US news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      US presidential election updates: Joe Rogan and Beyoncé take centre stage as campaigns make final pitches

      by

      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump centred their attention on Texas on Friday, with both presidential candidates holding events there. In appearances on opposite sides of the staunchly Republican state, the nominees set out their contrasting visions for the country – with the content of their pitches underlining recent polling data which shows the gender gap among voters widening to historic levels.In Houston, Harris was joined by Beyoncé, with the Democratic candidate telling the Texas crowd that they were “ground zero in the fight for reproductive freedom”. She went on to call out Texas for having one of the most restrictive bans in the country, adding “now one in three women lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban”.Meanwhile, an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan in Austin created another opportunity for Trump to highlight the hyper-masculine tone that has defined much of his 2024 White House bid. A Trump victory could hinge on men turning out to vote for the Republican nominee, according to Politico, which highlighted Rogan’s podcast as a good place to reach them. With an audience in the tens of millions, The Joe Rogan Experience has built a massive, mostly male, audience.Here’s what else happened on Friday:Kamala Harris election news

      At the conclusion of her Houston rally, Harris called on voters to cast their ballots early. “Do we trust women? Do we believe in reproductive freedom? Do we believe in the promise of America, and are we ready to fight for it?” Harris said, before concluding by saying, “When we fight, we win.”

      In Houston, Beyoncé was joined by her former Destiny’s Child bandmate, Kelly Rowland, in front of an audience of 30,000 people. “I’m not here as a celebrity. I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said. “Imagine our daughters growing up seeing what’s possible with no ceilings, no limitations.”

      While Beyoncé appealed to a younger crowd, 91-year-old Willie Nelson showed earlier in the event that he still has cachet in his native Texas. “Are we ready to say Madam President?” Nelson asked the crowd before launching into Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys, to which the audience sang along.

      Colin Allred, the Democratic congressman running to unseat Texas senator Ted Cruz, used the rally to denounce his opponent. “I believe in a very different Texas than Ted Cruz does,” Allred said. “My time in Congress, I’ve been the exact opposite of Ted Cruz, because I never forgot where I came from, never forgot the folks who gave me a chance. He went on to lead the crowd in a chant of “You gotta lose your job.”

      Tim Walz delivered a rousing pep talk in Scranton, Pennsylvania, telling voters the race was “going to be tight”. “It’s the fourth quarter. We have got the best team on the field,” Walz said. “We have got to do this one inch at a time, one yard at a time, one door at a time, one call at a time, one dollar at a time, one vote at a time.”
      Donald Trump election news

      Donald Trump ran hours late to a rally in Michigan, causing thousands of his supporters to leave while others huddled in cold weather to await the former president at an outdoor rally in the battleground state. The Republican presidential nominee was delayed by his interview with Rogan, which stretched to three hours. In Michigan, Trump said “we’ve got a war going and she’s out partying,” a reference to Israel’s attacks on Iran.

      Chinese government-linked hackers are believed to have targeted phones used by Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as part of a larger breach of US telecommunications networks, according to a New York Times report. Investigators are working to determine what data, if any, was accessed by the “sophisticated” hack, sources said.
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      There was uproar and outrage among the Washington Post’s current and former staff and other notable figures in the world of American media after the newspaper’s leaders on Friday chose to not endorse any candidate in the US presidential election. The newspaper’s publisher, Will Lewis, announced on Friday that for the first time in over 30 years, the paper’s editorial board would not be endorsing a candidate in this year’s presidential election, nor in future presidential elections. The decision, according to some staffers and reporters, was allegedly made by the Post’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos.

      Russian actors were behind a widely circulated video falsely depicting mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed in Pennsylvania, US officials confirmed. The video had taken off on social media but was debunked within three hours by local election officials and law enforcement after members of the public reported it.

      Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, has called for the defence department to investigate a report that Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Politico reports. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Armed Services Committee, said “Elon Musk, who has billions in contracts that support some of our most sensitive military operations, reportedly has an open line to Putin.” Musk’s spacecraft company SpaceX has multiple contracts with the defence department and Nasa. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the billionaire has had previously unreported discussions with Putin since 2022.

