Category Archives: US Politics

US senator rejects Israeli army report on killing of Palestinian American reporter

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Chris Van Hollen calls for independent US inquiry, saying IDF claim Shireen Abu Aqleh died amid gun battle unsupported by evidence

A US senator has dismissed an Israeli army report that claims a soldier accidentally killed the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in the midst of a gun battle, saying it is unsupported by the evidence.

Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator for Maryland, repeated his call for an independent US investigation into Abu Aqleh’s killing in the West Bank in May, saying that the United Nations and reconstructions by major news outlets found that the Al Jazeera television journalist was not in the immediate vicinity of fighting with Palestinian militants and could not have been caught in the crossfire.

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Trump’s Mar-a-Lago legal victory starts search for special master – live updates

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US midterms campaigns kick into high gear after Labor Day as Senate returns from month-long break

Legal pressure on Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department lawyer who schemed with Donald Trump and others to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, is expected to rise with the cooperation of another ex-DoJ lawyer who worked with him, say former prosecutors.

The cooperation from the ex-lawyer, in tandem with other evidence obtained by prosecutors, could help spur charges against Clark – a close ally of then president Trump – and benefit prosecutors as they go after bigger targets.

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Hillary Clinton reveals lingerie ad that prompted trademark pantsuit look

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Intrusive press photographs and official visit to Brazil led to then first lady adopting style of dress that she made famous

Hillary Clinton decided to start wearing the pantsuits that became her political trademark after “suggestive” photos taken of her during a visit to Brazil were used in a lingerie ad in the mid-1990s, she has revealed.

The former US secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate told CBS News in an interview that aired on Sunday that the choice came after a 1995 trip to Brazil she took with her husband, Bill Clinton, then in the first of two terms as president.

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Trouble for Trump’s Truth Social as investors back away from cash boost

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Injection of $1.3bn for former president’s media company looks set to be derailed because of lackluster investor support

Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media company is facing further financial turmoil after a long-awaited $1.3bn cash injection looks set to be derailed due to lackluster investor backing.

Shareholders of the special purpose acquisitions firm, which last year brokered a deal to take the Trump Media and Technology Group public, have not backed a one-year extension to complete the transaction, which threatens to spoil the merger.

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‘Tired of trickle-down economics’: Biden calls for expansion of unions in Labor Day speech

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President again pledges to be ‘most pro-union president’ in history during speech in Milwaukee

Joe Biden used a Labor Day speech in the battleground state of Wisconsin to endorse the expansion of unions, reiterating his election promises to be the “most pro-union president” in American history.

The US president argued in Milwaukee that a skilled, unionised workforce would help the US regain its place as a world leader in infrastructure and manufacturing.

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Judge grants Trump’s request for special master to handle seized documents

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Federal court accepts ex-president’s call for official to set aside materials potentially subject to privilege protections

A federal judge has granted Donald Trump’s request to have a “special master” appointed to review documents the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate that could be subject to privilege protections in the investigation into unauthorized retention of government secrets.

The order from the US district court judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, also temporarily barred the justice department from reviewing the documents for its criminal inquiry until the special master completes its work, in a decision that marked a procedural victory for the former president.

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Ad campaign targets Latino voters as key bloc for Democrats in midterms

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Non-profit Voto Latino aims to challenge Republican ‘disinformation’ in key battleground states

With midterm elections on the horizon, Americans are subject to a flurry of Democratic and Republican ads. As the second-largest voting bloc in 2020, Latino voters are expected to play a significant role in the 2022 elections. They are therefore a key target group.

One non-profit, Voto Latino, aims to fight political disinformation and communicate with self-identified moderate Latino voters through a series of ads.

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January 6 committee assumes Mike Pence will testify, Jamie Raskin says

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Congressman says of former vice-president, ‘I would assume he is going to come forward and testify voluntarily’

The January 6 committee assumes the former vice-president Mike Pence will testify before it, a panel member said on Sunday.

“I would assume he is going to come forward and testify voluntarily,” Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, told CBS’s Face the Nation.

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Trump calls FBI, DoJ ‘vicious monsters’ in first rally since Mar-a-Lago search

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Former president also calls Joe Biden’s Philadelphia address the ‘most vicious, hateful, divisive speech’

Speaking in Pennsylvania on Saturday, at his first rally since the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for top-secret material taken from the White House and since Joe Biden used a primetime address to warn that Republicans were assaulting US democracy, Donald Trump lashed out.

The former president said: “The FBI and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do.”

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Biden targets Trump and says ‘anyone who fails to condemn violence is a threat to democracy’ – live

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Biden speaks at White House and takes swipe at former president, but says not all Trump supporters are threat to America

At the White House press briefing just now, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke on Joe Biden’s speech last night where he warned that Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans” are a threat to democracy.

“The president was trying to give the American people a choice: how do we move forward in this inflection point?” Jean-Pierre said. “When it comes to the soul of the nation, that is something the president has talked about for years… He has been concerned about where our democracy is going.”

