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    Kamala Harris to condemn Trump's 'chaos' and 'callousness' in DNC speech

    Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants who has broken racial barriers at every step of her political career, is set to become the first Black woman and first Asian American to accept a major party’s vice-presidential nomination on Wednesday night.In the most consequential speech of her political career, Harris, 55, is expected to urge voters to reject the divisive and destructive leadership of a president who “turns our tragedies into political weapons”.Early excerpts show she will sketch an optimistic vision for a nation whose promise drew her parents from opposite ends of the world decades before.“We’re at an inflection point,” she will say, speaking from a waterfront convention center near Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware. “The constant chaos leaves adrift. The incompetence makes us feel afraid. The callousness makes us feel alone. It’s a lot – and here’s the thing: we can do better and deserve so much more.”At the very beginning of Wednesday’s event, Harris gave a short direct-to-camera speech about the importance of voting in November’s election. She said she knew many of the viewers may have “heard about obstacles and misinformation, and folks making it harder for you to cast your ballot.”She offered directions to viewers on how they could get more information on ways to vote in this election – a short plea underscoring Democrats’ efforts to increase turnout.Harris, only the fourth woman in history to be nominated for a presidential ticket, will share a stage on Wednesday – one hundred years and one day after the ratification of the 19th amendment that guaranteed the women – with Hillary Clinton, the first woman nominated by a major party for the presidency, and Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker and highest-ranking woman in American political history.Born in 1964 to Shyamala Gopalan, a Indian-born American breast cancer researcher, and Donald Harris, an American economist from Jamaica, Harris will recount their political activism and said some of her earliest memories of attending civil rights protests as a toddler.Harris and her sister, Maya, were raised by her mother, who she will say taught her “to walk by faith, and not by sight”.Maya, Harris’s niece Meena, and Harris’s step-daughter Ella Emhoff are expected to nominate Harris on Wednesday night.After graduating from Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington, DC, Harris pursued a career in criminal justice. In 2003, she was elected district attorney of San Francisco and the attorney general of California before becoming only the second Black woman to serve in the Senate.It is this chapter of her career that Harris struggled to reconcile during her own presidential campaign, when confronted by progressives over her record as a prosecutor.But on Wednesday, the Democrats mostly celebrated her historic ascensions. Harris’s presence on stage Wednesday was not preordained.During the first Democratic primary debate last year, Harris confronted Biden over his past opposition to school bussing policies and his working relationship with segregationist senators. The attack wounded Biden, who had centered his campaign around the promise to restore the soul of the nation.After her own presidential campaign fizzled and she dropped out of the race late year, Harris returned to the Senate, where she found her voice in the midst of nationwide protests over racial injustice. She joined protesters on the street and delivered a deeply personal speech on the Senate floor about being Black in America. She sponsored police reform legislation and championed a bill to make lynching a federal crime.Harris’s speech caps the third night of the Democrats’ national convention, which moved almost entirely online due to the coronavirus pandemic. Other speakers include Clinton and Barack Obama, who is expected to warn that Donald Trump poses a threat to American democracy. More

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    Democratic national convention day three: Barack Obama & Kamala Harris lead speeches – watch live

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    Democrats stage the third night of their online convention after formally nominating Joe Biden as the presidential candidate for November’s election. The main speakers on Wednesday include Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi
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    Security guard nominates Joe Biden for president: 'He really saw me'

    What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with the potential future president for five minutes?Security guard Jacquelyn Brittany, 31, (whose last name has been obscured at her request) almost lost her chance to say something when she escorted Joe Biden up an elevator last year. Brittany, who works as a security guard for the New York Times, remained silent for most of the journey, but when prompted by an aide she blurted out: “I love you, I do. You’re like my favorite!”Biden had been on his way to a New York Times editorial board meeting trying to secure the paper’s endorsement. The paper did not endorse him, but Brittany’s endorsement soon eclipsed that fact: the moment was captured on an episode of The Weekly and quickly went viral.On Tuesday, Brittany got to endorse Biden again: she was the first person to nominate him for president during the Democratic national convention.“I take powerful people up on my elevator all the time,” Brittany said in a prerecorded statement for the convention, which was held online this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.“When they get off, they go to their important meetings. Me? I just head back to the lobby. But in the short time I spent with Joe Biden, I could tell he really saw me, that he actually cared, that my life meant something to him,” she continued.Her nomination appeared to nod at some of the major issues this election: the concerns of middle- and working-class America, the Black Lives Matter movement and the coronavirus pandemic.“I knew even when he went into his important meeting, that he’d take my story in there with him. That’s because Joe Biden has room in his heart for more than just himself,” she said.She finished by calling Biden her friend: “We’ve been through a lot and have tough days ahead. But nominating someone like that to be in the White House is a good place to start. Thats why I nominate my friend Joe Biden as the next president of the United States,” she said. More

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    Far-right activist wins Republican primary in Florida

