Former US president comes to Georgia to support Jon Ossoff for US Senate and Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor
Barack Obama, speaking at a Wednesday campaign rally in suburban Atlanta, offered a closing argument for Democrats in the final week of the midterm election campaign.
“These are not serious people,” he said of Donald Trump and the Republican party. “And we’re all paying the price for their lack of seriousness.”
Continue reading...Burnham welcomes Ukraine’s president to No 10 for the first time since he became PM
PMQs is about to start.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
After @genevieve_holl reported this last night, various sources in the Trump administration who are supportive of Farage said Badenoch was needlessly trying to cause a political row (per @katyballs @MrHarryCole) and accused her of undermining the Anglo-American relationship.
It is possible that these people are particularly sensitive about this topic because they are still considering buying the islands, as @connorstringer and I reported earlier in the year. Domestic opposition to the idea of the US running Chagos in the UK would be a problem for the White House.
Calamity Kemi Strikes Again.
Kemi Badenoch has risked causing a diplomatic row with Britain’s allies, all because she cannot control the Tory spin doctors around her that oversaw the disastrous premierships of Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Theresa May, and even David Cameron.
Kemi and the Conservatives cannot be trusted by the Chagos people.
If they really have interest in the Chagos, why would you have started negotiating about things you already own?
We are confused at why @KemiBadenoch is attacking @Nigel_Farage …
We understood Nigel Farage’s comments to mean that we would get perpetual use of the base, which, frankly, we’ve always had.
Continue reading...Ex-president urged party at closed-door fundraiser to create sweeping framework, from safety ‘slow-down’ to job losses
Barack Obama urged Democrats to prioritize a “public conversation” about AI management and safety in a closed-door Manhattan fundraiser last week.
The comments by the former US president reportedly urged the party to create a sweeping framework for everything from a safety “slow-down” to domestic job losses and children’s wellbeing.
Continue reading...Former president nevertheless said in an interview that he was happy to see a ceasefire with Iran and hopes it holds
Barack Obama has said that after 15 weeks of war with Iran, the US is now “worse off” than before the conflict started in February.
“We’ve now fought a war, spent billions and billions of dollars, you know, put enormous strain on our military. A lot of people have died. And it feels like we’re back where we were before we started the war, except maybe a little bit worse off,” the former US president told NBC News in an interview that aired on Friday.
Continue reading...Musical stars and retired politicians from less polarised era seeming antidote to cage fights on White House lawn
The Barack Obama presidential center opened in Chicago on Thursday after more than a decade in the making amid a musical fanfare and paeans to democratic principles that evoked a previous age, all while delivering an implied rebuke to Donald Trump.
Featuring appearances by a cast of musical stars and retired politicians from a less polarised era, it was a seemingly perfect antidote to the crass spectacle of cage fights on the White House lawn.
Continue reading...Former US president and New York mayor read to a group of children and led a sing-along at a Bronx childcare center
Barack Obama met with Zohran Mamdani for the first time on Saturday at a childcare center where the former Democratic US president and mayor of New York City read to preschoolers and led a sing-along.
The meeting comes as Mamdani, a democratic socialist who marked his 100th day in office just over a week earlier, is also trying to build a working relationship with Donald Trump – Obama’s Republican presidential successor.
Continue reading...US president will need to show heavy costs of war were worthwhile while Iran must choose between instant and delayed gratification
If talks between Iran and the US reconvene within the next few days in Islamabad, Donald Trump will have two major political hurdles to overcome – first showing that any deal he secures is better than the one signed by Barack Obama in 2015 and from which he withdraw in 2018, and secondly proving the deal is more favourable than the one on offer in Geneva in February before he launched his war.
Otherwise he will have inflicted massive damage on the world economy when alternatives were available that were less costly in blood and treasure. He will also have to show that Iran has made no permanent gain by taking control of shipping passing through the strait of Hormuz. These are the yardsticks, or tests, around which his negotiating team will be keeping an anxious eye.
Continue reading...Former US president headlines event for Democratic candidate for Virginia governor, who leads in polls
Barack Obama headlined a rally Saturday in Virginia to try to secure a victory for the state’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, who leads in polls days before the election.
Obama moved between criticizing Donald Trump and Republican policy and rhetoric – with a bit of humor – while also explaining how Abigail Spanberger could help counter what Democrats see as the country’s downward trajectory.
Continue reading...Universities, law firms and businesses that have changed course should have stood by convictions, says ex-president
Barack Obama took aim at institutions and businesses who made deals or worked out settlements with the Trump administration, noting on a new podcast episode: “We all have this capacity, I think, to take a stand.”
In a talk with Marc Maron on the comedian’s last edition of his long-running WTF With Marc Maron, the former US president said institutions – including law firms, universities and businesses – that have changed course during the Trump administration should have stood by their convictions.
Continue reading...Office of ex-US president breaks precedent and warns that allegations of attempted ‘coup’ are ‘attempt at distraction’
Barack Obama has broken his silence on calls from Donald Trump for him to be prosecuted by unequivocally rejecting his successor’s accusations that he tried to engineer a “coup” following Trump’s 2016 election victory by “manufacturing” evidence of Russian interference.
