World news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘It doesn’t register with me’: Biden disregards concerns about his age – video

      by

      The US president has dismissed concerns about his age after a recent poll by NBC News which found that 70% of adults said he should not run again. Addressing a press conference with the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, Joe Biden, 80, said: ‘With regard to age … I can’t even say the number. It doesn’t register with me.’

      Biden recently announced his intention to run again for the presidency with a campaign video asking Americans to give him another four years to ‘finish what he started’ More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden formally announces 2024 White House run

      by

      Joe Biden has formally announced his campaign for re-election in 2024, asking Americans for four years to “finish this job”, possibly setting up an extraordinary rematch with Donald Trump.In a three-minute video opening with images of the US Capitol attack, Biden warned that the US remains under threat from the anti-democratic forces unleashed by his predecessor, who he beat in 2020.Biden said: “When I ran for president four years ago, I said we were in a battle for the soul of America – and we still are.”The president launched his re-election campaign on the fourth anniversary of his return to politics in 2019, when he declared his third presidential run. Since then, the political landscape has changed.The US is still grappling with the scars of a pandemic that killed more than 1.1 million and with inflation that has eased from historic highs but remains painful. Americans remain deeply divided, convulsed by the loss of federal abortion rights, near-weekly mass shootings and worsening climate disasters.Already the oldest president, Biden would be 86 before the end of a second term, nearly a decade older than Ronald Reagan was when he left the White House in 1989. Trump is 76.In his video, Biden warned that “Maga extremists” – Trump’s slogan is “Make America Great Again” – were working to strip away “bedrock freedoms”.“Cutting social security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy,” Biden said. “Dictating what healthcare decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”The president and his wife, Jill Biden, had made his intentions known. But Biden felt little need to rush after a better-than-expected Democratic performance in the midterm elections tamped down calls for a serious primary challenge.Ultimately, the president chose to wait until after his tour of Ireland, a three-day trip he said restored his “sense of optimism”. Returning home, he told reporters he planned to “run again”.The vice-president, Kamala Harris, the highest-ranking woman and person of color in US politics, will be Biden’s running mate again.Biden is dogged by low approval ratings and concerns about his age. Only a quarter of Americans want him to run, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Among Democrats, that figure is 50%. Should Biden win the nomination, as expected, most Democrats will support him.On Tuesday, Biden was due to welcome the president of South Korea. Next month, he will travel to the G7 summit in Japan. His team will begin to formalize a campaign expected to be headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware.Julie Chávez Rodríguez, a senior White House adviser and granddaughter of the celebrated labor leader César Chávez, will be campaign manager. Her principal deputy will be Quentin Fulks, a strategist who ran Raphael Warnock’s Senate re-election campaign in Georgia, a battleground state Biden won in 2020. The announcement begins a fundraising sprint. Donors have been summoned to Washington.Hours after making his candidacy official, during remarks to union workers at a conference in Washington, Biden was greeted by chants of “four more years”.“Our economic plan is working,” he said in a speech rife with references to his working-class upbringing in Scranton, Pennsylvania.“Let’s finish the job,” he said.Biden has made clear he plans to run on accomplishments in the first half of his presidency, when Democrats had majorities in Congress.Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, delivering financial assistance to those hit hard by Covid. He also approved a $1tn infrastructure bill; signed the first major federal gun safety bill in nearly 30 years; pursued initiatives to both treat veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and boost the semiconductor industry; and made Ketanji Brown Jackson the first Black woman on the supreme court.Perhaps his most significant legislative achievement to date is the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant US response to the climate crisis.But while Biden’s policies are broadly popular, he has struggled to earn credit. He has spent the last few months attempting to sell his economic policies and rally Americans before a showdown with Republicans over the federal debt limit.On the world stage, Biden has rallied a global coalition behind Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion while seeking to strengthen US defenses against China. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, however, was among the lowest points of Biden’s presidency, even as he fulfilled a promise to end America’s longest war.Republicans greeted Biden’s announcement by assailing his handling of immigration and the economy.“Biden is so out-of-touch that after creating crisis after crisis, he thinks he deserves another four years,” said Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee. “If voters let Biden ‘finish the job’, inflation will continue to skyrocket, crime rates will rise, more fentanyl will cross our open borders, children will continue to be left behind, and American families will be worse off.”Biden must negotiate with a divided Congress, Republicans holding the House. Biden plans to use a showdown over raising the federal borrowing limit to draw a contrast with Republican economic priorities, which he argues are aligned with big business and special interests.In his campaign video, Biden warned that individual freedoms are under attack by far-right Republicans who have trampled reproductive, voting and LGBTQ+ rights.“This is not a time to be complacent,” he said. “I know America. I know we’re good and decent people.”After nearly a half-century in public life including 36 years as a senator from Delaware and eight years as the vice-president to Barack Obama, Biden called himself a “bridge” to the next generation of Democrats. But only two fringe candidates have challenged him for the nomination: the self-help author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr.The Republican field is growing. Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, has entered the race. The South Carolina senator Tim Scott has taken steps to run. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is widely expected to announce. Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, is also weighing a run.Trump announced his candidacy after the midterms in November. He and Biden both face federal investigations over their handling of classified information. In Biden’s case, documents were discovered at his office and home. His lawyers have stressed they are cooperating.Trump resisted efforts to retrieve materials he took to his Florida estate. But that is just one of many legal challenges he faces. Earlier this month, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal charges related to hush money payments to a porn star. He also faces investigations into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, trial over a rape accusation, and a civil suit over his business affairs.Ahead of Biden’s announcement, Trump lashed out, saying the “five worst presidents in American history” combined had not inflicted the “damage Joe Biden has done”.In his video, Biden said: “Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedoms. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights.”
      Joan E Greve contributed reporting. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Prosecutor in Trump-Georgia case says charging decisions to come in summer

