Category Archives: US elections 2024

Documents detail Republican push to force hand counts in Arizona election

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Supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd were calling for hand counts in 2022 as election denialism swept Cochise county, a records request shows

Republican elected officials in a small Arizona county talked with state lawmakers and activists about hand-counting ballots there in 2022 and urged their counterparts in other counties to push for hand counts as well, newly released public records show.

The records from Cochise county, a Republican stronghold along the US-Mexico border, only came to light after a lawsuit from a watchdog group, American Oversight, and took well over a year to be released. The original records request from American Oversight was filed in November 2022.

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Democrats seize on Trump’s ‘horrible city’ remark about Milwaukee for ads

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Wisconsin city will host Republican national convention next month, a key swing state Biden won in 2020

US Democrats have seized on Donald Trump’s dismissal of Milwaukee as “a horrible city” by trumpeting the unflattering description on advertising hoardings – a month before the city in the swing state of Wisconsin hosts the Republican national convention, where the former president is set to be the party’s presidential nominee this November.

Trump reportedly made the comment in a meeting with congressional Republicans in Washington on Thursday, his first return to Capitol Hill since extremist supporters broke into Congress on 6 January 2021, to try to stop Joe Biden’s victory over him.

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Trump serenaded by Republicans on first visit to Capitol since January 6

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Lawmakers sing Happy Birthday to ex-president, 78 on Friday, who reportedly called convention host Milwaukee ‘horrible’

Donald Trump went to the US Capitol to rally congressional Republicans in his first visit since 6 January 2021, when his supporters descended on the building in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Trump’s favour.

A packed room full of House Republicans sang Happy Birthday to Trump, who turns 78 on Friday.

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US inflation eases slightly as economic anxiety looms over presidential election

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Consumer price index rose 3.3% in May, as Federal Reserve is due to announce latest decision on interest rates

Inflation cooled slightly in the US last month, as consumers’ frustration over high prices continues to loom over November’s presidential election.

The consumer price index rose at annual pace of 3.3% in May, slipping back from the previous month’s reading of 3.4%.

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Joe Biden delivers gun safety speech hours after son’s firearms conviction

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President sought to rally support around issue but speech was briefly interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters

Joe Biden, facing a backlash from young voters over the war in Gaza, has sought to rally support around the issue of gun safety just hours after his son Hunter was convicted of lying about his drug use to illegally buy a firearm.

Contrasted his record with election rival Donald Trump, the US president brought an audience that included many students to its feet at the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s annual Gun Sense University conference in Washington on Tuesday.

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DeSantis ‘freedom fund’ Pac targets abortion and marijuana ballot initiatives

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Group, known as Florida Freedom Fund, launched in May and will also be involved in school board races

The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has launched a political action committee that is targeting popular ballot amendments on abortion access and marijuana legalization that will be voted on in November.

The group, known as the Florida Freedom Fund, launched in May, Politico first reported. The committee is chaired by James Uthmeier, DeSantis’s chief of staff who was previously the Republican’s campaign manager during his unsuccessful presidential primary run.

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Trump vows to ‘drill, baby, drill’ despite rally attendees wilting in extreme heat

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Supporters hospitalized following rallies in Las Vegas and Phoenix, where temperatures have broken records

Dozens of Donald Trump’s supporters have been requiring medical help at his rallies in the scorching US south-west but it seems lost on him that his plans to reverse climate policies and “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels will only worsen extreme weather, campaigners say.

A total of 24 people at a Trump rally in Las Vegas on Sunday required medical attention due to the heat, according to the Clark county fire department, with six taken to hospital for treatment. The hospitalizations come after a further 11 people needed to be admitted to hospital for heat exhaustion as they waited for Trump to speak at a rally in Phoenix on Thursday.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene compares Trump to Jesus at Las Vegas rally

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Republican extremist tells crowd ‘The man that I worship is also a convicted felon’

Donald Trump has been compared to Jesus Christ by the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene at a campaign rally for the former president in Las Vegas, a city more renowned for evoking images of gambling than biblical scenes.

Greene, who makes frequent references to her Christian faith, cited Trump’s supposed Christ-like qualities to challenge the Democrats’ efforts to capitalise on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s status as a convicted felon following his recent conviction in a case involving hush money paid to an adult film actor and falsified business records in a New York court.

