Meanwhile, in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, Kamala Harris slammed Trump’s performance at the Univision town hall yesterday, when he referred to 6 January 2021, when rioters stormed the capitol and injured over 140 police officers, “a day of love”.“The American people are exhausted with his gaslighting. Enough. We are ready to turn the page. We’re done,” she said.During the Univision town hall, a Republican voter told Trump the former president had lost his vote due to his response to the January 6 riots and the coronavirus pandemic. Trump responded: “Nothing done wrong at all.”“There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns,” he said. “And when I say we, these are people that walked down – this was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love.”
Joe Biden has released a statement on Israel’s killing of Hamas’s chief Yahya Sinwar. In his statement, Biden called the killing a “good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world,” adding that he planned to speak to Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders.
Kamala Harris also commented on Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar while on the campaign trail in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “This moment gives us an opportunity to end the war in Gaza,” the US vice-president and Democratic nominee for president in this election, said.
Donald Trump told the audience at the Univision town hall last night that “we can’t destroy our country” in order to save the planet from the climate crisis. Answering a question from a veteran construction worker, who had seen first-hand “the devastating impacts of climate change”, whether he still believed global warming was a hoax, Trump launched into a lengthy tirade.
At a rally in Durham, North Carolina, Tim Walz delivered a fiery criticism of Donald Trump.“When Trump is talking about bringing back stop-and-frisk policies, those are harassment that went on to the Black community, specifically Black males, and put a disproportionate number of them into incarceration,” he told supporters.
Biden announced today further student debt relief for public servants – amounting to about $4.5bn. The action affects about 60,000 borrowers across the country, said the White House, touting the efforts of the US president and Harris to improve loan forgiveness since taking office.
Surrogates for the Walz/Harris campaign, meanwhile, are questioning Trump’s cognitive abilities, pointing to his recent 40-minute musical interlude at a town hall where he was meant to be answering voters’ questions.Here’s Mark Cuban, the billionaire executive and TV personality who appeared alongside Harris in Wisconsin:Bill Clinton, who appeared with Walz in North Carolina, quipped: “Heck, I’m only two months younger than Donald Trump. But the good news for you is I will not spend 30 minutes swaying back and forth to music.”Meanwhile, in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, Kamala Harris slammed Trump’s performance at the Univision town hall yesterday, when he referred to 6 January 2021, when rioters stormed the capitol and injured over 140 police officers, “a day of love”.“The American people are exhausted with his gaslighting. Enough. We are ready to turn the page. We’re done,” she said.During the Univision town hall, a Republican voter told Trump the former president had lost his vote due to his response to the January 6 riots and the coronavirus pandemic. Trump responded: “Nothing done wrong at all.”“There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns,” he said. “And when I say we, these are people that walked down – this was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love.”At a rally in Durham, North Carolina, Tim Walz delivered a fiery criticism of Donald Trump.“When Trump is talking about bringing back stop-and-frisk policies, those are harassment that went on to the Black community, specifically Black males, and put a disproportionate number of them into incarceration,” he told supporters.Walz also slammed the idea that Trump “understood” the needs of voters. “If any of our relatives … tells us ‘Donald Trump understands us’, that’s bullshit. He does not understand us. He does not understand you,” Walz said, noting that the former president didn’t “give a damn” if social security checks cleared.He appeared at the rally alongside former president Bill Clinton.Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump’s return to the White House after the former president has repeated threats that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centers.Trump has proposed deploying the military inside major cities largely run by Democrats to deal with protesters or to crush criminal gangs. He has threatened to dispatch large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people in so-called “sanctuary” cities.He also aims to obliterate the progressive criminal justice policies of left-leaning prosecutors.“In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of law and order … I will not hesitate to send in federal assets including the national guard until safety is restored,” Trump says in the campaign platform for his bid to become the 47th US president, Agenda47.Trump provoked uproar earlier this week when he called for US armed forces to be deployed against his political rivals – “the enemy within” – on election day next month. But his plans to use national guard troops and military personnel as a means to attack those he sees as his opponents go much wider than that, spanning entire cities with Democratic leadership.Mayors and prosecutors in several US cities are collaborating over strategies to minimize the fallout. Levar Stoney, the Democratic mayor of Richmond, Virginia, a city of more than 220,000, said he was aware how difficult it would be to resist Trump given the enormous powers at a president’s disposal.“It’s very difficult to autocrat-proof your city,” he said. “But you have to have backstops, and mayors are working in coalition to ensure they can be a backstop against these divisive policies.”Read more:Newly unsealed divorce records show Arizona congressman Ruben Gallego, the Democratic nominee for an open Senate seat, petitioned a court to end his marriage with Kate Gallego, Phoenix’s mayor, just before she gave birth to their son. But it contained none of the potentially damaging details conservatives had hoped to uncover.Gallego’s opponent, Kari Lake, has long alluded to the filings, making insinuations that their contents would tarnish his public persona. Ahead of the release, one of her advisers sought to distance the campaign from the effort to unseal the documents, an effort brought by the conservative outlet, Washington Free Beacon.The couple split in 2016 after six years of marriage. The congressman has previously said that his post-traumatic stress disorder from serving in Iraq contributed to the demise of their marriage.The Gallegos had fought the release, expressing concern that the public disclosure could endanger their son, Michael. The effort to keep the records sealed fanned rightwing speculation about what was in them.Kate Gallego has endorsed her husband’s Senate bid.In June, Yavapai superior court judge John Napper, who originally presided over the Free Beacon’s case, tempered expectations well in advance, according to a video obtained by 12 News.