      by

      The prosecutor in Atlanta investigating whether Donald Trump and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia said on Monday she expects to announce charging decisions in the case this summer and urged “heightened security”.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis wrote in a letter to local sheriff Pat Labat that she expects to announce the decisions some time between 11 July and 1 September. She said she wanted to give Labat time to coordinate with local, state and federal agencies “to ensure that our law enforcement community is ready to protect the public”.“Open-source intelligence has indicated the announcement of decisions in this case may provoke a significant public reaction,” Willis wrote in the letter, adding that some could involve “acts of violence that will endanger the safety of our community”.As leaders, they need to be prepared, she wrote, adding that her team would be in touch to talk about arrangements.The letter was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which added that letters were also sent to the city’s police chief and the head of the emergency management agency serving the municipality and county.The Atlanta police department confirmed receipt of a letter from Willis and said it would “continue to monitor the potential for unrest throughout our city”.“We stand ready to respond to demonstrations to ensure the safety of those in our communities and those exercising their first amendment right [to peacefully assemble], or to address illegal activity, should the need arise,” a department statement said.Willis has been investigating whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss to his Democratic rival Joe Biden in Georgia as Biden cruised to a more comfortable victory in the electoral college.She opened the investigation in early 2021, shortly after a recording of a phone call between Trump and Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, was made public. In that call, Trump suggested the state’s top elections official could help “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss in the state.It has become clear since then that the scope of Willis’s investigation has expanded far beyond that call.Trump, who last fall announced a 2024 bid campaign for the White House, already faces criminal charges in New York. A Manhattan grand jury in March indicted the former president on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to a porn actor during the 2016 election that he won.New York police had said ahead of his arraignment there that they were ready for large protests by Trump’s supporters, who believe any charges against him are politically motivated. And while hundreds of onlookers, protesters, journalists and some politicians did show up, fears that unruly crowds would cause chaos ultimately proved unfounded.Meanwhile in Washington, federal grand juries are investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election and the potential mishandling of classified documents by Trump at his Florida estate. Federal prosecutors have questioned numerous Trump administration officials before the grand jury. It’s not clear when those investigations, both overseen by a special counsel appointed last fall, might conclude or who, if anyone, might be charged.Trump’s legal team in Georgia – Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg – said in a statement that Willis’s announcement to law enforcement “does nothing more than set forth a potential timetable” for decisions Willis had already said were coming.“On behalf of President Trump, we filed a substantive legal challenge for which [Willis’s] office has yet to respond,” the statement said. “We look forward to litigating that comprehensive motion which challenges the deeply flawed legal process and the ability of the conflicted [prosecutor’s] office to make any charging decisions at all.”Trump’s legal team last month filed a motion seeking to toss out a report drafted by a special grand jury that was impaneled to aid Willis’s investigation. They also asked the court to prohibit Willis from continuing to investigate or prosecute Trump. A judge gave Willis until 1 May to respond. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Don Lemon says he has been fired by CNN: ‘I am stunned’

