Category Archives: US Politics

John McCain’s son says he will vote Democrat as he slams Trump Arlington visit

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Jimmy McCain, a national guard lieutenant, says he can’t ‘overlook’ Trump’s criticism of his late father

The son of the late Republican senator John McCain – whose war record was disparaged by Donald Trump – has added his voice to criticism of the former president’s controversial Arlington cemetery visit, accusing him of violating a sacred burial site for political purposes.

First Lieutenant Jimmy McCain, an intelligence officer in the 158th infantry regiment of the national guard, said Trump’s behaviour at the cemetery – America’s most revered burial ground for fallen military personnel and military heroes – was in line with previous acts of disrespect.

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Trump and allies plant seeds for ‘chaos and discord’ if he loses, experts warn

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Spread of conspiracy theories seeks to foment early election doubts in case Trump loses, some Republicans say

Donald Trump and election denialist allies at Turning Point USA, True the Vote and other Maga stalwarts are spreading conspiracy theories about election fraud in order to lay the groundwork for charging the election was rigged if Trump loses, warn election experts and some veteran Republicans.

The consequences of the strategy could be dire. John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa Arizona who spoke at the Democratic national convention in August in support of Vice-President Kamala Harris’s campaign for the presidency, said that former president Trump and his allies “will throw everything at the wall and see what sticks”, if Trump loses.

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Biden to join Harris on campaign trail for first time since dropping out of race

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Pair due to appear together in Pittsburgh in vital swing state of Pennsylvania, aimed at cementing support from unions

Joe Biden will join Kamala Harris on the campaign trail for the first time on Monday since standing aside six weeks ago to let the vice-president claim the presidential nomination following a poor debate performance.

The pair were due to appear together in Pittsburgh in the vital swing state of Pennsylvania at a Labour Day event aimed at cementing support from trade unions, a key Democrat constituency and a bedrock of Biden’s support as he has styled himself as “the most pro-union president in US history”.

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Trump ridiculed after accusing Kamala Harris of mistreating Mike Pence

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Harris campaign responds: ‘In a stunning senile moment Trump suggested it was Harris who treated Pence poorly’

Donald Trump has drawn ridicule and accusations of hypocrisy after accusing Kamala Harris of mistreating Mike Pence, the former vice-president who his supporters said should be hanged during the January 6 insurrection that he incited.

The Republican’s nominee’s comments came in an interview with Fox News, when he also singled out Harris’s 2018 cross-examination of Brett Kavanaugh during Senate confirmation hearings after Trump, then president, nominated him as a justice on the US supreme court.

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Trump shares posts of Gold Star families praising cemetery visit and criticizing Harris

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Soldiers’ relatives hit out at vice-president after she said Trump ‘disrespected sacred ground’ for a political stunt

Donald Trump shared statements from the relatives of 13 soldiers killed during the chaotic US evacuation from Kabul as they hit out at Kamala Harris after she criticized the former president’s involvement in a ceremony honoring the service members.

The dispute over the ceremony at Arlington national cemetery, during which Trump campaign aides allegedly shoved a cemetery worker so they could film Trump laying a wreath, contravening rules against political activity at the site, escalated after the vice-president said Saturday that Trump “disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt”.

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Senior adviser rejects rumors of shake-up in Trump campaign leadership

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Corey Lewandowski says management will remain despite reports of ex-president ‘feeling superstitious and nostalgic’

Trump campaign senior official Corey Lewandowski has rejected rumors of shake-up in the management of the former president’s election bid, saying the operation’s leadership will not change.

Lewandowski, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager who recently joined the 2024 team, told Fox News Sunday that campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita will remain at the top.

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More than 10,000 US hotel workers strike on Labor Day weekend

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Staff demand wage increases and reversal of pandemic-era cutbacks that impose ‘painful’ working conditions

Thousands of US hotel workers went on strike on Sunday for improved pay and conditions in a dispute likely to disrupt many Labor Day weekend holiday travelers, amid union warnings that industrial action could escalate.

