Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) broke his <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/08/politics/biden-victory-congressional-republican-reaction/index.html" target="_blank">silence</a> about the election on Monday, declining to acknowledge President Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden and defending Trump’s court challenges, though McConnell did not endorse outright Trump’s voter fraud conspiracy theories.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h4>



On the Senate floor, McConnell&nbsp;<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4922052/senator-mcconnell-president-trump-within-rights-challenge-election-results-court" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said Trump</a>&nbsp;is “100% within his rights” to open legal challenges into allegations of voter fraud, arguing the courts should weigh these accusations and Trump should not be shamed into conceding to Biden in the meantime.



McConnell said states should count all legal ballots and reject illegal ballots, echoing Trump’s baseless claim that last week’s election was riddled with illegal voting, and he said the process should be observable by all sides, possible alluding to a false claim circulating among Trump and his allies that pollwatchers were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/11/06/trump-and-allies-keep-claiming-republican-poll-watchers-were-banned-thats-a-lie/?sh=2fb971f244da">banned in some states</a>.



Unlike Trump and some of his allies like Rep.&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1325658048585752581" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Matt Gaetz</a>&nbsp;(R-Fla.), McConnell did not repeat any specific fraud allegations or falsely imply Trump was the rightful winner, possibly leaving an exit for himself if the president’s legal challenges are unsuccessful.



He scolded media outlets for projecting a Biden victory and said no state has officially certified its results yet, though in most recent presidential races, news outlets have traditionally called a winner and both candidates have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/4024228/what-time-do-the-losing-candidates-usually-concede-the-long-and-short-of-election-night" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">accepted the outcome</a>&nbsp;well before the weeks-long election certification process wraps up.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h4>



“President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” McConnell said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4922052/senator-mcconnell-president-trump-within-rights-challenge-election-results-court" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Monday</a>. “If any major irregularities occurred this time of a magnitude that would affect the outcome, then every single American should want them to be brought to light.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT</h4>



McConnell accused Democrats of hypocrisy for demanding a concession from Trump. He pointed to the fact that Al Gore did not concede to George W. Bush until Dec. 13, 2000 — though&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/13/gore-concedes-presidential-election-to-bush-dec-13-2000-287285" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">that concession was stalled</a>&nbsp;due to a recount process that sparked a Supreme Court challenge — and he suggested Democrats never accepted the results of the 2016 election. In reality, 2016 challenger Hillary Clinton&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/hillary-clinton-concession-speech/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">delivered a concession speech</a>&nbsp;the morning after Election Day, though she still maintained later on that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/nyregion/hillary-clinton-russia-hacking-election-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Russian interference</a>&nbsp;was partly to blame for her loss.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h4>



Trump has not conceded to Biden yet, instead lodging baseless allegations of voter fraud and inaccurately suggesting he would have won if not for a unified Democratic effort to rig the race. His campaign has launched legal challenges in multiple states alleging voter fraud and violations of poll-watchers’ right to observe the counting process, but several of these lawsuits were swiftly rejected last week due to a lack of evidence, and most experts believe these legal efforts are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/election-2020-what-are-the-trump-legal-claims-11604876612" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">unlikely to alter</a>&nbsp;the results of the election. Some close Trump allies like his wife Melania and son-in-law Jared Kushner have privately encouraged the president to concede,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/08/politics/jared-kushner-donald-trump-concession/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CNN reported</a>, though the White House&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/08/us/election-results/a-white-house-official-disputed-reports-that-kushner-had-advised-trump-to-concede" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">denied this claim</a>.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h4>



That’s the number of Republican Senators who have congratulated Biden. Moderate Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Ben Sasse (R-Nev.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have all acknowledged Biden’s win, though more doctrinaire congressional Republicans have sided with Trump and refused to accept the election’s results.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h4>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/11/09/these-are-the-republicans-who-have-acknowledged-bidens-victory/?sh=63cbf5bacedc">These Are The Republicans Who Have Acknowledged Biden’s Victory (Forbes)</a>



-By Joe Walsh, Forbes Staff

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Holds Media Opportunity With Newly-Elected GOP Senators

McConnell: Trump Has ‘Every Right’ To Challenge Election Loss

There’s a vignette that Senator Kamala Harris likes to tell about her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris. It’s a well-trodden soundbite that has proliferated into hashtags and official 2020 campaign merchandise, but the commercialization shouldn’t detract from its meaning: An immigrant from India who came to the United States with dreams of curing cancer, Shyamala raised Harris and her sister Maya to be strong Black women who are mindful of what their identities mean in American work and life. “My mother would look at me,” Harris has said, “and she’d say, ‘Kamala you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last.’”



