NBC News modeled out a 3-bedroom home and found tariffs added more than $4,000 to total costs.
ATLANTA (AP) — PresidentDonald Trumpand other Republicans have long criticized states that take weeks to count their ballots after Election Day. This year has seen a flurry of activity to address it. Part of Trump'sexecutive order on elections, signed in March butheld up by lawsuits, takes aim at one of the main reasons for late vote counts: Many states allow mailed ballots to be counted even if they arrive after Election Day. The U.S. Supreme Court last month said it would consider whethera challenge in Illinoiscan proceed in a case that is among severalRepublican-backed lawsuitsseeking to impose an Election Day deadline for mail ballots. At least three states — Kansas, North Dakota andUtah— passed legislation this year that eliminated a grace period for receiving mailed ballots, saying they now need to be in by Election Day. Even in California, whereweekslong vote countingis a frequentsource of frustrationanda target of Republican criticism, a bill attempting to speed up the process is moving through the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Order asserts federal law prohibits counting late ballots The ballot deadline section of Trump'swide-ranging executive orderrelies on an interpretation of federal law that establishes Election Day for federal elections. He argues this means all ballots must be received by that date. "This is like allowing persons who arrive 3 days after Election Day, perhaps after a winner has been declared, to vote in person at a former voting precinct, which would be absurd,"the executive orderstates. It follows a pattern for the president, who hasrepeatedly questionedthe legitimacy of such ballots even though there isno evidencethey are the source of widespread fraud. The issue is tied closely to his complaints abouthow long it takes to count ballots, his desire for results on election night and hisfalse claimsthat overnight "dumps" of vote counts point to a rigged election in2020, when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. But ballots received after Election Day, in addition to being signed and dated by the voter, must be postmarked by the U.S. Postal Service indicating they were completed and dropped off on or before the final day of voting. Accepting late-arriving ballots has not been a partisan issue historically. States as different as California and Mississippi allow them, while Colorado and Indiana do not. "There is nothing unreliable or insecure about a ballot that comes back after Election Day," said Steve Simon, the chief election official in Minnesota, which has an Election Day deadline. In his executive order, most of which ispaused by the courts, Trump directs the attorney general to "take all necessary action" to enforce federal law against states that include late-arriving ballots in their final counts for federal elections. He also directs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to condition federal funding on compliance. Trump's rhetoric motivates Republican states Republicans in five states have passed legislation since the 2020 election moving the mail ballot deadline to Election Day, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks election legislation. Earlier this year, GOP lawmakers inKansasended the state's practice of accepting mail ballots up to three days after Election Day, a change that will take effect for next year's midterms.Problems with mail deliveryhad prompted Kansas to add the grace period in 2017. Kansas state Sen. Mike Thompson, a Republican who chairs the committee that handles election legislation, compared the grace period to giving a football team extra chances to score after the game clock expires. "We need this uniform end to the election just so that we know that all voters are operating on the same time frame," he said. A history of complaints in California California has long been a source of complaints about theamount of timeit takes for ballots to be counted and winners declared. "The rest of the country shouldn't have to wait on California to know the results of the elections," U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Committee on House Administration, said during an April hearing. He said California's "lax election laws" were to blame for the delays. The nation's most populous state has the largest number of registered voters in the country, some 22.9 million, which is roughly equivalent to the number of voters in Florida and Georgia combined. California also hasembraced universal mail voting, which means every registered voter automatically receives a ballot in the mail for each election. The deadline for election offices to receive completed ballots is seven days after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by then. A survey of some 35,000 Los Angeles County voters during last fall's election found that 40% waited until Election Day to return their ballot. Election officials say the exhaustive process for reviewing and counting mail ballots combined with a large percentage of voters waiting until the last minute makes it impossible for all results to be available on election night. California Democrats consider changes to speed the count Under state law, election officials in California have 30 days to count ballots, conduct a postelection review and certify the results. Dean Logan, Los Angeles County's chief election official, told Congress in May that his team counted nearly 97% of the 3.8 million ballots cast within a week of Election Day in 2024. Jesse Salinas, president of the state clerks' association, said his staff in Yolo County, near Sacramento, already works 16-hour days, seven days a week before and after an election. Assemblyman Marc Berman