Category Archives: US Politics

Texas: police charge suspect with manslaughter after eight killed by truck

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George Alvarez accused after SUV drove into migrant crowd in Brownsville, as investigators work to determine if crash was intentional

An SUV driver who killed eight people when he slammed into a group waiting at a bus stop in Brownsville, Texas, was charged with manslaughter, police said on Monday as investigators tried to determine if the crash was intentional.

Authorities believe the driver, George Alvarez, 34, of Brownsville, lost control after running a red light on Sunday morning and plowed into a crowd outside a migrant center in the city, which has long been an epicenter for migration across the US-Mexico border.

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Seven dead in Texas after car drives into crowd outside migrant center

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Police say crash may have been intentional, and driver was arrested for reckless driving and could face other charges

Seven people have been killed and 10 others were injured after a car plowed into a crowd outside a shelter serving migrants and homeless people in Brownsville, Texas, on Sunday, and investigators believe it may have been intentional, according to authorities.

The car careened into the crowd of people who were sitting on the curb at a bus stop near the Ozanam Center at about 8.30am, the police department in Brownsville, which is near Texas’s border with Mexico, said. That came four days before the scheduled expiration of Title 42, the Covid-19 era policy that allows border patrol agents to swiftly expel migrants at the US’s southern border.

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Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema vows to never join Republican party

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The former Democrat says she speaks frequently with White House but ‘rejects party politics’ and stays mum on re-election

US senator Kyrsten Sinema has vowed to never join the Republican party after she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to independent late last year.

In an interview aired on Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Arizona senator said that she is “absolutely” done with the country’s two-party political system.

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‘Spare us your prayers’: Ted Cruz faces backlash after Texas mall shooting kills eight

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Critics say the Republican senator should advocate for meaningful gun control rather than invoke prayer after mass, deadly violence

Texas US senator Ted Cruz’s comment that he was “praying” for families of the eight victims killed in a shooting at a shopping mall in his state has sparked outrage as many critics say the Republican should advocate for meaningful gun control rather than repeatedly invoke prayer after mass, deadly violence.

The backlash came as President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass gun control bills in the wake of Saturday’s attack, in which the gunman was also killed, in Allen, Texas.

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Situation at US-Mexico border ahead of end of asylum limits ‘very challenging’

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US homeland security secretary calls circumstances ‘difficult’ as ending of pandemic-era Title 42 restrictions approaches

The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Friday that immigration authorities faced “extremely challenging” circumstances along the border with Mexico days before the end of asylum restrictions implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A surge of Venezuelan migrants through south Texas, particularly in and around the border community of Brownsville, has occurred over the last two weeks for reasons that Mayorkas said were unclear. On Thursday, 4,000 of about 6,000 migrants in border patrol custody in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley were Venezuelan.

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Half of Trump’s ‘fake electors’ accept immunity in Georgia investigation

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The eight people are now protected from prosecution, limiting the possibility of a conspiracy indictment

Half of the 16 so-called fake electors in Georgia who sought to falsely declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election have accepted immunity deals in the local criminal investigation into the matter, their lawyer said in a court filing on Friday.

The immunity deals to the eight came in April, according to the filing, after the Fulton county district attorney’s office called their lawyer and said prosecutors were willing to make the arrangement – about four months after the lawyer asked about the prospect of such deals.

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The conservative scholar who lit a match to the US right’s education wars

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Stanley Kurtz’s crusade against ‘woke civics’ in schools has shaped Republican bills across the US

When two US senators – a Texas Republican and a Delaware Democrat – introduced a bill in June 2022 to expand grants for civics education, most observers saw it as something of an olive branch between the parties.

But despite initial momentum, three now-familiar letters stopped the bill in its tracks: CRT.

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GOP mega-donor reportedly paid private school tuition for great-nephew of Clarence Thomas – live

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Supreme court justice did not report Crow’s tuition payments on his annual financial disclosures, ProPublica reports

A new investigation by ProPublica revealed that billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow paid the tuition of Mark Martin, a grandnephew of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.

According to ProPublica, Mark Martin, whom Thomas obtained legal custody over when Martin was 6-years old, attended a private boarding school in northern Georgia called Hidden Lakes Academy for about a year.

“Harlan Crow has long been passionate about the importance of quality education and giving back to those less fortunate, especially at-risk youth… he and his wife have supported many young Americans through scholarship and other programs at a variety of schools…

Harlan and Kathy have particularly focused on students who are at risk of falling behind or missing out on opportunities to better themselves… Tuition and other financial assistance is given directly to academic institutions, not to students or to their families. These scholarships and other contributions have always been paid solely from personal funds, sometimes held at and paid through the family business.”

A New York judge has thrown out Donald Trump’s 2021 lawsuit that accused the New York Times of an “insidious plot” to obtain his tax records.

Vice president Kamala Harris will meet with Google and Microsoft CEOs today to discuss AI risks.

Iowa lawmakers have passed a Republican-led bill that allows teenagers to work longer hours and take previously banned jobs.

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US sends 1,500 troops to Mexico border as Covid-era asylum rule is set to expire

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Officials are bracing for the end of Title 42, which allows the US to expel non-Mexican migrants without the chance to seek asylum

Joe Biden will send 1,500 troops to the US-Mexico border, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, in preparation for a possible rise in immigration when Covid-19 border restrictions lift later this month.

The 90-day deployment of active-duty troops will supplement the work of the US border patrol but will not carry out law enforcement duties, said Brig Gen Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, in a statement.