      A fresh group of “lifelong Republican” former aides to Donald Trump added their voices to the chorus of criticism of the Republican nominee, speaking out in support of John Kelly, who earlier this week called his old boss a fascist. “The revelations General Kelly brought forward are disturbing and shocking. But because we know Trump and have worked for and alongside him, we were sadly not surprised by what General Kelly had to say,” a letter from more than a dozen staffers who worked in Trump’s administration says.
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More

    • 200 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘It’s going to be tight’: Tim Walz rallies Pennsylvanians for final stretch in Biden’s home town

      by

      Tim Walz delivered a rousing pep talk in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Friday, encouraging supporters to do everything they can in the next 11 days to elect Kamala Harris as president.Addressing hundreds of voters at the Scranton Cultural Center, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee compared the final days of the neck-and-neck presidential race between Harris and Donald Trump to the fourth quarter of a football game, leaning on his background as a former high school teacher and coach.“It’s going to be tight. It’s the fourth quarter. We have got the best team on the field,” Walz said. “We have got to do this one inch at a time, one yard at a time, one door at a time, one call at a time, one dollar at a time, one vote at a time.”The rally came as polls show a deadlocked race between Harris and Trump, despite hundreds of millions of dollars having been spent in the battleground states. According to the Guardian’s poll tracker, Harris now leads Trump by less than 1 point in Pennsylvania, which could serve as the tipping point state in the electoral college.Walz, the governor of Minnesota, warned supporters in Scranton against the “dangerous complacency” of downplaying the threat that Trump represents to the country.“We are running like everything is on the line because everything is on the line. It is. We feel it. You know it,” Walz said. “[Trump] is telling you what he is going to do, and none of it is good.”Walz specifically reiterated Harris’s message from her CNN town hall on Wednesday, during which she said that Trump’s former advisers were sending a “911 call” to the nation. In an Atlantic article published this week, John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, recounted that the then president expressed a wish for “the kind of generals that Hitler had”. (Trump’s campaign has denied Kelly’s claim.)Walz told voters in Scranton: “Maybe Donald forgot that Hitler and his generals were on the other side of this thing, and it was the sons of Minnesota and Pennsylvania that were carrying the stars and stripes, that kicked his ass and saved this world from fascism.”After cultivating a persona as a “joyful warrior”, Walz has turned increasingly punchy in the final stretch of the presidential race. In Wisconsin on Tuesday, Walz described Elon Musk, who recently appeared alongside Trump at a campaign rally, as a “dipshit”, and the governor repeated the insult on Friday.“I used a midwestern euphemism. I said that he was prancing and dancing around like a dipshit. That is exactly what it was,” Walz said, prompting cheers from the crowd.On a more positive note, Walz took a moment to express his appreciation for Joe Biden, who was born in Scranton and remains a popular figure in the city.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This country owes a huge debt to you and a huge debt to Joe Biden,” Walz said. “[Presidents] have always put this country above themselves, no matter the cost to their personal ambitions or what happened to them. Joe Biden has secured his place in history by upholding that tradition.”The Scranton crowd erupted into cheers of “Joe!” as Walz spoke. Michael McNulty, a 47-year-old voter from Scranton, lives down the street from Biden’s childhood home and expressed his gratitude for the president but said he felt invigorated by the Harris-Walz ticket.“I think there’s a real sense of optimism and hope here. It’s not just against Trump,” McNulty, wearing a Harris-Walz camo hat, said after the Scranton rally. “They’re sharing a vision for the future of the country that is one I want to live in. It’s one that I want to raise my children in and that I’m really proud to go out and contribute to make happen.”Biden won Pennsylvania by 1.2 points in 2020, four years after Trump carried the state by 0.7 points. Although polls show a tied race, McNulty is confident that Harris will win the Keystone state this time around.“We’re going to push this over the finish line here for the Harris-Walz ticket,” he said. “PA is going to deliver, and we’re going to have Madame President.” More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump – a timeline

