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      Six Arkansas schools to offer African American AP course despite restrictions

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      The six Arkansas schools that planned to offer an Advanced Placement (AP) course on African American studies say they will continue to do so despite state officials saying the class will not count toward a student’s graduation credit.The North Little Rock and Jacksonville North Pulaski school districts and eStem charter schools said on Thursday they would offer the course as a “local elective” despite the Arkansas education department saying it is not considered a state-approved course. They join two other school districts that have said they will continue offering the class.Education officials have said the class could not be part of the state’s advanced placement course offerings because it is still a pilot program and has not been vetted by the state yet to determine whether it complies with a law placing restrictions on how race is taught in the classroom.The state, however, has said that schools can still offer the course and it can count toward a student’s grade-point average.“District leaders believe that the AP African American Studies course will be a valuable addition to the district’s curriculum, and will help our young people understand and appreciate the rich diversity of our society,” the Jacksonville North Pulaski superintendent, Jeremy S Owoh, said in a statement.Arkansas and other Republican-led states have placed restrictions on how race is taught in the classroom, including prohibitions on critical race theory.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, earlier this year blocked high schools in his state from teaching the AP African American studies course.The Little Rock school district on Wednesday said it planned to continue teaching the course at Central high, site of the historic 1957 racial desegregation crisis. Central is one of six schools in the state that had been slated to offer the course this year. The Jonesboro school district told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette it also planned to continue offering the course.The website of the College Board, the non-profit organization which oversees AP courses, describes the course as interdisciplinary, touching on literature, arts, humanities, political science, geography and science. The pilot program debuted last school year at 60 schools across the country, and it was set to expand to more this year.The Little Rock school district has said it will ensure students in the class don’t have to pay the AP exam fee, and eStem said it will cover the exam cost. Because it is not state approved, Arkansas will not pay for the AP exam like it does other advanced placement courses. North Little Rock has said it is considering options to cover the costs of the exam.In addition, eStem said students who pass the course and take the exam will be awarded a medal of historical pursuit and valor that can be worn as part of graduation regalia.The state told districts last week that the course would not count toward graduation credit, days before the start of school for most students. The state has said students could still earn high school graduation credit through an African American history course the state offers, though it is not advanced placement. More

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      Outrage as Arkansas tells high schools to drop AP African American course

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      Advocacy groups are outraged after the Arkansas department of education warned state high schools not to offer an advanced placement course on African American history.The admonition from Arkansas education officials is the latest example of conservative lawmakers limiting education on racial history, sexual orientation and other topics they label as “indoctrination”.The Arkansas Education Association (AEA), a professional organization of educators in the state, said the latest decision is of “grave concern” to its members and other citizens worried about “the abandonment of teaching African American history and culture”.“Having this course pulled out from under our students at this late juncture is just another marginalizing move that has already played out in other states,” said a statement from AEA president April Reisma, which was shared with the Guardian.In a statement to the Guardian, NAACP president and chief executive officer Derrick Johnson called the decision “abhorrent” and an “attempt to strip high school students of an opportunity to get a jumpstart on their college degree”.“Let’s be clear – the continued, state-level attacks on Black history are undemocratic and regressive,” Johnson said. “The sad reality is that these politicians are determined to neglect our nation’s youth in service of their own political agendas.”On Monday, the first day of the 2023-2024 school year for many Arkansas public schools, the state education department announced that it would not be granting credit for the AP African American history class, the Arkansas Times reported.The official announcement came after department officials called educators on Friday, alerting them that the AP course would not be recognized for college credit in the same manner that similar courses on other topics are.The department said that the course may violate state’s Literacy, Empowerment, Accountability, Networking and Safety (Learns) Act, a new law passed this spring under Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee, a Republican and former White House press secretary during Donald Trump’s presidency.The Learns Act limits curriculum on a range of topics including gender, sexual orientation and subjects that would “indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as Critical Race Theory”.“Arkansas law contains provisions regarding prohibited topics. Without clarity, we cannot approve a pilot that may unintentionally put a teacher at risk of violating [state] law,” the department said in a statement about the pulled course to the Arkansas Times.Officials also announced that the state would not be covering the cost of the end-of-year exam on the course that allows high school students to earn college credit.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe cost of the credit qualifying exam is usually covered for other AP courses.Two high schools already offered a pilot version of the course last year, Axios reported. Six schools were scheduled to offer the course this year, including Little Rock’s Central high school, the epicenter of forced desegregation in 1957, NBC News reported.The latest challenge to the AP course comes after Florida’s department of education rejected the class in January.Florida’s department of education under Governor Ron DeSantis officially banned the course from that state’s high schools in January.In a letter to the College Board, the nonprofit organization that oversees AP courses and other university readiness exams, the Florida education department wrote that the course violated state law and “lacked educational value”. More

