Category Archives: Democrats

Republicans unveil 90s-throwback midterm election agenda

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The House minority leader introduced the Republicans’ ‘Commitment to America’, focusing on Biden and not on Trump

Republicans have unveiled a midterm election agenda heavy on critiques of Joe Biden but light on specific policies – and with a throwback theme to the mid-1990s.

After a primary season dominated by extremist “Make America great again” (Maga) candidates and deniers of the 2020 election result, Friday’s launch also represented an effort to tone down rhetoric and win back independent voters.

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Special master asks Trump team for proof of claims that FBI planted evidence – as it happened

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Special master also gives series of deadlines after judges overturn ruling that temporarily blocked DoJ from the material

The judge who had initially blocked the justice department from reviewing the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago and ordered a special master to weed out privileged materials has revised her ruling, Politico reports.

Federal judge Aileen Cannon’s changes come after an appeals court overturned the part of her opinion that had halted the government’s review of the documents taken from Donald Trump’s resort, hampering the investigation into whether the former president took government secrets with him when he left the White House.

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White House rejects ‘sham referendums’ in occupied Ukraine – as it happened

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National security adviser makes remark while Biden will ‘rebuke Russia’ at UN summit

Joined by his fellow New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, majority leader Chuck Schumer is continuing to call for aid to Puerto Rico at a press conference outside the Capitol.

Here’s the latest from Nexstar media:

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Judge blocks justice department from Trump documents as legal fight continues – live

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Judge appoints special master to weed out documents under legal privilege rules but DoJ is expected to appeal the decision

Speaking of conservative media, Ramon Antonio Vargas tuned into conservative stalwart Fox News to see what their political coverage looks like ahead of the midterms:

With most US voters indicating that the preservation of abortion rights is their chief focus as midterm elections loom, the face of Fox News and Republican politicians appear to be trying to shift attention to crime, a progressive media watchdog has warned.

As a kid, he always knew he wanted to be a doctor (“Fisher Price play kit,” he muses). But it wasn’t until he was an undergraduate at Columbia University that he experienced an epiphany.

He was working on a big display of the AIDS memorial quilt, he says, and was tasked with flying to San Francisco to bring back a “roll of carpet that looked like a body in a shroud.” On the day the exhibit opened for the finished quilt, he watched as men his age — people who should have been enjoying their 20s — walked in, coughing and raging with a disease very likely to kill them.

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Biden touts efforts to boost electric vehicles at Detroit auto show – as it happened

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President is in Detroit to promote the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes incentives for buying electric cars

A presidential run may be Mike Pence’s best hope of getting back into the White House. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that Donald Trump has thoroughly disavowed his former vice president:

Donald Trump will not pick Mike Pence as his running mate if he runs for the presidency again, according to an interview with the authors of a new book on his time in the White House.

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Republicans help Democratic minority block near-total abortion ban in South Carolina

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Opposition by quintet means Republicans lack votes in upper chamber to end filibuster, with bill heading back to state house

Five Republicans in South Carolina’s state senate have joined the Democratic minority to reject a near-total abortion ban, thwarting the controlling party’s intention to capitalize on the supreme court’s decision to overturn federal protections for the procedure.

Their opposition at a special session called on Thursday to approve a restrictive bill passed earlier in the South Carolina House meant Republicans lacked enough votes in the upper chamber, which they control 30-16, to end a filibuster.

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‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book says

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Gabriel Debenedetti, author of book on Biden’s relationship with Obama, reports call on night of 2018 midterms

On the night of the 2018 midterm elections, as a wave of anti-Trump sentiment swept Democrats to take control of the House, top Republican Mitt Romney urged Joe Biden to run for president.

“You have to run,” said Romney, the Republican presidential nominee Biden and Barack Obama defeated in 2012, speaking to the former vice-president by phone.

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Steve Bannon ‘stole millions of dollars to line his own pocket,’ New York attorney general says – as it happened

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Steve Bannon has now been formally indicted, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports.

Bannon was charged with money laundering and conspiracy in connection with his role in a fundraising effort to privately underwrite the construction of the US-Mexico border wall, according to the indictment unsealed on Thursday.

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Nuclear secrets reportedly found at Mar-a-Lago are ‘gamechanger’, experts say – as it happened

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Report appears to confirm security officials’ worst fears about the nature of the material Trump refused to hand back

Former Trump administration defense secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper have joined a group of retired military officers who have written an open letter warning of an “extremely adverse environment” for the military – a thinly-veiled attack on the former president’s efforts to use servicemen and women to advance his political goals.

“Military officers swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not an oath of fealty to an individual or to an office,” the letter, published by the online security analysis website War on the Rocks, states.

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Trump’s Mar-a-Lago legal victory starts search for special master – live updates

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US midterms campaigns kick into high gear after Labor Day as Senate returns from month-long break

Legal pressure on Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department lawyer who schemed with Donald Trump and others to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, is expected to rise with the cooperation of another ex-DoJ lawyer who worked with him, say former prosecutors.

The cooperation from the ex-lawyer, in tandem with other evidence obtained by prosecutors, could help spur charges against Clark – a close ally of then president Trump – and benefit prosecutors as they go after bigger targets.

