could threaten the capital's vital financial sector.
He is London's third mayor after Labour's Ken Livingstone (2000-2008) and Johnson (2008-2016), with widespread speculation he could try to follow in his predecessor's footsteps to Downing Street.
Khan predicts Britain will have a Muslim prime minister "in the not-too-distant future" but insists it will not be him.
"As long as Londoners continue to trust me to be their mayor, I'm currently in this job," he told AFP.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world Sadiq Khan, London's Feisty Mayor, Wins Second Term

In his victory speech, Sadiq Khan described himself as "a Londoner through and through".(FILE) London: London Mayor Sadiq Kha...

Virginia Republicans’ messy, Trumpy race to pick a nominee for governor

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GALAX, Virginia — Republican gubernatorial candidate <a href="https://kirkcox.com/">Kirk Cox</a> was several minutes into a wonky election security answer at a diner when <a href="https://www.vox.com/22217039/capitol-attack-trump-rally-election-biden-explained">January 6</a> came up again.
Did President Joe Biden win the election? Cox avoided directly answering the question at this recent event, though he had previously acknowledged that reality, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-general-elections-virginia-elections-voting-495f43e4a5d5bbf049cc7c4fc008969b">the one GOP frontrunner willing to do so</a>.
Instead, he refocused on proposals like voter ID requirements, <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-oppose-many-voting-restrictions-but-not-voter-id-laws/">which are popular with lots of voters</a>. But now, Lin, a Trump supporter who had posed the Biden question, had another one. She wanted to know whether he agreed with the Virginia Senate <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/amanda-chase-virginia-censure/2021/01/27/b126bf46-60cf-11eb-9061-07abcc1f9229_story.html">censuring</a> one of its members, Amanda Chase, after she called the people who <a href="https://www.vox.com/22217039/capitol-attack-trump-rally-election-biden-explained">stormed the US Capitol</a> that day in January “<a href="https://blurredbylines.com/blog/amanda-chase-virginia-capitol-riot-dc-january-6/">patriots</a>.”
Did Cox support the “freedom of speech” of Chase, now one of Cox’s competitors for the Republican nomination?
“I’m very much for freedom of speech,” Cox answered.
“So you were against [the censure vote]?” asked Lin, who supports Chase in the race. “I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I need a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’”
This narrow line on the 2020 election and cancel culture is one Republicans have had to dance along for months in courting voters before Saturday’s Virginia GOP gubernatorial convention.
The GOP has had a tough go of it statewide in the past few years in Virginia, with demographic changes helping push the state to become reliably Democratic. The party’s response — running further and further to the right — has only exacerbated the problem. But Virginia might not be lost to the right kind of Republican. At least not yet.
Republicans will choose their nominee in an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/here-s-why-virginia-gop-s-nominating-process-governor-could-n1266655">“unassembled convention</a>”; nearly 54,000 Republicans who successfully applied to be a delegate will be able to cast ranked-choice ballots at 39 drive-up locations around Virginia. It’s a process that has had more than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/virginia-gop-convention/2021/04/04/4bfe8fc4-9228-11eb-a74e-1f4cf89fd948_story.html">a few</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/lot-confusion-virginia-republicans-stumble-over-their-own-voter-id-n1265887">bumps</a> along the way, including Chase <a href="https://vagovernor.substack.com/p/audio-republican-gubernatorial-candidate?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozOTY4OTQzLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNjEyMTU1NCwiXyI6Inl0ZUZHIiwiaWF0IjoxNjIwMzM1MjM4LCJleHAiOjE2MjAzMzg4MzgsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNTkxMzYiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.HwqJkp0jVhIlP-YqLxj-aKtToiOeF8l2E7Fse2JYN5c&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#play">alleging the party chose a convention over a primary</a> to prevent her from becoming the nominee. It could also take several days to know the results — candidates have already sown doubt about the race.
“It’s going to make the Iowa caucuses look like a well-oiled machine,” a Democratic operative said, with a touch of hopeful glee.
Virginia last chose a Republican in a statewide election in 2009. Since then, the GOP has run candidates that its own insiders say don’t appeal to the state’s growing suburban population. They’re going to have to make inroads back into those communities to have a hope of winning, says Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the Center for Politics.
“I always look at, in the 2016 primaries, places where candidates like John Kasich and Marco Rubio did well against Trump: Those are the areas that have moved more toward the Democrats since — places like Loudoun County, Hanover County, Chesterfield County,” Coleman said. “Maybe those voters are still open to the right type of Republican after voting for Hillary [Clinton] and Biden.”
But can they do that while turning out the 44 percent of the state that went for Trump?
