Category Archives: US Politics

‘Say it to my face’ says Kamala Harris as she again challenges Donald Trump to debate – as it happened

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This blog is closed. You can find our latest US elections coverage here.

Kamala Harris’s campaign has announced a $50m advertising blitz ahead of the Democratic national convention next month with a television ad that portrays the presumptive Democratic nominee as “fearless”.

The 60-second ad will be the first in a series of paid media efforts ahead of the convention, which begins 19 August in Chicago.

We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead. Where every senior can retire with dignity. But Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act. But we are not going back.

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Donald Trump repeats controversial ‘You won’t have to vote any more’ claim

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Republican presidential nominee denies threatening to stay in office after end of possible second term in Fox interview

Donald Trump on Monday repeated his weekend remarks to Christian summit attendees that they would never need to vote again if he returns to the presidency in November.

But, after being asked repeatedly on Fox News to clarify what he meant, the Republican former president denied threatening to permanently stay in office beyond his second – and constitutionally mandated final – four-year term.

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Celebrity-studded ‘White Dudes for Harris’ call raises $4m for vice-president

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Jeff Bridges, Mark Hamill, Mark Ruffalo and contenders for Harris’s VP pick among 190,000 participants in Zoom call

A Zoom call meant to rally “white dudes” in support of vice-president Kamala Harris’s run for the White House raised more than $4m from about 190,000 participants, including numerous celebrities, according to the presumptive Democratic nominee’s campaign.

Guests on the call not only included contenders for Harris’s vice-presidential running mate: the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, and the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg. They also included the actors Jeff Bridges – famous for portraying the Dude in The Big Lebowski – and Mark Hamill, who secured a $50,000 donation during the call by delivering his renowned Star Wars line: “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.”

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US elections live: Harris backs Biden’s supreme court reforms as House speaker calls them ‘dead on arrival’

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Vice-president says action needed amid ‘clear crisis of confidence’ in the court; Mike Johnson rejects effort, saying they would ‘tilt the balance of power’

Joe Biden has called for a series of reforms to to the supreme court, including the introduction of 18-year term limits and a binding code of conduct for justices.

Biden, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, also called for a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.

This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one.

When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it. Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump.

Donald Trump wants to take America backward, to a politics of hate, chaos, and fear – this November America will unite around Vice President Kamala Harris to stop him.

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JD Vance calls Trump ‘morally reprehensible’ in resurfaced emails

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Former friend releases messages largely from 2014-2017 in which Republican VP nominee also says: ‘I hate the police’

Questions continued to mount about the political transformation of Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, after the release of emails from a former friend in which Vance called Trump a “morally reprehensible human being” and said: “I hate the police.”

The messages between Vance and Sofia Nelson, who sent them to the New York Times, were largely dated between 2014 and 2017. In one, Vance sent Nelson a section of Hillbilly Elegy, his bestseller about his Appalachian boyhood.

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‘Terrifying’: Democrats react to Trump saying people won’t have to vote again

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Former president told Christian supporters on Friday ‘it’ll be fixed’ in four years if he wins 2024 election

Democrats have expressed outrage after Donald Trump told a group of Christian supporters on Friday that if he wins the presidency in November, they would never need to vote again.

“Christians, get out and vote, just this time,” the former president and current presidential nominee told the crowd at at Turning Point Action’s Believers’ Summit on Friday. “You won’t have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.”

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Biden administration blames Hezbollah for ‘horrific’ Golan Heights rocket attack

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National security council says attack that killed 12 children and teenagers ‘should be universally condemned’

The Biden administration formally placed blame on Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah for the rocket strike that killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday.

National security council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the attack was “conducted by Lebanese Hezbollah. It was their rocket, and launched from an area they control. It should be universally condemned.”

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Kamala Harris allies deploy new Trump attack line: he is ‘just plain weird’

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Tactic calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are now more engaged with election

US Democrats have spent recent days trying out a relatively new attack line on Donald Trump: that he is weird. The tactic is almost certainly calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are moving from marked disinterest in the now-dropped matchup between Joe Biden and his presidential predecessor to engagement in the 100-day contest between Trump and Kamala Harris.

In a press release Thursday, vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris issued a list of the main takeaways of what Trump had given the American people. “Is Donald Trump OK?” the X message said. The seventh of nine entries was: “Trump is old and quite weird?”

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Top Republicans call Kamala Harris a ‘dangerous liberal’ as attacks ramp up

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Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham and Ron DeSantis try to paint Harris, a centrist Democrat, as having far-left politics

Republicans took to the airwaves Sunday to criticize a surging Kamala Harris, calling the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee a “dangerous liberal” as US conservatives’ lines of attack on the vice-president began to solidify.

In appearances across CNN and Fox News, senior Republican figures Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham and former presidential candidate Ron DeSantis each attempted to paint Harris – who is typically seen as a centrist Democrat – as having far-left politics.

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Swat team says it had no contact with Secret Service before Trump rally shooting

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‘We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing … and that never happened,’ says lead sharpshooter on local Swat team

Local police officers on a special tactical team who were assigned to help protect Donald Trump on the day the former president was wounded during a 13 July assassination attempt in Butler county, Pennsylvania, have said they had no contact with Secret Service agents before the gunman opened fire.

“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the Swat team in nearby Beaver county, Pennsylvania, told ABC News.

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Gen-Z voters spread the ‘Kamalove’ as Harris’s popularity earns youth support

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Pramila Jayapal, progressive Seattle representative, says of ‘undeniable’ enthusiasm: ‘I have not seen anything like this’

Kamala Harris pledged to earn the votes of young people this election, as the vice-president and newly elevated presumptive Democratic nominee rides a gen Z-powered wave of online “Kamalove” .

