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Post by Webster on Mar 11, 2024 14:04:28 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump has confirmed that he met with Elon Musk, following a report that the former president was seeking a major cash infusion for his latest re-election campaign. Trump was asked if he thought he would get the Tesla CEO’s support in an interview with CNBC this morning. Trump replied: I don’t know. I’ve been friendly with him over the years. I’ve helped him. When I was president I helped him. I’ve liked him.The New York Times reported last week that Trump and Musk held a private meeting in Palm Beach along with a few wealthy Republican donors. Musk later said he is not donating to either Trump nor Joe Biden.
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Post by Webster on Mar 11, 2024 14:27:51 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden to deliver remarks on lowering health care costs during New Hampshire visitJoe Biden is heading to the competitive election state of New Hampshire today where he is expected to call on Congress to lower health care costs for American families before later participating in a campaign event. The president is due to fly into Manchester this afternoon, and is scheduled to deliver a speech in Goffstown where he will call for lawmakers to apply his $2,000 cap on drug costs and $35 insulin to everyone, not just people who have Medicare, AP reported. Biden will also seek to make permanent some protections in the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire next year, it said.
Joe Biden is issuing a budget plan Monday aimed at getting voters’ attention: tax breaks for families, lower healthcare costs, smaller deficits and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Unlikely to pass the House and Senate to become law, the proposal for fiscal 2025 is an election-year blueprint about what the future could hold if Biden and enough of his fellow Democrats win in November. The president and his aides previewed parts of his budget going into last week’s State of the Union address, with plans to provide the fine print on Monday. If the Biden budget became law, deficits could be pruned $3tn over a decade. Parents could get an increased child tax credit. Homebuyers could get a tax credit worth $9,600. Corporate taxes would jump upward, while billionaires would be charged a minimum tax of 25%. Biden also wants Medicare to have the ability to negotiate prices on 500 prescription drugs, which could save $200bn over 10 years. All of this is a chance for Biden to try to define the race on his preferred terms, just as the all-but-certain Republican nominee, Donald Trump, wants to rally voters around his agenda.
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Post by Webster on Mar 11, 2024 14:38:07 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Kansas Republicans were condemned as “vile and wrong” after attendees at a fundraising event beat and kicked a martial arts dummy wearing a Joe Biden mask. Footage posted to social media showed attendees at the Johnson county Republican event kicking and beating the dummy, which was wearing a Biden mask and a T-shirt displaying the slogan “Let’s Go Brandon”, a rightwing meme mean to disparage Biden. Dinah Sykes, the Democratic minority leader in the state Senate, told the Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit news site: Political violence of any kind is vile and wrong, and we cannot afford to brush it under the rug when others encourage it.Sykes called for state Republican leaders to take action against those responsible. Mike Brown, the Kansas Republican party chair, told the Kansas City Star he was not at the event, which was not organised by the state party, though he sent emails to promote it. Mike Kuckelman, a former state Republican chair, condemned the event.
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Post by Webster on Mar 11, 2024 14:39:27 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden calls for higher taxes on corporations and wealthy as he unveils $7.3tn budgetJoe Biden unveiled a $7.3tn budget proposal aimed as election-year pitch to voters that would offer tax breaks for families, lower health care costs and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Biden’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year that starts in October includes raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 from 21%, hiking rates on people making over $400,000, forcing those with wealth of $100m to pay at least 25% of their income in taxes, and letting the government negotiate to bring more drug costs down, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, the government would bring back a child tax credit for low- and middle-income earners, fund childcare programs, funnel $258bn to building homes, provide paid family leave for workers, and spends billions on violent crime prevention and law enforcement. The document promises to cut annual deficit spending by $3tn over 10 years, slowing but not halting the growth of the $34.5tn national debt. Biden also renewed his demand for funding on border security, Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and other national security issues that has been stalled by Republican congressional leadership for months. White House budgets are always something of a presidential wishlist, and Biden’s proposal is unlikely to pass the House and Senate to become law. Biden and his aides previewed parts of his budget going into last week’s State of the Union address, and they provided the fine print on Monday, AP reported.