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Five key takeaways from Biden’s speech on the threat to democracy

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In a rare primetime address, Biden pitched the midterms as a battle for the nation’s soul and directly called out Trump

Joe Biden – who usually makes couched references to “the former guy” and his “predecessor” – explicitly named and called out Donald Trump during his speech. The president warned that Trump and the “Maga (Make America great again)” Republicans “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic”.

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Biden’s stern warning on extremism shows the rose-colored glasses are off

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The president’s primetime speech named Trump and ‘Maga Republicans’ as a threat facing American democracy

Joe Biden’s journey from idealist to realist continues. But it is not quite complete.

After 36 years in the Senate, he stepped into the US presidency in 2021 as an apostle of bipartisanship, convinced that his authoritarian-minded predecessor Donald Trump would fade away and the Republican party would rediscover its bearings.

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Biden speech: ‘Democracy is under assault’ from election deniers and political violence, president warns – as it happened

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The president called out Maga forces as a threat ‘to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the very soul of this country’

Protesters outside Independence Hall were shouting “Let’s go, Brandon,” which Biden was able to brush off.

Biden addressed them, saying: “They’re entitled to be outrageous. This is a democracy.”

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Retired NYPD officer receives longest sentence yet for attack on Capitol

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Thomas Webster was given a 10-year prison time for six charges, including assaulting an officer with a metal flagpole

A retired New York police department officer has received a record-setting 10- year sentence for his involvement in the Capitol attack, during which he used a metal flagpole to assault one of the police officers trying to hold off a mob of Donald Trump supporters.

Thomas Webster was sentenced on Thursday, and his prison time will represent the longest punishment so far for the roughly 250 people facing punishment for their role in the January 6 attack.

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Trump ‘knowingly put national security at risk’ by stashing classified documents, Schiff says – as it happened

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In overnight court filing, DoJ says it was ‘likely’ efforts had been made to move and hide documents

Donald Trump’s former White House counselor, Kellyanne Conway, does not think Republicans should move on from her former boss, despite signs his control of the party could cost it the chance to take Congress in November.

Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Conway said: “Those who want to move on from Trump: You go first.”

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Trump boasted he had ‘intelligence’ on Macron’s sex life

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Inventory of what was seized at Mar-a-Lago caused ‘transatlantic freakout’ between Paris and Washington

Donald Trump boasted to close associates that he knew secrets about Emmanuel Macron’s sex life from US intelligence sources, it has been reported.

The report in Rolling Stone magazine comes in the wake of the release of court documents on the classified and national defence documents found in a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on 8 August, which mention a file referred to as “info re: President of France”.

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Trump Mar-a-Lago home searched over ‘likely’ efforts to hide files, DoJ says

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Court filing alleges files were found despite Trump lawyers saying all documents had been returned

The FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after it obtained evidence there was probably an effort to conceal classified documents in defiance of a grand jury subpoena and despite Trump’s lawyers suggesting otherwise, the Department of Justice said in a court filing late on Tuesday night.

The filing, opposing Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized, amounted to the most detailed picture of potential obstruction of justice yet outlined by the DoJ.

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First-of-its-kind legislation will keep California’s children safer while online

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Bill approved Monday will require companies to install guardrails for those under age 18 and use higher privacy settings

California lawmakers passed first-of-its-kind legislation on Monday designed to improve the online safety and privacy protections for children.

The bill, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, will require firms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to install guardrails for users under the age of 18, including defaulting to higher privacy settings for minors and refraining from collecting location data for those users.

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Biden ‘determined to ban assault weapons’ as he lays out crime prevention plans – as it happened

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President details his Safer America Plan in Pennsylvania speech and says funding police provides ‘peace of mind’

The White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding a gaggle aboard Air Force One, as Joe Biden heads to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to talk about gun safety.

The first topic in the gaggle is the flooding in Mississippi and the failure of the Jackson area water treatment services, which has caused a crisis over clean drinking water.

US Secret Service official Tony Ornato, a figure of intense interest to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, has retired from the agency. He was an eyewitness to some of the most critical incidents involving Donald Trump in the hours leading up to the deadly assault on the US Capitol.

NBC News reported that Trump has hired a criminal attorney who was once Florida’s solicitor to his legal team. Chris Kise is expected to make his first appearance in federal court in West Palm Beach on Thursday when district judge Aileen Cannon mulls Trump’s request for a special master to oversee the justice department’s review of classified materials seized by the FBI at his home.

We’re awaiting at any moment the justice department’s legal response to Trump’s request, which will be a lengthy filing running up to 40 pages after Cannon waived a 20-page limit imposed by the court.

Incumbent Democratic Arizona senator Mark Kelly leads Republican challenger Blake Masters by more than three points in a poll released today, appearing to confirm a growing belief within the party that pro-choice messaging on abortion will be vote-winner in November’s midterms.

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Top Secret Service official at heart of January 6 Trump row steps down

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Tony Ornato, who reportedly told aide Trump lunged for steering wheel as Capitol attack was starting, was key figure to committee

Top US Secret Service official Tony Ornato, who has become a figure of intense interest to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, has retired from the agency.

Ornato was thrust into the center of the January 6 furor as an eyewitness to some of the most critical incidents involving Donald Trump in the hours leading up to the deadly assault on the US Capitol.

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