Category Archives: US Politics

Trump campaign sees boost after boost amid bad week for Biden

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As Biden was hit by a brutal special counsel report, Trump seemed set for victory at the supreme court and his only serious Republican rival suffered humiliation

For those campaigning to bring Donald Trump back to the White House, the past week has seen much to celebrate. For those concerned for the health of American democracy, it felt like a disaster.

Joe Biden was hit by a brutal special counsel report that painted him as elderly with a failing memory, fans of Trump eager to see him on the 2024 ballot appeared set for victory at the US supreme court, and Trump’s only remaining serious challenger in the Republican primary race suffered humiliation at the polls.

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Larry Hogan launches Republican Senate bid after saying he lacks ‘burning desire to be a senator’

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Ex-Maryland governor who Republicans hope can win in blue state told podcast last year sitting in Senate would be ‘really frustrating’

Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland who on Friday announced a surprise US Senate run, told an interviewer last year he did not “have a burning desire to be a senator”, would find sitting in the Senate “really frustrating”, thought being a senator was “not where my skill set lies”, and said that though he could win a seat, “the problem was I would win and I would have to go be a senator”.

Hogan made the stark remarks, which may now come to haunt him, in an interview last May with Johanna Maska, host of the Press Advance podcast and a former White House aide to Barack Obama.

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‘Gratuitous, inaccurate’: White House disputes special counsel report on Biden

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Democrats launch aggressive push back and defend president against Robert Hur’s description in report

Democrats and the White House on Friday launched an aggressive push back against a special counsel report that pushed Joe Biden’s age and memory to the front and center of the presidential election campaign and spurred a series of Republican attacks on the US president.

The special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of confidential documents on Thursday said the US president would not face criminal charges in the case but in a series of remarks characterized Biden as elderly and with a failing memory – triggering a political bombshell on an issue seen as a core weakness of Biden’s re-election campaign.

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US hospital treated 441 patients with severe injuries from border wall last year

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California doctors say growing number of patients have ‘fractures all over their body’ after falls from wall ‘like a three-story building’

Doctors at the University of California, San Diego’s trauma center (UCSD) have treated 455 patients with serious injuries sustained while trying to cross the US-Mexico border in 2023, a marked increase from the year before.

Ninety-seven per cent of the injuries, or 441 of them, occurred when people fell off the wall on the US side, said Alexander Tenorio, a resident neurosurgeon at UCSD who treats brain and spinal cord injuries.

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Biden mistakes dead European leader for living one – for second time in a week

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President’s gaffes stoke concern over his age as election campaign against his presumptive opponent – also advanced in age – picks up

Joe Biden has twice made gaffes this week in which he told anecdotes wrongly identifying dead European leaders as having talked to him about the events of the attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021.

On Wednesday at a campaign fundraiser in New York, Biden reportedly referred to the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl as talking to him about European concerns about the attempt to stop the certification of his 2020 election win, when he apparently meant Angela Merkel. Kohl died in 2017.

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US funding failure will have serious battlefield consequences, says Ukraine

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Zelenskiy aide says ‘foreign policy has become a hostage of internal politics’ after Republicans torpedo aid bill

The repeated failure of the Biden administration to get a funding package for Ukraine approved by the Senate will have real consequences in terms of lives on the battlefield and Kyiv’s ability to hold off Russian forces on the frontline, say Ukrainian officials.

The latest move by Senate Republicans to torpedo a bipartisan bill that would have combined $60bn (£48bn) in aid for Ukraine with aid to Israel and increased border security measures is a bitter blow for Kyiv. It could signal a very grim year ahead as the US political agenda settles into an election year with Donald Trump all but certain to be the Republican candidate.

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Black and Hispanic voters deserting Democratic party in large numbers, poll says

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Gallup survey shows big drop in only three years among Black and Hispanic voters, a concern for Biden’s re-election campaign

Black and Hispanic voters are deserting the Democratic party in numbers that will present a concern for Joe Biden’s re-election effort, a poll has found.

Among Black Americans expressing a party preference, the Democratic lead over Republicans has dropped by almost 20% in only three years, according to the Gallup survey.

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Republican National Committee wants Nikki Haley to drop out to boost funds

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Exclusive: RNC reported $8m in cash to spend, less than half of what it had in 2016, as it starts preparing for the 2024 election

Top officials at the Republican National Committee want Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, to drop out of the race for the GOP nomination so it can launch a joint fundraising committee with Donald Trump to bolster its finances, according to people familiar with the situation.

The RNC last week reported $8m in cash to spend in its year-end filing, an amount less than half of what it had when Trump was running for the presidency in 2016 and below what it needs to stand up operations as it prepares to take on Joe Biden in the general election.

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US man who says IDF kidnapped his mother calls on Biden to take action

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New Orleans man asks White House to follow through on Biden’s promise to respond ‘if you harm an American’ in mother’s case

A New Orleans-area man who has reported that Israeli troops kidnapped his mother – a US citizen – from a family home on the occupied West Bank Palestinian territory is asking Joe Biden’s White House to follow through on the president’s recent promise to respond “if you harm an American”.

Ibrahim Hamed said he realizes that Biden’s remarks on Friday – “if you harm an American, we will respond” – came after the United States and Britain attacked Houthi targets in Yemen in retaliation for a drone strike that killed three US army troops. But he said the sentiment should apply as well even in the case of a Palestinian American who has been taken by Israeli troops.

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Nevada primary: Biden focuses on Black and Latino voters as GOP scheme helps Trump

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Election day off to a quiet start with no major candidates in the state and with voters slow to trickle into polling sites

Polls have closed in Nevada, which is holding its first presidential primary contest in the US west, has been damp – and oddly quiet.