      by

      The TV news anchor Don Lemon said on Monday he had been fired from CNN – the news breaking shortly after word of another major US media departure, that of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.“I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN,” Lemon, 57, wrote on Twitter not long after appearing on CNN This Morning, the revamped show he co-hosted with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins.“I am stunned. After 17 years at CNN I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly.“At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network.”CNN did not say why Lemon had left but it did dispute his version of events.It said: “Don Lemon’s statement about this morning’s events is inaccurate. He was offered an opportunity to meet with management but instead released a statement on Twitter.”In a separate statement, the chairman of CNN, Chris Licht, said: “CNN and Don have parted ways. Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years. We wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future endeavors.”Licht also said CNN This Morning, which has struggled for ratings, “has been on air for nearly six months and we are committed to its success”.In February, Lemon was rebuked by Licht and briefly taken off-air over televised remarks about Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor now running for the Republican presidential nomination.Speaking to Harlow and Collins about Haley’s call for mental competency tests for ageing politicians, Lemon said Haley “isn’t in her prime, sorry”, adding: “A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”Haley is 51.In a recording obtained by the New York Times, Licht told staffers that Lemon’s remarks were “upsetting, unacceptable and unfair to his co-hosts, and ultimately a huge distraction to the great work of this organisation”.Lemon apologised, saying, according to CNN: “I’m sorry that I said it. And I certainly see why people found it completely misguided.”He added: “The people I’m closest to in this organization are women.”Haley told Fox News: “I have always made the liberals’ heads explode. They can’t stand the fact that a minority, conservative, female would not be on the Democratic side.“He made that comment. I wasn’t sitting there saying sexist middle-aged CNN anchors need to have mental competency tests, although he may have just proven that point.”Announcing his firing on Monday, Lemon said: “It is clear that there are some larger issues at play.“With that said, I want to thank my colleagues and the many teams I have worked with for an incredible run. They are the most talented journalists in the business and I wish them all the best.” More

    • 200 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump committed treason and will try again. He must be barred from running | Robert Reich

      by

      The most obvious question in American politics today should be: why is the guy who committed treason just over two years ago allowed to run for president?Answer: he shouldn’t be.Remember? Donald Trump lost re-election but refused to concede and instead claimed without basis that the election was stolen from him, then pushed state officials to change their tallies, hatched a plot to name fake electors, tried to persuade the vice-president to refuse to certify electoral college votes, sought access to voting-machine data and software, got his allies in Congress to agree to question the electoral votes and thereby shift the decision to the House of Representatives, and summoned his supporters to Washington on the day electoral votes were to be counted and urged them to march on the US Capitol, where they rioted.This, my friends, is treason.But Trump is running for re-election, despite the explicit language of section three of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which prohibits anyone who has held public office and who has engaged in insurrection against the United States from ever again serving in public office.The reason for the disqualification clause is that someone who has engaged in an insurrection against the United States cannot be trusted to use constitutional methods to regain office. (Notably, all three branches of the federal government have described the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as an “insurrection”.)Can any of us who saw (or have learned through the painstaking work of the January 6 committee) what Trump tried to do to overturn the results of the 2020 election have any doubt he will once again try to do whatever necessary to regain power, even if illegal and unconstitutional?Sure, the newly enacted Electoral Count Reform Act (amending the Electoral Count Act of 1887) filled some of the legal holes, creating a new threshold for members to object to a slate of electors (one-fifth of the members of both the House and the Senate), clarifying that the role of the vice-president is “solely ministerial” and requiring that Congress defer to slates of electors as determined by the states.But what if Trump gets secretaries of state and governors who are loyal to him to alter the election machinery to ensure he wins? What if he gets them to prevent people likely to vote for Joe Biden from voting at all?What if he gets them to appoint electors who will vote for him regardless of the outcome of the popular vote?What if, despite all of this, Biden still wins the election but Trump gets more than 20% of Republican senators and House members to object to slates of electors pledged to Biden, and pushes the election into the House where Trump has a majority of votes?Does anyone doubt the possibility – no, the probability – of any or all of this happening?Trump tried these tactics once. The likelihood of him trying again is greater now because his loyalists are now in much stronger positions throughout state and federal government.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYes, they were held back in the 2020 midterms. But in state after state, and in Congress, Republicans who stood up to Trump have now been purged from the party. And lawmakers in what remains of the Republican party have made it clear that they will bend or disregard any rule that gets in their way.In many cases, the groundwork has been laid. As recently reported in the New York Times, for example, the Trump allies who traveled to Coffee county, Georgia, on 7 January 2021 gained access to sensitive election data. They copied election software used across Georgia and uploaded it on the internet – an open invitation to election manipulation by Trump allies in 2024.If anything, Trump is less constrained than he was in 2020.“In 2016, I declared I am your voice,” Trump said last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a line he repeated at his first 2024 campaign rally, in Waco, Texas, a few weeks later. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”Filing deadlines for 2024 presidential candidates will come in the next six months, in most states.Secretaries of state – who in most cases are in charge of deciding who gets on the ballot – must refuse to place Donald Trump’s name on the 2024 ballot, based on the clear meaning of section three of the 14th amendment to the US constitution. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      AOC: ‘Better for country’ if Dominion had secured Fox News apology

