Category Archives: Republicans

US election 2024 primaries: intrigue in down-ballot races as Trump-Biden rematch set

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Ohio Republicans choose their nominee in key Senate race while California seeks to replace former speaker Kevin McCarthy

With a rematch set between Joe Biden and Donald Trump after both candidates crossed the delegate threshold needed to clinch their parties’ presidential nominations, suspense around the next wave of Tuesday primaries shifts to a handful of key down-ballot races.

Five states – Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio – will hold their presidential nominating contests on Tuesday. Trump and Biden are expected to sail to victory, growing their delegate counts in a march toward this summer’s conventions, where they will officially secure their parties’ nomination.

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Arizona county fears ‘homelessness on steroids’ as migrant shelter funds end

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Additional federal funding for shelter has been caught in broader political battles about illegal migration and government spending

An Arizona migrant shelter that has housed thousands of asylum seekers plans to halt most operations in two weeks when funding from Washington runs out, a problem for towns along the border where officials fear a surge in homelessness and extra costs.

Arizona’s Pima county, which borders Mexico, has said that at the end of the month its contracts must stop with Tucson’s Casa Alitas shelter and services that transport migrants north from the border cities of Nogales, Douglas and Lukeville.

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Republican Bill Cassidy derides Trump and calls 2024 race ‘sorry state of affairs’

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Louisiana senator expressed disapproval of the former president, saying: ‘Is this a person we want to have an office?’

Louisiana’s Republican senator Bill Cassidy has issued new criticisms towards Donald Trump while calling the 2024 presidential race a “sorry state of affairs”.

In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Cassidy expressed his disapproval for Trump’s hostile rhetoric towards migrants, saying that it has “reflected poorly in terms of regarding folks who are coming here … illegally – and they shouldn’t be, but in a dehumanizing fashion”.

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‘A campaign for vengeance’: critics warn of a radical second Trump term

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After a chaotic first term, experienced advisers are ready to usher in a second presidency ‘driven by imaginary grievances’

The US election primary season is effectively over. Conventional wisdom holds that the two major candidates will now pivot towards the centre ground in search of moderate voters. But Donald Trump has never been one for conventional wisdom.

Detention camps, mass deportations, capital punishment for drug smugglers, tariffs on imported goods, a purge of the justice department and potential withdrawal from Nato – the Trump policy agenda is radical by any standard including his own, pushing the boundaries set during his first presidential run eight years ago.

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Trump hush-money trial delayed for 30 days as lawyers review new evidence

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Judge agrees to month-long postponement after Trump lawyers say they need more time to sift through newly released documents

A judge on Friday delayed Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal trial until at least mid-April after the former president’s lawyers said they needed more time to sift through a profusion of evidence they only recently obtained from a previous federal investigation into the matter.

Judge Juan Manuel Merchan agreed to a 30-day postponement and scheduled a hearing for 25 March to address questions about the evidence dump. The trial had been slated to start on 25 March. It is among four criminal indictments against Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee.

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Ex-intern for Republican candidate says post on adult website was ‘a prank’

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Bernie Moreno, a hardline LGBTQ+ opponent running for Senate seat in Ohio, appeared to look for ‘men for 1-on-1 sex’ in 2008 profile

A former intern to Bernie Moreno, Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate for US Senate in Ohio and a hardline opponent of LGBTQ+ rights, said he wrote as an “aborted prank” a post on the Adult Friend Finder website in which Moreno appeared to look for “young guys to have fun with” and “men for 1-on-1 sex”.

“I am thoroughly embarrassed by an aborted prank I pulled on my friend, and former boss, Bernie Moreno, nearly two decades ago,” the former intern, Dan Ricci, said in a statement provided to the Associated Press by Moreno’s lawyer.

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White House lawyer tells House speaker to end Biden impeachment ‘charade’

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Scathing letter from White House counsel tells Republican Mike Johnson ‘it is clear the House Republican impeachment is over’

The White House’s top lawyer told House Republicans to give up on their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, calling the investigation a “charade”.