introduced legislation that would keep the state's 30-day certification period but require county election officials to finish counting most ballots within 13 days after the election. They would be required to notify the state if they weren't going to meet that deadline and give a reason. "I don't think that we can stick our heads in the sand and pretend like these conspiracies aren't out there and that this lack of confidence doesn't exist, in particular among Republican voters in California," said Berman, a Democrat. "There are certain good government things that we can do to strengthen our election system." He acknowledged that many counties already meet the 13-day deadline in his bill, which awaits consideration in the Senate. "My hope is that this will strengthen people's confidence in their election system and their democracy by having some of those benchmarks and just making it very clear for folks when different results will be available," Berman said. ___ Associated Press writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture.Sign up for it here. When Donald Trump ordered air strikes on key Iranian nuclear-enrichment sites last month and immediately declared that the targets had been "completely and totally obliterated," he was counting on a single display of overwhelming air power to accomplish a major strategic goal. Though initially hesitant to join Israel's 10-day-old bombing campaign against Iran, the president came to believe that the United States could finish off Tehran's nuclear ambitions all at once. After what he called a "very successful attack," Trump demanded that Israel and Iran stop fighting, declaring, "NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!" In reality, the U.S. attack may have only delayed the Iranian program by months. Trump ended up short-circuiting both his own efforts at diplomacy with Iran and an extraordinary Israeli campaign that required years of elaborate preparation, rendered Iran's air-defense network inoperable, and allowed Israeli forces to methodically work through a long list of target sites across the country over the course of a week and a half. Destroying a military target from the air usually requires multiple raids on the site—not one night and a victory declaration on Truth Social. Israeli military planners had clearly hoped to enlist American help in attacking Iran but may not have anticipated that it would be for one night only. To some extent, Trump's approach is typical of American leaders, who have routinely underestimated the true complexities of military tasks and assumed that a burst of overwhelming force will secure U.S. objectives and allow Washington to impose its version of peace. Recent events—not just in the Middle East but also in Ukraine—suggest that smaller countries with fewer resources than the United States have a far more urgent understanding specifically of how to use air power and generally of how to defeat their enemies. [Read: Trump's One-and-Done Doctrine] An unbounded faith in American military might, combined with a desire not to get bogged down in long foreign engagements, has led to excesses of optimism in the past: the constant escalation cycle in Vietnam, when it was said that more force would bring victory; the infamous mission accomplished banners after U.S. forces deposed Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. In conflicts since the end of World War II, the U.S. military has prevailed in individual battles, but it has won only one clear victory in a war: Operation Desert Storm in 1991. This conundrum has led to far less introspection than it deserves. One of the reasons might be that U.S. military power has been so extensive that the military, and policy makers, have not had to think too deeply about the process of winning wars. For 80 years, the U.S. military could be deployed to occupy territory, blow up structures, or destroy an enemy force—and was able to do it. It could inflict a frightening toll on its enemies at remarkably little cost to itself. The risk of overestimating American capabilities may be greatest in decisions about applying air power. The U.S. has the most awesome air force the world has ever seen. (Not coincidentally, the successful Desert Storm campaign involved purposeful and relentless air attacks on enemy targets.) Such power has immense costs, however, one of which is the destructive luxury of not having to think deeply about just what it means to win a war. American policy makers feel able to lecture smaller powers about what they should and should not do. Trump pushed Israel—which had, remarkably, achieved the ability to move freely in Iranian airspace—to stand down before the U.S. could reliably ascertain whether its own air strikes had been effective. Since 2022, bad instructions from the United States have been devastating to Ukraine's effort to fight off Russian invaders. Under the Biden administration, the United States feared escalation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and kept Ukrainians from using Western-made long-range weaponry to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia. In effect, the American veto created a large safe space in Russia, and gave the Russians the flexibility to plan and execute a hugely destructive strategic air campaign against Ukraine. Until Ukraine began developing its own systems, it was nearly powerless to stop the Russians from unleashing drones and missiles on Ukrainian military and civilian targets. Instead, the Ukrainians were forced to concentrate their resources on a bloody land war fought in trenches and by drones; despite large casualties on both sides, the fighting has produced only tiny changes in territorial control. Ukraine has done its best to change this dynamic, by working to