World news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Federal Reserve increases interest rates by a quarter point to 16-year high – as it happened

      by

      From 6h agoThe Federal Reserve is set to raise interest rates this afternoon, with an announcement coming at 2pm ET from the central bank after its most recent board meeting. Analysts expect the Fed will raise rates by a quarter point, which will bring rates up to 5% to 5.25%. This would be the central bank’s 10th interest rate increase since March 2022, when rates were at zero.The interest rate increase will come at what in hindsight may seem like an inflection point for the economy. Inflation is down, consumer spending has flattened and growth in the job market is starting to slow down, but Fed officials, especially Fed chair Jerome Powell, have been stringent on getting inflation down to their target of 2%. Inflation in March was 5%, the lowest it’s been since 2021, but still quite far from 2%.Analysts and economists will be closely watching Powell’s press conference at 2.30pm, where he will discuss the direction Fed staff see the economy going, giving hints as to whether even more interest rate hikes are to come or whether the Fed will end its rate-hike campaign.Here’s a quick summary of everything that’s happened today:
      The Federal Reserve increased interest rates by a quarter point, bringing rates up to 5% to 5.25%. Fed chair Jerome Powell said that Fed officials no longer anticipate more hikes, but will monitor economic data to see if they are necessary in coming months. The stock market dipped slightly after the Fed’s announcement.
      The debate over the debt ceiling continued today, with news that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell will keep himself out of the specific of negotiating talks and hints that senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are breaking from Dems and looking to take Senate negotiations seriously.
      2024 is already gearing up: Joe Biden released his second TV ad since launching his campaign last week, while US rep. Colin Allred of Texas announced his bid to unseat Texas senator Ted Cruz. In Nevada, Jim Marchant, an election denier and staunch supporter of Donald Trump, also announced a Senate big.
      We’ll be closing this blog for today. Thanks for reading.Democratic senator Raphael Warnock from Georgia said that his two young kids were on lockdown at school because of the shooting in midtown Atlanta.“They’re there. I’m here, hoping and praying they’re safe,” he said on the Senate floor. “Thoughts and prayers are not enough.”One person has been confirmed dead and at least four injured after a gunman opened fire in a building in midtown around 12.30pm ET. Police said they are still searching for a suspect.The Washington Post just published a cheery report that the White House and lawmakers on Capitol Hill technically have just six working days together before the US government potentially defaults on its debt on 1 June.With the House and Senate in session on different days, and Biden making international trips for the G7 summit in Japan and another “Quad” meeting with Australia, Japan and India in Australia, the legislative and executive branches are scheduled to have just six more days together to figure out the debt ceiling.Of course, negotiations can take place even when a chamber is not in session, but the precariousness of negotiations and the closeness of default makes the timing a tad inconvenient.Talking about the fallout of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said that it seems the worst of the crisis is over.“The severe period of stress, those have now all been resolved and all the depositors have been protected,” he said, adding that JPMorgan’s acquisition of First Republic bank marked the end of the worst of it all.Asked about lessons that he learned from the crisis, he noted that there needs to be stronger regulation and supervision, but declined to offer any specifics as he has tasked Fed vice chair Michael Barr with drafting specific policy proposals.“I am not aware of anybody thinking [the collapse] could happen so quickly,” Powell said. “Now that we know that was possible… it will be up to vice chair Barr to design ways to address that.”Today’s Federal Reserve interest rate hike is its second quarter-point hike in a row, after a series of half- and three-quarter point hikes over the last year. Fed chair Jerome Powell said at his press conference this afternoon that “slowing down was the right move”.“I think it’s enabled us to see more data and it will continue to do so. We have to always balance the risk of not doing enough and not getting inflation under control against the risk of maybe slowing down economic activity too much,” he said. “We thought that this rate hike, along with the meaningful change in our policy statement, was the right way to balance that.Asked about the possibility of a recession, Powell seemed optimistic that the Fed could achieve a “soft landing” – keeping interest rates high without seeing huge impacts on unemployment. He noted that even as rates have hit 5% over the last 14 months, the unemployment rate stands at 3.5%.“It’s possible that we can continue to have a cooling in the labor market without having the big increases in unemployment that have gone with many prior episodes,” he said.Of course, Powell noted earlier in the press conference that the full impacts of the interest rate increases have yet to be seen, acknowledging uncertainty about the full economic impact of rate hikes.Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell emphasized the importance of raising the debt ceiling, though noted that the debt limit is “fiscal policy matters”.“It’s essential that the debt ceiling be raised in a timely way so that the US government can pay all of its bills when they’re due. Failure to do that would be unprecedented,” he said. “We’d be in uncharted territory.Powell noted that the Fed doesn’t “give advice to either side” and also noted that “no one should assume that the Fed can protect the economy from the potential short- and long-term effects” upon default.He also noted that debt limit standoff did not play a role in the Fed’s decision today to increase interest rates.Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is holding a press conference after the central bank announced a quarter-point interest rate increase. Powell’s tone in the press conference has changed since he last addressed the press in March. The Fed is no longer anticipating needing more rate increases, but will monitor the economy in determining future interest rate changes.While Powell is still reiterating the Fed’s inflation target of 2%, he acknowledged that the economy is “seeing the effects of our policy tightening on demand and the most interest-rate-sensitive sectors of the economy, particularly housing and investment”. In other words, the Fed sees its interest rate hikes taking effect in the slowing of the economy.“There are some signs that supply and demand in the labor market are coming back into balance,” Powell said. He added that the “economy is likely to face further headwinds from tighter credit conditions”, meaning the full effects of the interest-rate hikes have yet to be seen.Taking a question from a reporter on whether the Fed’s statement today should be taken as a hint that officials will pause rate hikes, Powell said the officials did not make a decision on a pause, but noted that they intentionally updated their stance in today’s press statement that removed a line suggesting more increases would be appropriate.“Instead, we’re saying that in determining the extent to which [more hikes are needed], the Committee will take into account certain factors,” he said. “That’s a meaningful change that we are no longer saying we anticipate [changes] and we will be driven by incoming data meeting by meeting.”The press statement that came with the Federal Reserve’s announcement of another interest rate hike is nearly identical to the one that was released at its last meeting on 22 March, with one key exception.In its 22 March release, Fed officials in the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) hinted that more interest rates are to come, saying: “The Committee anticipates that some additional policy firming may be appropriate” in order to bring inflation down to the target of 2%.In today’s statement, that line was cut.The rest of the statement was in line with FOMC’s March meeting statement. They reiterated their stance that “inflation remains elevated” and the jobs market has been strong, with the unemployment rate low. They emphasized that “the US banking system is sound and resilient” and that they are “highly attentive to inflation risks”.Analysts have been wondering whether this interest rate increase will be the Fed’s last, with pauses to come after as the interest rate is held steady at future meetings.Any more hints about what is next for interest rates after this most recent hike will likely be made at Fed chair Jerome Powell’s press conference at 2.30pm ET.The Federal Reserve just announced a quarter-point interest rate increase. This brings the interest rate to a 16-year high at 5% to 5.25%. The central bank has been on a year-long campaign to temper inflation, though it has had to delicately balance the potential of shaking the economy too much with stringent rate increases.Fed chair Jerome Powell will lead a closely watched press conference, where he will discuss the Fed’s view on the state of the economy.The United Auto Workers (UAW) union said in an internal memo that it is holding off on a Joe Biden endorsement due to the president’s electric vehicle policies.UAW president Shawn Fain said in the memo that union leaders met with Biden last week and discussed “our concerns with the electric vehicle transition”, according to the New York Times. The union is concerned that auto workers will suffer during the transition to EV as less workers are needed to assemble EVs.“The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” the memo reads, referring to electric vehicles. “We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments.”The union has 400,000 members across the country, though members are primarily in auto-industry heavyweight Michigan, a key election battleground state.The FBI arrested a man in Florida on Tuesday for his involvement in the January 6th Capitol riots, specifically for setting off an “explosive device” in the US Capitol tunnel that leads into the building. Daniel Ball, 38, was first arrested last week by the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office for assaulting seven people, including law enforcement officers, in Florida. Ball’s probation officer, upon being shown photos and videos of the Capitol riot, identified Ball as the person throwing an explosive device in the tunnel, where law enforcement was blocking rioters.Ball faces multiple charges related to the riot, including assaulting police officers and entering a restricted area with a deadly weapon.The justice department said in March that at least 1,000 people have been arrested on charges related to the riots, with 518 pleading guilty to federal crimes so far.Election denier Jim Marchant announced that he will be running for US Senate, challenging Democrat incumbent senator Jacky Rosen for the seat she won last year.During his announcement speech on Tuesday, Marchant said that he is running to “protect Nevadans from the overbearing government, from Silicon Valley, from big media, from labor unions, from the radical gender-change advocates,” the Washington Post reported.His election campaign was acknowledged by Rosen on Twitter, who replied to Marchant’s announcement:
      Nevadans deserve a Senator who will fight for them, not a MAGA election denier who opposes abortion rights even in cases of rape and incest…
      While far-right politicians like Jim Marchant spread baseless conspiracy theories, I’ve always focused on solving problems for Nevadans.
      Marchant has described himself as a “MAGA conservative”, the Post reports, and is an avid supporter of Donald Trump. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      DeSantis accused of favoring insurance-industry donors at residents’ expense