Obama’s office took the unusual step of issuing an emphatic refutation after Trump told reporters that his predecessor had “[tried] to lead a coup” against him and was guilty of “treason” over intelligence assessments suggesting that Russia had intervened to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in the campaign.
Continue reading...‘It is up to all of us to fix this,’ former president said in speech at Hamilton College in New York
Barack Obama has called on US citizens, colleges and law firms to resist Donald Trump’s political agenda – and warned Americans to prepare to “possibly sacrifice” in support of democratic values.
“It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are a progressive or say you are for social justice or say you’re for free speech and not have to pay a price for it,” Obama said during a speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, on Thursday.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Ledbetter sued employer Goodyear in 1998 after finding out she was paid $6,500 less than lowest-paid male supervisor
Lilly Ledbetter, an equal pay advocate whose lawsuit against her employer inspired the Fair Pay Act of 2009, died Saturday in Alabama at age 86.
Ledbetter died of respiratory failure, according to a statement from her family provided to the Alabama news organization Al.com.
Continue reading...Former president’s campaign makes unprecedented request, citing fears of an assassination attempt by Iran
As he wrapped up his remarks, Walz took a swing at Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint to remake the US government authored by people in Donald Trump’s orbit.
“I’ve also, at times, said Donald Trump doesn’t have a plan – concept of a plan, at times. That wasn’t exactly correct. He does have a plan. It’s called Project 2025,” Walz said.
This thing is a damn nightmare. His project 2025 would repeal the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act – that would threaten hundreds of thousands of new manufacturing jobs, including those right here in Michigan. The ones that JD Vance said, those 650 jobs were table scraps, good-paying union jobs building America, and those are table scraps. He would establish, and every single economist said so, a national sales tax on everything from groceries to prescription drugs.
And the estimates is it would cost each and every one of you $4,000 he says those tariffs that Trump will pay, or that China will pay, Trump’s tariffs – you’re going to pay them. That’s the way it always works.
Let me tell you exactly what vice-president Harris and I will do. We’re going to create an American forward strategy for manufacturing, one that builds on the historic investments, bipartisan infrastructure, law, Chips act, science act, Inflation Reduction Act, creating all kinds of new opportunities, ones that empowers American workers, revitalizes manufacturing communities, leads us into an industries of the future and keep out innovating and out competing the rest of the world.
We never fear the future. You build the future, and this gives us the opportunity to do it.
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Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right congresswoman of Georgia, is once again facing criticism for peddling a baseless – and just plan bizarre – claim about the weather.
“Yes they can control the weather,” Greene said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
Continue reading...Hard-right hosts resurrect racist Obama birther conspiracy theory and lament Democrats’ treatment of Joe Biden
As the Democratic party enjoys the afterglow of an exuberant national convention, the rightwing media has settled on consistent counter-programming: complaining about “joy”, hyping up pro-Palestinian protests and expressing a newfound concern for the treatment of Joe Biden.
The coverage, which has at times avoided the more pointed Democratic criticisms of Trump by cutting to ad breaks, has also including the criticism of women both for smiling too much and not smiling enough, and the coining of a new name for Barack Obama: “Barack-Stabber”.
Continue reading...Former president addresses delegates amid reports Oprah Winfrey is expected to make an appearance
Kamala Harris’s campaign raised four times as much money last month than Donald Trump’s campaign, Reuters is reporting, citing federal disclosures filed late on Tuesday.
The Harris campaign told the Federal Election Commission it raised $204m in July, compared to $48m reported by Trump’s main fundraising group.
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Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, has turned up at the Democratic national convention, for reasons unknown.
Cohen fell out with Trump years ago, and was a witness for the prosecution in the former president’s hush-money trial in New York, which ended with him being found guilty of 34 felonies related to falsifying business documents.
Continue reading...Ex-president headlining in Chicago on Tuesday brings memories of 2004 appeal for unity that inspired Democrats
From “skinny kid with a funny name” to elder statesman: Barack Obama, the former US president, will be the headline speaker at the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Tuesday – 20 years after he first burst on to the national political scene.
Obama, a state legislator from Illinois, was days from his 43rd birthday and months from being elected to the Senate when he was given a slot at the party’s 2004 convention in Boston. “Rising star to woo voters with upbeat keynote speech,” was the Guardian headline on 27 July 2004.
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Joe Biden described selecting Kamala Harris as his vice-president as “the best decision I made my whole career”, and he drew a sharp contrast between her and Donald Trump. Mocking Trump over his recent conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden said:
Violent crime has dropped to the lowest level of more than 50 years, and crime will keep coming down when we put a prosecutor in the Oval Office instead of a convicted felon.
When he talks about America being a failing nation, he says, we’re losing. He’s the loser. He’s dead wrong.
Guess who cast the tie-breaking vote? Vice-president, soon-to-be-president, Kamala Harris.
With a grateful heart, I stand before you now on this August night to report that democracy has prevailed. Democracy has delivered, and now democracy must be preserved.
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