Far-right Florida congressman is asked by critic: ‘Are you admitting to a quid pro quo?'’
The far-right Florida Republican Matt Gaetz has hailed Aileen Cannon – the judge who dismissed the classified documents case against Donald Trump – as a “future supreme court justice”.
“Future supreme court justice Cannon,” Gaetz posted Monday to social media, with a picture of the Florida jurist.
Continue reading...Suspected shooter and one rally attendee dead, says Butler county district attorney – here’s what else we know about the situation
A shooting occurred at a Donald Trump rally on Saturday, followed by the former president being rushed off the stage with blood around his ear. Here’s what we know about the situation so far.
Trump was speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when loud noises were heard in the crowd around 6.13pm.
Trump appeared to have been struck by something in the area of his right ear as he was speaking, and videos show him quickly clutching his ear and then ducking down to the ground, as security agents and others leap to his aid.
One spectator was killed and at least two were injured.
Trump stood up with blood on the side of his face and appeared to be saying “fight, fight” while pumping his fist.
Trump was then quickly escorted from the stage and into his vehicle.
The rally location is now an active crime scene. The FBI has taken over the investigation.
Trump’s team and the Secret Service confirmed that he was “fine” and being checked at a local medical facility.
Trump later posted a statement on Truth Social, saying he was hit by a “bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear”.
The Butler county district attorney confirmed that the suspected shooter and one rally attendee were dead. One person at the rally was in serious condition. The Secret Service later said two people were critically injured.
The shooting is being investigated as an attempted assassination.
The FBI later named Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, PA as the “subject involved” in the shooting.
The Secret Service shared more details on the shooter’s position and confirmed that the shooter was killed by the Secret Service. ABC News reported that law enforcement officials the suspect was perched on a rooftop and used an AR-style rifle.
The president, Joe Biden, said “everybody must condemn political violence” in a speech shortly after the shooting. The White House later said the president and Trump had spoken. Biden is traveling back to the White House. Trump is in New Jersey.
Continue reading...Strength of criticism suggests Trump and allies see vice-president as powerful electoral asset for Democrats
With the state of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in turmoil, Donald Trump and his Republican allies are stepping up attacks on a familiar and, some say, possibly more threatening, political foe: his vice-president, Kamala Harris.
In the weeks since Biden’s stumbling debate performance, Republicans have intensified what many call racist and misogynistic criticism. They have questioned Harris’s competency, mocked her demeanor, and accused her of concealing concerns about the president’s health. Trump unveiled a new, derisive nickname for the vice-president, “Laffin’ Kamala”, which he tested at a campaign rally in Florida this week.
Continue reading...Moderate conservative from Maine says she wanted Nikki Haley to win and will write her name on November ballot
US senator Susan Collins didn’t vote for her fellow Republican Donald Trump for president in 2016 or 2020 – and the third time will not be the charm.
The longtime moderate conservative from Maine told reporters on Friday that she intended to write in former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s name on the ballot in November. The move recalls 2016, when Collins said she wrote in then-US House speaker Paul Ryan for president over Trump, who won the White House before losing to Democratic rival Joe Biden in 2020.
Continue reading...Sean O’Brien accused of bolstering ‘most anti-union party and president’ by senior members of his own union
Teamsters International president Sean O’Brien has been accused by senior members of the union of disgracing it by agreeing to an unprecedented appearance at next week’s Republican national convention.
O’Brien’s decision was branded “unconscionable” by John Palmer, vice-president at large at Teamsters, who accused him of lending support to the “most anti-union party and President” in a generation.
Continue reading...Billboards will go up in seven swing states as campaign seeks to publicize manifesto and tie it to ex-president
Democrats will put up billboards in swing states that show Donald Trump and tie him to Project 2025, a conservative manifesto that could become reality if he wins in November.
The Democratic National Committee’s paid media campaign escalates liberal efforts to publicize Project 2025 and tie it to the former president after he sought to distance himself from the plan. The blueprint for a second Trump administration is led by the rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation and counts support from more than 100 other conservative groups.
Continue reading...A new rule would require Fulton county to hand count paper ballots and investigate discrepancies on the spot, possible delaying tabulation
Georgia’s state board of elections has proposed changes to election policy and monitoring requirements that put Fulton county elections officials in their crosshairs and could delay and allow for partisan actors to challenge election results. .
As part of the state board’s reprimand for Fulton county double-counting some ballots in a 2020 recount – an error that did not affect the outcome of the election – Fulton county is required to hire a team of election monitors for the 2024 presidential election. The board also began a process of rule-making this week that will require county elections workers to count the paper ballots cast at each polling place by hand before turning those ballots in to be tabulated after each day of voting, and to investigate discrepancies on the spot.
Continue reading...Board calls Trump ‘a chilling choice against this national moment’ days before Republican national convention
The editorial board of the New York Times has declared that “Donald Trump is unfit to lead” in an urgently worded article published just ahead of the Republican convention, where Trump will once again be formally named the party’s choice for president.
Noting that the former president and convicted felon has now become the Republican nominee three times in eight years, the board said: “A once great political party now serves the interests of one man, a man as demonstrably unsuited for the office of president as any to run in the long history of the republic, a man whose values, temperament, ideas and language are directly opposed to so much of what has made this country great.”
Continue reading...Senator Michael Bennet said Trump may win ‘by a landslide’ while two more senators echoed his concerns
Joe Biden came under renewed moral pressure on Wednesday to abandon his presidential candidacy amid agonised appeals by a succession of senior Democrats for him to consider the broader picture.
