Category Archives: Kamala Harris

Trump revokes security clearances for Biden, Harris and other political enemies

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In Friday memo, president also pulls clearances for Antony Blinken, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and Letitia James

Donald Trump moved to revoke security clearances for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and a string of other top Democrats and political enemies in a presidential memo issued late on Friday.

The security-clearance revocations also cover the former secretary of state Antony Blinken, the former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, the former Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump for fraud, as well as Biden’s entire family. They all will no longer have access to classified information – a courtesy typically offered to former presidents and some officials after they have left public service.

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Tim Walz regrets getting ‘sucked in’ to addressing Trump’s pet-eating lies

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Harris running mate discussed campaign missteps after saying he’ll run for third term as Minnesota governor

Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate in the November presidential election won by Donald Trump, says he deplores how much time he spent addressing the opposing campaign’s decision to spread false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in Springfield, Ohio.

“They sucked me in on” that, Walz said in a recent episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. Echoing similar remarks that he made on a recent episode of the Fast Politics With Molly Jong-Fast podcast, he added: “I was just horrified and angry when they were demonizing folks in Springfield, Ohio. [And] there I was talking for almost a week about immigration, right where they wanted us to be.”

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Gloom and pessimism take hold of Democrats as they look for new leaders

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Questions about the viability of a female presidential candidate rise after a crushing presidential defeat

Democrats are harboring strong feelings of stress and gloom as the new year begins. And many are questioning whether their party’s commitment to diverse candidates – especially women – may lead to further political struggles as Donald Trump is sworn in for a second presidency on 20 January.

A recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that a significant number of Democrats believe that it may be decades before the United States will get its first female president.

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Trump moves to block report on election interference and classified documents cases – US politics live

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President-elect’s lawyers ask attorney general to stop release of outgoing special counsel Jack Smith’s report

Nina Jankowicz, a former homeland security official tasked with fighting disinformation, said Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to end factchecking on his platforms was a “bending of the knee” to Donald Trump.

“Let’s be clear – the factcheckers have not ‘been’ politically biased as Zuckerberg suggests, but have been *perceived as such* because of politically motivated efforts to smear them, one that Zuck is now participating in and capitulating to,” said Jankowicz, who know leads the American Sunlight Project, an anti-disinformation group.

Facebook has already contributed to the demise of journalism and this will be the final nail in the coffin; newsrooms —especially outside the U.S. where subscription models are difficult sells—get grants from Facebook to provide fact-checks. That money allows them to do other journalism!

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Biden administration bans medical debt from inclusion on credit reports

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Kamala Harris announces removal of billions in medical debt from credit reports of 15 million Americans

Lenders will no longer be able to see whether American borrowers have unpaid medical debt in their credit history, according to a new rule from the outgoing Biden administration.

The vice-president, Kamala Harris, announced early on Tuesday that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was removing $49bn of existing unpaid medical bills from the credit reports of 15 million Americans and will ban the inclusion of medical debt on credit reports.

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Biden reportedly regrets ending re-election campaign and says he’d have defeated Trump

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President also regrets picking Merrick Garland for attorney general, as he was slow to prosecute Trump for January 6

Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.

The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter.

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Biden library reportedly under threat by Democrats enraged by Hunter pardon

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Senior party figures consider withholding contributions to presidential library to express anger at pardon for son

Senior Democrats are reportedly considering withholding contributions to Joe Biden’s future presidential library amid a mounting backlash over his decision grant a blanket pardon to his son Hunter.

The threat has emerged as simmering anger among congressional Democrats – already building over the president’s insistence on seeking a second term before belatedly stepping aside as the party nominee in favour of Kamala Harris – has burst into the open over Sunday’s pardon, which Biden had previously vowed not to give.

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Trump victory not a mandate for radical change, top election forecaster says

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US expert who predicted outcome says models showed voters were unhappy with economy but did not seek sweeping transformation

Despite Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the presidential election, a political scientist who developed a model that correctly predicted his sweep of battleground states warns that voters have not necessarily given the president-elect a mandate to make radical changes.