Shyamala was right: Her daughter has been “the first” a number of times. In 2010, Harris became the first African-American and first woman to serve as California’s attorney general. In 2016, she became the first Indian-American woman to be elected to the United States Senate. In August of 2020, she became the first Black woman and first Asian-American woman to appear on the presidential ticket of a major political party.



On Saturday, November 7, the Associated Press projected that former vice president Joe Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, won the state of Pennsylvania and have earned more than 270 electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election. Senator Harris can therefore add more firsts to her list:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/11/07/kamala-harris-makes-history-as-first-female-black-asian-american-vice-president/">she is officially the first female vice president-elect&nbsp;</a>in United States history and the first person of color to earn the distinction as well.



In her first public statement after the race was called—<a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1325119592130252801" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a tweet</a>—Harris didn’t mention these firsts. “This election is about so much more than&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@JoeBiden</a>&nbsp;or me,” she said. “It’s about the soul of America and our willingness to fight for it. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Let’s get started.”



Harris’s presence in the 2020 race—both for as a candidate for president in the early days of the Democratic primary, and for vice president in the general election race—has been a potent reminder of what has been lacking in our nation’s highest office for more than two centuries.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“It&#8217;s a kind of beautiful, full-circle moment for the story of America because I think women, and more specifically Black women, have done so much work—and are sort of the backbone of this country—without the acknowledgment of the work that we&#8217;ve done,” says Alia Daniels, co-founder of the global queer digital media network Revry. “And so I think being able to see someone who looks like me, in one of those positions, it&#8217;s just a level of pride that I don&#8217;t even know if I can fully express.”</blockquote>



Daniels notes that because we’ve seen women attain powerful positions in the private sector over the past few decades—consider former Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi, or General Motors chief Mary Barra, to name a few boundary-breaking corporate leaders—it can be all too easy to take female leadership for granted. “But this is the highest position in our country that a woman has held,” she says. “There&#8217;s something to actually seeing it.”



The American public has already witnessed Harris asserting her expertise and authority on the national stage: her use of “I’m speaking” during the vice presidential debate last month was a master class in dealing with a male interrupter, and her questioning of then-U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions and now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Senate hearings in 2017 and 2018 were similar showcases of feminine confidence and capability. But her impending presence in the executive branch of government has the potential to be as instructive as inspirational.



“No one can deny the power of seeing somebody who shares an identity, like your gender or your race, which are so salient in American society, certainly, in a position of power,” says Colleen Ammerman, director of the Gender Initiative at Harvard Business School. Ammerman points to research that has shown how female role models and mentors, as well as mere exposure to portraits of female leaders, can help encourage women to speak up, stand up and perhaps achieve more. “The images of leadership and power that we see are overwhelmingly white and male. Sometimes we don&#8217;t even quite notice that until we see something different,” she says.



Henah Parikh, development and communications manager at She’s the First, a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to fighting gender inequality through education, puts it this way: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” She points to research that shows that, without female role models, girls stop believing they can be anything they want to be as early as 5 years old. Women like Harris help combat that.



“We talk a lot about these women trailblazers, like Kamala Harris who are the historic first, but they&#8217;re also paving the way for pulling other girls and women up with them,” Parikh says. “And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s so important to me and to a lot of women, but especially for me as a South Asian woman.”



Senator Harris’s election to the vice presidency comes at a moment when a pandemic has killed more than 200,000 Americans and forced thousands more out of work. Women have been disproportionately affected: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 865,000 women dropped out of the labor force in September, compared to 216,000 men. The childcare and remote learning demands on mothers working from home stand to erase <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace#" target="_blank">close to a decade</a> of gains for women in the workplace unless spouses, employers and the government work to find solutions and provide support.



Harris alone cannot fix this. But for Aimee Koval, cofounder and president of Metis Consulting, a B-corp and certified disability-owned enterprise that provides technology and management consulting, Harris’s experience as a daughter, aunt and stepmother makes her more qualified than previous White House occupants to understand the unique challenges facing women.



“For me the big impact of choosing a woman in the White House is that that comes with a perspective that I think that we haven&#8217;t seen enough of, or enough understanding at a federal level from lawmakers who have not taken those concerns into account have not addressed issues such as childcare and the funding of schools,” Koval says.



Koval notes that fairly or unfairly, all eyes will be on Harris when it comes to these issues; this level of scrutiny and pressure is one of the well-documented downsides of being a “first” or “only” within an organization. In the federal government, where Democrats have held onto their majority in the House but control of the Senate is still unclear, women like Cori Bush—the first Black woman&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/elanagross/2020/11/04/the-firsts-of-the-us-2020-election/?sh=3309ce521c89">elected to Congress</a>&nbsp;by Missouri—and the newly-reelected members of “The Squad” (Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib) can use their personal experiences and political sway to advocate for these policies, too. But the rates of women in government, even with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/erinspencer1/2020/11/05/record-number-of-women-to-serve-in-the-117th-us-congress/">a record 131 women</a>&nbsp;so far elected to the 117th Congress, still lag that of the general public. The work is not over.



