Category Archives: Republicans

Kevin McCarthy says ‘every American should accept’ election results

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The former Republican House speaker’s comments arrive as Trump’s guilty verdict is set to spark election integrity debates

Kevin McCarthy, former Republican US House speaker, has said that Americans should accept the results of November’s presidential race – as rising political tensions in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s campaign finance violation conviction in New York are set to inflame election integrity issues.

The relatively moderate McCarthy, who was ousted as speaker last year in a Republican power struggle and has since resigned from Congress, said on Sunday that “every American should accept the results” of the election that is expected to pit Democratic incumbent Joe Biden against the former Republican president Trump.

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Trump hails Republicans for defending him and calls conviction ‘a scam’

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In Fox interview, Trump derides his conviction and baselessly characterizes it as political weaponization of US justice system

Donald Trump on Sunday lauded the Republican party for rallying behind him in the wake of his conviction on 34 felony charges in a hush-money case aimed at influencing the 2016 election.

Trump made the comments in his first sit-down press interview since the guilty verdict was returned on Friday that held he falsified business records linked to an illicit affair with adult actor Stormy Daniels. The former US president appeared on Sunday in a taped interview on Fox & Friends, a friendly forum on the rightwing channel and in which he was served up a series of softball questions by a trio of Fox hosts.

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Mike Johnson plans Republican mega-bill ready to push through if Trump wins

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House speaker plans far-reaching bill including tax cuts and border security to make Trump ‘the most consequential president’

Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, is planning a sweeping ideological legislative drive that aims to make Donald Trump “the most consequential president of the modern era” if the Republicans win power in November.

A far-reaching bill containing a range of policy priorities at once – including tax cuts worth trillions, border security and rolling back Obamacare – is being prepared to avoid the mistakes the GOP believed happened early in Trump’s first term, when Johnson says the party wasted time because its victory over Hillary Clinton took it by surprise.

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House Republicans assail university head for negotiated end to Gaza protest

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Northwestern president becomes lightning rod in Republican-led committee hearing also featuring chiefs of Rutgers and UCLA

Members of a Republican-led congressional committee confronted another set of university heads on Thursday over their approach to pro-Palestinian protests in the latest hearings on Capitol Hill on a reported increase of campus antisemitism.

Republicans on the House of Representatives’ education and workforce committee repeatedly clashed fiercely with Michael Schill, president of Northwestern University in Illinois, over his decision to negotiate an end to a tented protest community rather than call in police, as has happened on other campuses.

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Senate Republicans block bipartisan border security bill for a second time

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Democrats had forced vote to try to prove argument that Republicans are not serious about situation at US-Mexico border

Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan border security bill for a second time, part of an attempt by Chuck Schumer to flip the script on immigration – a major political liability for Joe Biden and Democrats in this year’s election.

The 43-50 vote was far short of the necessary 60 votes needed to advance the legislation. Republicans, who have repeatedly demanded Democrats act on the border, abandoned the compromise proposal at the behest of Donald Trump who saw it was a political “gift” for Biden’s re-election chances.

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Louisiana expected to classify abortion pills as controlled and dangerous substances

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First-of-its-kind bill on mifepristone and misoprostol passed state legislature and is expected to be signed into law by governor

Two abortion-inducing drugs could soon be reclassified as controlled and dangerous substances in Louisiana under a first-of-its-kind bill that received final legislative passage on Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by the governor.

Supporters of the reclassification of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly known as “abortion pills”, say it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions. Numerous doctors, meanwhile, have said it will make it harder for them to prescribe the medicines they use for other important reproductive healthcare needs, and could delay treatment.

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Senate Democrats to investigate Trump’s reported big oil ‘deal’

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Two committees inquiring after reports of ex-president’s offer to roll back dozens of regulations for $1bn campaign donations

Powerful Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into an alleged quid pro quo offer from Donald Trump to fossil fuel executives.

At a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago home and club last month, the former president reportedly told oil bosses he would immediately roll back dozens of environmental regulations if elected, and requested $1bn in contributions to his presidential campaign. It would be a “deal” for the executives because of the costs they would avoid under him, he reportedly said.

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Nikki Haley says she will vote for Donald Trump in 2024 election

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U-turn by ex-president’s most enduring rival during Republican primaries provokes swift backlash

Nikki Haley, who emerged as Donald Trump’s most enduring rival and trenchant critic during the Republican primary elections, has said she intends to vote for the former US president in November.

Haley was speaking at the Hudson Institute thinktank in Washington on Wednesday, her first public appearance since dropping out of the race in March. She was asked whether Joe Biden or Trump would do a better job on national security issues.

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Trump attends Houston lunch to ask oil bosses for more campaign cash

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Invitation-only meeting comes on heels of controversial dinner at Mar-a-Lago where Trump reportedly offered $1bn quid pro quo

Donald Trump was continuing to ask fossil-fuel executives to fund his presidential campaign on Wednesday, despite scrutiny of his relationship with the industry.

The former president attended a fundraising luncheon at Houston’s Post Oak hotel hosted by three big oil executives.

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Vince Fong wins Kevin McCarthy’s seat for rest of US House term

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Special election replaces speaker who was first ever voted out of the job, with election for next full term to take place in November

Vince Fong, backed by Donald Trump, has won a special election to finish the term of the former US House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who also lent his endorsement.

