Category Archives: Republicans

Ohio Republicans accused of trying to mislead voters with abortion ballot wording

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New lawsuit accuses ballot board of presenting voters with a confusing summary on November ballot about access to abortion

Abortion rights advocates in Ohio filed a lawsuit on Monday, claiming that state Republican leaders are trying to confuse voters on a ballot measure about access to reproductive healthcare.

Last week, the Ohio ballot board – led by the Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose – approved the wording of Issue 1, a November ballot measure that will ask voters if the state constitution should guarantee a right to abortion, contraception, fertility treatment and miscarriage care.

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Eminem demands Vivek Ramaswamy cease using his music on campaign trail

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Rapper sends letter to Republican presidential hopeful objecting to candidate’s use of his song

The rapper Eminem has demanded that Vivek Ramaswamy cease using his music.

In a letter reported by the Daily Mail, a representative for the rapper’s publisher told counsel for the Republican presidential hopeful that Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, objected to Ramaswamy’s use of his compositions and was revoking a license to use them.

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Trump vows to appeal after judge sets March 2024 trial date – live

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Experts say trial dates typically not subject to appeal as Mark Meadows attempts to move his case to federal court

Attorneys for Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows are today arguing in Georgia that his trial in the election subversion case should be moved to federal court from the state level, where Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis originally brought the charges.

The hearing was scheduled to start at 10 am, but attendees are not permitted to carry electronic devices while in the building, and so we are unlikely to know what’s happening in the courtroom.

If Meadows is able to punt his case to federal court, it could benefit him when it comes time to choose a jury, experts said. The jury pool for a federal case would be composed of residents from across northern Georgia, which is more politically conservative than Fulton County and a potentially friendlier audience for the former Trump official and Republican congressman.

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Trump legal team claims trial dates ‘by design’ clash with election campaign

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Alina Habba said trials’ schedules would cause them to overlap and clash with voting, preventing the ex-president from campaigning

Donald Trump’s legal spokesperson has predicted that forthcoming early trial dates in the former president’s four criminal cases will not hold, and that his multiple cases could clash with the final stages of the 2024 presidential election campaign and voting.

Alina Habba told the Fox News Sunday show that prosecutors’ plans for fast turnarounds in Trump’s two federal criminal cases and the state indictments in New York and Georgia amounted to “unrealistic theatrics”. She said that each of the trials would last from four to six weeks, raising the threat of overlapping schedules.

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Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants Elon Musk to be his presidential adviser

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Republican candidate and biotech entrepreneur names Twitter CEO when asked about potential advisers should he win election

The Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has said that he wants Elon Musk as an adviser if he becomes president.

The billionaire biotech entrepreneur was in Newton, Iowa, campaigning at a town hall on Friday when he was asked about whom he would want as advisers for his potential presidency.

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Biden jokes Trump is ‘handsome guy’ after being asked about mugshot; Harrison Floyd denied bail – as it happened

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This blog has now closed

Mugshots define eras.

Bugsy Siegel peering malevolently from beneath his fedora in a 1928 booking photo summed up the perverse romance of gangsters in the prohibition age.

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Sarah Palin says US civil war ‘is going to happen’ over Trump prosecutions

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Former vice-presidential nominee condemns prosecutors over ‘travesty’ and says ‘we’re not going to keep putting up with this’

A second US civil war is “going to happen” if state and federal authorities continue to prosecute Donald Trump, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin said.

“Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen,” Palin told Newsmax on Thursday night.

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Trump ‘shakes up legal team’ before surrender; Meadows booked at Georgia jail – live

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Ex-president changes lawyers hours before being expected in Georgia; Mark Meadows surrenders after agreeing $100,000 bond payment

Full report: Trump ‘shakes up legal team hours before surrender’

In a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll, 35% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they think the climate change is a major factor in the extreme heat that the US has experienced recently, compared with 85% of those who lean Democratic. Overall, nearly two-thirds of Americans who experienced extremely hot days said climate change was a major factor.

Young Republican voters, however, seem increasingly concerned about the climate crisis. A 2022 Pew poll found that 73% of Republicans aged 18-39 thought climate change was an extremely/very or somewhat serious issue.

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Republicans ‘deserve to lose’ if they fail to address climate crisis, says activist

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Benji Backer, executive director of conservative climate group, calls question on crisis in debate ‘historic’ but laments answers

Republicans “deserve to lose” electorally if they can’t show they care about the climate crisis, according to the head of a conservative climate organization that put forward a rare question on the issue to GOP candidates in Wednesday’s televised debate.

The Republican presidential hopefuls, minus Donald Trump, were asked at the Fox News debate what they would do to improve the party’s standing on climate policy by Alexander Diaz, a young conservative who is part of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a youth conservative group that pushes for action on the climate crisis.

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Republican debate live: eight presidential hopefuls take stage as Trump is a no-show

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Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Doug Burgum, Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy take stage in Milwaukee

Onstage at the Republican presidential debate tonight is the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum – who almost didn’t make it.

He has managed to make the event despite requiring crutches and wearing a boot after hurting his Achilles tendon while playing basketball.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene: ‘My name is on a list’ of Trump vice-president picks

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Far-right congresswoman from Georgia tells the Guardian she ‘would be honored’ if chosen for the role

Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia “knows” her name is “on a list” of possible picks as vice-president to Donald Trump should he win the Republican nomination next year, the far-right congresswoman and conspiracy theorist told the Guardian on Wednesday.

