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      Viktor Orbán tells CPAC the path to power is to ‘have your own media’

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      Viktor Orbán tells CPAC the path to power is to ‘have your own media’Hungarian leader also tells Republicans at Budapest conference that shows like Tucker Carlson’s should be broadcast ‘24/7’ The Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán, has told a conference of US conservatives that the path to power required having their own media outlets, calling for shows like Tucker Carlson’s to be broadcast “24/7”.Orbán, recently elected to a fourth term, laid out a 12-point blueprint to achieving and consolidating power to a special meeting of the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), under the slogan of “God, Homeland, Family”, held in Budapest.Orbán and US right to bond at Cpac in Hungary over ‘great replacement’ ideologyRead moreThe Hungarian prime minister said that with his fourth electoral victory on 3 April, Hungary had been “completely healed” of “progressive dominance”. He suggested it was time for the right to join forces.“We have to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find allies in one another and coordinate the movements of our troops,” Orbán said.He told Republicans in the Balnaconference centre on the banks of the Danube that media influence was one of the keys to success. In Hungary, the prime minister and his allies have effective control of most media outlets in Hungary, including state TV.“Have your own media. It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left,” he said. “The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.”He portrayed the US media as being dominated by Democrats, who he claimed were being “served” by CNN, the New York Times and others.“Of course, the GOP has its media allies but they can’t compete with the mainstream liberal media. My friend, Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there,” he said. “His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or as you say 24/7.”Carlson had been billed as a key speaker at the CPAC conference, but the Fox News talk show host sent only a 38 second video message, in which he extolled Hungary under the Orbán government as a model for the US.“I can’t believe that you’re in Budapest and I am not,” he said. “What a wonderful country. And you know why you can tell it’s a wonderful country? Because the people who turned our country into a much less good place are hysterical when you point it out.”“The last thing they want is any kind of signpost to a better way, and Hungary certainly provides that,” Carlson added. “A free and decent and beautiful country that cares about its people, their families, and the physical landscape.”Journalists from international media outlets were denied access to the event, including the New Yorker, Vox Media, Vice News, Rolling Stone, and the Associated Press, despite months of requests. The organizers either ignored their requests for accreditation or told them to “watch the event online”.Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union that runs CPAC, said the Central-European country is the right place to start a conversation about Europe.Hungary: where editors tell reporters to disregard facts before their eyesRead moreOrbán’s 12-point action plan also included points on faith, “because the absence of faith is dangerous” and the importance in countering “LGBT-propaganda” which was “still new in our country but we have already destroyed it”.The second day of the CPAC conference on Friday is billed to start with a “surprise video message” that some speculate will be from Donald Trump, who was also invited to the event. The schedule also features Candace Owens, described as “Trump’s favorite influencer’, video messages from Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Santiago Abascal, president of Spain’s Vox party, and Zsolt Bayer, a pro-Orbán pundit who formerly called Roma people “animals”, referred to Jewish people as “stinking excrement” and used racist slurs for Black people during the BLM protests.Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate from the French far right National Rally, was announced as a speaker on Monday, but the post disappeared from the organizers’ Facebook after a couple of hours, and her name was deleted from CPAC Hungary’s website.TopicsCPACViktor OrbánHungaryUS politicsEuropeRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets engaged to longtime partner Riley Roberts

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets engaged to longtime partner Riley RobertsDemocratic congresswoman confirms engagement to Roberts, whom she met as a student at Boston University Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took a break between visiting Amazon union workers and endorsing progressive candidates to get engaged to her longtime partner Riley Roberts.Ocasio-Cortez to unionized Amazon workers: victory is ‘just the beginning’Read moreOcasio-Cortez, 32, confirmed to Insider on Thursday that she and Roberts, who met while both were at Boston University, got engaged last month while visiting her parents’ home town in Puerto Rico.She then wrote on Twitter: “It’s true! Thank you all for the well wishes.”According to Insider, the pair were quiet about their relationship even before Ocasio-Cortez became a popular political voice, and their friends at university did not always know they were together.Roberts has also been one of her greatest support systems throughout her career, according to a biography published earlier this year, People magazine reported.“What we do know about Roberts doesn’t fit the stereotype of a politician’s partner,” writes Josh Gondelman in an essay in Take Up Space: The Unprecedented AOC by the editors of New York magazine.“He doesn’t seem focus-grouped or media-trained for state dinners and press conferences. We know he’s supportive and encouraging in private,” Gondelman writes. “And his expertise, as far as his public image goes, is his elusiveness and restraint.”The few times Roberts, a marketing professional, has popped up in media it has been with the couple’s dog, Deco, or in the 2018 documentary Knock Down the House.Ocasio-Cortez said she and Roberts would not start planning a wedding for at least a month.TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezDemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Help is on the way’: US Senate approves $40bn Ukraine package