The mix of contenders has been revealing.
<ul>
<li>Chase, the self-described “Trump in heels,” has dominated headlines in national media, saying things like the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/4/20/22387556/derek-chauvin-verdict-guilty-murder-manslaughter">Derek Chauvin verdict</a> made her “<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amanda-chase-gop-governor-candidate-sick-chauvin-guilty-verdict-2021-4">sick</a>” because she worried about how cops would feel about it. And she’s popular with the base, at least according to a February poll and a <a href="https://vagovernor.substack.com/p/the-latest-polling-in-the-republican">more recent one conducted by Democrats</a>.</li>
<li>Businessman and former lieutenant governor hopeful Pete Snyder is nearly as Trumpy, railing against the “woke” liberal establishment and highlighting endorsements from figures like <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/13/20963016/trump-promote-ken-cuccinelli-chad-wolf-dhs-acting-secretary-uscis-federal-vacancies-reform-act">Ken Cuccinelli</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/31/16236382/david-clarke-resigns">Sheriff David Clarke</a>.</li>
<li>Meanwhile, newcomer and former private equity group executive <a href="https://www.youngkinforgovernor.com/">Glenn Youngkin</a> has surged to the top of some <a href="https://www.facebook.com/VAFaithFreedom/posts/2925876564400319">recent</a> <a href="https://www.youngkinforgovernor.com/post/youngkin-dominates-liberty-university-college-republican-straw-poll">straw polls</a> by running a well-funded campaign that ticks <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA7g_U43JxA">all the conservative culture war boxes</a> but also talks about appealing to “Trump Republicans, libertarians, and Democrats” to win in November.</li>
<li>Cox, a delegate in the Virginia House and formerly the body’s speaker, remains the establishment favorite. He touts his know-how on implementing conservative policies, telling Vox, “it’s very important to have the experience to know how to run the state and to make good decisions.”</li>
</ul>
But regardless of how candidates are positioning themselves, there are certain issues that keep coming up on the trail: support for law enforcement, the eradication of “critical race theory” from schools, and election integrity, to name a few.
And for some voters, like Heather, who attended Cox’s event in Galax, the last on that list is most important — or, more specifically, it’s the question of whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election that matters most.
“That’s a huge one,” she said. “That’s first and foremost for this election or any election.”
The future of the GOP after Trump is an open question. And barring disputes like <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/5/5/22419504/liz-cheney-trump-big-lie">the one playing out between US Rep. Liz Cheney and the bulk of the House GOP</a> right now, Virginia might be the best glimpse we get before the 2022 midterms.
Here’s what it looks like: There are seven candidates running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, with four in real contention (Youngkin, Chase, Cox, and Snyder). All of them tout their traditional conservative bona fides — being pro-Second Amendment, anti-abortion, pro-business, and the like. Many of them rail against Covid-related closures, praising Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for keeping schools and businesses open throughout the pandemic.
“All across Virginia on day one, we are going to get every single school open — five days a week, every single week, with a real, live, breathing teacher in every classroom,” Snyder told a crowd at a brewery in Wytheville last weekend. “And folks, getting the schools open is only the beginning. We need to break the backs of this special interest monopoly of the teachers’ unions and bring real change to our schools.”
<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Closing message for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VAGOV?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#VAGOV</a> candidate Pete Snyder (R), all on education. If he's nominated at this Saturday's convention, expect the message to continue into the general...<a href="https://t.co/WN1YxoIRA6">https://t.co/WN1YxoIRA6</a>
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) <a href="https://twitter.com/HotlineJosh/status/1389675881153634312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2021</a></blockquote>
</div>
Given the country’s rate of vaccination, decreased community spread, and reopening, those pandemic issues might not be as relevant come November — or in 2022 and beyond. Trump, though, still will be.
At Snyder’s event, an emcee opened the afternoon by asking, “How many of you wish Donald Trump was president right now?” and a one-time Trump operator told the crowd they had to get to work to “defeat the socialists,” who “might even be worse than socialists, they’re bordering on communists.”
Youngkin, for his part, makes sure to note in his stump speech that he’s won praise from Trump, but he was also willing to criticize the former president’s tone as “a bit harsh” at <a href="https://loudounnow.com/2021/04/27/snyder-stumps-in-ashburn-as-convention-nears/">a campaign event in northern Virginia</a>.
Loyalty to Trump isn’t the key thing, argues <a href="https://www.peterdoran.org/">Peter Doran</a>, a former think tank CEO and one of the other three candidates recognized by the state party. (The others are former Roanoke Sheriff <a href="https://octaviajohnson.com/">Octavia Johnson</a> and retired Army Col. <a href="https://www.sergiodelapena.com/">Sergio de la Peña</a>.)