The White House counsel, Ed Siskel, told the House speaker, Mike Johnson that “it is clear the House Republican impeachment is over” in a scathing letter sent on Friday morning.

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Special counsel says he was doing his job when he criticized Biden’s memory

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Robert Hur, who investigated president over classified files, says at hearing before Congress ‘I had to consider the president’s memory’

Robert Hur, the justice department special counsel assigned to report on Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, told Congress he was just doing his job when he shook up the US election campaign by criticizing the president’s apparent inability to recall certain events.

In his report released in February, Hur, a former US attorney under Donald Trump, recommended Biden not be charged for possessing classified documents. But he infuriated the president’s Democratic allies by making repeated references to Biden’s age and memory as one reason for not indicting him, saying jurors would see him “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

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Divided Washington state to choose Biden or Trump: ‘Everything seems a mess right now’

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A recent poll puts Biden leading Trump 54-38, but the ex-president has committed supporters ahead of state’s primary

Had he heard it, Joe Biden would surely have been delighted by Bianca Siegl’s comment – and the fact she barely paused before making it.

“Of course I will be voting on Tuesday,” says the 47-year-old, speaking at a farmers’ market in Seattle’s University district. “If Trump were to get elected, it would be incredibly dangerous for the world and for my family.”

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Journalist says Katie Britt’s story about child sex abuse ‘out-and-out lie’

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Jonathan Katz accuses Britt of being ‘dishonest’ in State of the Union rebuttal with story about Karla Jacinto Romero

Doubts have been cast on the accuracy of a story about horrific child sex abuse told by the Republican senator Katie Britt in her widely ridiculed speech delivered in rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

The journalist and author Jonathan Katz has accused Britt of being “fundamentally dishonest” for invoking the case of a woman who had been sex-trafficked at age 12 and raped multiple times to illustrate the supposed failure of the Biden administration’s border control policies.

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Alabama senator Katie Britt delivers rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union

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Britt, 42, third youngest serving senator, spoke on the heels of her state’s supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are ‘children’

Republicans chose first-term Alabama senator Katie Britt, the youngest Republican woman ever to serve in the Senate, to deliver the rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday.

The 42-year-old presented a counterpoint to the oldest sitting president at her kitchen table in Alabama after his speech.

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State of the Union guest list shows reproductive rights in spotlight after Alabama IVF bill signed into law – live

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Guests at Biden address to include Alabama woman whose IVF was cancelled, and Texas women who went through abortion ordeals

More than a quarter of Black female voters describe abortion has their top issue in this year’s presidential election, according to a new poll.

The findings by health policy research firm KFF reveal a significant shift from previous election years, when white, conservative evangelicals were more likely to put abortion as their biggest priority when voting, AP reported. Those voters were highly motivated in recent presidential elections to cast ballots for Donald Trump.

Abortion voters are young, Black women – and not white evangelicals.

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Biden’s State of the Union guests include mother whose IVF was canceled and Kate Cox

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White House says Cox and Latorya Beasley’s stories show ‘how the overturning of Roe v Wade has disrupted access to healthcare’

An Alabama mother who saw a second round of IVF canceled after the state supreme court ruled that embryos were children and a Texas mother forced to travel outside her state for a doctor-recommended abortion were due to attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday, as guests of the first lady, Jill Biden.

The White House said the cases of Latorya Beasley of Birmingham, Alabama, and Kate Cox, from Dallas, Texas, showed “how the overturning of Roe v Wade has disrupted access to reproductive healthcare for women and families across the country”.

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California election results: Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey advance to November Senate race

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Congressman and ex-Dodgers player emerge as top two contenders, boxing out progressives Katie Porter and Barbara Lee

Adam Schiff, the centrist Democratic congressman, is poised to be the next US senator from California after securing enough votes to advance to the November election. He will face off with Republican Steve Garvey, a former professional baseball player, who also performed well in the non-partisan primary on Tuesday.

Schiff, a pro-Israel Democrat, was quickly called a winner by the Associated Press, and Garvey secured his spot in the general election about an hour after polls closed.