expand its own long-range capabilities andusing those weapons against targets in Russia. The tragedy for Ukrainians is that the Biden administration stood in their way for three years—and was succeeded by a Trump administration that, perhaps because of a broad sympathy with Putin, seems intent on letting Russia win. [Read: The problem with Trump's cease-fire] For all its advanced weaponry, the United States would benefit from listening to smaller, more inventive militaries that are fighting larger adversaries in a rapidly evolving technological environment. Ukraine, for example, has developed enormous expertise in designing and deploying unmanned aerial vehicles, which—as the recent attacks on Russian airfields thousands of miles away from the Ukrainian border showed—create new vulnerabilities at traditional military facilities. Unfortunately, nothing about recent U.S. actions suggests that the country's leaders have any intention to learn from others. Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon seems obsessed with "lethality"—the idea that the United States wins wars by bringing greater lethal force to every direct engagement with the enemy. But although that focus might sound macho and hyper-militaristic to him and Trump, it may be the precursor to more events like Trump's Iran strikes: showy tactical attacks that fail to accomplish any strategic goals of substance. Article originally published atThe Atlantic
BEIRUT (AP) — Hezbollah leader Naim KassemreiteratedSunday the militant group'srefusal to lay down its weaponsbefore Israel withdraws from all of southernLebanonand stops its airstrikes. He spoke in a video address, as thousands gathered in Beirut's southern suburbs to mark the Shiite holy day of Ashoura Ashoura commemorates the 680 AD Battle of Karbala, in which the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hussein, was killed after he refused to pledge allegiance to the Umayyad caliphate. For Shiites, the commemoration has come to symbolize resistance against tyranny and injustice. This year's commemoration comes in the wake ofa bruising warbetween Israel and Hezbollah, which nominally ended with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in late November. Israeli strikes killed much of Hezbollah's top leadership, including longtimeSecretary General Hassan Nasrallah, and destroyed much of its arsenal. Since the ceasefire, Israel has continued to occupy five strategic border points in southern Lebanon and to carry out near-daily airstrikes that it says aim to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its capabilities. Those strikes have killed some 250 people since November, in addition to more than 4,000 killed during the war, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. There has been increasing international and domestic pressure forHezbollahto give up its remaining arsenal. "How can you expect us not to stand firm while the Israeli enemy continues its aggression, continues to occupy the five points, and continues to enter our territories and kill?" Kassem said in his video address. "We will not be part of legitimizing the occupation in Lebanon and the region. We will not accept normalization (with Israel)." In response to those who ask why the group needs its missile arsenal, Kassem said: "How can we confront Israel when it attacks us if we didn't have them? Who is preventing Israel from entering villages and landing and killing young people, women and children inside their homes unless there is a resistance with certain capabilities capable of minimal defense?" His comments come ahead of an expected visit by U.S. envoy Tom Barrack to Beirut to discuss a proposed plan for Hezbollah's disarmament and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the rest of southern Lebanon. Barrack posted Saturday on X that Lebanon is facing "a historic moment to supersede the strained confessionalism of the past and finally fulfill (its) true promise of the hope of 'One country, one people, one army'" and quoted U.S.President Donald Trumpsaying, "Let's make Lebanon Great again."
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) —America's largest trade partner, the European Union, is among the entities awaiting word Monday onwhether U.S. President Donald Trumpwill impose punishingtariffson their goods, a move economists have warned would have repercussions for companies and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. Trump imposed a 20% import tax on all EU-made products in early April as part of a setof tariffstargeting countries with which the United States hasa trade imbalance. Hours after the nation-specific duties took effect, he put them on hold until July 9 at a standard rate of 10% to quiet financial markets and allow time for negotiations. Expressing displeasure the EU's stance in trade talks, however, the president said he wouldjack up the tariff ratefor European exports to 50%. A rate that high could make everything from French cheese and Italian leather goods to German electronics and Spanish pharmaceuticals much more expensive in the U.S. The EU, whose 27 member nations operate as a single economic bloc, said its leaders hoped to strike a deal with theDonald Trumpadministration. Without one, the EU said it wasprepared to retaliatewith tariffs on hundreds of American products, ranging from beef and auto parts to beer andBoeing airplanes. Here are important things to know about trade between the United States and the European Union. US-EU trade is enormous A lot of money is at stake in the trade talks. The EU's executive commission describes the trade between the U.S. and the EU as "the most important commercial relationship in the world." The value of EU-U.S. trade in goods and services amounted to 1.7 trillion euros ($2 