      by

      Ron DeSantis, the rightwing Republican governor of Florida and a likely 2024 presidential candidate, has handed favors to his big-money donors in the insurance industry at the expense of cash-strapped residents of his state, a new report claims.The report, “How Ron DeSantis sold out Florida homeowners”, draws on contributions from the American Federation of Teachers union, the non-profit Center for Popular Democracy, the voting rights group Florida Rising and the dark money watchdog Hedge Clippers.The report pinpoints the insurance industry as a crucial underwriter of DeSantis’s meteoric rise to the governor’s mansion and as a potential White House contender – and alleges that this may have influenced his decision making.DeSantis, who ran a successful re-election campaign last year, and Friends of Ron DeSantis, a political action committee that supported him, have taken a combined $3.9m in contributions from insurance industry players. If donations to the Republican party of Florida since 1 January 2019 – days before DeSantis assumed office – are added, this total swells to more than $9.9m.The authors’ analysis of campaign finance data also found that two property casualty insurance firms donated a combined total of $125,000 to DeSantis’s 2023 inaugural celebration, which marked the beginning of his final term as governor in the term-limited state.It is no coincidence, the report’s authors suggest, that DeSantis’s administration has put the insurance companies’ interests ahead of Florida’s own citizens, who are battling homeowner insurance rates nearly triple the national average.They write: “Instead of fixing problems with Florida’s property insurance industry, DeSantis has lavished the industry with favors and benefits while everyday Floridians suffer.”These benefits have included the creation of $2bn taxpayer-funded reinsurance fund. Such funds exist to insure the insurers and prevent them being wiped out during a catastrophic event. Usually, insurance companies buy such coverage on the open market but, in Florida, DeSantis chose to use tax dollars to provide access to a state-subsidised insurance fund.Second, the Florida legislature passed a bill that stripped policyholders of the ability to recover legal fees when suing insurance companies that refuse to honour legitimate claims. DeSantis trumpeted the signing of this bill on his official webpage.Home insurance is a hot-button issue in Florida, where communities vulnerable to the climate crisis face increasingly frequent and severe hurricanes and other weather events. Last year Hurricane Ian caused record levels of property damage and recent storms flooded some Fort Lauderdale neighbourhoods for more than a week.The report notes: “Communities of color and low-income neighborhoods with significant climate risks face crumbling infrastructure, soaring insurance premiums, and a lack of public investment. Florida cities like Jacksonville (where one in three residents is Black) and Orlando (where one in three is Latino) are at the highest risk nationally, based on the number of properties at substantial climate risk.”For many, it is getting worse. This year insurance price hikes are expected to average 40%, according to the Insurance Information Institute. This follows a reported 50% climb during the DeSantis administration, industry analyst John Rollins found. The increases are forcing Florida homeowners to forgo coverage at nearly twice the national rate or quit the state altogether.Tracy-Ann Brown, 53, said by phone from Miami: “The prices are horrendous. Our insurance went up to $1,800 per month and I could not afford it with my husband’s salary and my salary put together. We had a home that we had to take the insurance off and, unfortunately, our house caught fire on Easter Sunday and we didn’t have insurance on it.”Brown, a community liaison specialist for public schools, added: “The insurance everywhere here is crazy from Broward all the way to Dade. I’ve asked so many people and they’ve said the same thing. Their insurance has gone sky high.”The report argues that the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation is dominated by industry insiders who approved insurance price hikes at greater rates than were seen under previous governors.“Evidence is mounting that big insurance has blocked proposals that would have lowered costs for consumers,” it continues. “A 2022 proposal by state senator Jeff Brandes claimed to reduce insurance and save Floridians ‘$750 million to $1 billion a year’ by allowing smaller insurance companies to access the catastrophic reinsurance fund. The insurance-heavy business lobby reportedly blocked the plan.”The authors draw a contrast with Louisiana, which they say has a more robust property casualty insurance market despite similar hurricane risks. Unlike DeSantis’s insurance industry handouts, they contend, Louisiana conditions its subsidies to the insurance industry on increased participation in the state property insurance market.Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said: “Floridians are suffering from the threat of floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters, and homeowners are increasingly at risk of losing it all because they simply cannot afford spiraling insurance premiums.”She added: “Where is the governor? Well, he has picked sides: when given the choice of helping Florida’s working families or doing the bidding of the insurance lobby, Ron DeSantis puts his donors first. This report joins the dots. We can’t allow DeSantis to dismantle the livelihoods of millions of Floridians in the service of corporate interests.”DeSantis has not yet formally announced a 2024 campaign but is expected to do so after Florida’s legislative session ends later this month. In the meantime he has travelled to early-voting states to promote his new book, has met with donors and just returned from an overseas trade mission.The governor has also become embroiled in a legal battle with Disney. Days after the company sued him in federal court for what it described as retaliation for opposing the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill, members of Disney World’s governing board – made up DeSantis appointees – filed a lawsuit to countersue the entertainment giant.A CBS News-YouGov poll released on Monday showed former president Donald Trump leading a hypothetical Republican primary field with 58% of the vote, followed by DeSantis with 22%.The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans thwart Democrats’ push to stiffen supreme court ethics rules