    A far-right social media provocateur whose hate speech got her banned from social media won her Republican primary on Tuesday and will challenge the Democratic representative Lois Frankel for Congress in November.Laura Loomer won praise from Donald Trump early on Wednesday, who tweeted that she had a “great chance”, despite her Florida district being deep blue.Loomer has been a political fixture for decades in the Palm Beach county district, which is firmly Democratic, and has been banned from some social media sites and ride-share sites after anti-Muslim comments.After trying to hoax journalists with Project Veritas, Loomer moved to direct confrontations with public figures in recent years, disrupting interviews and news conferences.Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Medium, PayPal, Venmo, GoFundMe, Uber and Lyft have banned her, but her communications get out through tweets by supporters and other workarounds, the Palm Beach Post reported.Loomer has been a guest on Fox News and alt-right programs after gaining followers by ambushing journalists and politicians in stunts posted online. Her campaign adviser is Karen Giorno, a political strategist who worked for Governor Rick Scott and Trump’s 2016 campaign in Florida.Donors have contributed millions to her campaign.Elsewhere in Florida, Ross Spano, a Republican congressman dogged by ethics investigations, lost his primary challenge on Tuesday, becoming the eighth incumbent House member to be defeated in party primaries this year.Scott Franklin, a former navy pilot, business owner and Lakeland city commissioner, won a contest shaped by the coronavirus pandemic.The US Department of Justice is investigating Spano for alleged campaign finance violations. The House ethics committee was looking into allegations that Spano borrowed more than $100,000 from two friends and then loaned the money to his campaign. But it paused the review when the criminal investigation began.The district sits east of Tampa in central Florida and has traditionally voted Republican. Franklin will face Democrat Alan Cohn, a former television journalist who had raised about $600,000 for the race as of 29 July. More

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    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accuses NBC of spreading misinformation after DNC speech

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

    Congresswoman says NBC tweet about her endorsement of Bernie Sanders ‘sparked an enormous amount of hatred’

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    1:43

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praises Bernie Sanders in DNC speech – video

    Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused NBC News of spreading an “incredible amount of damage and misinformation” overnight on Tuesday after the network construed a routine procedural speech by her as a snub of the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.
    Speaking on the second night of the Democratic national convention (DNC), Ocasio-Cortez was assigned to second the nomination of Senator Bernie Sanders as president. Sanders ended his presidential bid and endorsed Biden last spring, but he was in line for a formal nomination as part of the process of transferring his delegates to Biden.
    Ocasio-Cortez had originally endorsed Sanders for president during the primary season before switching her support to Biden.
    “In a time when millions of people in the United States are looking for deep systemic solutions to our crises of mass evictions, unemployment and lack of healthcare,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a short speech on Tuesday, “en ​espíritu del pueblo​ and out of a love for all people, I hereby second the nomination of Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont for president of the United States of America.”
    Soon after, NBC News sent a tweet that seemed to impute some intrigue to the fact that Ocasio-Cortez had not endorsed Biden for president. Such endorsements are not typically conferred in the convention setting and there was no reason or expectation for Ocasio-Cortez to do so.
    But an NBC News account tweeted: “In one of the shortest speeches of the DNC, Rep Ocasio-Cortez did not endorse Joe Biden: ‘I hereby second the nomination of Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont for president of the United States of America.’”
    Hours later, the tweet was deleted and an editor’s note was appended reading, “This tweet should have included more detail on the nominating process.”
    But Ocasio-Cortez and others were dissatisfied, accusing the news outlet of stoking false controversy at a time when the Democratic party faces a generational divide between leaders like Ocasio-Cortez, a 30-year-old progressive, and Biden, a 77-year-old who won his first Senate race 17 years before she was born.
    Ocasio-Cortez tweeted three times at NBC, starting after midnight:

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
    (@AOC)
    You waited several hours to correct your obvious and blatantly misleading tweet.It sparked an enormous amount of hatred and vitriol, & now the misinfo you created is circulating on other networks.All to generate hate-clicks from a pre-recorded, routine procedural motion. https://t.co/crDlEymgMD

    August 19, 2020

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
    (@AOC)
    This is completely unacceptable, disappointing, and appalling.The DNC shared the procedural purpose of my remarks to media WELL in advance. @NBC knew what was going to happen & that it was routine.How does a headline that malicious & misleading happen w/ that prior knowledge?

    August 19, 2020

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
    (@AOC)
    So @NBCNews how are you going to fix the incredible amount of damage and misinformation that you are now responsible for?Because a 1:15am tweet to slip under the radar after blowing up a totally false and divisive narrative across networks isn’t it. https://t.co/zf6Wqiotvv

    August 19, 2020

    As of this writing NBC News had not released further comment.
    Sanders was also nominated for president at the 2016 Democratic national convention, before his delegates were passed to Hillary Clinton. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard nominated Sanders, and the nomination was seconded by a state campaign director and a spokeswoman for an election watchdog group.

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