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Nikki Haley suspends presidential campaign; Biden calls Trump ‘wounded, dangerous’ candidate – live

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Republican candidate pulls out of race; Biden campaign says Trump running ‘on an extreme agenda’ in fresh warning after Super Tuesday

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Nikki Haley is to pull out of the 2024 presidential election race. It says the candidate is expected to make a brief appearance at 10am ET (3pm GMT).

Haley has won only two primaries – the District of Columbia and Vermont – during her campaign.

Haley won’t announce an endorsement Wednesday, the people said. She will encourage Donald Trump, who is close to having the delegates needed to win the GOP nomination, to earn the support of Republican and independent voters who backed her.

She is expected to emphasize that she will continue to advocate for the conservative domestic and foreign policies she supports and caution against some of the dangers, such as isolationism and a lack of fiscal discipline, that she sees coming from Washington.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene lashes out as UK reporter asks about conspiracy theories

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Extremist tells Emily Maitlis ‘you’re a conspiracy theorist’ and dismisses interviewer over ‘Jewish space lasers’ question

Far-right Republican congresswoman, Trump ally and potential vice-presidential pick Marjorie Taylor Greene told a British interviewer to “Fuck off”, when asked about her frequent repetition of conspiracy theories.

Emily Maitlis, formerly a senior journalist at the BBC and now a presenter of the News Agents podcast, spoke to Greene at Donald Trump’s Super Tuesday celebration at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, as the former president closed in on the Republican nomination.

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Kentucky senate passes bill for child support of unborn children

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Measure allows parent to seek child support up to a year after giving birth to retroactively cover pregnancy expenses

The Republican-led Kentucky senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to grant the right to collect child support for unborn children, advancing a bill that garnered bipartisan support.

The measure would allow a parent to seek child support up to a year after giving birth to retroactively cover pregnancy expenses. The legislation – Senate Bill 110 – won Senate passage on a 36-2 vote with little discussion to advance to the House. Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers.

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Super Tuesday 2024 live: millions of voters head to polls in the US as Haley suggests she could stay in the race

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Donald Trump looks all but certain of Republican presidential nomination as Nikki Haley rejects suggestions of third-party bid and says she may keep fighting

Over at CNN, Ronald Brownstein has an analysis piece which looks a little at the potential weakness of Donald Trump support away from his core base. Brownstein writes:

[Trump’s] performance so far reflects his success at transforming the Republican Party in his image. He’s reshaped the Republicans into a more blue-collar, populist and pugnacious party, focused more on his volatile blend of resentments against elites and cultural and racial change than the Ronald Reagan-era priorities of smaller government and active global leadership that former South Carolina Gov Nikki Haley has stressed.

But while the primaries have underscored Trump’s grip on the GOP, they have also demonstrated continued vulnerability for him in the areas where he has labored since he first announced his candidacy in 2015 – particularly among the white-collar suburban voters who mostly leaned toward the GOP before his emergence. The early 2024 nominating contests have shown that a substantial minority of Republican-leaning voters remain resistant to Trump’s vision.

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US lawmakers present bill to fund government and avert shutdown

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The bill sets a discretionary spending level of $1.66tn for fiscal 2024 and still faces opposition from hardline House Republicans

US congressional negotiators on Sunday revealed a bill to fund key parts of the government through the rest of the fiscal year that began in October, as lawmakers faced yet another threat of a partial shutdown if they fail to act by Friday.

The legislation sets a discretionary spending level of $1.66tn for fiscal 2024, a spokesperson for Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said. It fills in the details of an agreement that Schumer and Republican House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson set in early January.

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Donald Trump sweeps Michigan’s Republican party convention

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Former president is awarded all 39 state delegates for November’s national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Donald Trump continued his march toward the GOP nomination at the Michigan Republican party convention on Saturday, sweeping all 39 delegates.

The delegates awarded will fuel Trump ahead of Tuesday, 5 March, when 15 states will hold primaries and Trump’s nomination could be all but decided. The Michigan state party delegates met on Saturday at the sprawling Amway Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, huddling in 13 separate meeting rooms representing the state’s 13 congressional districts.

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