      by

      Arguing that the US supreme court has “the lowest ethical standards” of a court in the country, Senate Democrats on Tuesday demanded tighter rules on the nine justices but ran into resistance from Republicans who accused them of being bitter over recent conservative rulings.Democrats had convened a hearing of the Senate judiciary committee after a series of media reports on entanglements between two of the court’s conservative justices and parties with interests in its cases. These includes Clarence Thomas’s acceptance of luxury travel and a real estate deal from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, and Neil Gorsuch’s sale of a property to a law firm executive with business before the court. Both were interactions the two justices did not fully disclose.The committee’s Democratic chair Dick Durbin, a senator from Illinois, said: “We wouldn’t tolerate this from a city council member or an alderman. It falls short of the ethical standards we expect of any public servant in America. And yet the supreme court won’t even acknowledge it’s a problem.“Ethics cannot simply be left to the discretion of the nation’s highest court. The court should have a code of conduct with clear and enforceable rules so justices and the American people know when conduct crosses the line. The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards.”But to Republicans, the Democrats’ calls for Thomas to be investigated and for the court to accept more stringent ethics rules represent nothing more than sour grapes. Last year, the supreme court’s six conservative justices handed down decisions that upended American life by overturning the precedent established by Roe v Wade to allow states to ban abortion, expanding the ability for Americans to carry concealed weapons without a permit, and reducing the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plant emissions.Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the panel, alluded to these rulings to argue Democrats were simply trying to undermine the court’s conservative majority.“This assault on justice Thomas is well beyond ethics. It is about trying to delegitimize a conservative court that was appointed through the traditional process,” Graham, a senator from South Carolina, said.Durbin had invited supreme court chief justice John Roberts to the hearing, but he declined to attend, citing the need to keep the court separate and free from congressional interference, while sending along a “statement on ethics principles and practices” signed by all of the court’s nine justices. Federal law requires judges, including supreme court justices, recuse themselves from any matter “in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned”, but unlike other judges and federal employees, the court has no formal ethics code.Democrats say the nine highest judges in the country do not have ethics rules comparable to other judges or even many federal employees, and have introduced two pieces of legislation to impose a code of conduct and other requirements. Neither measure appears to have much of a chance in this Congress, where Republicans control the House of Representatives and could use the filibuster to block any legislation in the Senate.Before the hearing began, the Democrats’ push won an endorsement from J Michael Luttig, a former appeals court judge and noted conservative legal thinker who said Congress does have the authority to establish such standards.He wrote in a letter to the committee: “There should never come the day when the Congress of the United States is obligated to enact laws prescribing the ethical standards applicable to the non-judicial conduct and activities of the supreme court of the United States, even though it indisputably has the power under the constitution to do so, but paradoxically, does not have the power to require the court to prescribe such standards for itself.”Luttig was joined by progressive scholar Laurence Tribe, who wrote to the committee: “I regard legislation to impose ethical norms in a binding way on the justices as eminently sensible. Put simply, I see such legislation as a necessary though probably not sufficient response to the current situation.”Neither men opted to testify. Instead, Democrats heard from invited legal scholars who generally agreed that Congress had the power to implement a code of conduct on the supreme court, should they choose to do so. Experts invited by the Republican minority, meanwhile, said Congress did not have the power to impose a code of conduct on the supreme court, and downplayed the severity of the reports about the court’s ethics.Michael Mukasey, a former attorney general under George W Bush, said in the hearing, said: “It’s impossible to escape the conclusion that the public is being asked to hallucinate misconduct, so as to undermine the authority of justices who issue rulings with which the critics disagree, and thus to undermine the authority of the rulings themselves.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Florida woman charged after allegedly throwing drink at far-right Matt Gaetz

      by

      A Florida woman faces two charges of battery – one a felony – after allegedly throwing a drink at the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz.The Walton county sheriff reportedly said Gaetz insisted on pressing charges. Gaetz maintained he was justified in doing so, saying 41-year-old Selena Jo Chambers “cross[ed] the Rubicon beyond just words to throwing stuff”.A previous case of a drink being thrown at Gaetz resulted in a woman being sent to prison.In 2019, Amanda Kondrat’yev, then 35 and a former political opponent of Gaetz, received a 15-day prison sentence for throwing a slushie at her rival.That beverage-blitzing brouhaha happened at an “Open Gaetz” public event at a restaurant in Pensacola appropriately named the Brew Ha Ha.The alleged case involving Chambers happened at the South Walton Beaches food and wine festival on Saturday night.According to the Pensacola News Journal, Chambers “told police she was walking and tripped and spilled her drink on Gaetz, though she recognised Gaetz before spilling her drink on him”.The sheriff said Chambers cursed Gaetz before throwing her drink, which hit the congressman and another person. A woman with Chambers said she was the one who cursed.Gaetz is a prominent ally of Donald Trump. He recently played a leading role in a rightwing rebellion that forced the California Republican Kevin McCarthy through 15 votes before he was confirmed as US House speaker.On his podcast on Tuesday, Gaetz said that he had been “enjoying catching up with new friends and old, and folks recognised me, and we were taking pictures and having polite conversations. As I was chatting with one gentleman, a lady threw a drink on the both of us.”Defending the decision to press charges, he said: “If we start allowing stuff to be thrown or hurled, if we allow people to be harmed, there is a severe risk of escalation and accident.“And we don’t want to see anyone in harm’s way, whether it’s family members, supporters or even our detractors. We want them to be safe too.“But when they really cross the Rubicon beyond just words to throwing stuff and striking me and striking a gentleman I was speaking with, with a drink, then that has really caused harm to our community. And it’s something that we want to contain and extinguish and not see going forward.”In 2019, at his assailant’s trial, Gaetz said: “I come not for any vengeance or retribution, but for the safety of the constituents who attend our public events.”In addition to her 15-day prison sentence, Kondrat’yev – a mother of two – got a year of supervised probation and was fined $500.A press release from Gatez about Chambers’ alleged attack said: “I will never allow the safety of north-west Floridians to be comprised.”He also called Chambers “a registered Democrat and self-described member of the ‘resistance’” to Trump and his far-right supporters.Chambers was booked with one count each of misdemeanor battery and battery on an elected official. The latter is a felony. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      E Jean Carroll says she sued for rape on advice of Trump adviser’s husband