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      ‘Help is on the way’: US Senate approves $40bn Ukraine packageBiden to sign mix of military and economic aid for Ukraine and its allies after 86-11 vote in Senate on Thursday The Senate overwhelmingly approved a $40bn infusion of military and economic aid for Ukraine and its allies on Thursday as both parties rallied behind America’s latest, and quite possibly not last, financial salvo against Russia’s invasion.The 86-11 vote gave final congressional approval to the package, three weeks after Joe Biden requested a smaller $33bn version and after a lone Republican opponent delayed Senate passage for a week. Every voting Democrat and all but 11 Republicans – including many of the chamber’s supporters of Donald Trump’s isolationist agenda – backed the measure.US Senate passes $40bn aid package for Ukraine – liveRead more“I applaud the Congress for sending a clear bipartisan message to the world that the people of the United States stand together with the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their democracy and freedom,” Biden said in a written statement afterwards.Biden’s quick signature was certain as Russia’s attack, which has mauled Ukraine’s forces and cities, slogs into a fourth month with no obvious end ahead. That means more casualties and destruction in Ukraine, which has relied heavily on US and Western assistance for its survival, especially advanced arms, with requests for more aid potentially looming.“Help is on the way, really significant help. Help that could make sure that the Ukrainians are victorious,” said the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, underscoring a goal that seemed nearly unthinkable when Russia launched its assault in February.Final passage came as Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, said the US had authorized shipping Ukraine another $100m worth of weapons and equipment from Pentagon stocks. That brought the total US spend sent to Kyiv since the invasion began to $3.9bn, exhausting the amounts Congress previously made available but that will be replenished by the newest legislation.TopicsUS newsUS SenateUkraineUS foreign policyUS politicsUS CongressEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      US withdrawal triggered catastrophic defeat of Afghan forces, damning watchdog report finds

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      US withdrawal triggered catastrophic defeat of Afghan forces, damning watchdog report findsReport by special inspector general blames Trump and Biden administrations, as well as the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani Afghan armed forces collapsed last year because they had been made dependent on US support that was abruptly withdrawn in the face of a Taliban offensive, according to a scathing assessment by a US government watchdog.A report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar) on the catastrophic defeat that led to the fall of Kabul on 15 August, blamed the administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden as well as the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani.“Sigar found that the single most important factor in the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces’ (ANDSF) collapse in August 2021 was the decision by two US presidents to withdraw US military and contractors from Afghanistan, while Afghan forces remained unable to sustain themselves,” said the congressionally mandated report, which was released on Wednesday.Afghanistan stunned by scale and speed of security forces’ collapseRead moreThe Sigar account focused on the impact of two critical events that it said doomed the Afghan forces: the February 2020 Doha agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban, and then Biden’s April 2021 decision to pull out all US troops by September, without leaving a residual force.“Due to the ANDSF’s dependency on US military forces, these events destroyed ANDSF morale,” the inspector general said. “The ANDSF had long relied on the US military’s presence to protect against large-scale ANDSF losses, and Afghan troops saw the United States as a means of holding their government accountable for paying their salaries. The US-Taliban agreement made it clear that this was no longer the case, resulting in a sense of abandonment within the ANDSF and the Afghan population.”The ANDSF were dependent on US troops and contractors because that was how the forces were developed, the report argued, noting “the United States designed the ANDSF as a mirror image of US forces”.“The United States created a combined arms military structure that required a high degree of professional military sophistication and leadership,” it said. “The United States also created a non-commissioned officer corps which had no foundation in Afghanistan military history.”It would have taken decades to build a modern, cohesive and self-reliant force, the Sigar document argued. The Afghan air force, the main military advantage the government had over the Taliban, had not been projected to be self-sufficient until 2030 at the earliest.Within weeks of Biden’s withdrawal announcement, the contractors who maintained planes and helicopters left. As a result, there were not enough functioning aircraft to get weapons and supplies to Afghan forces around the country, leaving them without ammunition, food and water in the face of renewed Taliban attacks.The US had begun cutting off air support to the Afghan army after the Doha agreement was signed. Exacerbating its impact on morale was the fact that the deal had secret annexes, widely believed to stipulate the Taliban’s counter-terrorism commitments and restrictions on fighting for both the US and Taliban. They remain secret, apparently, even from an official enquiry.