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      ‘Criminal liability for librarians’: the fight against US rightwing book bans

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      In the classic comedy Blackadder, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger demanded “tougher sentences for geography teachers”. So much for satire. In the real world, US Republican politicians are now seeking “criminal liability for librarians”.To Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Democracy Forward, as absurd as rightwing book bans can seem (a Florida claim that the Arthur books can “damage the souls” of children a particularly florid example), this is no laughing matter at all.She says: “In Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill into law that would have done a number of things, including creating the potential of criminal liability for librarians.”The law, Act 372, would make it a misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500, for librarians and booksellers to furnish minors with materials deemed “harmful” by authorities. The law also provides for challenges to materials in public libraries.Last Saturday, two days before the bill was to become law, a federal judge blocked it, as a violation of free speech rights under the first amendment to the US constitution.The judge, Timothy L Brooks, quoted Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel: “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” Feelings are running high.Arkansas is set to appeal. It will face organised opposition. Democracy Forward is part of a broad coalition including the Arkansas Library Association, the Central Arkansas Library System, community bookstores, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, the state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and individual library users.For Perryman, such work is only beginning.“What we know is that laws like the one in Arkansas are part of a national effort from anti-democratic forces, movements and people that do not represent the vast majority of the American people, or even the vast majority of people in states like Arkansas, that are seeking to sow culture wars in order to undermine democracy.“In Arkansas, we blocked that law with a broad coalition of booksellers, librarians and community members, and I think that’s really important in terms of understanding what’s happening in these communities. We are seeing people who do not typically go to court, who do not typically resort to the legal process, really mobilising.”Attempted book bans in libraries and public schools have proliferated in Republican states, complaints made on grounds of history, race, gender, LGBTQ+ rights and more. Attempts to ban titles by high-profile authors (Maya Angelou, Amanda Gorman, Art Spiegelman) have attracted national headlines. The phenomenon has perhaps been most visible in Florida, under a governor, Ron DeSantis, running for the Republican presidential nomination, and with “grass roots” groups such as Moms for Liberty sprouting and shouting loud.Perryman points to sources of fertiliser for such rapid growth.“We have seen a real effort on the part of anti-democratic and far-right actors like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, like Ron DeSantis in Florida, like [Governor] Greg Abbott in Texas, like legislatures that have developed this [policy]. We have seen a real effort from those sort of lawmakers to develop strategies that are responsive to a very vocal but small minority of people.“The far right has been strategic about trying to organize groups such as Moms for Liberty, formed to provide an appearance that there is an organic movement sprouting across the country, that people are really concerned about children being able to access books, about freedom of expression and what’s being taught in schools.“And what we see time and again is that those voices do not represent a majority of people, and that they are part of a network that is coordinated to try to create issues, in order to be able to roll back progress and roll back our basic freedoms, including the freedom to read and the ability of communities to thrive.“In order to combat that, we have to understand what we’re up against. And so what we have done at Democracy Forward is not only work with on-the-ground communities seeking resources to fight back, who need legal representation … but also to really look and monitor what is happening at the local and state levels throughout the country. And who is behind those efforts.”Democracy Forward was founded after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, by “a dedicated and spirited group” who wanted to take the fight back to the right. Before her current role, Perryman was chief legal officer and general counsel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, working to “enhance access and equity in healthcare”.She now links book bans to assaults on other civil liberties including access to abortion, a right three Trump appointees to the US supreme court helped remove last year.“If you would have lived a few years ago in the United States, what you would see was laws popping up around the country where there were criminal penalties for doctors for doing their job.“Rightwing actors that were highly coordinated and resourced pushed the law further and further, in order to be able to play in friendly jurisdictions and ultimately they did what they sought to achieve, which was to overturn a constitutional right to access reproductive healthcare through abortion.”Now, Perryman says, “in the censorship space, it is very important to understand that this is a similar playbook.“When you have political movements that do not represent the majority of people … you have to assume that their desire is to fundamentally alter our democracy and to fundamentally alter our first amendment, our ability to express ourselves, the ability of children to be able to get good education and ideas and materials.“And so we take this very seriously, because this is a movement in this country that is a threat to democracy and we will do everything we can to push back.” More