      by

      A former model has accused Donald Trump of groping and sexually touching her in 1993, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between him and Jeffrey Epstein, who she claims introduced them.Stacey Williams, who was a model in the 1990s, said she first met Trump in 1992 after being introduced by Epstein. Williams said that while on a walk with Epstein in early 1993, he suggested they stop by Trump Tower. Soon after they arrived, she alleges, Trump pulled her toward him and started groping her, putting his hands “all over my breasts”, waist and her buttocks. Williams said she froze and that she believed she saw the men smiling at each other.A Trump spokesperson has denied the allegations, calling them politically motivated and “unequivocally false”.The allegation of groping and unwanted sexual touching follows a well-documented pattern of behavior by Trump. This is a list of many of the allegations made against the former president. Trump has denied all the claims:2013Cassandra SearlesAge: 24, Location: Miss USA 2013 pageant
      “He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room.”
      The former Miss Washington 2013 alleged in a comment on Facebook that Trump repeatedly grabbed her buttocks and invited her to his hotel room.Source: Facebook, via Yahoo News2007Summer ZervosAge: Early 30s, Location: Trump Tower and a hotel in Los Angeles
      “He then grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast.”
      The former contestant on The Apprentice has accused Trump of groping and kissing her on two occasions. She settled a defamation suit against Trump without compensation in 2021.Source: Gloria Allred press event2006Ninni LaaksonenAge: 20, Location: Outside the Ed Sullivan Theater before an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman
      “Trump stood right next to me and suddenly he squeezed my butt.”
      The former Miss Finland alleges Trump grabbed her buttocks during a photoshoot before an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.Laaksonen said: “Somebody told me there that Trump liked me because I looked like Melania when she was younger. It left me disgusted.”Source: Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat2006Jessica DrakeAge: 32, Location: A golf tournament in Lake Tahoe
      “When we entered the room he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each of us on the lips without asking for permission.”
      Drake alleges Trump forcibly kissed her and two female friends on the lips and when rebuffed, pursued her, asking: “How much?”Source: Gloria Allred press event2006Samantha HolveyAge: 20, Location: Miss USA 2006 pageant
      “He would step in front of each girl and look you over from head to toe like we were just meat, we were just sexual objects, that we were not people.”
      The former Miss North Carolina alleges Trump would barge into the pageant dressing room and inspected women like “meat”.Source: CNN2005Rachel CrooksAge: 22, Location: Outside the elevator in Trump Tower
      “[Trump] kissed me directly on the mouth.”
      Crooks, then a receptionist at real estate firm Bayrock Group, whose offices are in Trump Tower, said she introduced herself to Trump outside the building’s elevator one morning. Trump began kissing her cheeks, and then “kissed me directly on the mouth”, she said.“It was so inappropriate … I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that,” said Crooks.Source: New York Times2005Natasha StoynoffAge: 40, Location: A closed-door room in Mar-a-Lago
      “I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.”
      Stoynoff alleges Trump forcibly kissed her. As a People Magazine reporter, Stoynoff said she was sent to Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump for a story about his first wedding anniversary with Melania, where he forced himself on to her.“We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat,” wrote Stoynoff.Source: People2005Jennifer MurphyAge: 26, Location: Outside an elevator after an interview
      “I was thinking ‘Oh, he’s going to hug me’, but when he pulled my face in and gave me a smooch. I was like ‘Oh – kay.’”
      The former contestant on The Apprentice alleges Trump forcibly kissed her after a job interview.Source: Grazia magazine2003Melinda McGillivrayAge: 23, Location: At Mar-a-Lago during a concert by Ray Charles
      “All of a sudden I felt a grab, a little nudge. I think it’s Ken’s camera bag, that was my first instinct. I turn around and there’s Donald. He sort of looked away quickly. I quickly turned back, facing Ray Charles, and I’m stunned.”
      McGillivray alleges Trump grabbed her buttock in a pavilion behind the main house in the middle of a group of people. Ken Davidoff, who was Mar-a-Lago’s official photographer, said he remembered McGillivray telling him on the night: “Donald just grabbed my ass!”Source: Palm Beach Post2001Tasha DixonAge: 19, Location: Backstage at the 2001 Miss USA pageant
      “Our first introduction to him was when we were at the dress rehearsal and half-naked changing into our bikinis.”
      The former Miss Arizona alleges Trump entered dressing rooms while her fellow contestants were “half-naked”.Source: CBS NewsEarly 2000sKaren JohnsonAge: Unknown, Location: Mar-a-Lago
      “I was grabbed and pulled behind a tapestry, and it was him. And I’m a tall girl and I had six-inch heels on, and I still remember looking up at him. And he’s strong, and he just kissed me. I was so scared because of who he was.”
      The former dancer has claimed she was grabbed by Trump during a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in the early 2000s, when he allegedly groped and forcibly kissed her. Johnson, in an interview for a 2019 book, alleged the assault happened just out of sight from other guests, including her husband, and that, just like his Access Hollywood tape boast that his fame allowed him to get away with grabbing women “by the pussy” without consent, he did the same to her.Source: Esquire2000Bridget SullivanAge: 19, Location: Backstage at the 2000 Miss USA pageant
      “The time that he walked through the dressing rooms was really shocking. We were all naked.”