“I strongly believe that progress isn’t inevitable,” Harvard’s Ammerman says. “And I think it&#8217;s dangerous to sort of think, okay, we&#8217;ve broken one barrier and so we&#8217;ll just automatically keep going.”



Jackie Adams, coauthor of “A Blessing” and the first African-American female correspondent formally assigned to cover the Reagan and H.W. Bush White Houses for CBS News, has watched women vie for positions of power since Geraldine Ferraro was the first female vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket in 1984. Looking at the developments from the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, she finds reasons to be optimistic about female leadership beyond Harris’s fresh status as vice-president elect. “There are more women of color running for office than ever before,” she said. “I think that there is a flywheel that&#8217;s spinning and it might be pushed further ahead a little bit faster, [as] Senator Harris becomes vice president, but even if she doesn&#8217;t, it&#8217;s not gonna be stopped.”



The inspiration that Harris has already instilled in young girls is evident in the tweets and photos depicting Halloween costumes (<a href="https://twitter.com/meenaharris/status/1322297281333272576" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Converse and all)</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/ErinnFHarley/status/1313473405514125313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1313473405514125313" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">driveway stump speeches</a>. But the significance of her election is not limited to the Gen-Z set.



“Senator Harris actually shares a birthday with my mom,” She’s the First’s Parikh says, going on to explain that both her mom and Shyamala Gopalan Harris come from South India, and both came to American with a lot to learn. Parikh describes hearing Harris talk so fondly about Shyamala and then texting her own mother.



“I said, ‘I just hope that you feel like you have seen some growth in this country, just by seeing this on television.’ Millions of Indian people around the country can relate,” she says. “It is something we&#8217;ve never ever experienced before.”



&#8211;By Maggie McGrath, Forbes Staff

kamala harris

Kamala Harris Makes History: What The First Female Vice President-Elect Means For Women

When CIOs talk about platforms, they’re usually referring to digital rather than political ones. But as Americans head to the polls, corporate tech leaders should be paying close attention to what a second Trump administration, or a first Biden one, could have in store for them.



The outcome of the contest will have profound consequences for skilled immigration, data privacy regimes, the regulation of AI and other issues such as cybersecurity that all matter to CIOs. It will also shape how America deals with China as a competitor and trading partner—a fraught relationship that’s sparked concerns over high-tech supply chains and the security of 5G communications networks<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/10/09/huawei-rivals-nokia-ericsson-27-billion-us-sanctions/#7249ea2bde48">&nbsp;using equipment from Huawei and other Chinese firms</a>.



The election will also help determine whether America can sustain its role as a global innovation leader. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a think tank with close links to the tech industry, points out that the U.S. would need to spend at least an additional $100 billion a year, or an increase of around 80% over current spending levels, just to match what it was investing in research as a percentage of GDP back in the 1980s.



“The reality is that America is no longer the global innovation leader, at least on a per capita basis, and it risks losing out to China over the next decade or two,” the ITIF wrote in a recent study of the likely impact of the upcoming election on tech policy. “Whether or not the two major parties understand this threat and want to prioritize it is unclear.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Tackling China</h3>



What is clear is that tensions over high-tech trade with China are likely to remain high under either a second Trump administration or a first Biden one. But the tactics a Biden presidency would adopt are likely to be quite different to those of its predecessor.



Speaking at the<a href="https://www.forbes.com/connect/event/forbes-cio-next-virtual-episode1/">&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;CIO Next virtual summit</a>&nbsp;held on October 27, Darrell West, an expert on technology policy at the Brookings Institution, said that if President Trump is re-elected, he’s likely to continue his aggressive and unpredictable, go-it-alone policy towards pressuring China for trade concessions. “A company may wake up one day thinking they are a friend of the administration and the next day become a target,” said West.



A Biden presidency is likely to keep up the pressure on China, too, but will almost certainly create a clear set of processes for handling trade negotiations on high-tech and other issues. West thinks it will also want to forge a more united front with the European Union on dealing with the Chinese. While this approach may make it easier for CIOs and other executives to assess supply chain risks in dealing with Chinese manufacturers, both presidential candidates are likely to maintain U.S. efforts to keep hardware from China and other suppliers out of 5G networks in America and other countries on national security grounds.