Those calls came as the US president dug in his heels to make it hard to supplant him as the nominee.
Continue reading...Republicans to push Safeguard American Voter Eligibility bill in effort to quell unproved fraud of non-citizens voting
Congressional Republicans will vote this week on a bill to require people to show proof of citizenship to register to vote, a move that comes as they lay the groundwork for undermining election results in November.
The House will vote on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility bill, or Save bill, which would make states require, in person, documents that prove a person is a US citizen when registering to vote. This can include a Real ID, passport or other kinds of identification that show a person’s place of birth. It wouldn’t include a standard drivers license as a sole form of identification and calls for a secondary proof of place of birth alongside it, like a birth certificate.
Continue reading...Ex-president returns to campaign trail in Doral and makes baseless accusations but doesn’t name running mate
Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail in Florida on Tuesday night, hurling insults at Joe Biden and airing a litany of familiar grievances, but declining to name a running mate for November’s general election.
The former president and presumptive Republican nominee was speaking to a crowd of several hundred supporters at his golf club in Doral, a western suburb of Miami, keeping them waiting in 90F heat for a freewheeling monologue that began more than an hour later than scheduled.
Continue reading...The Oklahoman brought a snowball to the Senate floor in 2015 to prove humans couldn’t change the climate
Republican former senator James Inhofe, a climate denier who once brought a snowball to the chamber floor in a stunt attempting to disprove global warming, died on Tuesday at the age of 89.
Inhofe resigned as senator for Oklahoma in January 2023, suffering long-term effects of Covid-19. Elected in 1994, his time as the state’s longest-serving senator was notable for his ultra-conservative positions on numerous issues, including calling the climate emergency “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”.
Continue reading...Error messages displayed on Facebook and X pages for South Dakota governor plagued by dog-killing admission
Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota who has been dogged by controversy since recounting how she chose to shoot dead a puppy and a goat, attracted new questions when it was noted that some of her official social media accounts appeared to have been deleted.
On Monday, a link from Noem’s official website led to an error message on Facebook, which said: “This content isn’t available right now. When this happens, it’s usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it’s been deleted.”
Continue reading...The New Maga Deal full of errors and omissions from former Trump adviser convicted of contempt of Congress
In a book due to be published a day before his release from prison this month, the former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro praises Donald Trump’s Maga movement – and claims to list errors and omissions that led to his four-month sentence for criminal contempt of Congress, for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House January 6 committee.
But Navarro makes striking errors and omissions of his own, including jarringly misidentifying Ashli Babbitt – the Trump supporter shot dead at the US Capitol who became a martyr to many on the far right – as a US marine corps veteran.
Continue reading...Polling shows critical group unenthused about Biden and Trump – and moved by economy over abortion
The independent voter is the elusive prize in any election. This year, Democrats are hoping that widespread support for abortion rights will draw in women who might have previously shied away from the party.
But polling shows that independent female voters, a critical group for any candidate, are particularly unenthused about the prospect of choosing between the same two guys who ran for election last time. Now, with some Democrats publicly mulling replacing Joe Biden in the wake of his catastrophic debate performance and Kamala Harris emerging as a possible heir apparent, a key question is whether a Harris-topped ticket would provide them with some much-needed excitement.
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Joe Biden has cancelled his upcoming Sunday address to the National Education Association Staff Union after the country’s largest union announced a strike over unfair labor practice complaints including overtime nonpayments.
A statement released by Biden’s campaign team said:
President Biden is a fierce supporter of unions and he won’t cross a picket line. The president is still planning to travel to Pennsylvania this weekend, and we will have more details to share at a later point.
I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.
Continue reading...Trump lawyer Will Scharf’s claims of prosecuting violent criminals conflicts with his record of mundane actions
A lawyer on the legal team that argued in favor of a US supreme court ruling granting Donald Trump broad criminal immunity has inflated his credentials as a violent crime prosecutor in a political beauty contest aimed at wooing the former president’s Maga supporters and becoming Missouri’s attorney general.
Will Scharf, who sat on the former’s president’s appellate team fighting charges of subversion brought by the special prosecutor Jack Smith, has burnished his crime-fighting credentials on his campaign literature as he seeks to unseat Missouri’s sitting attorney general, Andrew Bailey, in a GOP primary next month.
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House Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington said that Joe Biden “is going to lose to Trump” following the president’s poor debate performance last week.
In a new interview with KATU News, Gluesenkamp Perez said: “About 50 million Americans tuned in and watched that debate. I was one of them for about five very painful minutes. We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth, I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump.”
Continue reading...Republican senator warns of retribution: ‘Pandora’s box opened by the Democrats is going to be applied’
South Carolina’s Republican senator Lindsey Graham warned of retribution against Democrats amid Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal cases.
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, Graham, a staunch Trump ally, said without evidence, “The Democrats keep calling president Trump a felon. Well, be careful what you wish for. I expect there will be an investigation of Biden’s criminality at the border.”
Continue reading...AAF to publish dossiers of employees they consider hostile to ex-president, with goal of ultimately replacing them
Armed with rhetoric about the “deep state”, a conservative-backed group is planning to publicly name and shame career government employees that they consider hostile to Donald Trump.
This “blacklist” of civil servants, which will be published online, is intended to advance Trump’s broader goals, which, if elected, include weeding out government employees and replacing them with loyalists.
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