      The former Miss New Hampshire alleges Trump walked in to the dressing room unannounced while contestants were naked.Source: BuzzFeed1998Karena VirginiaAge: 27, Location: Waiting for a car after the US Open in New York
      “Then his hand touched the right side of my breast. I was in shock.”
      Virginia alleges Trump grabbed her arm and touched her breast.Source: Gloria Allred press event1997Amy DorrisAge: 24, Location: US Open
      “He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything. I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it.”
      The former model accused Trump of sexually assaulting her at the US Open tennis tournament, accosting her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the event in New York on 5 September 1997. She spoke to the Guardian in 2020 from her home in Florida and provided evidence to support her account, including corroborators, her ticket to the US Open and photos of her sitting next to Trump at the Open. He was 51 at the time and married to his second wife, Marla Maples.Source: The Guardian1997Cathy HellerAge: 44, Location: A Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago
      “He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips.”
      Heller alleges Trump forcibly kissed her on the lips in public at a Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago when, she said, she met Trump and he immediately kissed her on the lips, fighting her when she pulled away.“He was pissed. He couldn’t believe a woman would pass up the opportunity,” she said.Source: The Guardian1997Temple TaggartAge: 21 Location: A 1997 Miss USA pageant event and in Trump Tower
      “He kissed me directly on the lips. I thought, ‘Oh my God, gross.’ He was married to Marla Maples at the time.”
      The former Miss Utah alleged Trump forcibly kissed her on the mouth on two occasions, including the first time she met him.Trump also kissed her on the mouth during a meeting at Trump Tower, she claimed, where he recommended the she lie about her age to advance her career.Source: The New York Times1997Mariah BilladoAge: 18, Location: Backstage at the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant
      “I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s a man in here.’”
      The former Miss Vermont Teen USA and other unnamed accusers allege Trump walked into the dressing room unannounced while teen beauty queens aged 15 to 19 were naked.Source: Washington Post1996 Lisa Boyne Age: 25, Location: A New York restaurant
      “[Trump] stuck his head right underneath their skirts.”
      Boyne alleges Trump insisted the female models walk across the table and that he looked up their skirts, commenting on whether they were wearing underwear and their genitalia.Source: The Huffington PostEither 1995 or 1996E Jean CarrollAge: 52, Location: Bergdorf Goodman, New York City
      “He leaned down and pulled down my tights.” She said: “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear I didn’t want anything else to happen.”
      A New York jury found Trump sexually abused the advice columnist in a New York department store changing room 27 years ago. The verdict in May 2023 for the first time legally branded a former US president as a sexual predator. But as it is the result of a civil not criminal case, the only legal sanction Trump faces is financial.Carroll testified in court, telling jurors: “He leaned down and pulled down my tights.” She said “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear I didn’t want anything else to happen.”Source: The Guardian1993Stacey WilliamsAge: in her twenties, Location: Trump Tower
      “He pulled me into him and started groping me, he put his hands all over my breasts, my waist, my butt and I froze … deeply confused … his hands were moving all over me.”
      The former model spoke to the Guardian about how she met Trump through the late sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, whom she was dating at the time, and has accused the former president of groping and sexually touching her in an incident in Trump Tower, his office and residence complex on New York’s Fifth Avenue, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.Source: The Guardian1993Jill HarthAge: early 30s, Location: One of the children’s bedrooms at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate
      “He pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again.”
      A former business partner, Harth alleges Trump forcibly kissed her on the lips and groped her breasts and grabbed her genitals, in what she referred to in a 1997 lawsuit as “attempted rape”. On a previous occasion, she alleges, he groped her under the table during dinner with colleagues at the Plaza Hotel.Harth later dropped the lawsuit after settling with Trump in a separate breach of contract case, according to the AP.Source: The GuardianEarly 1990s Kristin AndersonAge: Early 20s, Location: China Club, a Manhattan nightclub
      “He did touch my vagina through my underwear.”
      Anderson alleges Trump put his hand up her skirt and touched her genitals through her underwear.Source: The Washington Post1989Ivana TrumpAge: 40, Location: The master bedroom of the Trump Tower triplex
      “I referred to this as a ‘rape’, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
      In a divorce deposition, Trump’s first wife used “rape” to describe an incident that transpired between them. After a settlement was reached, and the rape allegation became public in a 1993 book, Ivana softened the claim. As part of her nondisclosure agreement, she was not allowed to discuss her marriage to Trump without his permission.Source: Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J Trump1980sJessica LeedsAge: 38, Location: A first-class cabin of a plane
      ‘He was like an octopus … His hands were everywhere’
      Leeds alleges Trump groped grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.Source: The New York Times More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Virginia must restore voter eligibility to more than 1,600 after US judge ruling

