Category Archives: US Politics

US supreme court expected to rule on abortion pill access lawsuit – live

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Justices consider appeal by White House following lower court order reimposing restrictions on drug mifepristone

Speaking of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, two polls were released today concerning the men that tell us … not much new.

The first, from the Wall Street Journal, confirms that Trump remains the most popular figure among contenders for the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2024. The WSJ was one of the few surveys that found Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has not entered the race yet but is widely expected to, with an edge over Trump in a survey released last December. That trend has now reversed: in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, Trump gets 51% support, and DeSantis 38%. The former president also beats DeSantis even in a poll that includes other potential Republican candidates – none of whom crack double-digit support.

The possible charges are two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes, and the gun charge, also a potential felony.

Two senior law enforcement sources told NBC News about “growing frustration” inside the FBI because investigators finished the bulk of their work on the case about a year ago. A senior law enforcement source said the IRS finished its investigation more than a year ago.

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Biden may announce 2024 presidential campaign next week – report

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In recent weeks president has laid out likely themes of a re-election bid and secured a doctor’s note that he is ‘fit for duty’

The US president Joe Biden and his team may announce his re-election campaign by video next week, according to a source familiar with the matter on Thursday.

An announcement on Tuesday by Biden, 80, would coincide with the anniversary of his 2020 campaign launch four years earlier, the source said, asking not to be identified.

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Senate asks supreme court chief justice to testify on ethics amid Clarence Thomas revelations – as it happened

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The Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee has asked chief justice John Roberts to testify on 2 May about the court’s ethics, following revelations of undisclosed links between a Republican megadonor and conservative justice Clarence Thomas.

In a letter to Roberts, judiciary committee chair Richard Durbin did not mention those reports about Thomas specifically, but noted that since he last addressed the court’s ethics in 2011 “there has been a steady stream of revelations regarding Justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally. These problems were already apparent back in 2011, and the Court’s decade-long failure to address them has contributed to a crisis of public confidence. The status quo is no longer tenable.”

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Mike Lindell ordered to pay $5m to man who debunked data used to push big lie

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MyPillow CEO’s ‘Prove Mike Wrong Challenge’ promised money to anyone who could disprove data he claimed showed Trump won

Mike Lindell must make good on a promise and pay $5m to a software expert who debunked data the conspiracy theorist touted in advancing Donald Trump’s lie that his 2020 election defeat was the result of voting fraud, an arbitration panel decided.

In its decision, the panel said: “The data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.”

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TikTok must divest itself of Chinese ownership or face ban, FCC commissioner tells Australian inquiry

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Company accused of ‘gaslighting’ public on surveillance concerns during Senate inquiry into foreign influence through social media

TikTok will either need to divest itself from Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States, according to the commissioner of the US federal communications commission, Brendan Carr, who accused the company of “gaslighting” the public on surveillance concerns.

Appearing before the Australian Senate inquiry into foreign influence through social media, the Trump appointee said concern about TikTok in the US was “broad and deep”, and crossed party lines.

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Fox still in legal peril over election lies after settling with Dominion – live

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Media empire still faces defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic as shareholders reportedly considering trip to the courts

A top House Republican has signaled that the party will indeed try to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the New York Times reports.

Mark Green, the chair of the House homeland security committee, told donors this weekend that the effort would kick off this week when the secretary testifies before his committee, which happened Tuesday. The Times, citing a recording of a House Freedom Caucus fundraiser it obtained, said the case would focus on Mayorkas’s “dereliction of duty and his intentional destruction of our country through the open southern border.”

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Dominion had planned to make Rupert Murdoch its second witness

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Lawyers were going to call media mogul this week, forcing him to appear in person for cross-examination

Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems had planned to put media mogul Rupert Murdoch on the stand to testify this week before it reached a $787.5m settlement with Fox for its broadcasting of false claims about the company’s voting equipment after the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Dominion was going to call the 92-year-old Murdoch as its second witness, forcing him to appear in person for cross-examination before the end of the week. He would have followed Tony Fratto, a crisis communications consultant who represented Dominion after the 2020 election and contacted Fox many times to inform them they were making false claims.

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‘Dominion wins but the public loses’: Fox settlement avoids paying the highest price

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The news corporation will have to shell out $787.5m but, for them, it’s just ‘the cost of doing business’

The staggering $787.5m settlement between Fox and the voting equipment company Dominion marked the end of one of the most aggressive efforts to hold someone accountable for spreading misinformation after the 2020 election.

Dominion sued Fox for $1.6bn in damages for knowingly broadcasting false information about the company after the election. The money from the settlement, one of the largest libel payouts in media history, was just the icing on a cake Dominion had, in many ways, already won.

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Blinken warns Sudan’s rivals as US diplomatic convoy comes under fire

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Secretary of state condemns apparent attack by fighters linked to paramilitary RSF after days of deadly clashes

A US diplomatic convoy came under fire in Sudan in an apparent attack by fighters associated with Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said, in an incident he described as “reckless” and “irresponsible”.

The incident on Monday prompted a direct warning from Blinken, who separately telephoned the RSF leader Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, and Sudan’s army chief, Gen Abdel Fatah al-Burhan, to tell them any danger posed to American diplomats was unacceptable.

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Top Republicans visit New York to sound off on debt ceiling and crime – live

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In his speech, Kevin McCarthy raised the specter of Joe Biden causing a debt default by refusing to negotiate.