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      in US Politics

      Judge blocks Arkansas law allowing librarians to be charged over ‘harmful’ books

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      Arkansas is temporarily blocked from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors, a federal judge ruled on Saturday.US district judge Timothy L Brooks issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which also would have created a new process to challenge library materials and request that they be relocated to areas not accessible by kids. The measure, signed by the state’s Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, earlier this year, was set to take effect on 1 August.A coalition that included the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) in Little Rock had challenged the law, saying fear of prosecution under the measure could prompt libraries and booksellers to no longer carry titles that could be challenged.The judge also rejected a motion by the defendants, which include prosecuting attorneys for the state, seeking to dismiss the case.The ACLU of Arkansas, which represents some of the plaintiffs, applauded the court’s ruling, saying that the absence of a preliminary injunction would have jeopardized the free speech rights enshrined in the US constitution’s first amendment.“The question we had to ask was – do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials?” Holly Dickson, the executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, said in a statement. “Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties.”The lawsuit comes as lawmakers in an increasing number of conservative states are pushing for measures making it easier to ban or restrict access to books. The number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the US last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.Laws restricting access to certain materials or making it easier to challenge them have been enacted in several other states, including Iowa, Indiana and Texas.Arkansas’s attorney general, Tim Griffin, said in an email on Saturday that his office would be “reviewing the judge’s opinion and will continue to vigorously defend the law”.The executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System, Nate Coulter, said the judge’s 49-page decision recognized the law as censorship, a constitutional violation and wrongly maligning librarians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“As folks in south-west Arkansas say, this order is stout as horseradish!” he said in an email. He added: “I’m relieved that for now the dark cloud that was hanging over CALS’ librarians has lifted.”The lawsuit which produced Brooks’s injunction names the state’s 28 local prosecutors as defendants, along with Crawford county in west Arkansas.A separate lawsuit is challenging the Crawford library’s decision to move children’s books that included LGBTQ+ themes to a separate portion of the library. More