“Sigar was not able to obtain copies of these annexes, despite official requests made to the US Department of Defence and the US Department of State,” the report observes.The secrecy led to unintended consequences, the report said.“Taliban propaganda weaponised that vacuum against local commanders and elders by claiming the Taliban had a secret deal with the United States for certain districts or provinces to be surrendered to them,” it said.The Sigar report also blames the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, who changed ANDSF commanders during the Taliban offensive, appointing aged loyalists from the communist era, while marginalising well-trained ANDSF officers aligned with the US.It quotes one unnamed former Afghan government official as saying that after the Doha agreement, “President Ghani began to suspect that the United States wanted to remove him from power.”According to the former official and a former Afghan government Ghani was afraid of a military coup. He became a “paranoid president … afraid of his own countrymen” and particularly of US-trained Afghan officers.Ghani fled Afghanistan on the day Kabul fell.TopicsAfghanistanAshraf GhaniUS foreign policyTrump administrationBiden administrationSouth and central AsiaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican ‘big lie’ supporters triumph in sign of Trump’s enduring power

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      Republican ‘big lie’ supporters triumph in sign of Trump’s enduring powerHard-right candidates who challenged 2020 result win string of primary victories on a good night too for progressive Democrats Republican candidates who questioned, denied and challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election won a string of consequential primaries in Pennsylvania and North Carolina this week, a testament to the enduring power of Donald Trump’s voter fraud myth, which continues to animate the hard-right movement he started.In a campaign season dominated by angst over the economy and frustration with leadership in Washington, several hard-right candidates successfully channeled conservative grassroots momentum, and are now in striking distance of positions that will have enormous influence over voting and elections administration in battleground states across the country.US primary elections: Dr Oz tied with McCormick in test of Trump’s influence on Republicans – liveRead moreDemocrats, meanwhile, who face a grim electoral outlook dampened by Joe Biden’s dismal approval ratings, chose to elevate candidates who more closely reflected the party’s base, with progressives on the verge of growing their ranks in Congress.Though not yet complete, the results from Tuesday’s highly anticipated election night delivered a composite portrait of a Republican party still in Trump’s thrall, even in races where his chosen candidate came up short.In Pennsylvania, Republicans nominated Doug Mastriano, a hard-right election denier who was a key figure in the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in his state. He attended and helped organize Trump’s “Save America” rally in Washington on January 6 that preceded the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, and has been subpoenaed by the House panel investigating the assault.Mastriano’s victory sets up a high-stakes showdown with Josh Shapiro, the state’s Democratic attorney general. Should Mastriano prevail in November, he would be in charge of one of the most contested states in the country – one in which the governor appoints the secretary of state, who in turn oversees the election.During his campaign, Mastriano embraced elements of Christian nationalism, staking out controversial positions on issues such as abortion, LGBTQ rights and public health mandates. In one debate, he suggested he would oppose any exceptions to an abortion ban, including in cases involving rape or incest. Shapiro has cast himself as a defender of abortion rights, an issue that is expected to play a key role in governor’s races this fall should the supreme court strike down Roe v Wade, as is anticipated.In his victory speech Tuesday night, Mastriano lashed out at media outlets and commentators who referred to him as “extreme”.“They like to call people who stand on the constitution far-right and extreme,” he said. “Forcing your kids to mask up, that’s extreme. Forcing healthcare workers to lose their job for not getting a jab. It’s extreme when you shut down businesses in our state.”In the marquee Senate race, the Trump-backed celebrity physician, Mehmet Oz, was neck-and-neck with the former hedge fund chief executive David McCormick, with nearly all of the vote tallied. The conservative commentator Kathy Barnette had fallen far behind and was out of contention for the nomination.During the campaign, the candidates competed to claim the Maga mantle. Both Oz, who touted Trump’s endorsement, and McCormick, who is married to the former Trump administration official Dina Powell, struggled to animate the former president’s loyal base, and spent millions of dollars of their personal war chests attacking each other in one of the most expensive intra-party brawls of the cycle.That apparently left an opening for Barnette, who enjoyed a last-minute surge in the polls. Despite her Maga bona fides and endorsements from Trump’s allies, the former president warned voters that she was unelectable.In response to doubts about the strength of her candidacy, Barnette said: “Maga does not belong to President Trump.”In North Carolina, the scandal-plagued first-term congressman Madison Cawthorn lost his re-election bid despite Trump urging supporters to give the 26-year-old Maga firebrand a “second chance”. He was beaten by Chuck Edwards, a state senator who offered a record that was every bit as conservative but without the celebrity. It was a sharp fall for Cawthorn, once viewed as a