      by

      The advice columnist E Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for rape after she was encouraged to take legal action by George Conway, the husband of a top aide to the then president.On her third day on the witness stand, Carroll told the jury hearing her lawsuit for battery and defamation over the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store changing room in 1996 that she did not intend to sue Trump until he called her a liar when she went public with her accusations more than two decades later.Shortly afterwards she met Conway, a lawyer who was at the time married to Kellyanne Conway, one of the Trump White House’s most visible officials. George Conway was a vocal critic of the then president, to the embarrassment of his wife.Carroll said that they spoke at a party where Conway laid out the difference between criminal case and civil cases.“George said: you should seriously think about this,” she told the jury of six men and three women.Two days later, Carroll filed her first lawsuit against Trump, for defamation, after he called her a liar in denying the alleged rape at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman store.Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, sought to characterise the lawsuit as politically motivated, in part through the association with Conway who went on to recommend a lawyer to Carroll.Tacopina contrasted that move – and a second more recent civil lawsuit for rape after a change in the law allowed for it – with Carroll’s decision not to take legal action against the former head of CBS, Les Moonves, who she also accused of sexual assault in an elevator.Carroll said that Moonves had not called her a liar.“He simply denied it,” she said. “He didn’t call me names. He didn’t grind my face into the mud like Donald Trump did.”Carroll said Moonves was accused of sexual abuse by a dozen women and that his denial of her allegation was one among many.Under cross-examination, Carroll defended her decision not to call the police after the alleged rape, as the typical response of women of her generation who are “ashamed” to have been sexually assaulted.She acknowledged that she frequently advised people to go to the police in her Elle column, Ask E Jean.“I was born in 1943. I’m a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and to not complain,” she said. “I would never call the police about something I am ashamed of.”Carroll acknowledged she did call the police on one occasion, when she saw “loutish behaviour by some kids”.Tacopina responded: “So your testimony is you’ll call the police if a mailbox is attacked but not if you are attacked?”Carroll said it was.“I will never, ever go to the police,” she said.Asked why, then, more than two decades after the alleged rape she decided to go public, Carroll said that times had changed.“I reached a point in my life at 76 where I was no longer going to stay silent,” she testified.Tacopina pressed Carroll about her continued shopping trips to Bergdorf Goodman where she spent thousands of dollars in the following years.“Bergdorf’s is not a place I’m afraid to enter,” she responded.Tacopina also highlighted Carroll’s complimentary comments about Trump’s television show The Apprentice. Carroll said she was praising the construct of the programme as “witty”.On Monday afternoon, in re-cross-examination, Tacopina asked Carroll if she was happy now and she responded that she was “with undertones of unhappiness”.Then after three days of intense testimony, Carroll’s stint on the witness stand ended.Later this week, Carroll’s legal team is expected to call her friend, Lisa Birnbach and another woman, Carol Martin, to testify that Carroll told them about the alleged assault shortly after it occurred. Both have since corroborated the account.Carroll testified that Birnbach told her the alleged attack was rape and to call the police. But Martin advised her to keep quiet because Trump was a powerful businessman who would “bury” her.Carroll kept her silence for more than two decades but changed her mind as other women came forward to recount their experiences of sexual assault and harassment as the #MeToo movement swept the US. She wrote a book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, detailing abuse of one kind or other by a number of men, including Trump. Excerpts were published in New York magazine in 2019.Trump called Carroll’s allegations “a complete con job” and said her book “should be sold in the fiction section”.“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City department store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a hoax and a lie,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Carroll’s legal team is also expected to call two other women. Natasha Stoynoff, a writer for People magazine, is expected to testify that in 2005 Trump led her into an empty room and forcibly kissed her until he was interrupted. Jessica Leeds accuses Trump of assaulting her on a plane in 1979 by grabbing her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt. More