With Chinese companies pulling ahead in areas such as<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonytrippe/2020/08/31/china-is-gunning-to-be-the-world-leader-in-ai-chips-while-restricting-exports/#392b0c186d4e">&nbsp;chips that power artificial intelligence (AI) applications</a>, the issue of how the U.S. government can better support domestic innovation will be on the table no matter who becomes president. Neither candidate looks likely to bring government spending as a percentage of GDP back to 1980s levels, but the Biden camp has pledged to invest an additional $300 billion over four years to help close some of the gap. If he is re-elected, President Trump is likely to continue his current policy of reducing overall government support on R&amp;D while boosting investment<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2020/08/14/us-to-boost-ai-quantum-funding-in-2021/#291bef1521dd">&nbsp;in some key areas such as AI, quantum information science and advanced manufacturing</a>.



On cybersecurity, both candidates would likely step up efforts to protect U.S. companies and critical infrastructure such as electrical grids from cyberattacks. West thinks a Biden administration could press for a kind of Geneva convention on cyber arms control, whereas if President Trump is re-elected his administration will keep pursuing a more unilateral approach. If the Democrats win the presidency and perhaps carry the Senate too, they may also push for a mandatory regime that requires companies to report hacks to a national database. Republicans, on the other hand, are more likely to leave breach reporting requirements to individual states.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Importing talent</h3>



Finding enough skilled workers is one of CIOs’ biggest concerns, so they will be hoping for an easing of restrictions on H1-B visas and other channels that the present Trump administration has been restricting.



Robert Atkinson, the president of the ITIF, thinks a Biden administration will expand skilled immigration whereas a second Trump one is likely to extend the current crackdown. However, he cautions that if Biden wins, companies can’t count on a swift increase in H1-Bs. “There are a lot of folks on the left [of the Democratic party] who have pushed back on H1-Bs because these are seen as undermining U.S. wages,” he says. “You could instead see an expansion of other avenues and vehicles to bring in high-skilled workers.”



Atkinson also thinks that if Biden carries the White House, CIOs could find<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marksettle/2020/10/20/the-proper-path-to-achieving--automation-at-scale/#2f8df7ef2a4a">&nbsp;robotic process automation (RPA) strategies</a>, which use software to take over tasks from workers, under intense political scrutiny because of fears these will destroy jobs and crater wages. “In a Biden administration, companies will have to be much more careful and cautious about how they portray this. Trump doesn’t mind automation; he minds offshoring.”



Companies’ automation drives could be blunted in other ways. For instance, tax reforms in 2018 made it possible for businesses to immediately deduct the entire cost of equipment purchases from taxable income; previously, they had generally only been allowed to write off a portion of the cost in a single year. This encouraged CIOs and other executives to accelerate purchases of everything from robots to servers. However, the changes will come up for review in a couple of years and a Biden administration would be less likely to push for an extension.



If Biden wins the election, CIOs will almost certainly face tougher rules on data privacy. Both candidates are in favor of a national consumer privacy regime to replace the present mix of different state ones, but the Democrats are more likely to push for<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynerash/2020/06/29/ccpa-enforcement-to-begin-on-wednesday-july-1-2020--steps-to-get-ready/#5650f7475f8b">&nbsp;a California-style framework</a>&nbsp;with significant compliance costs and hefty fines for rule-breakers. They are also more likely to support a national regime to regulate the use of artificial intelligence for things such as facial recognition systems.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Tech under the microscope</h3>



No matter which of the presidential candidates ends up in the White House after the election, it’s clear that the world of technology is going to face more intense scrutiny than ever before.



CIOs will want to keep an especially close watch on who ends up leading key government agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, which are responsible for oversight on antitrust policy. The Justice Department’s recent move to sue Google<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/10/20/justice-department-suing-google-for-antitrust-violations/#7e1f4243dbb8">&nbsp;for alleged antitrust violations</a>&nbsp;is likely to be followed by actions against Facebook and possibly other tech firms. It will also be important to watch who is chosen to sit on key congressional bodies such as the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee, which issued a report earlier this month<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/06/long-awaited-house-report-recommends-breaking-up-big-tech/#46776205c831">&nbsp;flagging multiple potential areas of potential concern</a>, including Amazon’s significant share of the cloud computing market.



The Brookings Institution’s West neatly encapsulated where things stand in his closing remarks at the Forbes CIO Next event. “Over the last 30 years, the mantra has been ‘permissionless innovation,’” he said, referring to a relatively laissez-faire view of technology’s impact on the economy and society. “That era is coming to an end. We’re going to have more public engagement [on tech issues], more public oversight, and more public regulation.”



-By Martin Giles, Forbes Staff

Tag: USA Election

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

McConnell: Trump Has ‘Every Right’ To Challenge Election Loss

Kamala Harris Makes History: What The First Female Vice President-Elect Means For Women

Here’s How The U.S. Election Could Impact Automation, Cybersecurity, Data Privacy And Other Key Issues CIOs Care About