rising star in the Maga universe, and a rare win for the Republican party’s old guard, which aligned against him.Trump’s choice for Senate, the North Carolina congressman Tedd Budd, also triumphed. Trump’s early endorsement of the little-known House Republican reshaped the race, elevating a candidate who objected to the certification of 2020 election results in two states. He beat out the state’s former governor, Pat McCrory, who refused to say the 2020 election was stolen.Budd now faces the former state supreme court chief justice Cheri Beasley for the seat being vacated by the retiring Republican senator Richard Burr. If elected, Beasley would be the southern state’s first Black senator if elected.Trump’s choice in Idaho also came up short, failing to unseat the state’s Republican governor, Brad Little. Janice McGeachin, the state’s far-right lieutenant governor, who twice attempted a power grab while Little was out of state, had made Trump’s false claims of a stolen election a central plank of her candidacy.While much of the focus was on Trump’s influence over his party, Tuesday’s results tested Biden’s appeal among the party’s base. In Oregon, a progressive challenger, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, appeared on track to unseat the congressman Kurt Schrader, a seven-term incumbent with a reputation for breaking with his party. Schrader was the first candidate Biden endorsed this cycle, and his loss would be a major victory for the progressive movement.In Pennsylvania, Congressman Conor Lamb, an avowed centrist from the Biden wing of the party who won difficult races in Trump country, lost handily to the state’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, an iconoclastic progressive with blue-collar appeal.Meanwhile, Pennsylvania state representative Summer Lee, running for an open House seat, appeared to have overcome a wave of money from outside groups aiming to counter the progressive movement. If she wins the primary in the solidly Democratic district, Lee would be on track to become the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress.“Our victory shows that we can overcome the billionaire class that wants to divide and conquer us all with fear and lies-for-profit, if only we come together across our differences for a positive vision of multiracial democracy,” Lee wrote on Twitter after declaring victory on Tuesday night. “We can have nice things, if we fight.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansDemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      How 4chan’s toxic culture helped radicalize Buffalo shooting suspect

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      How 4chan’s toxic culture helped radicalize Buffalo shooting suspectPayton Gendron’s 180-page manifesto borrowed straight from the site’s politics boards, echoing antisemite and racist myths Just weeks after 4chan motivated a quadruple shooting in Washington DC, the racist and conspiracy-oriented online message board probably inspired the killings of 10 at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo over the weekend.A 180-page manifesto, allegedly released by the accused along with a video of the attack, is rife with pseudo-scientific racism, antisemitic conspiracy theories and a call for others to mimic his violence. The screed is mostly plagiarized from other extremists and from the far-right 4chan.The 18-year-old white man charged with carrying out the massacre – before turning himself over to police at the scene – wrote that “extreme boredom” drove him to 4chan in March 2020.‘Cheering section’ for violence: the attacks that show 4chan is still a threatRead morePayton Gendron first fell into logging on the message board daily when coronavirus-related lockdowns kept many in New York state indoors, according to the timeline in the manifesto. His family told the New York Post that isolation and paranoia inflicted by the pandemic made him snap – possibly a preview of Gendron’s legal defense.Gendron faces first-degree murder charges, which the justice department says they may prosecute as hate crimes. Most of those slain were Black, including Aaron Salter, a security guard who tried to stop the shooting; local activist Katherine Massey; and substitute teacher Pearl Young.The manifesto contains hundreds of racist and antisemitic memes borrowed straight from 4chan’s politics boards and spells out the philosophy behind the attacks: the racist myth that Democrats favor open immigration policies and high birthrates for Black people to “replace” Republican voters and seize control of America.Buffalo shooting: what we know about the victims so farRead moreThat so-called rreat replacement myth, sometimes more bluntly termed “white genocide theory,” has found particularly fertile ground in places like 4chan.“We have seen (the great replacement myth) playing a greater role in mobilizing individuals to violence because it has a somewhat unique ability to foster a sense of emergency,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, assistant professor in the school of religion at Queen’s University and author of an upcoming book on the radicalizing power of conspiracy theories.The manifesto details the baseless racism that underpins the philosophy, including the idea that Jewish people secretly control the world, and that the genetic differences between the races make them incompatible. One particular image, sourced from 4chan, claims to show “the truth about race” – compiling a handful of debunked, misunderstood, or cherrypicked studies to assert the claim that certain races are inferior to whites. The manifesto even seeks to back up its claims with the long-abandoned pseudoscience of phrenology, which studies the sizes and shapes of craniums.While these claims have no basis in modern biology or sociology, they are established doctrine on 4chan, where even conversations on a board devoted to cooking frequently veer into racist slurs and junk race science. The popularity of these ideas on 4chan has bubbled up into the mainstream.The great replacement