      by

      Virginia must restore more than 1,600 people to the voter rolls after a federal judge ruled on Friday that the state had illegally removed them.The US district judge Patricia Giles granted an injunction request brought against Virginia election officials by the justice department, which claimed the voter registrations were wrongly canceled during a 90-day quiet period ahead of the November election that restricts states from making large-scale changes to their voter rolls.“The ruling is a big victory. All of the eligible voters who were wrongfully purged from the voter rolls will now be able to cast their ballots,” said Ryan Snow, a lawyer with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups that sued the state over the policy. “The judge stopped the outrageous mass purge of eligible voters in Virginia.The voters had been flagged for removal after Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, issued an executive order on 7 August requiring election officials to check voter rolls against DMV records on a daily basis for non-citizens. Voting rights groups have long warned that such comparisons are an unreliable way to check for citizenship because someone can become a naturalized citizen after getting their driver’s license or may accidentally check the wrong box at the motor vehicles department.Thomas Sanford, an attorney with the Virginia attorney general’s office, told the judge at the conclusion of Friday’s hearing that the state intended to appeal her ruling.The justice department and private groups, including the League of Women Voters, said many of the 1,600 voters whose registrations were canceled were in fact citizens whose registrations were canceled because of bureaucratic errors or simple mistakes like a mischecked box on a form.Justice department lawyer Sejal Jhaveri said during an all-day injunction hearing on Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, that’s precisely why federal law prevents states from implementing systematic changes to the voter rolls in the 90 days before an election, “to prevent the harm of having eligible voters removed in a period where it’s hard to remedy”.Giles said on Friday that the state was not completely prohibited from removing non-citizens from the voting rolls during the 90-day quiet period, but that it must do so on an individualized basis rather than the automated, systematic program employed by the state.State officials argued unsuccessfully that the canceled registrations followed careful procedures that targeted people who explicitly identified themselves as non-citizens to the Department of Motor Vehicles.Charles Cooper, a lawyer for the state, said during arguments on Thursday that the federal law was never intended to provide protections to non-citizens, who by definition cannot vote in federal elections.“Congress couldn’t possibly have intended to prevent the removal … of persons who were never eligible to vote in the first place,” Cooper argued.The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit, though, said that many people are wrongly identified as non-citizens by the DMV simply by checking the wrong box on a form. They were unable to identify exactly how many of the 1,600 purged voters are in fact citizens – Virginia only identified this week the names and addresses of the affected individuals in response to a court order – but provided anecdotal evidence of individuals whose registrations were wrongly canceled.Cooper acknowledged that some of the 1,600 voters identified by the state as non-citizens may well be citizens, but he said restoring all of them to the rolls means that in all likelihood, “there’s going to hundreds of non-citizens back on those rolls. If a non-citizen votes, it cancels out a legal vote. And that is a harm,” he said.He also said that with the election less than two weeks away, it was too late to impose the burden of restoring registrations on busy election workers, and said the plaintiffs who filed their lawsuits roughly two weeks ago should have taken action sooner.State officials said any voter identified as a non-citizen was notified and given two weeks to dispute their disqualification before being removed. If they returned a form attesting to their citizenship, their registration would not be canceled.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn media interviews, Youngkin has questioned the justice department’s motives for filing the lawsuit.