trillion) in 2024, or an average of 4.6 billion euros a day, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat. The biggest U.S. export to Europe is crude oil, followed by pharmaceuticals, aircraft, automobiles, and medical and diagnostic equipment. Europe's biggest exports to the U.S. are pharmaceuticals, cars, aircraft, chemicals, medical instruments, and wine and spirits. EU sells more to the US than vice versa Trump has complained about the EU's 198 billion-euro ($233 billion) trade surplus in goods, which shows Americans buy more stuff from European businesses than the other way around. However, American companies fill some of the gap by outselling the EU when it comes to services such as cloud computing, travel bookings, and legal and financial services. The U.S. services surplus took the nation's trade deficit with the EU down to 50 billion euros ($59 billion), which represents less than 3% of overall U.S.-EU trade. What are the issues dividing the two sides? Before Trump returned to office, the U.S. and the EU maintained a generally cooperative trade relationship and low tariff levels on both sides. The U.S. rate averaged 1.47% for European goods, while the EU's averaged 1.35% for American products. But the White House has taken a much less friendly posture towardthe longstanding U.S. allysince February. Along with the fluctuating tariff rate on European goods Trump has floated, the EU has been subject to his administration's 50% tariff on steel and aluminum and a 25% tax on imported automobiles and parts. Trump administration officials have raised a slew of issues they want to see addressed, including agricultural barriers such as EU health regulations that include bans on chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-treated beef. Trump has also criticized Europe's value-added taxes, which EU countries levy at the point of sale this year at rates of 17% to 27%. But many economists see VAT as trade-neutral since they apply to domestic goods and services as well as imported ones. Because national governments set the taxes through legislation, the EU has said they aren't on the tableduring trade negotiations. "On the thorny issues of regulations, consumer standards and taxes, the EU and its member states cannot give much ground," Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Germany's Berenberg bank, said. "They cannot change the way they run the EU's vast internal market according to U.S. demands, which are often rooted in a faulty understanding of how the EU works." What are potential impacts of higher tariffs? Economists and companies say higher tariffs will mean higher prices for U.S. consumers on imported goods. Importers must decide how much of the extra tax costs to absorb through lower profits and how much to pass on to customers. Mercedes-Benz dealers in the US. have said they are holding the line on 2025 model year prices "until further notice." The German automaker has a partial tariff shield because it makes 35% of the Mercedes-Benz vehicles sold in the U.S. in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but the company said it expects prices to undergo "significant increases" in coming years. Simon Hunt, CEO of Italian wine and spirits producer Campari Group, told investment analysts that prices could increase for some products or stay the same depending what rival companies do. If competitors raise prices, the company might decide to hold its prices on Skyy vodka or Aperol aperitif to gain market share, Hunt said. Trump has argued that making it more difficult for foreign companies to sell in the U.S. is a way to stimulate a revival of American manufacturing. Many companies have dismissed the idea or said it would take years to yield positive economic benefits. However, some corporations have proved willing toshift some productionstateside. France-based luxury group LVMH, whose brands include Tiffany & Co., Luis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Moet & Chandon, could move some production to the United States, billionaire CEO Bernaud Arnault said at the company's annual meeting in April. Arnault, who attended Trump's inauguration, has urged Europe to reach a deal based on reciprocal concessions. "If we end up with high tariffs, ... we will be forced to increase our U.S.-based production to avoid tariffs," Arnault said. "And if Europe fails to negotiate intelligently, that will be the consequence for many companies. ... It will be the fault of Brussels, if it comes to that." Many expect Trump to drop his most drastic demands Some forecasts indicate the U.S. economy would be more at risk if the negotiations fail. Without a deal, the EU would lose 0.3% of its gross domestic product and U.S. GDP would fall 0.7%, if Trump slaps imported goods from Europe with tariffs of 10% to 25%, according to a research review by Bruegel, a think tank in Brussels. Given the complexity of some of the issues, the two sides may arrive only at a framework deal before Wednesday's deadline. That would likely leave a 10% base tariff, as well as the auto, steel and aluminum tariffs in place until details of a formal trade agreement are ironed out. The most likely outcome of the trade talks is that "the U.S. will agree to deals in which it takes back its worst threats of 'retaliatory' tariffs well beyond 10%," Schmieding said. "However, the road to get there could be rocky." The U.S. offering exemptions for some goods might smooth the path to a deal. The EU could offer to ease some regulations that the White House views as trade barriers. "While Trump might be able to sell such an outcome as a 'win' for him, the ultimate victims of his protectionism would, of course, be mostly the U.S. consumers," Schmieding said.
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