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Post by Webster on Mar 11, 2024 14:40:42 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden aides said their budget was realistic and detailed while rival measures from Republicans were not financially viable. “Congressional Republicans don’t tell you what they cut, who they harm,” AP reported White House budget director Shalanda Young as saying. -- The president is transparent, details every way he shows he values the America people.House Republicans voted on Thursday on their own budget resolution for the next fiscal year out of committee, saying it would trim deficits by $14tn over 10 years. But their measure would depend on rosy economic forecasts and sharp spending cuts. The White House called the plan unworkable.
The House Republican leadership have issued a statement calling Joe Biden’s budget “yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility”. -- The president’s budget is “a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline,” a statement by House majority leader Steve Scalise, Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik reads.While hardworking Americans struggle with crushing inflation and mounting national debt, the President would increase their pain to spend trillions of additional taxpayer dollars to advance his left-wing agenda.
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Post by Webster on Mar 11, 2024 14:43:15 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Housing secretary Fudge to resign in 'crazy, silly' election seasonHousing and urban development (HUD) secretary Marcia Fudge has announced that later this month she will step down from her post “with mixed emotions” and intends to retire after decades of public service, accompanying her news with a call for more focus on homelessness and more affordable housing. She also appeared to time her announcement so that she could step away before the 2024 presidential election reaches its most intense phases this summer and fall, calling the election season, in an exclusive interview with USA Today “crazy, silly”. Fudge, 71, intends to return to her home state of Ohio after 22 March and continue life as a private citizen, rather than running for any other public office, she told USA Today in an exclusive interview. “It’s time to go home. I do believe strongly that I have done just about everything I could do at HUD for this administration as we go into this crazy, silly season of an election,” she told the outlet. Fudge said affordable housing should be a nonpartisan focus. -- It is not a red or blue issue. Everybody knows that it is an issue…an American issue.’’She told USA Today that under her tenure at the agency, since the start of the Biden administration, she worked to improve its role in supporting families with housing needs, helping people experiencing homelessness and boosting economic development in communities. Joe Biden issued a statement praising Fudge. -- Over the past three years she has been a strong voice for expanding efforts to build generational wealth through homeownership and lowering costs and promoting fairness for America’s renters. Thanks to Secretary Fudge, we’ve helped first-time homebuyers, and we are working to cut the cost of renting. And there are more housing units under construction right now than at any time in the last 50 years.”
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Post by Webster on Mar 11, 2024 14:45:03 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden has just taken the stage in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where he is about to speak about the economy, health care and the cost of drug prices. The address comes after he sent his aspirational 2025 budget to Congress, following his return on Monday morning to Washington from Delaware, and then flew to the New England swing state. Biden is on a push to hit the campaign trail, trying to build on the energetic reboot of his presidency with his fiery state of the union speech last week, in the face of criticisms that he is too old and doddery to run for reelection. Out of the gate he is hailing his plan, under the Inflation Reduction Act, to cap the total that seniors on Medicare pay for prescription drugs at $2,000 a head per year. “We beat Big Pharma,” he said of the US pharmaceutical industry.
Joe Biden is making a speech about taxes, healthcare and costs, on a visit to the swing state of New Hampshire this afternoon. The US president is sifting out some points that he hammered during his state of the union address last week and is expanding on them in public addresses and election campaign events, as he ramps up his reelection efforts with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump marching towards the nomination to run against him. “I’m a capitalist. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes,” Biden told the crowd in Goffstown, on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire. Biden wants to raise income taxes for those making over $400,000 a year, as well as raising corporation tax. “A fair tax code is how we invest in things that make this country great,” he said. He slammed “my predecessor” – Trump – for “making $2tr in tax cuts” during his single term and “expanding the federal deficit”. He aspires, he said, with a cooperative congress, to raise hundreds of billions of dollars by raising taxes on the very wealthiest Americans. He’s departing the stage now.