“How can I as a governor allow non-citizens to be on the voter roll?” Youngkin asked rhetorically during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.Donald Trump, who is already spreading baseless claims about fraud, also weighed in on the case after the justice department filed a lawsuit to stop the removals.“Sleepy Joe Biden and Comrade Kamala Harris ridiculously accuse me of wanting to ‘weaponize’ the Justice Department, when they have done all of the weaponizing. Now, their truly Weaponized Department of ‘Injustice,’ and a Judge (appointed by Joe), have ORDERED the Great Commonwealth of Virginia to PUT NON-CITIZEN VOTERS BACK ON THE ROLLS,” he said, despite evidence that several of those affected were actually citizens.Jason Miyares, Virginia’s Republican attorney general, issued a statement after Friday’s hearing, criticizing the ruling.“It should never be illegal to remove an illegal voter,” he said. “Yet, today a Court – urged by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice – ordered Virginia to put the names of non-citizens back on the voter rolls, mere days before a presidential election. The Department of Justice pulled this shameful, politically motivated stunt 25 days before Election Day, challenging a Virginia process signed into law 18 years ago by a Democrat governor and approved by the Department of Justice in 2006.”Nearly 6 million Virginians are registered to vote.A similar lawsuit was filed in Alabama, and a federal judge there last week ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible non-citizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Chinese believed to have targeted Trump’s and Vance’s phones in US telecommunications breach

      by

      Chinese government-linked hackers are believed to have targeted phones used by Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as part of a larger breach of US telecommunications networks, according to a New York Times report.The Trump campaign was informed this week that the phone numbers of the Republican presidential and vice-presidential nominee were among those targeted during a breach of the Verizon network, the paper said, citing sources.Investigators are working to determine what data, if any, was accessed by the “sophisticated” hack, the sources said. Other current and former government officials were also targeted, according to the report.The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed an investigation was under way into the “unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China”. It did not name the Trump campaign in the statement.“After the FBI identified specific malicious activity targeting the sector, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) immediately notified affected companies, rendered technical assistance, and rapidly shared information to assist other potential victims,” the agency said.The Trump campaign did not directly address whether the phones used by Trump and Vance had been targeted.In a statement, a Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, criticized the White House and Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, and sought to blame them for allowing a foreign adversary to target the campaign, the Times reported.A Wall Street Journal report last month said a cyber-attack linked to the Chinese government had infiltrated multiple US telecommunications firms and may have gained access to systems used by the federal government in court-approved wiretapping efforts.The hackers accessed at least three telecommunication companies – AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies – in what may have been an attempt to find sensitive information related to national security, according to the report.The Trump campaign earlier this year revealed it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US justice department unsealed criminal charges in September against three members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps suspected of hacking the Trump campaign.Justice department officials said hackers were trying to undermine Trump’s campaign and intended to sow discord, exploit divisions within American society and potentially influence the outcome of the 5 November election.With the election under two weeks away, Trump and Kamala Harris are locked in a tight race. In both national head-to-head polls and surveys in the crucial swing states where the election will be decided, the pair seem almost deadlocked. More