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      in Elections

      Hunter Biden’s Daughter and a Tale of Two Families

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      The story surrounding the president’s grandchild in Arkansas, who has not yet met her father or her grandfather, is about money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.There is a 4-year-old girl in rural Arkansas who is learning to ride a camouflage-patterned four-wheeler alongside her cousins. Some days, she wears a bow in her hair, and on other days, she threads her long blond ponytail through the back of a baseball cap. When she is old enough, she will learn to hunt, just like her mother did when she was young.The girl is aware that her father is Hunter Biden and that her paternal grandfather is the president of the United States. She speaks about both of them often, but she has not met them. Her maternal grandfather, Rob Roberts, described her as whip-smart and funny.“I may not be the POTUS,” Mr. Roberts said in a text message, using an acronym for the president, but he said he would do anything for his granddaughter. He said she “needs for nothing and never will.”The story surrounding the president’s grandchild in Arkansas, who is not named in court papers, is a tale of two families, one of them powerful, one of them not. But at its core, the story is about money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.Her parents ended a yearslong court battle over child support on Thursday, agreeing that Mr. Biden, who has embarked on a second career as a painter whose pieces have been offered for as much as $500,000 each, would turn over a number of his paintings to his daughter in addition to providing a monthly support payment. The little girl will select the paintings from Mr. Biden, according to court documents.“We worked it out amongst ourselves,” Lunden Roberts, the girl’s mother, said in an interview with The New York Times. “It was settled” in a discussion with Mr. Biden, she said.Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment for this article.Hunter Biden remains close to his father and often appears at White House events.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMs. Roberts said she dropped a request to have the girl’s last name changed from Roberts to Biden. (Mr. Biden had fought against giving their daughter the Biden surname.) Ms. Roberts would only say that the decision to drop the request was mutual. “We both want what is best for our daughter, and that is our only focus,” she said.Though a trial planned for mid-July has been averted, people on both sides fear that the political toxicity surrounding the case will remain. Already, it has been extensively covered in conservative media, from Breitbart to Fox News, and conservative commentators assailed the Biden family after news of the settlement.Both Hunter Biden, the privileged and troubled son of a president, and Ms. Roberts, the daughter of a rural gun maker, have allies whose actions have made the situation more politicized. There is no evidence the White House is involved in those actions.Clint Lancaster, Ms. Roberts’s attorney, has represented the Trump campaign. He also called Garrett Ziegler, an activist and former Trump White House aide who has cataloged and published messages from a cache of Hunter Biden’s files that appear to have come from a laptop he left at a repair shop, to serve as an expert witness in the child support case. In the other corner, allies of Democratic groups dedicated to helping the Biden family have disseminated information about Mr. Ziegler and the Roberts family, seeking to highlight their Trump ties.And then there is President Biden.His public image is centered around his devotion to his family — including to Hunter, his only surviving son. In strategy meetings in recent years, aides have been told that the Bidens have six, not seven, grandchildren, according to two people familiar with the discussions.The White House did not respond to questions about the case, in keeping with how officials have answered questions about the Biden family before.Several of the president’s allies fear that the case could damage his re-election prospects by bringing more attention to a son whom some Democrats see as a liability. Others say the far right has focused on Hunter Biden, a private citizen, but ignored any moral and ethical failings of the former president, Donald J. Trump.“He’s under more indictments than two Super Bowl teams’ worth of players,” the author and political strategist Stuart Stevens, who left the Republican Party in 2016, said of Mr. Trump. “But that doesn’t matter: You have Hunter Biden. It’s just anger in search of an argument.”‘People Have an Image of Me’Lunden Roberts, 32, comes from a clan as tight-knit as the Bidens. Her father is a red-state gun manufacturer whose hunting buddies have included Donald Trump Jr., and who taught her at a young age how to hunt turkeys and alligators. She works for the family business, which sits on a winding country road dotted with pastures on the outskirts of Batesville.The pride of her family, the 5-foot-8 Ms. Roberts graduated with honors from Southside High School in Batesville and played basketball for Arkansas State University, where a team biography said she enjoyed hunting and skeet shooting. After graduating, she moved to Washington to study forensic investigation at George Washington University. She never completed the program. Photos from that time show her attending baseball games at Nationals Park and attending Drake and Kanye West concerts.Lunden Roberts arriving for a hearing in the paternity case in Batesville, Ark., in May. Ms. Roberts and Mr. Biden settled the case on Thursday.Karen Pulfer Focht/ReutersAlong the way, she met the son of a future president who was sliding into addiction and visiting Washington strip clubs.In mid-2018, Ms. Roberts was working as a personal assistant to Mr. Biden, according to a person close to her and messages from a cache of Mr. Biden’s files. Their daughter was born later that year, but by then, Mr. Biden had stopped responding to Ms. Roberts’s messages, including one informing him of the child’s birth date. Shortly after their daughter was born in November 2018, he removed Ms. Roberts and the child from his health insurance, which led Ms. Roberts to contact Mr. Lancaster.She filed a lawsuit in May 2019, and DNA testing that year established that Mr. Biden was the father of the child. In a motion for custody filing in December 2019, Ms. Roberts said that he had never met their child and “could not identify the child out of a photo lineup.”Ms. Roberts said in an interview that she had grown used to the onslaught of scrutiny around the case: “I read things about myself that I have no clue about,” she said. But one thing she said she can’t stand is being called a bad mother. “People can call me whatever they want, but they can’t call me that,” she said.Her public Instagram account tells its own story: “I hope one day when you look back you find yourself proud of who you are, where you come from, and most importantly, who raised you,” she captioned a photo of the two of them at the beach earlier this year. In another photo, shared to her account in April 2022, her daughter wore an Air Force One baseball cap and stood in front of the Jefferson Memorial.“People have an image of me, but few get the picture,” Ms. Roberts wrote on another photo in July 2022.Ms. Roberts posted a photo of herself and her daughter in Washington last year. Seen through one prism, the photos are a powerful public testament of love from a mother to her daughter. Seen through another, they are exploitative, certainly from the perspective of Biden allies, who fear the images — and the child — are being weaponized against the Biden family.For her part, Ms. Roberts said she did not bring her daughter to Washington to punish the Bidens. She said she brought her to Washington because not many little girls get to say that their grandfather is the president.