myth has been endorsed, in various forms, by vlogger Nick Fuentes and neo-Nazi organization Patriot Front and by more establishment figures like Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Senate hopeful JD Vance.In Discord chat logs believed to be written by Gendron, he writes, “I only really turned racist when 4chan started giving me facts.” Early in 2022 he explained that only 4chan – including the board dedicated to Nazi ideology – gave him the real news he sought. “White genocide is real when you look at data, but is not talked about on popular media outlets,” he wrote. He confessed to browsing 4chan daily and that he “barely interacts with regular people”.4chan is also notorious for praising and deifying other mass shooters and white supremacist terrorists. Gendron’s alleged manifesto has ample evidence of their influence on him. Civil rights lawyer Crump: investigate Buffalo shooting as domestic terrorismRead moreThe document borrows heavily from another manifesto written in 2019 by Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Tarrant was also a frequent user of 4chan and its sister board, 8chan, according to a government report. Tarrant’s own manifesto, which was uploaded to 8chan before the attack, in turn plagiarized significantly from Anders Brevik, who murdered 77 in Norway in 2011 in an anti-immigrant spree.Brevik himself copy-and-pasted most of his manifesto directly from other anti-Islam sources, illustrating “the broader ideas behind the great replacement conspiracy theory have been around for some time within various far-right movements”, Amarasingam said.Besides Buffalo, both 4chan and 8chan have become politically significant forces in the US. Both boards helped form and foster QAnon, the far-right myth that Donald Trump is combating a cult of elite leftist pedophiles. The boards played a central role in constructing the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, which inspired the deadly Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.Then, last month, 23-year-old Raymond Spencer recorded himself shooting and wounding four people at random. He uploaded the footage to 4chan and continued posting right up until he committed suicide, as police closed in on him. A racist meme, popular on 4chan, was posted on the wall of the apartment Spencer used as a sniper’s nest.Gendron and Spencer’s cases vividly show how 4chan’s toxic culture can radicalize young men, according to Amarasingam.“You can hear it all over the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto – a deep sense of urgency that there is an imminent collapse of white people and white culture,” the professor said. “Combine all this with the furious nihilism, racism, and angst of 4chan and it all becomes deeply worrying.”TopicsUS newsBuffalo shootingUS politicsReuse this content More

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      Biden tells Buffalo shooting mourners: ‘Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail’ – as it happened

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      Joe Biden attacked the “hateful and perverse ideology” behind the Buffalo massacre as he and first lady Jill Biden visited the city and paid tribute to the victims.In an emotional but powerful address to mourners, officials and first responders, the president called on Americans to “enlist” in the fight against racial hatred:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In America, evil will not win. I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word.
      What happened here is simple and straightforward terrorism, domestic terrorism, violence inflicted in the service of hate, and a vicious thirst for power.
      The media, and politics, the internet, have radicalized angry and lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That’s the word. Replaced by other people who don’t look like them.
      I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit.Biden condemned years of racially-based attacks across the country..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas and Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta, this week in Dallas, Texas. Now in Buffalo… Buffalo, New York…
      White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison running through our body politic that’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. No more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can, that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America.We’re closing our live blog now, but it’s far from the end of our political coverage for the day. It’s primary day in several states, with prominent Republican Senate and governor candidates in Pennsylvania notably going head to head.Please watch for my colleague Lauren Gambino’s coverage later, including TV doctor Mehmet Oz’s bid to advance his chase for a Senate seat and North Carolina extremist Madison Cawthorn’s efforts to hold on to his in the House of Representatives.The day was otherwise dominated by Joe Biden’s visit to grieve with the families of victims and survivors of the weekend’s massacre of 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo.“Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail,” Biden said, calling white supremacy “a poison” that had no place in America. Here’s what else we followed:
      Buffalo mayor Byron Brown said he saw Biden’s “sense of resolve” to get something done about gun reforms following the grocery store massacre.
      Republicans in Wisconsin who submitted to Congress false ballots stating Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the state are facing a $2.4m lawsuit.
      The food and drug administration approved a Covid-19 booster shot for children aged five to 11.
      The FBI opened a federal hate crime investigation into a shooting at an Asian-American owned hair salon in Dallas that wounded three women.
      Black students in Georgia who say they were blocked from protesting a rule that allowed Confederate flags on clothing but not Black Lives Matter materials are suing their school district.