Such an event would be unprecedented in US history, and could have catastrophic consequences for the global economy. Here’s more of McCarthy’s remarks:

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Republican donor pauses Ron DeSantis funding over abortion and book banning

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Thomas Peterffy says Florida governor ‘seems to have lost some momentum’ in undeclared bid for 2024 presidential nomination

A top Republican donor said he had paused plans to fund Ron DeSantis’s expected presidential run because of the Florida governor’s “stance on abortion and book banning”.

Thomas Peterffy, founder of Interactive Brokers, a digital trading platform, told the Financial Times: “I have put myself on hold. Because of his stance on abortion and book banning … myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.”

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Democratic senators condemn federal judge’s ruling to block abortion drug

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Lawmakers from New York, Minnesota and Wisconsin decry the ruling, now on hold by supreme court until at least 19 April

Top Democratic senators across the US are pushing back after a federal judge in Texas decided to block the FDA-approved abortion drug mifepristone.

On Sunday, the New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand criticized as an “outrage” Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision, which is currently halted until at least Wednesday 19 April by the supreme court.

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Lindsey Graham calls fellow Republican ‘irresponsible’ for defending Pentagon leaker

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Conspiracy theorist and election denier Marjorie Taylor Greene says national guardsman Jack Teixeira has been treated unfairly

Senator Lindsey Graham condemned his fellow Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene as “terribly irresponsible” on Sunday, after the far-right congresswoman defended the air national guardsman charged with leaking Pentagon intelligence documents.

Speaking on ABC’s This Week show, Graham said the leaks had “done a lot of damage to our standing” and criticized “those who are trying to sugarcoat this on the right”.

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South Dakota governor says her two-year-old grandchild has several guns

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Kristi Noem tells audience at NRA forum toddler has a shotgun, a rifle and a pony

South Dakota’s governor told an audience of people that her two-year-old grandchild has several guns.

While speaking on Friday at a National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbying leadership forum in Indiana, the Republican governor Kristi Noem told audience members her toddler grandchild has multiple guns, reported Mediaite.

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Too many with access, too little vetting. Pentagon leaks were ‘a matter of time’

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Jack Teixeira’s arrest has exposed a system weakened by the legacy of 9/11 and caught off guard by an enemy that is increasingly within

Jack Teixeira, 21 years old, clean-shaven, with buzz-cut hair and proudly uniformed, is the face of America’s newest security threat, one it is struggling to resolve.

The formidable US counter-intelligence infrastructure is adept at finding spies and rooting out whistleblowers. Teixeira, charged on Friday on two counts of the Espionage Act, is neither spy nor whistleblower.

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Mike Pompeo says he will not run for president in 2024 election

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Former secretary of state and Trump ally decides not to challenge ex-boss for the Republican nomination

Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said on Friday that he will not run for president in the 2024 election.

The devoted ally and defender of Donald Trump opted out of a contest that would have put him into competition with his former commander in chief.

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‘They created this’: are Republicans willing to lose elections to retain their abortion stance?

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The right has, for decades, relied on abortion to rally their conservative base, but now their unified policy is flagging

Democrats have taken multiple actions in response to what they say is a “draconian” and “dangerous” decision by a federal judge in Texas threatening access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the US.

Several Democratic governors have begun to stockpile doses of the drugs used in medication abortions. Nearly every Democrat in Congress signed onto an amicus brief urging an appeals court to stay the decision, while some called on the Biden administration to simply “ignore” the ruling, should it be allowed to stand. A group of House Democrats introduced a bill that would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) final approval over drugs used in medication abortion.

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Pentagon leaks suspect wins praise from far-right US politicians and media

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Marjorie Taylor Greene calls Jack Teixeira ‘white, male, Christian and anti-war’ as Tucker Carlson says his sin was ‘telling the truth’

Washington lawmakers have written off Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old air national guardsman accused of being behind the worst US intelligence leak in a decade, as an “alleged criminal” after his arrest yesterday, but that hasn’t stopped him from winning praise from the political right.

“He revealed the crimes, therefore he’s the criminal. That’s how Washington works. Telling the truth is the only real sin,” declared the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson on Thursday evening in the opening monologue of his show, which is the most watched on cable television. “The news media are celebrating the capture of the kid who told Americans what’s actually happening in Ukraine. They are treating him like Osama bin Laden,” the late al-Qaida terrorist leader.

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Jack Teixeira: suspect in Pentagon leaks charged under Espionage Act – live

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Member of air national guard, 21, accused of leaking sensitive documents pertaining to US intelligence

“This is not just about taking home documents,” US attorney general Merrick Garland said about the Pentagon leaks.

“This is about … both the unlawful retention and transmission of the documents … There are very serious penalties associated with that. People who sign agreements to be able to receive classified documents acknowledge the importance to national security of not disclosing those documents and we intend to send that message to our national security,” he added.

“The first public reporting regarding the Government Information appeared on or around April 6, 2023. Accordingly, there is reason to believe that Texeira was searching for classified reporting regarding the US Intelligence Community’s assessment of the identity of the individual who transmitted classified national defense information to include the Government Document,” it added.

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US supreme court justice blocks ruling that limits abortion pill access – live

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Temporary pause on lower court rulings gives court additional time to consider a longer stay

Danco Laboratories has said that they will continue to distribute the abortion pill, according to an email from the company.

Reuters reported that the company emailed a statement confirming that they will still continue to dispense Mifeprex to its customers.

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