“She’s very proud of who her grandfather is and who her dad is,” Ms. Roberts said. “That is something that I would never allow her to think otherwise.”A Troubled SonHunter Biden, 53, is recovering from crack cocaine addiction and is the last surviving son of the president, who lost his eldest, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015. The younger Mr. Biden has five children, and has said that he fathered his fourth at a low point in his life.“I had no recollection of our encounter,” Mr. Biden wrote in his 2021 memoir. “That’s how little connection I had with anyone. I was a mess, but a mess I’ve taken responsibility for.”Before Thursday’s settlement, Mr. Biden had paid Ms. Roberts upward of $750,000, according to his attorneys, and had sought to reduce his $20,000-a-month child support payment on the grounds that he did not have the money. The new amount is lower than what had been originally ordered by the court, according to a person familiar with the case.“I’m very proud of my son,” President Biden told reporters recently.Al Drago for The New York TimesTrial or no trial, Mr. Biden will remain one of his father’s political vulnerabilities. Since his addiction spiraled out of control and his dealings with foreign governments caught the attention of conservatives, the younger Mr. Biden’s choices have become grist for memes, conservative cable news panels and Republican fund-raising. The most recent round kicked off after he struck a deal with the Justice Department to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and accept terms that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a separate gun charge.On top of that, Mr. Biden has been the subject of multiple congressional investigations, and the contents of the laptop he left at a repair shop have been pored over and disseminated by activists, who say his private communications show criminal wrongdoing.In the White House, matters involving Hunter are so sensitive that only the president’s most senior advisers talk to him about his son, according to people familiar with the arrangement.Through it all, the president has been staunchly supportive. Rather than distance himself, Mr. Biden has included Hunter on official trips, traveled with him aboard Marine One, and ensured that he is on the guest list at state dinners.“I’m very proud of my son,” the president told reporters recently.‘Life’s Greatest Blessing’President Biden has worked over the past half-century to make his last name synonymous with family values and loyalty. The strength of his political persona, which emphasizes decency, family and duty, was enough to defeat Mr. Trump the first time around, and he would need to keep it intact if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024.On a proclamation issued on Father’s Day, Mr. Biden said that his father had “taught me that, above all, family is the beginning, middle and end — a lesson I have passed down to my children and grandchildren.” He added that “family is life’s greatest blessing and responsibility.”President Biden; Jill Biden, the first lady; and their children and grandchildren watching fireworks from the White House after Mr. Biden’s inauguration in 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSince they entered the White House, President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, have centered their family lives around their grandchildren, and have given them the benefits that come with living in close contact with the White House.Naomi Biden, 29, is Hunter’s eldest child, from his first marriage, to Kathleen Buhle, which ended in 2017. Ms. Biden was married on the South Lawn of the White House last year in a Ralph Lauren dress that she called the product of her “American(a) dreams.” She and her sisters have taken trips around the world with the president and first lady. Hunter married Melissa Cohen in 2019. His youngest child, who is named for Beau and was born in 2020, is photographed frequently with his grandparents.In April, President Biden told a group of children that he had “six grandchildren. And I’m crazy about them. And I speak to them every single day. Not a joke.”Hunter Biden’s youngest son, Beau, is frequently seen traveling and attending events with his grandparents.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesBut the president has not yet met or publicly mentioned his other grandchild. His White House has not answered questions about whether he will publicly acknowledge her now that the child support case is settled.Still, Mr. Stevens, the political strategist, said that Mr. Biden’s support of his son, even against an onslaught of Republican criticism and ugly scandals, has only emphasized his unconditional love for his family.“The net positive of this has gone to Biden, by the way,” Mr. Stevens said of the president. “He stuck by him.”Political ConcernsFew involved think the particulars of this case, even though it has been settled, will stay at a simmer, especially given its ubiquity in right-wing media.“In yet another sweetheart deal, Hunter Biden got off easy in his child support case,” wrote the editorial board of The New York Post, which has followed the proceedings closely.Aside from the news coverage and commentary, allies of the Biden family are privately worried that the involvement of right-wing operatives in the matter has made any engagement harder for the family.Mr. Ziegler, who was named as an expert witness in the case, had a footnote role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election results: In December 2020, Mr. Ziegler escorted Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, and the attorney Sidney Powell into the Oval Office, where a group discussed with Mr. Trump a plan to seize control of voting machines in key states. Mr. Ziegler’s White House guest privileges were later revoked.Mr. Ziegler declined to confirm his involvement in the child support case.Ms. Roberts’s attorney, Mr. Lancaster, also has a background in conservative activism. He is vocal on social media about his support for Mr. Trump, often retweeting criticism from conservative outlets and Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter. He also worked as an attorney for the Trump campaign during an electoral vote recount in Wisconsin after the 2020 election.Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in 2020. Allies of the Biden family are concerned that the paternity case will be used against President Biden in the 2024 campaign.Al Drago for The New York TimesOn the other side, people affiliated with left-leaning organizations, including Facts First USA, an advocacy group run by David Brock, are wary of what the team surrounding Ms. Roberts may do as the 2024 campaign gets underway.Members of the group, which operates independently of the White House and has taken a more adversarial approach to critics than the Biden administration does, have circulated a photo of Ms. Roberts’s father posing with Donald Trump Jr. Mr. Roberts said in a text message that he has gone hunting with Mr. Trump but that he did not recall when they had first met.The Republican pollster Frank Luntz said it was “a waste of time” for activists to focus on attacking the president’s family because voters do not care about Hunter Biden as much as they care about other issues, including Ukraine and inflation.“You have the responsibility to hold people accountable, but I want to be clear: It will not change a single vote,” he said of Hunter Biden’s legal and personal problems.If the Roberts family is taking political advice — outside of any that might come from the family attorney — they aren’t saying. In Batesville, the girl’s maternal grandmother, Kimberly Roberts, said in a brief telephone interview that she would not comment on the case.She did have one thing to say, though.“My granddaughter is happy, healthy, and very loved,” Ms. Roberts said, before hanging up.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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      Asa Hutchinson announces candidacy for Republican presidential nomination