      02:19Donald Trump has received a savage Twitter smackdown from George Conway, a constant bête noire of the former president as co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and husband to his former adviser Kellyanne Conway.The Tuesday afternoon insult likening Trump to a caged monkey throwing feces came as part of a chain that began with news the 6 January committee was not expecting to call him as a witness in public hearings this spring.Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson says its “not our expectation” to call Donald Trump as a witness. He said it’s not clear Trump would enhance investigators’ understanding of the evidence they’ve already unearthed.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 17, 2022
      Lawyer Elizabeth de la Vega decided it was not something she wanted to see:Smart. Calling Trump as a witness in the June hearings would be a terrible move. https://t.co/FxCobKVb32— Elizabeth de la Vega (@Delavegalaw) May 17, 2022
      And Conway followed up with this:Yes. Displaying a monkey in a cage throwing its feces around would provide equal enlightenment, even if the monkey were sworn. https://t.co/6oHg2oWapd— George Conway🇺🇦 (@gtconway3d) May 17, 2022
      Thousands of ballots from several counties in today’s Pennsylvania primary election might not be able to be read “for several days”, the Associated Press reports, because of a printing error.Officials in Lancaster county, the state’s sixth most populous, said the problem involved at least 21,000 mailed ballots, only a third of which were scanning properly. The glitch will force election workers to redo ballots that can’t be read by the machine, a laborious process expected to take several days, the AP says. Officials in the Republican-controlled county pledged that all the ballots will be counted eventually.“Citizens deserve to have accurate results from elections and they deserve to have them on election night, not days later,” Josh Parsons, Republican vice chair of the county board of commissioners said at a news conference. “But because of this, we’re not going to have final election results from these mail ballots for probably several days”. pic.twitter.com/YacDxjCitN— Commissioner Ray D’Agostino (@CommissionerRD) May 17, 2022
      John Fetterman, frontrunner in today’s Democratic senate primary in Pennsylvania, is undergoing what campaign staff say is “a standard procedure” to install a heart pacemaker.The state’s lieutenant governor announced on Sunday he had suffered a minor stroke two days previously, but said he was recovering and his campaign “isn’t slowing down one bit”.“John Fetterman is about to undergo a standard procedure to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator. It should be a short procedure that will help protect his heart and address the underlying cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation (A-fib), by regulating his heart rate and rhythm,” the statement from his campaign said.Fetterman tweeted that he used “an emergency absentee ballot” to cast his vote today (presumably for himself) from his bed in Penn Medicine Lancaster general hospital.Just cast my Primary Election Vote from Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital using an emergency absentee ballot. ✅ pic.twitter.com/HftIKtZG2V— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) May 17, 2022
      Buffalo’s mayor Byron Brown has just been talking about Joe Biden’s visit to his city today, and what he sees as the president’s “sense of resolve” to get something done about gun reforms following the grocery store massacre.Brown told reporters that the president and first lady Jill Biden spent considerable private time with the families of the 10 killed by an alleged white supremacist, which he said he thought strengthened Biden’s “commitment to try to bring change”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As it relates to gun control in this country change has been very elusive. There are those in Washington who have put the needs and the desires of the gun manufacturers ahead of the lives of Americans. That has to stop.
      The president talked about gun control. He talked about his concern for the families here. There was talk about what could be done to end these mass shootings.
      The president seemed very moved by what he saw here in this community. And I really felt a strong sense of resolve and commitment in the president to try to bring change as it relates to these kinds of situations.
      I saw him steel himself during this visit to get something done. I felt it, I think it’s powerful, and I think it’s real.Brown also paid tribute to police officers and fire fighters who responded to Saturday’s shooting, and credited Aaron Salter, the former police officer and Tops market security guard who lost his life in a firefight with the killer, for saving lives:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If not for the heroic actions of… Aaron Salter engaging the shooter and exchanging gunfire with the shooter that ultimately took his life, more people would probably have gotten killed inside the store.The US Congress held its first open briefing on UFOs in more than 50 years on Tuesday, but those seeking explanations for the numerous military sightings of unexplained objects were left disappointed, as defense officials appeared to hold their juiciest information for closed door hearings.During a 90-minute briefing in Washington a highlight was the release of two new videos showing unidentified aerial phenomena, although one of them was immediately debunked by Scott Bray, the deputy director of navy intelligence.The hearing, the first of its nature since 1966, came after a bumper year for UFO enthusiasts. In 2021, US intelligence released a landmark report which found 144 reports of unidentified aerial phenomenon, only one of which could be explained.The report followed US navy pilots publicly discussing their encounters with UAPs, with one retired lieutenant claiming he saw objects in the sky above the east coast “every day for at least a couple years”.On Tuesday Bray sought to defend the government’s investigation of UAPs – following accusations that the Pentagon is not taking the issue seriously enough – but also showed members of an intelligence subcommittee videos of airborne objects.One video, filmed during daylight, showed an object appearing to whiz past a military jet. The fleeting appearance of the object – it appeared on screen for less than a second – showed the difficulty in gathering data on some UAPs, Bray said.Another clip, recorded at night from a military plane at some time in 2019, showed triangle shapes appearing to hover in the sky. Bray then played another video that captured the same phenomena, but followed it up with a mundane explanation: the objects were drones, rendered triangular in shape and other-worldly in motion because of a quirk in the way video was captured through night-vision equipment.The debunking did little to counter accusations – including one leveled by Andre Carson, the committee chair – that the Pentagon has little interest in investigating the inexplicable. Read more:Out-of-this-world revelations in short supply at US Congress briefing on UFOs Read moreThe US has taken control of Afghanistan’s embassy in Washington DC, and consulates in New York and Beverly Hills, California, the state department has said.It moved to secure the properties Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, after determining Afghanistan “formally ceased conducting diplomatic and consular activities in the United States” at noon yesterday.In reality, there have been no formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Kabul since the Taliban assumed power after the chaotic US withdrawal last summer. The US does not recognize the Taliban as a legitime government.An official notice will be published in the federal register on Wednesday stating that the department had assumed responsibility for “protection and preservation” of the properties the AP said.Nobody will be allowed to enter the buildings without state department official, it said.The day has been dominated so far by Joe Biden’s visit to grieve with the families of victims and survivors of the weekend’s massacre of 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo.The president and first lady Jill Biden met with the families, then he delivered a powerful address in which he called out the racial hatred behind the killings, and urged Americans to unite in the fight against “hateful and perverse ideology”.“Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail,” Biden said, calling white supremacy “a poison” that had no place in America.Elsewhere:
      Republicans in Wisconsin who submitted to Congress false ballots stating Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the state are facing a $2.4m lawsuit.