More than 10,000 workers walked off the job at hotels in Boston, Seattle, Honolulu, Kauai and Greenwich, Connecticut, as well as the Californian cities of San Francisco, Sand Diego and San Jose after contract talks with the establishments’ owners collapsed.

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RFK Jr sues North Carolina elections board to remove his name from ballot

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Action comes after a series of ballot woes are threatening to undermine the impact of his decision to end campaign

Robert F Kennedy Jr is suing North Carolina’s state board of elections after it refused to remove his name from the electoral ballot following his decision to drop his independent presidential campaign and endorse Donald Trump.

The legal action comes after a series of ballot woes that initially impeded Kennedy’s campaign but are now threatening to undermine the impact of his decision to end it.

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Elizabeth Warren condemns Trump for ‘changing his tune’ on IVF

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Democratic senator says Republican nominee trying to have it ‘both ways’ and adapting position to his audience

The US senator Elizabeth Warren has accused Donald Trump of trying to have it “both ways” with in vitro fertilization (IVF), two days after the former president vowed to force health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the treatments if he is elected in November.

Speaking on MSNBC, Warren said Trump was simply adapting his positions according to what he perceived his audience’s preference to be.

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Kamala Harris says Trump ‘disrespected sacred ground’ on cemetery visit

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Vice-president accuses Republican rival of ‘political stunt’ as Democrats call for inquiry into apparent altercation

Kamala Harris – the Democratic nominee for November’s White House race – has accused Donald Trump of “disrespecting sacred ground” on his recent visit to Arlington national cemetery, as the controversy over an apparent altercation between workers of his campaign and cemetery staff continued to build.

The vice-president on Saturday accused the former president and Republican nominee of staging a “political stunt” after the US army accused the Trump campaign of turning a wreath-laying ceremony on Monday to mark the deaths of US soldiers in Afghanistan into a photo opportunity. The army also accused two campaign workers representing Trump – who said he was invited to the ceremony by the family of one of the honored soldiers – of pushing aside an official who told them it was forbidden to take pictures at the graves of military members who had recently died.

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Donald Trump comes out in support of recreational-use marijuana in Florida

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State will decide on a constitutional amendment in November over whether to allow for adult use of pot

Donald Trump has come out in support for a proposed constitutional amendment that would legalize recreational marijuana in Florida, the state in which he resides.

In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump said “personal amounts of marijuana will be legalized for adults” with Florida’s amendment 3, “whether people like it or not”.

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Democrats seize on Trump cemetery photo op ‘disgrace’ as election issue

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Politicians and veterans say episode was on par with ex-president’s history of disrespecting service in armed forces

Democrats are trying to turn Donald Trump’s clash with staff at Arlington National Cemetery, the hallowed final resting place of America’s war dead, into a broader election issue by highlighting it as an example of his history of disrespecting military veterans.

Congressional Democrats with military records and liberal-leaning veterans groups say the episode is consistent with past instances of the Republican presidential nominee flagrantly denigrating service in the armed forces.

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2024 US presidential polls: Harris taps into near-record levels of enthusiasm

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Find out who’s up and who’s down in the latest US presidential election opinion polls

Kamala Harris’s entry into the presidential race has given a shot in the arm to Democratic voters, who are now expressing near-record enthusiasm levels, fresh polling data shows.

While the figures from Gallup indicate rising enthusiasm among all voters – including Republicans – over the past five months, comparative figures show a much steeper increase among Democrats – indicating that Harris’s replacement of Joe Biden as presidential candidate is the likely driving factor.

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Donald Trump pushed me to ketamine therapy, niece Mary says in new book

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Bestselling author, a trained psychologist, describes debilitating effects of being related to the former president

In a new memoir, Mary L Trump, niece of Donald Trump, writes of being pushed to despair, and ketamine therapy, by her uncle’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, his chaotic, far-right administration and his refusal to leave national politics despite his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020.

“I’m here because five years ago, I lost control of my life,” Mary Trump writes, describing ketamine treatment undertaken in December 2021. “I’m here because the world has fallen away and I don’t know how to find my way back.