In a paper released with little fanfare three weeks before the vote, Cornell University professor of government Peter Enns and his co-authors accurately forecast that Trump would win all seven swing states, based on a model they built that uses state-level presidential approval ratings and indicators of economic health.

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Democrats criticize Harris for ‘self-congratulatory’ review of election loss

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Top campaign staff also under fire for saying party has to ‘dominate the moderate’ in Pod Save America appearance

Some Democratic figures have accused Kamala Harris’s campaign of being self-congratulatory after a series of recent public appearances from the candidate and her senior staff in which they declined to admit making any errors that could have contributed to her defeat.

Some of the criticism was aimed at Harris herself, following a video call to thank campaign donors in which the vice-president expressed pride in her failed race for the White House.

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Democrats search for answers as blue Philadelphia turns towards Trump

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Trump grew his support in nearly all of Philadelphia’s wards – what went wrong for Harris in a key Democratic city?

When Kamala Harris stopped at the west Philadelphia barber shop Philly Cuts just days before the election, its manager, James Browne, said the vice-president came off “almost like a favorite aunt”.

Harris seemed “genuine, kind, nice, very comforting” during the half-hour she spent in the shop while campaigning in the largest city in battleground state Pennsylvania, Browne said. “Meeting her in person was very different than seeing her on TV.”

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‘Queen of polling’ J Ann Selzer quits after Iowa survey missed by 16 points

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Pollster announces she’s moving on ‘to other ventures’ after poll wrongly predicted strong shift in state to Kamala Harris

J Ann Selzer, the celebrated Iowa election pollster, announced on Sunday that she is moving on “to other ventures and opportunities”, two weeks after her survey in the state wrongly predicted a strong shift to Kamala Harris in the days before the election.

That poll, which projected a 47% to 44% lead for the vice-president over Donald Trump on the back of older women breaking for Democrats over the issue of reproductive rights, came three days before the national vote, giving Democrats false hope that Harris could win the White House decisively. When the votes were counted, Selzer was off by 16 points as the former president won the state decisively.

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Dozens of stars backed Harris’s campaign and yet she lost. Is the era of celebrity endorsements over?

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Focus on A-list talent such as Swift and Beyoncé may have reinforced an out-of-touch vision, or maybe celebrity support holds no political power

The names read like a who’s who of A-list talent about to walk a red carpet or attend Vanity Fair’s famous post-Oscar party. Oprah Winfrey, Megan Thee Stallion, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Springsteen and many, many more.

These are just some of the bold-face name celebrities who backed Kamala Harris’s failed run for the White House, making it one of the most star-studded political campaigns in US history. Even the world’s biggest current star – singer Taylor Swift – got behind Harris.

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The ‘foolproof’ election forecaster who predicted Trump would lose – what went wrong?

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Allan Lichtman’s forecast model was meant to be foolproof. He explains to David Smith what was different this time

Surely not even Nostradamus could get it right all of the time.

Allan Lichtman had correctly forecast the result of nine of the past 10 US presidential elections (and even the one he didn’t, in 2000, he insists was stolen from Al Gore). His predictive model of “13 keys” to the White House was emulated around the world and seemed all but indestructible.

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Trump announces Matt Gaetz as attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard for top intelligence post – US politics live

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Far-right Florida congressman to get top justice job; former Democrat Gabbard frequently appeared with Trump on the campaign trail

Mehdi Hasan writes for the Guardian today, asking “Is Donald Trump a foreign policy dove?”

You can read it here …

Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat, that means casualties are worse.

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Australia’s gambling giants spent $240,000 on Facebook ads for US election bets

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Guessing the colour of Trump’s tie among bets promoted by TAB, Ladbrokes, Sportsbet and Neds in the week leading up to the election

Australia’s big online gambling operators poured at least $240,000 into Facebook ads promoting novelty bets on the US election last week, including whether Donald Trump’s speech would mention fraud or what colour his tie would be, just weeks before the government is expected to announce its long-awaited plans to restrict wagering ads.