“Most Virginia Republicans are painted as these big hard-right, hard-conservative voters who only care about Donald Trump. That’s not true,” Doran said. “They care about their job. They care about what’s happening to their kids in this past year, and their education. And they care very deeply about the Republican Party’s failure to win over the past decade.”
Wilma, a mother of four and delegate in the convention, agreed, saying the GOP’s future relies on getting young people to understand conservative values like small government, constitutional rights, and concern about the deficit.
“My kids all look at the stimulus — it might be nice to get that money, that cash,” she said. “But eventually they know in the long run, they’re the generation that’s going to have to pay it back.”
Still, it’s no longer enough to tick the “fiscal conservative,” “Christian,” “gun owner,” and “anti-abortion” boxes. There are new ones on the list — keywords of the culture war issues the former president helped animate.
Take “critical race theory,” which Chase <a href="https://www.whsv.com/2021/04/20/republican-candidates-in-virginias-gubernatorial-race-meet-at-forum/">says</a> is part of the reason she decided to homeschool her children.
As <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/24/21451220/critical-race-theory-diversity-training-trump">Vox’s Fabiola Cineas explained</a>, “critical race theory is a framework for grappling with racial power and white supremacy in America.” But it’s also become a catch-all term for what the Trump administration thought was an effort to “indoctrinate” American students and workers with “divisive and harmful sex- and race-based ideologies”:
<blockquote>
“They’ve lumped everything together: critical race theory, the 1619 project, whiteness studies, talking about white privilege,” Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and UCLA and Columbia University law professor, told Vox. “What they have in common is they are discourses that refuse to participate in the lie that America has triumphantly overcome its racist history, that everything is behind us. None of these projects accept that it’s all behind us.”
</blockquote>
It’s not just Chase using the term frequently: Almost all the candidates make sure to highlight their opposition to it; six have <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/virginia-governor-election-critical-race-theory-pledge">signed a pledge opposing critical race theory</a>. As journalist Dave Weigel pointed out on Twitter, Youngkin went so far as to upload multiple video clips of him criticizing it.
Trump’s impact, though, is perhaps most evident in the obsession with election security.
On one hand, Amanda Chase’s stance on the 2020 election sets her apart from the rest of the party — so much so that she, her supporters, and some outsiders claim the state party chose a convention rather than a primary to mitigate the risk of her ending up at the top of their ticket.
Last month, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-general-elections-virginia-elections-voting-495f43e4a5d5bbf049cc7c4fc008969b">in an interview with the AP</a>, Chase even questioned whether Biden won Virginia. (He carried it by 10 percentage points, as <a href="https://results.elections.virginia.gov/vaelections/2020%20November%20General/Site/Presidential.html">official election results</a> show.)
But none of the candidates can distance themselves too far from Trump’s lies and doubt-sowing about the 2020 election. They need only look to the US House to see the consequences of doing so.
<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
This is the key here. Cheney is responding to massive movement across the party to validate 1/6, led by, but by no means limited, to Trump. She’s not the one forcing this conversation, what annoys her colleagues is she won’t ignore it. <a href="https://t.co/t6QzdKQTkn">https://t.co/t6QzdKQTkn</a>
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) <a href="https://twitter.com/BenjySarlin/status/1390303717849632778?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 6, 2021</a></blockquote>
</div>
Neither Youngkin nor Snyder will say Biden’s presidency is legitimate. Cox appears willing to do so (at least when he’s not at a diner in southwest Virginia).
And everyone has plans to improve election integrity. Youngkin promotes his “election security task force,” one plank of which is updating voter rolls monthly. He and Cox talk about making the state election commission nonpartisan. Snyder wants to “make Virginia No. 1 in ballot integrity.”
They’re all fairly anodyne-sounding proposals, but talking about things like that is a requirement for securing the nomination, says Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington.
“While they may not support what happened on January 6, they do want to offer a position that shows some sympathy to the position of Trump supporters,” Farnsworth said.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the rhetoric will dog them during the general election — Youngkin’s spokesperson said they believe election security isn’t a partisan issue, “it’s a democracy issue.”
And “Kirk Cox is an example of a candidate who accepts Biden as a legitimate president but nevertheless speaks in ways that gives some solace to Trump supporters,” Farnsworth pointed out, adding it’s likely that “voters in November will not be dramatically impacted by what’s said in May.”
Still, the insistence on making America’s elections more secure helps perpetuate a world in which seven out of 10 Republican voters still say — per a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/30/politics/cnn-poll-voting-rights/index.html">recent CNN poll</a> — that Biden didn’t win enough votes to be president.