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‘Tired of trickle-down economics’: Biden calls for expansion of unions in Labor Day speech

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President again pledges to be ‘most pro-union president’ in history during speech in Milwaukee

Joe Biden used a Labor Day speech in the battleground state of Wisconsin to endorse the expansion of unions, reiterating his election promises to be the “most pro-union president” in American history.

The US president argued in Milwaukee that a skilled, unionised workforce would help the US regain its place as a world leader in infrastructure and manufacturing.

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Ad campaign targets Latino voters as key bloc for Democrats in midterms

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Non-profit Voto Latino aims to challenge Republican ‘disinformation’ in key battleground states

With midterm elections on the horizon, Americans are subject to a flurry of Democratic and Republican ads. As the second-largest voting bloc in 2020, Latino voters are expected to play a significant role in the 2022 elections. They are therefore a key target group.

One non-profit, Voto Latino, aims to fight political disinformation and communicate with self-identified moderate Latino voters through a series of ads.

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Could unexpected Democratic gains foil a midterm Republican victory?

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A string of favorable outcomes for the party, coupled with backlash from supreme court’s abortion ban, could galvanize Biden supporters

Joe Biden travels to the battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on Monday, determined to reframe America’s midterm elections as a defining choice between democracy and the extremism of Donald Trump.

Fighting for every vote, the US president will mark Labor Day with growing confidence as opinion polls suggest that, while Republicans still have the lead, Democrats now have the momentum heading into the home stretch.

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Biden targets Trump and says ‘anyone who fails to condemn violence is a threat to democracy’ – live

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Biden speaks at White House and takes swipe at former president, but says not all Trump supporters are threat to America

At the White House press briefing just now, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke on Joe Biden’s speech last night where he warned that Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans” are a threat to democracy.

“The president was trying to give the American people a choice: how do we move forward in this inflection point?” Jean-Pierre said. “When it comes to the soul of the nation, that is something the president has talked about for years… He has been concerned about where our democracy is going.”

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Five key takeaways from Biden’s speech on the threat to democracy

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In a rare primetime address, Biden pitched the midterms as a battle for the nation’s soul and directly called out Trump

Joe Biden – who usually makes couched references to “the former guy” and his “predecessor” – explicitly named and called out Donald Trump during his speech. The president warned that Trump and the “Maga (Make America great again)” Republicans “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic”.

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Biden’s stern warning on extremism shows the rose-colored glasses are off

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The president’s primetime speech named Trump and ‘Maga Republicans’ as a threat facing American democracy

Joe Biden’s journey from idealist to realist continues. But it is not quite complete.

After 36 years in the Senate, he stepped into the US presidency in 2021 as an apostle of bipartisanship, convinced that his authoritarian-minded predecessor Donald Trump would fade away and the Republican party would rediscover its bearings.

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Biden speech: ‘Democracy is under assault’ from election deniers and political violence, president warns – as it happened

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The president called out Maga forces as a threat ‘to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the very soul of this country’

Protesters outside Independence Hall were shouting “Let’s go, Brandon,” which Biden was able to brush off.

Biden addressed them, saying: “They’re entitled to be outrageous. This is a democracy.”

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Sarah Palin loses Alaska special election to Democrat Mary Peltola

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Peltola’s victory in the state’s first ranked choice voting election makes her the first Alaska Native to serve in the House

The Democrat Mary Peltola has won the special election for Alaska’s only US House seat, besting a field that included the Republican Sarah Palin, who was seeking a political comeback in the state where she was once governor.

Peltola, who is Yup’ik and turned 49 on Wednesday, will become the first Alaska Native to serve in the House and the first woman to hold the seat. She will serve the remaining months of the late Republican US Representative Don Young’s term. Young held the seat for 49 years before his death in March.

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Trump ‘knowingly put national security at risk’ by stashing classified documents, Schiff says – as it happened

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In overnight court filing, DoJ says it was ‘likely’ efforts had been made to move and hide documents

Donald Trump’s former White House counselor, Kellyanne Conway, does not think Republicans should move on from her former boss, despite signs his control of the party could cost it the chance to take Congress in November.

Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Conway said: “Those who want to move on from Trump: You go first.”

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Biden ‘determined to ban assault weapons’ as he lays out crime prevention plans – as it happened

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President details his Safer America Plan in Pennsylvania speech and says funding police provides ‘peace of mind’

The White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding a gaggle aboard Air Force One, as Joe Biden heads to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to talk about gun safety.

The first topic in the gaggle is the flooding in Mississippi and the failure of the Jackson area water treatment services, which has caused a crisis over clean drinking water.

US Secret Service official Tony Ornato, a figure of intense interest to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, has retired from the agency. He was an eyewitness to some of the most critical incidents involving Donald Trump in the hours leading up to the deadly assault on the US Capitol.

NBC News reported that Trump has hired a criminal attorney who was once Florida’s solicitor to his legal team. Chris Kise is expected to make his first appearance in federal court in West Palm Beach on Thursday when district judge Aileen Cannon mulls Trump’s request for a special master to oversee the justice department’s review of classified materials seized by the FBI at his home.

We’re awaiting at any moment the justice department’s legal response to Trump’s request, which will be a lengthy filing running up to 40 pages after Cannon waived a 20-page limit imposed by the court.

Incumbent Democratic Arizona senator Mark Kelly leads Republican challenger Blake Masters by more than three points in a poll released today, appearing to confirm a growing belief within the party that pro-choice messaging on abortion will be vote-winner in November’s midterms.

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