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      The Washington Post and LA Times refused to endorse a candidate. Why? | Margaret Sullivan

      by

      The choice for president has seldom been starker.On one side is Donald Trump, a felonious and twice-impeached conman, raring to finish off the job of dismantling American democracy. On the other is Kamala Harris, a capable and experienced leader who stands for traditional democratic principles.Nevertheless – and shockingly – the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have decided to sit this one out. Both major news organizations, each owned by a billionaire, announced this week that their editorial boards would not make a presidential endorsement, despite their decades-long traditions of doing so.There’s no other way to see this other than as an appalling display of cowardice and a dereliction of their public duty.At the Los Angeles Times, the decision rests clearly with Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the ailing paper in 2018, raising great hopes of a resurgence there.At the Post (where I was the media columnist from 2016 to 2022), the editorial page editor David Shipley said he owned the decision, but it clearly came from above – specifically from the publisher, Will Lewis, the veteran of Rupert Murdoch’s media properties, hand-picked last year by the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos. Was Bezos himself the author of this abhorrent decision? Maybe not, but it could not have come as a surprise.All of this may look like nonpartisan neutrality, or be intended to, but it’s far from that. For one thing, it’s a shameful smackdown of both papers’ reporting and opinion-writing staffs who have done important work exposing Trump’s dangers for many years.It’s also a strong statement of preference. The papers’ leaders have made it clear that they either want Trump (who is, after all, a boon to large personal fortunes) or that they don’t wish to risk the ex-president’s wrath and retribution if he wins. If the latter was a factor, it’s based on a shortsighted judgment, since Trump has been a hazard to press rights and would only be emboldened in a second term.“Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage,” the wrote former Washington Post editor Marty Baron on Friday on X, blasting the Post’s decision. He predicted that Trump would see this as an invitation to try further to intimidate Bezos, a dynamic detailed in Baron’s 2023 book Collision of Power.The editorials editor at the Los Angeles Times, Mariel Garza, resigned this week over the owner’s decision to kill off the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Harris.“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza told Columbia Journalism Review’s editor, Sewell Chan. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”Others, including a Pulitzer prize-winning editorial writer at the California paper, followed her principled lead. The Washington Post editor at large Robert Kagan resigned in protest, too. They do so at considerable personal cost, since there are so few similar positions in today’s financially troubled media industry.Some news organizations upheld their duty and remained true to their mission.The New York Times endorsed Harris last month, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president”, and writing that Trump “has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest”.The Guardian, too, strongly endorsed Harris, saying she would “unlock democracy’s potential, not give in to its flaws”, and calling Trump a “transactional and corrupting politician”.Meanwhile, the Murdoch-controlled New York Post has endorsed Trump. Although that decision lacks a moral core, it’s far from surprising.But the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post decisions are, in their way, far worse.They constitute “an abdication”, said Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. (I run an ethics center and teach there.)The refusal to endorse, he told me, “tacitly equalizes two wildly distinct candidates, one of whom has tried to overturn a presidential election and one of whom has not”.As for the message this refusal sends to the public? It’s ugly.Readers will reasonably conclude that the newspapers were intimidated. And people will fairly question, Cobb said, when else they “have chosen expediency over courage”.This is no moment to stand at the sidelines – shrugging, speechless and self-interested.With the most consequential election of the modern era only days away, the silence is deafening.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Pennsylvania officials investigating 2,500 voter registrations for fraud