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      The former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson announced on Sunday that he plans to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, saying the US needs “leaders that appeal to the best of America, and not simply appeal to our worst instincts” while also calling for Donald Trump to drop out the race.Meanwhile, on the other side of the political aisle, the centrist Democrat and West Virginia senator Joe Manchin evaded a question during an interview on CNN about a potential run challenging his party’s Oval Office incumbent, Joe Biden, fueling speculation about his own ambitions.“This is one of the most unpredictable political environments that I have seen in my lifetime,” Hutchinson said on ABC, adding that he traveled the US for six months and listened to repeated demands for new leadership before declaring himself as a candidate.Hutchinson’s announcement follows an eclectic career including stints as a prosecutor, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration and a member of Congress. He joins the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as the only members of the Republican mainstream to challenge Trump, Biden’s presidential predecessor, for the party’s 2024 White House nomination. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has been Trump’s only serious rival in polling.Hutchinson spoke of his recent visit to Iowa, which has historically been the first state to vote in presidential primaries and holds a crucial spot in White House election cycles.The former governor of Arkansas had hinted at this candidacy for almost a year and said in May that a possible Trump campaign wouldn’t deter him from running.He said he doesn’t “align” with a lot of Trump’s politics and that the country needed to go in a “different direction”.In Sunday’s interview, he said that Trump is better off focusing on his criminal indictment in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, as well as other legal concerns, instead of taking another shot at the presidency.“If we’re looking at the presidency and the future of our country, then we don’t need that distraction,” said Hutchinson, who added that he would formally kick off his presidential campaign later this month.Meanwhile, on Sunday morning, CNN’s Dana Bash spoke with Manchin and informed him of Hutchinson’s announcement. The host then asked Manchin about his own plans for 2024 after the senator skirted a question about whether he would support re-electing Biden in 2024.“I’m worn out,” Manchin said. “The people are tired, sick and tired of the fighting and division that we have.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen Bash asked Manchin again about his plans for 2024, Manchin replied evasively, saying: “We have a movement. There’s a movement. There’s a movement going on that people want to bring the extremes back to the sensible and reasonable, responsible middle.”He then went on to say he would like to be at least “a part of trying to get a dialogue” that would bring people “to the middle”.“It’s about our country,” Manchin said. “Everyone’s worried about their own political future. I’m worried about the country.”A millionaire coal-trading company founder, Manchin at times has undermined the agendas of Biden and other Democrats, occasionally voting against the party’s interest in the Senate, where the party and the independents who caucus with it currently hold just a two-seat advantage. Notably, last year, Manchin torpedoed sweeping climate legislation staunchly opposed by Republicans before later helping ratify a less ambitious bill.The self-help author Marianne Williamson has so far been the only Democrat to announce an intent to challenge Biden for the party’s presidential nomination in 2024. Biden is widely expected to announce another White House run but as of Sunday had not officially done so. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump should quit 2024 race if indicted in New York, Republican rival says