Fong, a California state assembly member, defeated fellow Republican and Tulare county sheriff Mike Boudreaux in the 20th congressional district, in the Central Valley farm belt.

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Rudy Giuliani pleads not guilty to charges in Arizona fake electors case

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Former New York mayor one of 12 defendants charged with illegally trying to keep Trump in power after 2020 election defeat

Rudy Giuliani denied charges of illegally trying to keep Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat as he was arraigned to appear before a court in Arizona along with 10 other defendants on Tuesday.

Giuliani’s not guilty plea to nine felony charges came days after he was served an indictment as he left a party to celebrate his 80th birthday last Friday.

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TV meteorologist attacks DeSantis over Florida’s ‘don’t say climate change’ law

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Steve MacLaughlin of WTVJ in Miami urges viewers to vote – because ‘there are candidates that believe in climate change’

A TV meteorologist condemned the Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s so-called “don’t say climate change” law on air and urged viewers to vote.

Steve MacLaughlin of WTVJ in Miami addressed viewers on Saturday amid rising heat records across the state, saying: “On Thursday, we reported … that the government of Florida was beginning to roll back really important climate-change legislation and really important climate-change language.”

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Marco Rubio says he would not accept 2024 election results ‘if it’s unfair’

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Republican senator’s comments come as he is considered among Trump’s top candidates for vice-president

The Republican Florida senator Marco Rubio said on Sunday he would not commit to accepting the 2024 presidential election results, insisting that “if it’s unfair” his party will “go to court and point out the fact that states are not following their own election laws”.

Rubio’s statements on Meet the Press come as he is considered among former president Donald Trump’s top candidates for vice-president. Trump has continuously said falsely that the 2020 election was stolen.

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‘Scary’: public-school textbooks the latest target as US book bans intensify

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A school district in Houston has voted to redact chapters on vaccines and climate change, and parents and educators are worried

The wave of book bans sweeping the US, typically reserved for works of fiction deemed controversial, has hit textbooks used in public schools, marking the next step in Republicans’ war on education.

The board of trustees for the Cypress Fairbanks independent school district in Houston voted 6-1 earlier this month to redact certain chapters in science textbooks, including those about vaccines, human growth, diversity, and climate change.

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Missouri Republican party fails to boot KKK-linked candidate from gubernatorial ticket

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Judge declines to remove Darrell McClanahan, who claims one-year honorary membership in terror group, from GOP primary race

A long-shot Missouri gubernatorial candidate with ties to the Ku Klux Klan will stay on the Republican ticket, a judge ruled on Friday.

Cole county circuit court judge Cotton Walker denied a request by the Missouri GOP to kick Darrell McClanahan out of the August Republican primary.

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‘She’s in the pantheon now’: Kristi Noem and the politicians who hit self-destruct

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The dog-killing South Dakota governor’s VP hopes are in tatters. But she’s not the first politician to flame out with an own goal

She could have been a contender. But then she wrote a book. And suddenly Kristi Noem was caught like a rabbit – or a rambunctious puppy – in the headlights.

The governor of South Dakota found herself insisting that a false claim she met the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un had been put in her book by accident. Wait, said Elizabeth Vargas of NewsNation, you recorded the whole audiobook version and read this passage out loud. Why didn’t you take it out then?

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Biden and Trump are betting on debates to help magnify the other’s weaknesses

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Trump will look to again cast Biden as greatly diminished while Biden will aim to remind voters why they rejected Trump in 2020

It’s game on for a pair of presidential debates between two unpopular candidates most Americans wish weren’t running for the nation’s highest office.

In a ratatat social media exchange on Wednesday, Joe Biden and Donald Trump agreed to participate in two debates on 27 June, hosted by CNN, and on 10 September, hosted by ABC.

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Biden asserts executive privilege to block release of special counsel interviews

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House Republicans seek recordings of classified documents case interviews, in what Democrats call a ‘purely political’ move

Joe Biden asserted executive privilege to stop House Republicans obtaining recordings of his interviews with Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s retention of classified information after his time as a senator and as vice-president to Barack Obama.

In a letter reported by the New York Times and other outlets on Thursday, the White House counsel, Edward Siskel, told the Republican chairs of the House judiciary and oversight committees: “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal – to chop them up, distort them and use them for partisan political purposes.

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Biden should have pardoned Trump on federal charges, Mitt Romney says

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Republican senator tells MSNBC that ‘frankly, the country doesn’t want to have to go through prosecuting a former president’

Joe Biden should have pardoned Donald Trump on all federal criminal charges the moment they were announced, the Utah senator and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said.

“Had I been President Biden,” Romney said, “when the justice department brought out indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him. I’d have pardoned President Trump.”

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Joe Biden and Donald Trump agree to two US presidential debates

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Both candidates agreed upon two dates for debates: 27 June and 10 September, and Trump also posted about a third date in October

Shortly after the Biden-Harris re-election campaign proposed two TV debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump ahead of November’s presidential vote, both men have agreed upon two debate dates: 27 June and 10 September.

CNN confirmed that it would host the first debate of 2024 on that date at 9pm ET from the crucial battleground state of Georgia.

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