      by

      Dominion Voting Systems would have better served the US public had it refused to settle its $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News until the network agreed to apologise on air for spreading Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said.“What would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that,” the New York congresswoman said.Dominion and Fox this week reached a $787.5m settlement, shortly before trial was scheduled to begin in a Delaware court.Legal filings laid out how in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s election win and the run-up to the January 6 attack on Congress, Fox News hosts repeated claims they knew to be untrue, as executives feared viewers would desert the network for rightwing competitors One America News and Newsmax.Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media mogul and Fox News owner, was among witnesses due to testify.Fox faces other legal challenges but its avoidance of an apology to Dominion caused widespread comment, with some late-night hosts moved to construct their own on-air mea culpas.Ocasio-Cortez, popularly known as AOC, acknowledged Dominion was not beholden to public opinion.“This was a corporation suing another corporation for material damages,” she told the former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC host, on Sunday. “Their job is to go in and get the most money that they can. And I think that they did that. They are not lawyers for the American public.”The congresswoman continued: “I think what is best for the country, what would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that. But that is not their role.“And so for us, I think this really raises much larger questions. Very often, I believe that we leave to the courts to solve issues that politics is really supposed to solve, that our legislating is supposed to solve.“We have very real issues with what is permissible on air. And we saw that with January 6. And we saw that in the lead-up to January 6, and how we navigate questions not just of freedom of speech but also accountability for incitement of violence.”Nine deaths have been linked to the January 6 Capitol attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting the attack. Acquitted by Senate Republicans, he is the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked if media platforms should be held accountable for incitement, Ocasio-Cortez said: “When it comes to broadcast television, like Fox News, these are subject to federal law, federal regulation, in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t.“And when you look at what [the primetime host] Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence. And that is the line that I think we have to be willing to contend with.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Supreme court justices think selves exempt from rules, top Democrat says

      by

      Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee leading a push for supreme court ethics reform, accused the top court of being a panel of “nine justices [who] believe they are exempt from the basic standards of disclosure”.His claim came amid growing criticism of the conservative justice Clarence Thomas, whose judicial record is under scrutiny after he became embroiled in scandal over taking undeclared gifts from a Republican mega-donor.The last US Congress considered a bill demanding the inclusion of the supreme court in existing judicial conference regulations but it did not clear the Senate and the chief justice, John Roberts, has been mostly silent on the issue.Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Durbin said he hoped Roberts would take advantage of an invitation to testify before the judiciary committee on 2 May, to explain how he intended to handle ethics reform.“This is John Roberts’s court,” the Illinois Democrat said. “We are dealing with a situation where history will remember it as such. He is an articulate, well-schooled man when it comes to presenting his point of view. I’m sure he’ll do well before the committee.“But history is going to judge the Roberts court by his decision as to reform, and I think this is an invitation for him to present it to the American people.”Asked why he didn’t ask Thomas to appear, Durbin said: “I know what would happen to that invitation. It would be ignored. It is far better from my point of view to have the chief justice here.”Durbin’s statement that he thought all nine justices considered themselves above ethics standards came when he was asked what a code of conduct might look like.“[It] would look an awful lot like the code that applies to the rest of federal government and other judges, and basically would have timely disclosures of transactions like this purchase of the justice’s mother’s home,” he said, referring to Thomas’s failure to declare the sale to the mega-donor Harlan Crow.“It would also give standards for recusal so that if there’s going to be conflict before the court and recusal, it’d be explained publicly, and investigations of questions that are raised. It’s the same across the board code of conduct, ethics laws, applied to the court.“Why this supreme court, these nine justices, believe they are exempt from the basic standards of disclosure, I cannot explain.”Durbin’s invitation to Roberts did not mention Thomas, referring instead to “a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally”.The court’s “decade-long failure” to address those problems has “contributed to a crisis of public confidence”, Durbin wrote.He said the 2 May hearing would focus on “the ethical rules that govern the justices of the supreme court and potential reforms to those rules”, noting that the “scope of your testimony can be limited to these subjects, and that you would not be expected to answer questions from senators regarding any other matters”. More