None of the major candidates are in the state, and voters have been slow to trickle into polling sites. Only about 12,000 people had opted to vote at polling stations on election day. About 151,000 people voted early, the majority of them by mail.

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Biden blames Trump for imminent death of immigration bill – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. For more on Biden’s address, you can read our full story:

This right here is what Joe Biden, most Democrats and the apparently dwindling number of Republicans who support the immigration bill are up against.

The House speaker, Mike Johnson, is leading the campaign against the compromise legislation, which would enact hardline policies Democrats generally oppose while also sending military assistance to Ukraine and Israel. In remarks today, he expressed approval at reports that the deal is on “life support” in the Senate:

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Joe Biden implores Congress to pass US-Mexico border security bill

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Senate bill includes aid to Ukraine and Israel, as House tries to advance bill with Israel aid only, which Biden says he would veto

Joe Biden urged Congress to pass the bipartisan border bill in a pointed speech on Tuesday, accusing Republicans of “caving” in to Donald Trump’s demands to block the legislation from advancing.

“All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically,” Biden said at the White House. “He’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it.”

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Protests as Atlanta council adopts new rules for referendum on Cop City

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Vote comes amid protests against the methodology the council adopted for signature matching on referendum petitions

The Atlanta city council adopted new rules on Monday that would allow the referendum process for the public to vote on the “Cop City” project to move forward. The vote came amid protests against the methodology the council adopted for signature matching on referendum petitions, which critics say gives the city a way to block a public vote on the controversial project.

Three people calling for the signature matching element of the ordinance to be removed were escorted from the council chambers ahead of the 10-5 vote adopting the ordinance.

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House Republican leaders demand Senate reject immigration compromise; Haley joins opposition to deal – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. For the latest on the Senate immigration bill, read our most recent report:

In a just-released statement, the top Republicans in the House called on the Senate to vote down the bipartisan immigration policy legislation.

“Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time. It is DEAD on arrival in the House. We encourage the U.S. Senate to reject it,” speaker Mike Johnson, majority leader Steve Scalise, whip Tom Emmer and conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik said.

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South Dakota tribe bans governor from reservation over US border comments

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Oglala Sioux tribe banishes Republican Kristi Noem after she spoke about wanting to send razor wire to Texas

A South Dakota tribe has banned the state’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, from one of the US’s largest reservations after she spoke this week about wanting to send razor wire and security personnel to Texas to help deter immigration at the southern border with Mexico.

The Oglala Sioux tribe president said Noem’s ban from the Pine Ridge reservation resulted from the fact that many arriving at the US border with Mexico are Indigenous people from places like El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, who come “in search of jobs and a better life”.

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US Senate releases draft bill to toughen border measures while securing aid to Ukraine and Israel

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Biden urges Congress to pass bill which includes measures to temporarily close border if over 5,000 undocumented people cross a day

US senators on Sunday evening released the details of a highly anticipated $118bn package that pairs federal enforcement policy on the US-Mexico border with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and others, launching a long-shot effort to push the bill past sceptical, hard right House Republicans – whom Democrats accuse of politicizing immigration while being in thrall to Donald Trump.

The proposal is the best chance for Joe Biden to bolster dwindling US wartime aid for Ukraine – a major foreign policy goal that is shared by both the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, and top Republican, Mitch McConnell. The Senate was expected this week to hold a key test vote on the legislation, but it faces a wall of opposition from conservatives.

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Nikki Haley: Trump spends more time ‘ranting’ than fighting for American people

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Republican candidate attacks Trump for being more concerned with himself than with country ahead of South Carolina primary

Nikki Haley pressed her case on Sunday to become the Republican presidential nominee by launching a sharp attack on her rival Donald Trump as a candidate who is set to spend more time in court than on the campaign trail this year and is intent on ranting about his own supposed victimhood rather than fighting for the American people.

With less than three weeks to go before the Republican primary in her home state of South Carolina, which many observers see as the former governor and UN ambassador’s last stand, Haley attacked Trump for being more concerned with himself than with the future of the country. She told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning TV show that his multiple court cases, in which he faces 91 charges across four criminal cases, amounted to a “real issue”.

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‘The weirdest campaign’: South Carolina delivers a win, but Biden still faces an uphill path

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The president’s decisive victory in the first Democratic primary belies a difficult campaign ahead with various strikes against him

Surprise! Joe Biden won the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina with a high-90s percentage that would make even Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un blush.

But despite the low energy and low turnout, there was a wider narrative on Saturday about representation, the changing face of the US and a rebuke to the white identity politics of Donald Trump.

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Biden wins South Carolina Democratic primary for presidential nomination

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The president easily swept past his opponents Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson to gain the state’s nod for the nomination

President Joe Biden has again won the South Carolina presidential primary, his first formal primary win of the election season.

Amid low voter turnout, the Associated Press projected that Biden also won all 55 of the state’s Democratic delegates. Another seven delegates are pledged by party leaders and elected officials, such as South Carolina’s lone Democratic congressman, Jim Clyburn. Neither Dean Phillips, the congressman from Minnesota, nor author Marianne Williamson received at least 15% of the statewide vote or 15% of the vote in any congressional district, the threshold necessary to win delegates.

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South Carolina Democratic primary 2024: track live results

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Follow live as the state’s Democratic voters choose their preferred candidate for the US elections

The South Carolina Democratic primary took place on 3 February, and was chosen by the Democratic National Committee as the first election contest in the 2024 election year. Joe Biden is the clear frontrunner in the primary and hopes to recapture the enthusiasm that launched his campaign in 2020.

The polls closed at 7pm.

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