Category Archives: US Politics

‘Day of great joy’: Wall Street Journal’s crusade to free Gershkovich succeeds

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Newspaper mounted a high-profile campaign to stress reporter’s innocence and ensure he was not forgotten

The reporter Evan Gershkovich’s release from a Russian prison on Thursday was celebrated across US and global media but perhaps most happily by journalists at his own paper, the Wall Street Journal in New York.

In an email to staff after news of Gershkovich’s release as part of a large-scale prisoner swap, Emma Tucker, the Journal editor-in-chief, said: “A few moments ago, Evan walked free from a Russian plane. He will shortly be on a flight back to the US.

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Trump holds first Pennsylvania rally since assassination attempt hours after heated interview with Black journalists – live

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Ex-president says he will travel back to Butler where assassination attempt took place; White House condemns Trump after he questions Harris’s racial identity at NABJ event

Journalists at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) began trickling in to the Hilton hotel in downtown Chicago this morning for a 12pm CT/1pm ET panel – featuring Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

He will be quizzed by the prominent political reporters Kadia Goba of Semafor, Rachel Scott of ABC News and Harris Faulkner of Fox News.

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US pauses $95m in aid to Georgia after passage of ‘foreign agents’ law

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Secretary of state says suspension is due to ‘anti-democratic’ actions from the Georgian government

The US has suspended $95m in assistance to Georgia after its parliament adopted legislation related to foreign agents that critics say was inspired by a Russian law used to crack down on political dissent and that sparked weeks of mass protests.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said on Wednesday that he had decided to pause the Georgian aid, which would directly benefit the government, in response to “anti-democratic” actions the government has taken.

The US has also already imposed visa bans on a number of Georgian politicians and law enforcement officials for suppressing free speech, particularly voices in favor of Georgia’s integration with the west.

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Trump favorite Kari Lake wins Arizona’s Republican Senate primary

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Far-right firebrand to face off against Democrat Ruben Gallego for US Senate seat vacated by Kyrsten Sinema

Kari Lake, the far-right firebrand and favorite of Donald Trump, has won Arizona’s Republican Senate primary.

The Associated Press projected the race at 8.44pm Arizona time on Tuesday night. Lake rose to prominence as a gubernatorial candidate in 2022, when she refused to concede the race to her Democratic challenger Katie Hobbs.

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‘Cat ladies’ come together to show support for Kamala Harris

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Zoom call – with pets included – organized as riposte to comments made by JD Vance about ‘childless cat ladies’

A group of pet lovers and self-described “cat ladies” came together for the latest in a series of Zoom calls in support of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. The Tuesday evening call was hosted by Christine Pelosi, a political consultant and the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, and Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic party.

The call was not organized around racial and ethnic identity, but as a rebuff to comments made in 2021 by JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, who told the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.

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Atlanta rally: Harris tells Trump to ‘say it to my face’ and challenges him to debate

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VP touts prosecution record to cheering crowd after state leaders including Stacey Abrams take stage to show support

Three weeks ago, the political commentariat was writing off Georgia and talking of narrow pathways for Joe Biden to hold the White House. Georgia was a desert. Tuesday evening, an Atlanta crowd greeted Kamala Harris like she backed up a truck full of sweet tea to that desert.

It’s probably too early – nine days since the president’s withdrawal and the vice-president’s ascension – to know if sentiment in Georgia had shifted enough to justify jubilation. But the crowd in Atlanta treated the new presumptive presidential nominee as a reason to celebrate after months of her quieter campaigning in the city as the vice-presidential nominee.

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Republican Arizona mayor John Giles endorses Harris for President

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Mesa mayor crosses party line to back vice-president and rebuke Trump’s ‘political extremism’ in op-ed

John Giles, the Republican mayor of Arizona’s third largest city and a previous thorn in the side of his party for endorsing Democrats, has thrown his support behind Kamala Harris for president.

Giles, who since 2014 has been mayor of Mesa near Phoenix, also rebuked Donald Trump in an opinion piece for the Arizona Republic published Monday.

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

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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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