“Everyone’s going to be rather deflated with the results of it,” Napper said, adding: “I’m not a politician, and maybe this will be very, very important information but this looks to me like one of the most garden-variety divorce files I have ever seen.”The US has granted temporary protected status to Lebanese nationals amid Israel’s deadly war on the country. The Guardian’s Michael Sainato reports:The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a new “temporary protected status” allowing Lebanese nationals in the US to remain in the country and apply for work permits, as the “ongoing armed conflict” in Lebanon continues with Israel expanding its invasion and its attacks on Hezbollah.As of July 2024, around 11,500 Lebanese nationals were believed to be in the US on nonimmigrant visas for business, tourism, temporary work or other opportunities, with California and Michigan hosting the most. About 11,000 of them will probably now be eligible to apply for temporary protected status, as well as for deferred enforced departure – in other words, protection from deportation. An additional 1,740 students from Lebanon may also be eligible for special student relief.For the full story, click here:The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has also weighed in on Israel’s killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, saying in a statement on Thursday:
Sinwar has the blood of countless innocents in Israel and Gaza on his hands and the world is a much better place without him …
Sinwar in his beliefs and actions have caused so much pain to the Israeli and Palestinian people; and I pray that his elimination from the scene will clear a path to urgently and immediately bring home all the hostages – including the seven Americans – and negotiate an end to hostilities that will ensure the security of the Israeli people and provide full humanitarian relief and a new path forward for the people of Gaza.
Schumer made no mention of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.The US will try to push forward a ceasefire and hostage-release proposal following Israel’s killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, Reuters reports.Speaking during a press briefing on Thursday, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said: “Over the past few weeks, there have been no negotiations for an end to the war because Sinwar has refused to negotiate.”Joe Biden has released a statement on Israel’s killing of Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar.In his statement, Biden called the killing a “good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world”.Biden went on to add, “As the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Sinwar was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, and citizens from over 30 countries.”“Over 1,200 people were killed on that day, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, including 46 Americans. More than 250 were taken hostage, with 101 still missing. That number includes seven Americans, four of whom are believed to still be alive and held by Hamas terrorists. Sinwar is the man most responsible for this, and for so much of what followed,” Biden continued in his statement.He added that he will be speaking soon with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to “discuss the pathway for bringing the hostages home to their families, and for ending this war once and for all, which has caused so much devastation to innocent people.”Notably, Biden made no mention of the 42,400 Palestinians – including healthcare workers and journalists – that Israeli forces killed since October or the nearly 2 million survivors who Israeli forces have forcibly displaced across the narrow strip.Moments ago, Kamala Harris stepped up to a podium while on the election trail in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and commented on Israel’s stating that it killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, in a battle in Gaza today.“This moment gives us an opportunity to end the war in Gaza,” the US vice-president and Democratic nominee for president in this election, said.She said “justice has been served” over the reported killing of the leader of the Islamist militants that control Gaza.Harris reiterated the administration’s stance that “Israel has the right to defend itself and called for the remaining hostages held by Hamas since it led an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to be released.But she added that “the suffering must end” in Gaza and said it was “time for the day after to begin without Hamas in power”. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not pledged a ceasefire.We are live blogging all the developments in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel, here.In the Middle East, the government of Israel has announced its military forces have killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, in a battle in Gaza. This comes less than three weeks after Israel also killed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, during air strikes on the outskirts of Beirut in Lebanon.Confirmation on Sinwar’s death is awaited from the Palestinian side. If verified that means the heads of Iran’s two most powerful proxy forces opposed to Israel have been wiped out. We are following all the developments on this live in our international blog and you can find all that news here.Hello, US politics blog readers, it’s another lively day on the campaign trail with less than three weeks to go before the election. There’s a lot more news to come and we’ll keep up with developments as they happen.Here’s where things stand:
Donald Trump told the audience at the Univision town hall last night that “we can’t destroy our country” in order to save the planet from the climate crisis. Answering a question from a veteran construction worker, who had seen first-hand “the devastating impacts of climate change”, whether he still believed global warming was a hoax, Trump launched into a lengthy tirade.
Kamala Harris posted that “Donald Trump incited an attack on our nation’s democracy because he didn’t like the outcome of the election. If January 6 [2021] was a bridge too far, there is a place for you in our campaign.” This is further outreach from the Democratic nominee for president herself, including to hammer home facts about the insurrection at the US Capitol that day. It came a day after she did an interview with rightwing Fox News and led a rally attended by more than 100 prominent Republicans.
Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, will campaign in Durham and Winston-Salem in North Carolina with Common today, to mark the first day of early voting in that important swing state. The Emmy-winning rapper and voting rights activist is to join Walz in Winston-Salem, in a push to get out the vote.
Harris is on a swing through two vital “blue wall” states today, with campaign stops including Milwaukee, La Crosse and Green Bay in Wisconsin, then heading to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Joe Biden announced today further student debt relief for public servants – amounting to about $4.5bn. The action affects about 60,000 borrowers across the country, said the White House, touting the efforts of the US president and Harris, his vice-president and successor as presidential nominee, to improve loan forgiveness since taking office. More