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Witness says E Jean Carroll called her ‘hyperventilating’ after alleged rape by Trump

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Lisa Birnbach testifies that Carroll called her and described the incident in 1996, and that she told her friend ‘E Jean, he raped you’

A close friend of E Jean Carroll has told a New York jury she received a distressed call from the advice columnist within minutes of Donald Trump allegedly raping her.

Lisa Birnbach testified at Carroll’s civil action against the former president on Tuesday that she was feeding her children at home when Carroll called “breathless, hyperventilating, emotional” in spring 1996.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html.

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Michigan clerk who denies election results faces recall in divided county

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Stephanie Scott was stripped of her election authority after she was accused of improperly handling voting equipment

Deepening tensions within rural and conservative Hillsdale county, Michigan, are coming to a head in a recall election for an election-denying township clerk who has been accused of spreading misinformation and mishandling a vote tabulator.

Elected in Adams Township in 2020, Stephanie Scott, who ran unopposed, has spent her years as a clerk – a position that would typically oversee township elections – mostly removed from the electoral process. After she refused to turn over a voting machine for regular maintenance in 2021, allegedly shared confidential voter data with a third-party IT analyst, and spread lies about election rigging, the Michigan Bureau of Elections removed Scott’s power to administer elections.

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‘They can survive just fine’: Bernie Sanders says income over $1bn should be taxed at 100%

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The independent Vermont senator argued against unfettered capitalism in an interview with journalist Chris Wallace

The US government should confiscate 100% of any money that Americans make above $999m, the leftwing independent senator Bernie Sanders said late last week.

Sanders expressed that belief in an exchange on Friday evening with the host of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? on HBO Max.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ‘not planning’ to run for Senate seat in 2024

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Decision clears way for incumbent New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand to run for re-election unopposed by congresswoman

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will not run for a seat in the US Senate next year, according to her office, clearing the way for incumbent New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, to run for re-election unopposed by the progressive congresswoman.

“She is not planning to run for Senate in 2024. She is not planning to primary Gillibrand,” Lauren Hitt, Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesperson, told Politico.

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Florida’s rightwing governor Ron DeSantis backs Kemi Badenoch’s ‘war on woke’

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Republican expected to run for nomination supports UK business secretary’s attempt to stop the left ‘corrupting British society’

Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, has backed UK business secretary Kemi Badenoch in taking on what he calls “the woke”.

DeSantis, who is expected to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, met Badenoch and foreign secretary James Cleverly on a visit to London this week.

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‘Fearful and trigger happy’: flooded with guns and paranoia, the US reels from shootings

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Permissive self-defense and gun laws spotlighted by recent shootings in which victims approached gunmen by mistake

Waldes Thomas and Diamond Darville were driving for the grocery delivery service Instacart near Miami in mid-April when they drove the order up to the wrong address.

Thomas, 19, and Darville, 18, reportedly told authorities they were backing away from the home when the owner emerged with his son, grabbed on to the driver’s window and fired a gun three times at their car. Antonio Caccavale, who didn’t hit anyone, later reportedly claimed to police who investigated the encounter that he shot because he feared for his and his son’s lives as Thomas and Darville’s car ran over his foot and struck a boulder.

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Biden reduces sentences of 31 people convicted of nonviolent drug offences

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White House announces offenders to be moved to home confinement and they will not have to pay remainder of fines

President Joe Biden has ordered the federal prison sentences of 31 people to be reduced, punishments which were given to them after nonviolent drug-related convictions.

In an announcement released on Friday, the White House revealed that those whose sentences were commuted would be under home confinement until a 30 June expiration date for their respective punishments. The plan is for them to then be on supervised release, with the duration of that based on their original sentence.

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Far-right California county’s bid to hand count votes will cost millions

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The move to a costly and experimental hand-count system comes as half the workforce is readying to strike over wages

In Shasta county, a deep red enclave in far northern California, officials are intensifying their push to replace voting machines with a costly and experimental hand-count system that could cost an additional $4m over two years.

The decision of the far-right majority on the region’s governing body, the Shasta county board of supervisors, to press ahead with the controversial plan comes as half the county’s workforce is preparing to strike over wages. Officials on the board recently said the county did not have enough money to pay requested wage increases for workers.

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Samuel Alito says leaked abortion draft made conservative justices ‘targets of assassination’ – as it happened

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Ron DeSantis grew angry on Thursday when asked by a reporter in Israel about his time at Guantánamo Bay:

One interesting thing about this clip is that it’s been shared on Twitter both by DeSantis’s own media operation (which is posted above) and by Democrats looking to attack the presumptive candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. Make of that what you will.

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Florida school superintendent who criticized DeSantis could lose job

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Rocky Hanna is accused of ignoring Florida governor’s directives in latest move against those who oppose Republicans’ politics

Florida officials are threatening to revoke the teaching license of a school superintendent who criticized the governor, Ron DeSantis.

The educator is accused of violating several statutes and DeSantis directives and allowing his “personal political views” to guide his leadership.

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Overdose deaths in San Francisco hit 200 in three months: ‘A crying shame’

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The 41% spike comes as the city closed an outreach center that stocked Narcan and allowed supervised drug use

Drug-related deaths surged by 41% in San Francisco in the first quarter of this year – with one person dying of an accidental overdose every 10 hours, as the fentanyl crisis continues to ravage the US west coast.

San Francisco saw 200 people die of overdoses in the past three months compared to 142 in the same months a year ago, according to reports by the city’s medical examiner.

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