      by

      Officials in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, are investigating about 2,500 voter registrations after election workers discovered signs that they may be fraudulent.The registrations under investigation were dropped off in two batches just before Pennsylvania’s voter-registration deadline on Monday. Election workers contacted the district attorney’s office after they noticed several suspicious applications that contained the same handwriting, signatures for voters that didn’t match what was on file, and inaccurate personal identifier information, including names, addresses, social security and driver’s license numbers, said Heather Adams, the district attorney, during a press conference on Friday.Investigators also spoke with voters who said they had not requested or filled out the forms that were turned in, she said.The announcement comes as voting is already under way in Pennsylvania, a must-win battleground state for both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris this election. Lancaster county, known for its Amish population, voted for Trump by nearly 16 points in 2020.Adams did not say how many applications her office had reviewed so far, but said that 60% of them had been fraudulent. She acknowledged that there were some legitimate applications in the batch and said those registrations would be processed.The effort appears to be associated with a large-scale canvassing group – she did not identify which one – and said that two other counties in the state are investigating a similar issue. The canvassers were paid, a common practice. Officials did not say whether there was a partisan breakdown in the applications.“It really shouldn’t matter. If there’s voters on the books that shouldn’t be, it increases the chance that we’re gonna have voter fraud,” Williams said.The announcement comes days after the county was accused of wrongfully holding up voter-registration applications from students. More

    • 225 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the US election and foreign policy: the world can’t afford Trump again | Editorial

      by

      This spring Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, warned bluntly that Europe should prepare itself for potential war: “Maybe, depending on who is ruling in Washington, we cannot rely on the American support and on the American capacity to protect us,” he said. Weeks earlier, Donald Trump had remarked that he would encourage Russia to attack Nato countries who paid too little.Japanese defence spending has soared. In South Korea, there are growing calls for an independent nuclear deterrent. America’s allies are nervous as they contemplate next month’s election. Autocrats, upon whom Mr Trump lavishes praise, are hopeful. The votes of tens of thousands of Americans in battleground states are likely to prove profoundly consequential for the rest of the world.The assumption is that a Trump victory would be felt first and hardest by Ukraine. Whatever his precise relationship with Vladimir Putin, with its cosy phone calls, the former president’s sympathies are clear. He blamed Volodymyr Zelenskyy for starting the war with Russia. Mr Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has urged an immediate end to assistance.On the Middle East, Kamala Harris has been more sympathetic to Palestinians and critical of Israel than Joe Biden, but there is no sign yet that she differs on policy. The dramatic erosion of Arab American support does not appear to have prompted a long‑overdue reconsideration of arms shipments to Israel. Yet Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is thought to eagerly anticipate the return of a president who rewarded and encouraged the Israeli right. Mr Trump pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, with which Tehran was complying – though at least his aversion to “endless wars” held him back from a strike on Iran. Would that hold now?Mr Trump’s presidency made the world more dangerous. Since his blustering mishandling of Kim Jong-un, North Korea has accelerated its nuclear programme and moved closer to China and Russia.The Biden administration did not reject all aspects of Mr Trump’s tenure. Hawkishness on China is one of the few bipartisan issues left. But the White House’s targeted approach is in contrast to Mr Trump’s crude economic nationalism – threatening 60% tariffs on Chinese products and up to 20% on all imports – which could spark a global trade war. He initially wooed Taiwan, but now says it should pay the US for its defence. That reflects a nakedly short-termist, transactional approach to foreign policy – with domestic political needs the priority.The Democrats – and Ms Harris – have tacked right on immigration, but Mr Trump has snatched infants from their parents and now promises mass deportations. His fascistic language about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America legitimised and spread racism. He has emboldened misogynists, the far right and strongmen internationally.Ms Harris is not thought to be as emotionally attached to Israel or Europe as her boss, nor to share his vision of a civilisational clash between democracies and their foes. She says she would “stand strong” with Ukraine, but might be somewhat more inclined than Mr Biden to push for a deal with Russia. While most expect there would be broad continuity, it is impossible to predict exactly what a candidate will do once in office.We can be sure, however, that while Ms Harris would not always get it right on foreign policy, she would bring stability, responsibility and dedication – in contrast to Mr Trump’s reckless, erratic, fact-free and narcissistic approach. And while climate action under her would still fall short of what is needed, her rival would deliberately wreck existing global accords. For all these reasons, the world cannot afford a second Trump administration. More