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      Trump should quit 2024 race if indicted in New York, Republican rival saysEx-Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson: man facing charge over porn star payment should ‘respect institution of the presidency’Donald Trump should quit the race for the Republican nomination in 2024 if he is indicted in New York over a hush money payment to a porn star during his victorious run in 2016, a prospective rival said.Is Fox News finally falling out of love with Trump? It’s complicatedRead more“It doesn’t mean that he’s guilty of it or he should be charged,” said Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas. “But it’s just such a distraction that would be unnecessary for somebody who’s seeking the highest office in the land.”Hutchinson has not declared a run. Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor, remains Trump’s only declared opponent from the Republican mainstream. The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is Trump’s only serious challenger in polling.Like other relative moderates, Hutchinson is a vanishingly small presence in polls regarding the nascent field.He told USA Today: “When you’re looking at Trump, it’s going to be a circus.”Widespread reporting has said an indictment is expected soon in the hush money case, which involves the payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, an adult film maker and actor who says she had an affair with Trump in 2006.Trump denies the claim, often abusing Daniels in misogynistic terms. But the man Trump directed to pay Daniels, his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, is due to testify before a grand jury on Monday.Trump has also been invited to testify, a sign an indictment is near. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is reported to be preparing to criminally charge Trump for false accounting business records with an intent to defraud, in relation to New York election law.Mark Pomerantz, a prosecutor who quit Bragg’s team, recently called the Daniels payment a “zombie case” that would not die.But David Shapiro, a former FBI agent who now lectures at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told the Associated Press it could be “especially difficult” for Bragg to prove intent and knowledge of wrongdoing.Trump, Shapiro said, is “loud, he’s brash, so proving that he had specific intent to fraud, one is almost left with the idea that, ‘Well, if he has that specific intent of fraud, he has it all of the time, because that’s his personality.’”Trump claims Bragg is politically motivated, as a Democrat, and racist because he is Black.At CPAC earlier this month, the former president told reporters he “won’t even think about leaving” the race, as an indictment would “probably … enhance my numbers”.Optimistically, Hutchinson told USA Today the man who left office twice impeached, the second time for inciting a deadly attack on Congress in an attempt to stay in power, should withdraw “out of respect for the institution of the presidency of the United States.“And that’s a distraction [and it] is difficult to run for the highest office in the land under those circumstances.Mike Pence: Donald Trump was wrong, history will hold him accountableRead more“I know he’s going to say [the charges are] politically motivated and all of those things, but the fact is, there’s just a lot of turmoil out there with the number of investigations going on.”Trump also faces federal investigation of his election subversion attempts, incitement of the January 6 attack and retention of classified records. A state investigation of his election subversion in Georgia is well advanced.In New York, his business faces a civil fraud suit and his chief financial officer was sentenced on tax charges in January. Trump also faces trial in a defamation suit from a writer who says he raped her.Trump denies all wrongdoing, claiming witch hunts by his political enemies.On Sunday, on NBC’s Meet the Press, Kevin Cramer, a Republican senator from North Dakota, was asked if Trump should step aside if he is indicted in “Manhattan or Atlanta or Washington”.“Donald Trump’s not going to take advice from the party or from me,” Cramer said.“But I think what will happen is, if he’s indicted, that becomes one of the factors in whether he wins primaries or not. The other factor is who else is in the race and who can make the best case.”DeSantis, Cramer said, “has certainly earned the right to be at the head of the class, not just through his political rhetoric but through his successful governing of a very large state.“We’ve seen him out on the stump a little more now doing the things that potential presidential candidates do. I think it will help that debate along. The challenge becomes if there are too many people in the race.”Polling has shown how a split field could hand Trump the nomination without a majority, as happened in 2016.Cramer said: “Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, certainly my friend Tim Scott would all be good candidates who understand the Trump doctrine but have a demeanor that’s probably more suitable to the swing voter.“And at the end of the day, what’s most important for primary voters to think about is not just who they love the most but who can win for the country and who can win for the party. Because we’re in desperate need of some new leadership.”TopicsUS elections 2024Donald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsArkansasNew YorknewsReuse this content More