      The food and drug administration approved a Covid-19 booster shot for children aged five to 11.
      The FBI opened a federal hate crime investigation into a shooting at an Asian-American owned hair salon in Dallas that wounded three women.
      Black students in Georgia who say they were blocked from protesting a rule that allowed Confederate flags on clothing but not Black Lives Matter materials are suing their school district.
      Republicans in Wisconsin who attempted to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, by submitting false electoral ballots to Congress declaring Donald Trump the winner, are facing a lawsuit.The legal action in Dane county circuit court says the decision by a Republican slate of electors to send the ballots saying Trump had won was “as legally baseless as it was repugnant to democracy”, the Associated Press says. Biden won the state, and its 10 electoral college votes, by almost 21,000 votes. The lawsuit, filed by three Democratic voters, names 10 Republicans and two attorneys it says were responsible and seeks up to $2.4m in damages, as well as disqualifying the Republicans from serving as electors in the future.“It’s essential to have accountability and to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Jeffrey Mandell, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the AP.“We have heard in the more than a year since the fraudulent electors met the excuse that what they did was not wrong, it was totally fine. We want a court to make clear that is not true”.Republican electors who have spoken publicly have argued they weren’t trying to change the Wisconsin result but attempting to “preserve legal options” if a court ruled in favor of Trump.Wisconsin was among a number of heavily contested swing states that Biden won to deny Trump a second term in office. The twice-impeached Trump has since expounded the big lie that the election was fraudulent and victory was stolen from him, and incited the 6 January Capitol riot by his supporters to try to cling on to power.Numerous conservative groups pushing the big lie are facing legal actions is several states, the Guardian reported last week.Read more:Groups perpetuating Trump’s 2020 election lie face scrutiny and lawsuitsRead moreA tweet from the president in Buffalo urges the nation “to find purpose to live a life worthy of those we lost. We must resolve that from tragedy will come hope and light and life”.Jill and I are in Buffalo to stand with the community and to grieve with the families. As a nation, we must find purpose to live a life worthy of those we lost. We must resolve that from tragedy will come hope and light and life. pic.twitter.com/Om8sTigHXl— President Biden (@POTUS) May 17, 2022
      An emotional Joe Biden, who received several bursts of applause during his Buffalo address, closed with a powerful call for Americans to come together to defeat what he said was a “hateful minority”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re the most multiracial, most dynamic nation in the history of the world. Now’s the time for the people of all races, from every background, to speak up as a majority in America and reject white supremacy.
      These actions we’ve seen in these hate filled attacks represent the views of a hateful minority. We can’t allow them to distort America. We can’t allow them to destroy the soul of the nation.And he widened his comments to include the divisiveness of the current political climate:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I travel the world all the time. Heads of state in other countries ask me, ‘What’s going on? What in God’s name happened on January 6th? What happened in Buffalo?’
      We have to refuse to live in a country where black people going about weekly grocery shopping can be gunned down by weapons of war deployed in a racist cause.
      We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.
      You must all enlist in this great cause of America. This is work that requires all of us, presidents and politicians, commentators, citizens, none of us can stay on the sidelines.
      We have to resolve that here in Buffalo, that from this tragedy, will come hope, in light, in life. It has to. And not on our watch… the sacred cause of America will never bow, never break, never bend. The America we love will endure.
      May the souls of the fallen rest in peace and rise in glory.The president said Americans had a duty to call out the hatred and racial bigotry behind the massacre in Buffalo, and countless other mass shootings. Then he turned to gun laws, and a call for Congress to pick up the baton:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The venom of the haters and their weapons of war… the violence in the words and deeds that stalk our streets, our stores, our schools. This venom, this violence, cannot be the story of our time. We cannot allow that to happen.