    • 200 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden says banking system is ‘safe and sound’ despite First Republic collapse – as it happened

      by

      From 5h agoJoe Biden has been speaking at the White House about the collapse of First Republic Bank, insisting that the “safety and security” of the US banking system was paramount.JP Morgan stepped in quickly to snap up the “deposits and substantially all assets” of the California bank, the third US lender to fail this year.Biden praised the swiftness of the takeover by the nation’s largest bank:
      I’m pleased to say that regulators have taken action to facilitate the sale of First Republic bank, making sure that all depositors are protected, and the taxpayers are not on the hook.
      These actions are going to make sure that the banking system is safe and sound. And that includes protecting small businesses across the country who need to make payroll for workers and their small businesses.
      Touting the economic successes of his administration during an address for small business week, Biden used the crisis to pivot to an attack on so-called make America great again (Maga) Republicans he said were threatening the economy by presenting proposals over raising the national debt limit that were unacceptable:
      The most immediate thing we can do is ensure the continued reliance of our economy and the financial system. The most important thing we have to do in that regard is to make sure the threat by the speaker of the House to default on the national debt is off the table.
      For over 200 years, America has never, ever ever failed with a debt. America is not a deadbeat nation. We have never, ever failed to meet the debt.
      As a result, one of the most respected nations of the world, we pay our bills and we should do so without reckless hostage taking from some of the Maga Republicans in Congress.
      Read more:We’re closing the US politics blog now, thanks for joining us.It’s been an eventful day, with Joe Biden attempting to reassure the public the US banking system was “safe and sound” following the collapse of First Republic bank.The president praised regulators and JP Morgan bank, the nation’s largest, that stepped in to pick up First Republic’s deposits and assets, safeguarding money invested in the failed California institution.Here’s what else we followed:
      Kevin McCarthy launched a robust defense of his stance on Ukraine in a testy exchange with a Russian reporter in Jerusalem. The speaker, with a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers to celebrate Israel’s 75th anniversary, challenged the reporter’s assertion that Republican rightwingers weakened his position by calling for an end to US aid.
      The Democratic governor of Washington state, Jay Inslee, announced he would not seek a fourth term in elections next year.
      It followed an announcement by Democratic Maryland senator Ben Cardin that he was standing down after three terms in office, creating a primary battle for a seat crucial to his party’s hopes of retaining control of the chamber in the 2024 election.
      Ron DeSantis’s war on Disney escalated with a decision by his hand-picked board overseeing the theme park giant to sue the company. Disney sued the board last week saying the Republican Florida governor’s seizure of power over the company was a retaliatory move for opposing his “don’t say gay” law.
      Dominion Voting Systems executives insisted its $787.5m settlement with Fox News over the media company’s lies about the 2020 election did not include a requirement that rightwing TV celebrity Tucker Carlson be dismissed. Fox fired Carlson last week.
      Attorneys for Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr filed a lawsuit seeking her return to the House floor, a week after Republicans banished the transgender Democrat for her opposition to a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for trans children.
      Donald Trump will appear next week in a town hall debate hosted by CNN. The surprise announcement said the former president will participate in the 10 May event for Republican and undecided voters at St Anselm college, a liberal arts campus in Manchester, New Hampshire.
      Please join us again tomorrow for more live US politics.The US military is tracking a mysterious balloon that flew over American soil, NBC News is reporting. It is not clear what it is or who it belongs to, according to three US officials cited by the network.The object flew across portions of Hawaii but did not go over any sensitive areas, the officials said.NBC reported the military had been tracking the object since late last week and has not determined if posed a threat to aerial traffic or national security. It was not communicating signals, one official said.It is also not clear if it is a weather balloon or something else, the official said, adding that the US military could shoot it down if it nears land.It was revealed last month that a Chinese spy balloon that flew over parts of the US earlier this year, and was shot down in February, had sent sensitive intelligence from US military sites back to Beijing.Donald Trump will appear next week in a town hall debate hosted by CNN, the cable news channel he has frequently and loudly derided as “fake news”.The network made the surprise announcement on Monday afternoon, saying the former president will participate in the 10 May event for Republican and undecided voters at St Anselm college, a liberal arts campus in Manchester, New Hampshire.The event will be hosted by Kaitlan Collins, host of CNN This Morning.Trump attacked the network frequently during his single term in office, at one stage revoking the press credentials of White House correspondent Jim Acosta, a particular bête noire. Acosta was reinstated after a legal challenge.It is not yet known who else might be appearing at the event.Attorneys for Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr are asking a court to allow for her return to the House floor, a week after Republicans banished the transgender Democrat for her opposition to a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for trans children.A lawsuit was filed Monday in state district court in Helena on behalf of Zephyr and several constituents who say they are being denied their right to adequate representation, the Associated Press reported.Zephyr was removed from the chamber last week after telling Republicans they would have “blood on your hands” if they voted for the measure.The controlling party said her actions “violated decorum” and that she had incited protests at the statehouse.The legal challenge against House speaker Matt Regier and statehouse sergeant-at-arms Bradley Murfitt comes with just days left in the legislature’s biennial session. Neither has commented on the lawsuit.Another prominent Democrat, the governor of Washington state Jay Inslee, has announced he won’t be seeking re-election. It follows the declaration earlier Monday by Maryland senator Ben Cardin that he was standing down.Inslee won election to a third term in 2020, but said in a statement: “I’m ready to pass the torch”.He didn’t say what he intended to do after his retirement next year, but said: “Now is the time to intensely focus on all we can accomplish in the next year and a half”.Inslee, who ran for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 2020, added: “Serving the people as governor of Washington state has been my greatest honor”.Senior Democrat Jamie Raskin – the Maryland congressman – has paid tribute to his friend Ben Cardin, his state’s US senator who has announced he’s standing down after three terms in office:
      After 58 years of integrity-filled public service, where he showed his prodigious work ethic from Annapolis to Washington, senator Ben Cardin has assembled a remarkable record of advancing the needs and priorities of Maryland.
      I salute him and have congratulated him on a truly amazing and inspiring career devoted to service of our people and the old-fashioned public values of honesty and decency. I want to thank him, his beloved wife Myrna and their whole family for their outstanding and continuing contributions to our state.
      In his own statement saying he had given his “heart and soul” to the state, Cardin said he would remain in office until the 2024 election:
      There is still much work to be done. During the next two years, I will continue to travel around the state, listening to Marylanders and responding to their needs.
      My top priorities include continuing our progress for the Chesapeake Bay, helping the people of Baltimore city deal with the challenges they face, and permanently expanding opportunities for telehealth, mental and behavioral health.
      Kevin McCarthy had a testy exchange with a Russian reporter over the war in Ukraine after his speech to the Israeli Knesset this afternoon.Asked if Ukraine was losing the support of Republicans, following comments by rightwingers such as McCarthy ally Marjorie Taylor-Greene that the US “had done enough” to help the country against the Russian invasion, the speaker of the American House of Representatives was firm:
      I vote for aid for Ukraine. I support aid for Ukraine. I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine. I do not support your killing of the children either.
      And I think for one standpoint, you [Russia] should pull out and I don’t think it’s right, and we will continue to support because the rest of the world sees it just as it is.
      Joe Biden has been speaking at the White House about the collapse of California’s First Republic bank, the third US lender to fail this year. He said the swift action of regulators, and JP Morgan bank, the nation’s largest, to take on First Republic’s deposits and most assets, helped ensure the US banking system was “safe and secure”.Here’s what else we’ve been following:
      Kevin McCarthy, the first speaker to address the Knesset for 25 years, talked up US-Israel relations in Jerusalem, and pledged full financial support for the country’s security. He promised US support for ensuring Iran never obtains nuclear weapons.
      Ron DeSantis’s war on Disney stepped up a notch with a decision by his hand-picked board overseeing the theme park giant to file its own lawsuit against the company. Disney sued the board last week saying the Florida governor’s seizure of power over the company was a retaliatory move for its opposition to his “don’t say gay” law.
      Democratic Maryland senator Ben Cardin announced he was standing down after three terms in office, opening the prospect of a furious primary battle for a seat crucial to his party’s hopes of retaining control of the chamber in the 2024 election.
      Dominion Voting Systems executives have been insisting that its $787.5m settlement with Fox News over the media company’s lies about the 2020 election did not include a requirement that rightwing TV celebrity Tucker Carlson be dismissed. Fox fired Carlson last week.
      We’ve plenty more coming up this afternoon. Please stick with us.Joe Biden has been speaking at the White House about the collapse of First Republic Bank, insisting that the “safety and security” of the US banking system was paramount.JP Morgan stepped in quickly to snap up the “deposits and substantially all assets” of the California bank, the third US lender to fail this year.Biden praised the swiftness of the takeover by the nation’s largest bank:
      I’m pleased to say that regulators have taken action to facilitate the sale of First Republic bank, making sure that all depositors are protected, and the taxpayers are not on the hook.
      These actions are going to make sure that the banking system is safe and sound. And that includes protecting small businesses across the country who need to make payroll for workers and their small businesses.
      Touting the economic successes of his administration during an address for small business week, Biden used the crisis to pivot to an attack on so-called make America great again (Maga) Republicans he said were threatening the economy by presenting proposals over raising the national debt limit that were unacceptable:
      The most immediate thing we can do is ensure the continued reliance of our economy and the financial system. The most important thing we have to do in that regard is to make sure the threat by the speaker of the House to default on the national debt is off the table.
      For over 200 years, America has never, ever ever failed with a debt. America is not a deadbeat nation. We have never, ever failed to meet the debt.
      As a result, one of the most respected nations of the world, we pay our bills and we should do so without reckless hostage taking from some of the Maga Republicans in Congress.
      Read more:Long-serving Democratic senator Ben Cardin of Maryland is expected to announce his retirement Monday after serving three terms, opening a rare vacancy in the chamber ahead of the 2024 election, according to the Associated Press, citing his spokesperson.The 79-year-old plans to release a statement saying he will not seek reelection. His retirement is likely to create a highly competitive Democratic primary to replace him as the party faces a tough electoral map to maintain its slim majority next year.Cardin has served in the Senate since 2006, when he won a seat to replace retiring Democrat Paul Sarbanes. Before that, he was a congressman who represented a large part of Baltimore and several nearby suburbs, winning his first House race in 1986.During his tenure in the Senate, Cardin has been a leader on health care, retirement security, the environment and fiscal issues. The senator has been a leading advocate for clean water and the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary, which flows in his home state.No reason for his decision was given. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas governor decried for ‘disgusting’ rhetoric in wake of mass shooting