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Trump vows to end taxation of tips at sweltering Las Vegas rally

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Ex-president makes direct appeal to service workers in swing state Nevada, which polls suggest is leaning his way

At a campaign rally Sunday in sweltering hot Las Vegas, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told the crowd he would seek to end taxation of income from tips, a direct appeal to service workers in the swing state of Nevada, which polls suggest is leaning his way ahead of the 5 November election.

That promise reveals one more point to a vague Trump tax plan that has so far included pledges of tax relief to middle-income workers and small businesses. Current law requires tipped employees to report those tips as income.

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Putin says Trump conviction ‘burns’ idea of US as leading democracy

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Russia expert warned Putin would see verdict as chance to undermine US’s global influence and boost his own standing

Vladimir Putin has described the recent criminal conviction of Donald Trump as politically motivated and claimed that it had “burned” the idea that the US was a leading democracy.

Trump last week became the first former US head of state ever convicted of a felony crime after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 charges over efforts to conceal a sexual liaison with an adult film actor, Stormy Daniels, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

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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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Zelenskiy: Trump risks being ‘loser president’ if he imposes bad deal on Ukraine

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Exclusive: Ukrainian leader says bad peace deal in event of Trump victory would mean end of US as global ‘player’

Donald Trump risks being a “loser president” if he wins November’s election and imposes a bad peace deal on Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, saying it would mean the end of the US as a global “player”.

In an interview with the Guardian in Kyiv, Zelenskiy said he had “no strategy yet” for what to do if Trump returned to the White House, and that the former British prime minister Boris Johnson had approached him on his behalf.

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Trump joins TikTok despite seeking to ban app as president

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‘The campaign is playing on all fields,’ an adviser to Trump’s campaign tells Politico

Former president Donald Trump has joined social media platform TikTok and made his first post late Saturday night, a video featuring the Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO, Dana White, introducing Trump on the social media platform.

The move came despite that fact that as president Trump pushed to ban TikTok by executive order due to the app’s parent company being based in China. Trump said in March 2024 that he believed the app was a national security threat, but later reversed on supporting a ban.

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Donald Trump had lots of negative opinions about felons. Now he is one.

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From roughing up suspects to revoking bail, the 34-count felon has suggested harsh treatment for his fellow criminals

Donald Trump has spent years complaining that American police and the criminal legal system should be “very much tougher”, arguing that some criminals should not be protected by civil liberties, police should rough up suspects and a much wider range of people should face the death penalty for breaking the law.

Now that the former president has been convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, Trump is arguing that the US legal system is out of control. “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he said on Friday.

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‘Karma always get you’: New Yorkers react to verdict in Trump criminal trial

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All opinions could be found on streets of New York City after conviction, including: ‘This is going to hand him the election’

The aftermath of the conviction of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts played out amid scenes of stress, jubilation and shock in Manhattan – the slice of New York that first made the former US president into a global celebrity and has now declared one of its most famous sons a guilty criminal.

Police cruisers tore downtown after jurors announced they’d reached a verdict in Trump’s hush-money trial, and many New Yorkers had been glued to their phones waiting for the decision to be relayed. Mayor Eric Adams tried to reassure citizens that authorities were prepared for unrest.

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Black Americans disproportionately encounter lies online, survey finds

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Most Americans concerned about online misinformation as election nears, according to poll by watchdog group Free Press

As US presidential elections approach, the vast majority of Americans are concerned about online misinformation and fear they do not have enough accurate information on candidates, especially local ones, a new poll has shown.

While people across the political and racial spectrum reported being “very concerned” about the deliberate spread of online misinformation, the study found Black Americans are disproportionately encountering misinformation when seeking accurate news.

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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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‘I need you’: Biden-Harris campaign launches initiative to court Black voters

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President and vice-president gear up for 2024 election with ‘Black Voters for Biden-Harris’ rally at majority Black Philadelphia school

Gearing up for the 2024 election, the Biden-Harris campaign launched its Black voters initiative on Wednesday at Philadelphia’s Girard College, a majority Black boarding school.

Around 2pm in an auditorium filled with hundreds of Black Philly residents, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris approached the podium to applause and an audience shouting “four more years”.

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Robert F Kennedy Jr files election complaint over CNN debate rules

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Independent presidential candidate alleges network is colluding with Trump and Biden to exclude him from 27 June debate

The independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr filed an election complaint on Wednesday alleging CNN is colluding with Joe Biden and the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, to exclude him from a debate the network is hosting next month.

Kennedy alleges the requirements to participate in the 27 June debate were designed to ensure only Biden and Trump would qualify and Kennedy claims he is being held to a higher standard.

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