      Look, I’m not naive. I know tragedy will come again. It cannot be forever overcome. It cannot be fully understood either.
      But there are certain things we can do. We can keep assault weapons off our streets. We’ve done it before. We passed pass the crime bill last time and violence went down. Shootings went down.
      You can’t prevent people from being radicalized to violence but we can address the relentless exploitation of the internet to recruit and mobilize terrorism. We just need to have the courage to do that, to stand up. Biden went on the address the peril he said the US is in, if urgent action is not taken:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The American experiment and democracy is in a danger like it hasn’t been in my lifetime. It’s in a danger this hour.
      Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America but who don’t understand America.
      To confront the ideology of hate requires caring about all people, not making distinctions.Joe Biden attacked the “hateful and perverse ideology” behind the Buffalo massacre as he and first lady Jill Biden visited the city and paid tribute to the victims.In an emotional but powerful address to mourners, officials and first responders, the president called on Americans to “enlist” in the fight against racial hatred:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In America, evil will not win. I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word.
      What happened here is simple and straightforward terrorism, domestic terrorism, violence inflicted in the service of hate, and a vicious thirst for power.
      The media, and politics, the internet, have radicalized angry and lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That’s the word. Replaced by other people who don’t look like them.
      I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit.Biden condemned years of racially-based attacks across the country..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas and Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta, this week in Dallas, Texas. Now in Buffalo… Buffalo, New York…
      White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison running through our body politic that’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. No more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can, that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America.Joe Biden has just begun his remarks at the scene of the mass shooting in Buffalo that claimed 10 lives on Saturday.“We’ve come to grieve with you,” the president said, after being introduced by first lady Jill Biden.“The feeling like there’s a black hole in your chest, you’re suffocating, you’re unable to breath. The anger, and the pain, the depth of a loss that’s so profound”.Biden is naming the victims one by one, and telling his audience a little about them.He is expected to move on shortly to a call for Congress to tighten gun laws. More

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      Trump promises to depress readers with big lie book: ‘I don’t think you’ll enjoy it’

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      Trump promises to depress readers with big lie book: ‘I don’t think you’ll enjoy it’Former president trumpets work in progress on his false claims about electoral fraud in 2020 Donald Trump says he is writing a book – which will “depress” readers – about his lie that electoral fraud caused his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020.Former Trump official Kash Patel writes children’s book repeating false claim over Steele dossierRead moreSpeaking in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, Trump said: “This is the greatest hoax, heist. This is one of the greatest crimes in the history of our country. And sadly, the prosecutors don’t want to do anything about it.“This is the crime of the century. I’m actually writing a book about it called The Crime of the Century.“I don’t think you’ll enjoy it. You’ll be very depressed when you read it, but we want to have it down for historic reasons.”On Monday, Winning Team Publishing – an imprint co-founded by Donald Trump Jr which has put out a picture book about Trump’s presidency – announced the new book on Twitter.“NEW BOOK ALERT: CRIME OF THE CENTURY by President Donald J Trump!” the tweet shouted, promising details soon.The tweet linked to a website where copies of the picture book, Our Journey Together, were on sale for $74.99 (unsigned) and $229.99 (signed). A copy signed by Donald Trump Jr was priced at $199.99.Most presidents sign book deals. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, has published one volume of memoirs after netting more than $60m for his work and that of his wife, Michelle.Trump has published a number of books under his own name, using ghostwriters. But he left office in disgrace, having been impeached twice, the second time for inciting the deadly Capitol attack of 6 January 2021. There has been no memoirs deal.In June last year, Trump claimed to have “turned down two book deals, from the most unlikely of publishers” because he did “not want a deal right now”. But he added: “I’m writing like crazy anyway, however, and when the time comes, you’ll see the book of all books.”At the same time, citing staff protests at Simon & Schuster over a deal for Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, publishing insiders said no mainstream house would touch a Trump memoir.“It would be too hard to get a book that was factually accurate,” Politico quoted one insider as saying. “That would be the problem. If he can’t even admit that he lost the election, then how do you publish that?”‘Emperor has no clothes’: man who helped make Trump myth says facade has fallenRead moreBooks about Trump, his time in power and his refusal to admit defeat continue to be bestsellers. But Keith Urbahn, an agent behind many such books, told Politico: “It doesn’t matter what the upside on a Trump book deal is – the headaches the project would bring would far outweigh the potential in the eyes of a major publisher.“Any editor bold enough to acquire the Trump memoir is looking at a factchecking nightmare, an exodus of other authors and a staff uprising.”Winning Team Publishing has no such problems. It did face controversy, however, when the New York Times reported that Trump stopped his White House photographer using images which were then included in his own book.Our Journey Together was reported to have made $20m in just two months on sale.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansPolitics booksAutobiography and memoirnewsReuse this content More