      by

      As he announced a reward for the capture of a 38-year-old Texas man accused of fatally shooting five people after some of them complained about his firing a rifle in his yard, the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, went out of his way to describe Francisco Oropeza and those he allegedly murdered as “illegal immigrants”.The Republican’s words drew ire from immigration advocates, state and federal lawmakers and other politicians as Abbott’s words hewed closely with his track record of using anti-immigrant rhetoric in the wake of mass shootings.They decried Abbott’s rhetoric as dehumanizing and indicative of an attempt to deflect attention from the role Republican lawmakers played in shaping Texas’s lax gun laws that Democrats say have created an unsafe environment for residents.As of Monday, law enforcement authorities had not confirmed the immigration status of the five people killed. The victims, which included a young boy and two women who were shielding children from gunfire, were all from Honduras. Oropeza, who remained at large on Monday morning as federal and local enforcement frantically searched for him, was a Mexican national who had reportedly been previously deported from the US.Political discussions of those facts prompted the local sheriff, Greg Capers of San Jacinto, to say they were irrelevant to investigators.“My heart is with this … boy,” Capers told reporters. “He was in my county, five people died in my county, and that is where my heart is – in my county, protecting my people to the best of our ability.”In his statements, Abbott also noted that he would tell state officials to “alert Operation Lone Star soldiers and troopers to be on the lookout for the criminal and any attempts to flee the country after taking the lives of five people”. The operation, which started in 2021, enabled Abbott to declare a security crisis at Texas’s border with Mexico – where crossings have risen in recent years – and deploy the state’s national guard there.Critics have decried how the operation has cost Texas taxpayers millions of dollars weekly while its participants make arrests that are physically distant from the border, not related to crimes there, and involve law enforcement agencies not directly part of Operation Lone Star, according to reporting from the Texas Tribune, ProPublica and the Marshall Project.Julián Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio who served as secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development before he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, criticized Abbott for using anti-immigrant rhetoric when “five human beings lost their lives”.State senator Roland Gutierrez – a Democratic lawmaker whose district includes Uvalde, where 19 elementary school students and two of their teachers were shot to death by an intruder last year – went on Twitter to call Abbott’s statement a “new low”.Abbott, Gutierrez maintained, continued to “do nothing to keep #Texas safe from #GunViolence”.Gutierrez, who is likely to run against the Republican Ted Cruz for his US Senate seat, told MSNBC’s Alicia Menendez on Sunday that the state’s GOP members were responsible for loosening gun laws, noting that there were more than 20 pieces of gun control legislation that have not moved.“They don’t get to have an immigration narrative today,” Guiterrez said. “They need to own the narrative that they have made this state more dangerous … An undocumented person was able to buy an AR-15 illegally somewhere because of their lax gun laws.”State Republicans have routinely rejected more gun restrictions, including in the wake of a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso that killed 23 and at the Uvalde school. Instead, they have loosened them, despite initially signaling they were open to some restrictions.In 2021, two years after the El Paso shooting, Abbott signed a so-called “constitutional carry” law that allows Texas residents to carry handguns without a license or training.Texas joins more than half the US in allowing the permitless carrying of firearms. In April, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a law making his state the latest to allow the carrying of concealed firearms without a license or training, less than seven years after a gunman killed 49 people and injured 53 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.Despite calls from the families of Uvalde victims for tougher gun laws, Republican Texas lawmakers have refused to act, and the state’s gun laws have gotten looser. Last August, a federal judge struck down a Texas law that raised the legal age for people to carry handguns from 18 to 21.Those acts came even as a poll commissioned by Fox News, whose viewers are largely Republican, found that American voters favor gun control measures and worry that firearms violence will victimize them.Police recovered an AR-15-style rifle that they say Oropeza used in Friday’s shooting. It is unclear how he obtained it.The Immigration Legal Resource Center tweeted that Abbott’s rhetoric amplified a “specific narrative” rather than focusing on the people involved.The Congressional Hispanic Caucus tweeted that Abbott, by centering the victims’ unconfirmed immigration status, decided to “dehumanize” and “delegitimize” their lives. Congressperson Chuy García of Illinois, one of the caucus’s members, added that Abbott would “take every chance he gets to dehumanize migrants. Even if they were murdered in a mass shooting.”Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso in Congress, called Abbott’s rhetoric a “disgusting lack of compassion and humanity”. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

      From Upstart to Start-Up Nation, Israel at 75 Faces New Challenges

      by

      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More