Between 31 October and 6 November – the day of the US election in Australia – TAB, Ladbrokes, Sportsbet and Neds were the top four Facebook advertisers in the country on Meta’s ad library tool, spending a combined $229,789 on politics-related ads.

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Trump to reportedly appoint immigration hardliner Stephen Miller to top White House job – live

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The architect of Trump’s immigration policy is expected to become the deputy chief of staff for policy, CNN reports

US president-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), will be in charge of the country’s borders in his new administration.

Homan’s areas of control will include “the southern border, the northern border, all maritime, and aviation security”, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. Trump added that “border czar” Homan will be in charge of the deportation of illegal immigrants.

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Sweep of swing states rubs salt in Democrats’ wounds as Trump prepares to meet Biden

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Trump to visit Oval Office on Wednesday as Biden says he will ‘ensure a peaceful and orderly transition’

Donald Trump was declared the winner in Arizona early on Sunday, completing the Republicans’ clean sweep of the so-called swing states and rubbing salt in Democrats’ wounds as it was announced that the president-elect is scheduled to meet with Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the presidential handover.

In a national campaign that was projected as being extremely close but he ended up winning handily, the result in Arizona gives Trump 312 electoral college votes, compared with Kamala Harris’s 226. The state joins the other Sun belt swing states – Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina – and the three Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in voting Republican. All were expected to be extremely competitive but all went for Trump, though by fairly close margins.

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Trump wins Arizona, completing sweep of all seven battleground states, AP declares

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Donald Trump now has what is expected to be a final total of 312 electoral college votes, with Kamala Harris securing 226

Donald Trump has won the presidential election in Arizona, the Associated Press declared on Saturday, completing a clean sweep of all seven battleground states and locking in a decisive electoral college victory over the Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris.

Trump, who had secured the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House by early Wednesday, now has what is expected to be a final total of 312 votes to Harris’ 226.

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Thousands protest in New York and Washington – as it happened

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This blog is closed, thanks for following along. You can find our latest US politics coverage here.

Russia’s foreign ministry sees no grounds for talking about resuming dialogue on strategic stability and arms control with the US at the moment, Interfax news agency reported on Saturday, citing Russia’s deputy foreign minister.

Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow and Washington “are exchanging signals on Ukraine” through closed channels at the military and political levels, according to Interfax. He also said that Russia was ready to listen to US president-elect, Donald Trump’s proposals on resolving the crisis in Ukraine, adding that there could be no simple solution.

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Iranian man charged in plot to kill Trump; judge grants special counsel’s request to pause Trump’s 2020 case – live

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Unnamed official of Iranian guard told a contact in September to create a plan to kill Trump, complaint says; judge grants Jack Smith’s ask to pause proceedings after election result

A federal judge has struck down a Biden administration policy that aimed to ease a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants who are married to US citizens.

The program, lauded as one of the biggest presidential actions to help immigrant families in years, allowed undocumented spouses and stepchildren of US citizens to apply for a green card without first having to leave the country.

The temporary relief from deportation brought a brief sense of security to some 500,000 immigrants estimated to benefit from the program before Texas-based U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker put it on hold in August, days after applicants filed their paperwork.

Barker ruled yesterday that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority by implementing the program and had stretched the legal interpretation of relevant immigration law “past its breaking point.”

The short-lived Biden administration initiative known as “Keeping Families Together” would have been unlikely to remain in place after Donald Trump took office in January. But its early termination creates greater uncertainty for immigrant families as many are bracing for Trump’s return to the White House.

CNN’s latest projection of the crucial races to gain control of the House has Republicans ahead in ten of the contests, with, according to their projections, only six victories needed to tip them over the magic 218 for control.

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