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Kamala Harris defends policy stances and shares plan for office in first major interview

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In sit-down with CNN’s Dana Bash, vice-president defends shifts on policy issues and her support for Biden

Kamala Harris sat for her first interview as the Democratic presidential nominee with CNN’s Dana Bash alongside her running mate, Tim Walz, on Thursday, and defended her shifts on certain policy issues over the years and her support for Joe Biden.

In the interview, which was taped in Savannah, Georgia, earlier on Thursday, the vice-president said her highest priority upon taking office would be to “support and strengthen the middle class” through policies including increasing the child tax credit, curtailing price gouging on everyday goods and increasing access to affordable housing – all policies that she has announced since she started campaigning for the presidency.

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Kamala Harris says ‘values have not changed’ on climate and border security in first clip from CNN interview – live

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Democratic nominee references record of prosecuting traffickers of guns, drugs and humans across the border

This evening, Kamala Harris will give her first sit-down interview since launching her presidential campaign, and will be joined by her running mate, Tim Walz. The Guardian’s Robert Tait takes a look at what we can expect from the hotly anticipated encounter:

Kamala Harris on Thursday will give her first major interview since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee in what is being seen as a key test of her credibility after a prolonged honeymoon that has seen her surge ahead of Donald Trump in opinion polls.

The 21-second video shows Trump laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and several snippets of Trump joining Gold Star family members at gravesites of their loved ones in a part of the cemetery known as Section 60.

‘We lost 13 great great people, what a horrible day it was,’ Trump says over somber music. ‘We didn’t lose one person in 18 months and then they took over the disaster, the leaving of Afghanistan.’

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US army confirms Arlington cemetery worker ‘pushed aside’ by Trump staff

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Strongest official criticism yet over altercation with ex-president’s staff during photo op at military cemetery

US army officials issued a strongly worded rebuke of Donald Trump’s campaign on Thursday as they confirmed a worker at Arlington national cemetery was “abruptly pushed aside” during an altercation with members of the former president’s staff.

The statement was the strongest official criticism yet of Trump’s controversial visit in which he gave a thumbs-up over graves as a photo opportunity and there was an alleged physical assault by two of his staffers on the army official. It came as outrage continued to mount from veterans and families of some of the service members buried there.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

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Trump staffers reported over altercation at Arlington cemetery during photo op

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Officials at military cemetery say two campaign members ‘verbally abused and pushed’ a representative

Officials at Arlington national cemetery have filed a report over the behavior of members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff who reportedly shoved and verbally abused an employee during a “crass” photo opportunity for the Republican presidential candidate.

The officials confirmed that a confrontation took place at the Virginia cemetery on Monday after the former president participated in a wreath-laying ceremony for 13 US servicemen and -women killed in a 2021 suicide bomb attack outside Kabul airport in Afghanistan.

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Vance attacks Biden-Harris economic record in Wisconsin rally – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. You can find all of our US elections coverage here

Mark Esper, a former defense secretary under Donald Trump, told CNN that he hoped the reported altercation between the former president’s staff and an official at Arlington national cemetery was investigated, while saying that the grounds should never be used for “partisan political purposes”:

Esper served under Trump from 2019 until shortly after the 2020 election, when Trump fired him. The former defense chief has since decried Trump as a “threat to democracy”.

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Swifties for Kamala rally raises nearly $140,000 for Harris

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Fan group holds Zoom call featuring Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and ‘original cat lady’ Carole King

Taylor Swift has yet to publicly endorse a candidate, but some of her fanbase are already mobilizing for Kamala Harris. The Swifties for Kamala Coalition officially launched on Tuesday, raising more than $138,000 for the Democratic candidate in a virtual rally featuring Carole King and the senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Swift, who has no affiliation with the group, was not present on the Zoom call nor involved in the event. The group has amassed about 250 million followers on social media platforms since Joe Biden dropped out of the race in late July and endorsed the vice-president.

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