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      Sarah Huckabee Sanders to give Republican State of the Union response

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      Sarah Huckabee Sanders to give Republican State of the Union responseFormer Trump press secretary turned Arkansas governor to share ‘the GOP’s optimistic vision for the future’ after Biden speech The White House press secretary turned Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders will give the Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address next week.Ilhan Omar defiant as Republicans oust her from key House committeeRead moreAnnouncing the move on Thursday, the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, called Huckabee Sanders “a servant-leader of true determination and conviction”, adding about his fellow Republican: “I’m thrilled Sarah will share her extraordinary story and bold vision for a better America on Tuesday.”Huckabee Sanders, now 40, was the second of Donald Trump’s four press secretaries in an administration under which relations between the press and the White House dwindled to new lows.Sanders memorably admitted lying to reporters about internal opposition to the FBI director, James Comey, during the investigation of Russian election interference in 2016 and links between the former president and Moscow.She told the New York Times it “bothers me” to be called a liar, “because one of the few things you have are your integrity and reputation”.“There’s a difference between misspeaking or not knowing something than maliciously lying,” she added.Huckabee Sanders was elected in Arkansas last November, following her father, Mike Huckabee, into the governor’s mansion. She began her time in power with a flurry of executive orders on culture war subjects.One banned use in state documents of the word “Latinx”, which one proponent has defined as “a gender-neutral term to describe US residents of Latin American descent”.Another order banned the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. Critical race theory is an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. It is rarely taught below college level but Republicans have enthusiastically and successfully used it as a wedge electoral issue.In her own statement on Thursday, Huckabee Sanders said she was “grateful for this opportunity to address the nation and contrast the GOP’s optimistic vision for the future against the failures of President Biden and the Democrats.Hispanic lawmakers in Connecticut seek official ban on term ‘Latinx’Read more“We are ready to begin a new chapter in the story of America – to be written by a new generation of leaders ready to defend our freedom against the radical left and expand access to quality education, jobs, and opportunity for all.”Some observers think Huckabee Sanders may in the future follow her father – and the Democratic former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton – and run for president.Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, bass guitarist and pitchman for questionable health products, did so in 2008 and 2016. In his first run he won the Iowa caucuses as part of an unexpectedly strong showing before losing to John McCain. In 2016 he was one of many candidates blown out of the water by Trump.Clinton was president for two terms beginning in 1993.Republicans also announced on Thursday that a second rebuttal to Biden’s speech will be given by the Arizona congressman Juan Ciscomani, who will speak in Spanish.TopicsState of the Union addressUS politicsJoe BidenArkansasRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More