In a virtual address to attendees of a two-day summit in Atlanta, hosted by the liberal gen Z-led organization Voters of Tomorrow, Harris said she had been elected the first female vice-president of the United States “because young voters showed up” in 2020. She touted “historic progress” made by the Biden-Harris administration on combating gun violence and climate change, all of which she said was again “at stake this November”.

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From rising star to potential liability: how JD Vance’s fortunes have turned

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Ohio senator’s ratings are at a record low and his hardline views on issues might prove to be a liability than an asset

He was supposed to be his master’s mini-me, his elevation as Republican vice-presidential nominee hailed as a virile celebration of Donald Trump’s near-total conquest of the GOP.

Now – days after receiving a rapturous response at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee – JD Vance is being lamented within party circles as a potentially fatal liability in Trump’s quest to recapture the White House.

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Biden to announce plans to reform US supreme court – report

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US president also to seek constitutional amendment to limit immunity for presidents and various officeholders

Joe Biden will announce plans to reform the US supreme court on Monday, Politico reported, citing two people familiar with the matter, adding that the US president was likely to back term limits for justices and an enforceable code of ethics.

Biden said earlier this week during an Oval Office address that he would call for reform of the court.

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Record-breaking Zoom supporting Harris mobilizes white female voters

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Over 160,000 attendees in a key demographic ‘answered the call’ on Thursday, with nearly $8.5m raised for Harris

Following the success of a virtual call to mobilize Black women voters for Kamala Harris, a similar event with more than 160,000 attendees was held on Thursday aimed at white women, and appeared to break records.

White women will be a key demographic for the Democrats to win over this election.

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Harris ‘erases’ Trump’s lead in new poll; Trump says VP’s comments about Israel-Gaza war ‘weren’t very nice’ – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. You can read our full report on Kamala Harris closing the gap in polling here

Don Davis, a North Carolina Democratic representative, has issued a statement endorsing Kamala Harris, just a day after he broke party rank and joined House Republicans in condemning Harris’s border policies.

In a statement, Davis said:

Today, I announce my endorsement and support of Vice-President Kamala Harris for president. I also believe governor Roy Cooper, an eastern NC native, would be an excellent choice for vice-president. The stakes of this presidential election are incredibly high, with far reaching implications.

At the same time, the administration and Congress must address the concerns of the southern border. These issues cannot be overlooked …

Yesterday, the department of justice arrested Ismael Zambada Garcia (AKA ‘El Mayo’) and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, two of the most notorious leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the deadliest enterprises in the world.

They are being charged for leading the Cartel’s deadly drug manufacturing and trafficking networks. I commend the work of our law enforcement officials who made this arrest for their ongoing work to bring Sinaloa cartel leaders to justice.

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Israeli right wing hits out at Kamala Harris as Netanyahu visit polarises opinion

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Amid anger at US vice-president’s call to end Gaza war, many families of hostages held by Hamas agree with her

Members of Israel’s rightwing government have hit back at Kamala Harris over her demands for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza after she met Benjamin Netanyahu during his US visit.

After a brief meeting with the Israeli prime minister, which Harris described as “frank and constructive”, the US vice-president and presidential candidate said it was “time for this war to end, and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination”.

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Israel and Hamas closer than ever to ceasefire deal, White House says

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Netanyahu meets Biden to discuss end to nine-month war in Gaza and has separate meeting with Kamala Harris

White House officials said Israel and Hamas were “closer now than we’ve been before” to reaching a ceasefire deal as Benjamin Netanyahu met Joe Biden on Thursday to discuss an end to the nine-month conflict in Gaza.

The talks at the White House came amid unprecedented political turmoil in the US and domestic pressure on the Israeli prime minster to rescue the dozens of hostages still being held captive after Hamas’s 7 October attack. Netanyahu also met the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, who is likely to replace Biden as the Democratic candidate for November’s election.

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Bill Barr complicit in misleading voter fraud statement’s release – watchdog

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Trump attorney general’s unusual actions ‘certainly not consistent’ with justice department policy, report finds

The former attorney general Bill Barr was personally involved in a decision to release an unusual and misleading justice department statement on the eve of the 2020 election suggesting there may have been voter fraud in Pennsylvania, according to a new inspector general’s report that was released on Thursday.

The 76-page report from the justice department’s Office of the Inspector General focused on the department’s handling of an investigation into nine military ballots that were found discarded in the trash in Luzerne county, Pennsylvania. Barr briefed Trump on the ballot issue before it was public and the president subsequently disclosed it in a radio interview. David Freed, the US attorney overseeing the matter, also released a statement and letter detailing the investigation.

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Manhattan prosecutors dispute Trump claim that criminal conviction should be overturned – as it happened

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This blog has now closed. You can read our full report on Kamala Harris’ meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu here

The Harris for President campaign has launched its first official video, less than a week after US President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the race.

The ad caps a week during which Harris also broke funding records and quickly clinched enough delegate support to become the presumptive nominee in an election that is now just over 100 days away.

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Biden’s address was a moving piece of political theatre and a rebuke of Trump

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Biden called for generational change and buried his resentments, but not without a pointed comment about his qualifications

There was 6 January 2021, and a violent coup attempt by a president desperately trying to cling to power. Then there was 24 July 2024, and a president explaining why he was giving up the most powerful job in the world.

Joe Biden’s address on Wednesday night was a moving piece of political theatre, the start of a farewell tour by “a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings” who entered politics in 1972 and made it all the way to the Oval Office. For diehard Democrats it was a case of: if you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

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