And the continued questioning of elections has applied even to their own party’s choices. Some of those <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/lot-confusion-virginia-republicans-stumble-over-their-own-voter-id-n1265887">choices</a>, admittedly, merit scrutiny from candidates extolling the importance of signatures on absentee ballots. But it also led Youngkin, Cox, and Chase to write to the party, demanding it not use “untested and unproven software that creates uncertainty, lacks openness and transparency, and is inconsistent with our calls as a party for safe and secure elections.”
Now, every ranked-choice ballot will be counted by hand, at a ballroom at the Richmond Marriott, race by race. Chair Rich Anderson <a href="https://vagovernor.substack.com/p/rpv-chairman-rich-anderson-explains?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozOTY4OTQzLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozNTgyMjAwOSwiXyI6IlY4NFZXIiwiaWF0IjoxNjE5ODEwMzYyLCJleHAiOjE2MTk4MTM5NjIsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNTkxMzYiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.1lZsdq0s6UNwjm1iVaG04zkR_Qt6hnHKPCgA4OwrEww&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#play">detailed to the Virginia Scope’s Brandon Jarvis</a> the lengths the Republican Party of Virginia is going to try to instill confidence in the process:
<ul>
<li>Each ballot “will be seen by several eyes at the same time” to guard against transposition of numbers.</li>
<li>An out-of-state independent oversight team will be present.</li>
<li>Each candidate can have two representatives in the counting room, a party spokesperson told Vox. And Anderson said they can “be pretty much right up on the ballots, and eyes on them,” because he wants “them to feel comfortable with the process, to understand it, and have confidence in the final outcomes.”</li>
<li>The news media can be on site to report, and Anderson says he’ll provide regular updates on social media as well.</li>
</ul>
They’ve also set aside money to livestream the counting process, because, Anderson said, “I just don’t want to repeat what was done in different places around the country where people were concerned about it being an opaque process.”
That’s left “no room” for any conspiracy theories about the counting to crop up, says John March, the state party communications director. Even so, there are bound to be some dissidents, and if it takes days, Coleman says he can “see the conspiracy theories now.”
“When you have a multi-candidate field in a multi-round election,” Farnsworth said, “the only sound bet is expecting that the party won’t get together and sing ‘kumbaya’ when this is all over.”
Virginia, once home to the capital of the Confederacy, has moved left enough in presidential races that on election night in 2020, the forecast group Decision Desk called it for Joe Biden right as polls closed. Trump ended up with just 44 percent of the vote here, Biden with 54.
But the GOP argues the state is not lost to them just yet.
In recent decades, Virginia had a peevish streak, electing a governor from the opposite party that just won the White House. The candidate to break that trend was former Gov. Terry McAuliffe — who’s running again this year.
And March points to the “unprecedented” level of interest in the convention as a sign of what’s to come: “54,000 people are getting involved on the grassroots level. ... You don’t really see that, and that just shows how excited Virginia Republicans are.”
Without Trump on the ballot this year, there might be an opening — a slim one for the governorship, but a bigger one to flip competitive state House districts. The person Republicans choose on Saturday will matter a lot.
“One thing I do think that could bode well for them is even though he lost, in 2017 Ed Gillespie got more votes than any previous Republican nominee for governor,” Coleman pointed out. “So maybe if Youngkin or whoever else can get that type of Gillespie turnout, which is definitely a question mark, and Democrats can’t get that anti-Trump turnout, maybe it’s going to be closer.”
Even so, it’s going to be an uphill battle for the GOP to narrow margins in some areas, let alone retake them. Take Chesterfield County, which Republicans easily won for decades. In 2020, it went for Biden by more than 6 percentage points.
“Going forward,” Coleman says, “this may be the last potential cycle where the Republicans could win a county like Chesterfield, and that may not even be enough — it may be necessary but not sufficient.”
Democrats seem to think it won’t be.
“We’re ready for a fight; we expect a fight. We expect a tough race,” said David Turner, the communications director for the Democratic Governors Association. “But what I would say is you can’t report accurately on the state of Virginia without acknowledging there’s pre-Trump and there’s post-Trump, and we’re still post-Trump.”
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22423524/virginia-gop-trump-convention-governor-election">https://www.vox.com/22423524/virginia-gop-trump-convention-governor-election</a>

vox Virginia Republicans’ messy, Trumpy race to pick a nominee for governor

GALAX, Virginia — Republican gubernatorial candidate Kirk Cox was several minutes into a wonky election security answer at a diner when Ja...