“I’d have to think about it and consider it,” Greene said, in Milwaukee ahead of the first Republican presidential debate.

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Trump co-defendant Mark Meadows seeks emergency order to protect him from arrest in Georgia – as it happened

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The Fulton county district attorney has advised several of Donald Trump’s co-defendants that they should surrender at the jail around 3am ET if they want a quick turnaround on their booking because it could take hours during the day, per people familiar.

Expect some surrenders in early hours.

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‘Inhumane’: judge hears arguments about anti-migrant buoys in Rio Grande

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Court to decide whether to remove them as Greg Abbott and other Republican governors defend militarization of border with Mexico

A federal judge heard arguments on Tuesday about whether state authorities should remove huge buoys installed to stop migrants crossing the river that divides Texas from Mexico.

The court hearing in Austin came a day after Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, and a group of hardline Republican governors gathered on the riverbank to defend local militarization of the US-Mexico border – while also acknowledging that the 1,000ft (305-meter) floating barrier had been adjusted after complaints that it had mostly drifted into Mexican territory.

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Joe and Jill Biden land in Hawaii to survey wildfire devastation – live

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The Bidens are accompanied by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Deanne Criswell

Donald Trump continues to hold a dominant lead over the rest of the GOP field in Iowa, the site of the nation’s first presidential caucuses, with 23 points ahead of his closest competitor, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, according to a new poll.

The survey by the Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom of likely Republican caucus-goers, was conducted before and after Trump’s latest indictment in Georgia, and shows the former president’s lead over DeSantis increased after his latest charges.

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Trump should drop out of 2024 presidential race, says Republican

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Senator Bill Cassidy says ‘he will lose to Joe Biden’ as ex-president faces more than 90 pending charges

Donald Trump should drop out of the 2024 race for the White House because polling shows the former US president trailing Joe Biden as he grapples with more than 90 pending criminal charges, according to Republican US senator Bill Cassidy.

Cassidy’s comments to State of the Union host Kasie Hunt were not the first time he has denounced Trump. About two months earlier, he went on CNN and predicted that Trump would lose if his party nominated him to run for the Oval Office again, citing the poor performance of his endorsed candidates during the 2022 midterms.

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Pence won’t say if criminal conviction should rule Trump out as president

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Former vice-president who once voted to expel felon from Congress says American people should decide

Donald Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, refused to say Trump should be barred from returning to the White House if he is convicted on any of 91 criminal charges against him.

“I think that he’s to be left to the American people,” Pence told ABC’s This Week, on Sunday. “Let’s have the former president have his day in court. Let’s maintain a presumption of innocence.”

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Joe Biden says US, Japan and South Korea ‘doubling down’ on joint defense against security threats – as it happened

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US president, Yoon Suk Yeol and Fumio Kishida meet as they agree to take trilateral defence cooperation to ‘unprecedented levels’

A standalone summit bringing together the leaders of Japan and South Korea would have been almost unthinkable just over a year ago, when the north-east Asian neighbours were embroiled in disputes over their bitter wartime legacy.

Bilateral ties were at a low point before the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, took office in May 2022, due to compensation claims by Koreans over Japan’s use of forced labour during its 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, and the longstanding controversy over Korean women who were coerced into working in Japanese military brothels.

It is a historic event, and it sets the conditions for a more peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific, and a stronger and more secure United States of America.

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Trump indictment sparks fears of calls to violence as Georgia grand jury doxxed – as it happened

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This blog is now closed, but continuing coverage of Trump’s Georgia indictment can be found here and here.

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, dismissed the suggestion that she is running in the 2024 GOP presidential race in order to become the vice president.

In an interview with Politico, Haley said:

I think everybody that says, ‘She’s doing this to be vice president,’ needs to understand I don’t run for second.

That’s something that I hear all the time, and I’ll tell you that, look, we have a country to save, and I don’t trust anybody else to do it.

Sources tell ABC News that Trump’s legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.

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Ron DeSantis campaign suffers another blow after debate memos published

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Rightwing Florida governor’s talking points for the first Republican debate include defending Trump and attacking Biden

Seeking to resurrect his flagging US presidential campaign, Ron DeSantis suffered a major embarrassment when memos about his preparation for the first Republican debate were reported by the New York Times.

Including advice not to attack the clear frontrunner, Donald Trump, the memos to the rightwing Florida governor ahead of the debate in Milwaukee next Wednesday were posted online by a consulting firm owned by Jeff Roe, chief strategist to Never Back Down, a Super Pac backing DeSantis.

Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times.

State [DeSantis’s] positive vision 2-3 times.

Hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response.

Defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to a Chris Christie attack.

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Biden to tout climate benefits of Inflation Reduction Act as White House announces visit to fire-ravaged Hawaii – live

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US president and first lady to meet survivors and first responders on Monday; White House speech on anniversary will extol wins on EVs and green energy

The US is the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the Inflation Reduction Act is widely forecast to slash these emissions, by as much as 48% by 2035, from 2005 levels, according to one analysis.

These forecasts have a relatively wide range of estimates due to uncertainties such as economic growth but even in the most optimistic scenario the US will require further measures if it is to get to net zero emissions by 2050, as scientists have said is imperative if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate impacts.

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