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Post by Webster on Mar 13, 2024 15:01:12 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump shows slight lead over Biden in new pollDonald Trump is narrowly leading Joe Biden in a new national poll released a day after both candidates clinched their presidential nominations. The poll by USA Today/Suffolk University found Trump polling at 40% to Biden’s 38%, with a significant group of voters who said they are unhappy with their options and open to being persuaded. One in four of those surveyed said they might change their minds before the November election. The poll found that 29% of voters ranked inflation and the economy as the most important issue determining their vote, followed by immigration (24%) and threats to democracy (23%). In what could be good news for Biden, an increasing number of voters said there was an economic recovery under way, and his approval rating has also increased, the poll showed.
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Post by Webster on Mar 13, 2024 15:04:19 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden hits campaign trail after unofficially clinching nomination to face TrumpJoe Biden is on his way to his second swing state of the week when he visits Wisconsin this afternoon, two days after showing up in New Hampshire to tout his election agenda and just hours after unofficially becoming the Democratic party’s nominee for president in the 2024 election. The current US president and his predecessor, Donald Trump, won primary elections in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington state on Tuesday night, solidifying a rematch in November that a majority of voters aren’t looking forward to. They won’t be officially anointed until their respective party conventions this summer, but both have now amassed enough delegates during the primary season to be unassailable as the nominees. Biden, his vice-president Kamala Harris and cabinet members are fanning out across the country after Biden’s handily energetic State of the Union address last week, with swing states and districts very much in mind. With today’s latest poll numbers showing that many voters are disgruntled and open to persuasion this election (though maybe the hard work will be persuading them to vote at all, not to switch allegiance), Biden and Trump have their work cut out. The Associated Press notes that the last presidential election featuring a rematch came in 1956, when Republican president Dwight Eisenhower again defeated the Democratic opponent he had beaten four years prior, Adlai Stevenson.
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Post by Webster on Mar 13, 2024 15:35:12 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden is expected to formally open his Wisconsin campaign headquarters when he visits Milwaukee this afternoon. He’s en route now. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will talk to reporters and answer questions aboard Air Force One on the way. The Republican party will hold its convention in Milwaukee this July as it prepares to officially declare Trump its nominee to face Biden at the ballot this November. Wisconsin is crucial to Biden’s re-election ambitions. He very narrowly won the state in 2020 in his domination of the upper midwest against the former president. Then there was an almighty, surreal battle as Trump set his political dogs on the trail of overturning the result, with a variety of plots. All failed and last December, a group of Republican fake electors in Wisconsin acknowledged that Biden won the presidency and agreed they would not serve in the electoral college in 2024 as part of a settlement agreement in a civil lawsuit.
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Post by Webster on Mar 14, 2024 15:09:27 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Senior White House officials are planning to meet today with Arab, Muslim and Palestinian-American community leaders in Chicago, according to several reports. The meeting, first reported by CNN, comes as Joe Biden faces increasing backlash from Arab Americans and progressives over his stance in the Israel-Gaza war. It also comes ahead of the Illinois Democratic primary on Tuesday. Among the White House officials expected to attend Thursday’s meeting are its director of intergovernmental affairs, Tom Perez, director of public engagement Steve Benjamin, liaison to Muslim-American communities Mazen Basrawi and national security council chief of staff Curtis Ried, CNN reported. But leaders in the Palestinian communities angry at how Biden has handled the war in Gaza have declined to join the meeting, according to a report by Politico, which quoted Hatem Abudayyeh, a group organizer, as saying: All the Palestinian leadership we work with in Chicago have rejected this overture, and USPCN [U.S. Palestinian Community Network] considers anyone – Palestinian, Muslim, Arab – who takes a meeting with the White House to be an absolute sell-out. There’s no more time for meetings.
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Post by Webster on Mar 14, 2024 16:10:22 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Chicago Muslim and Palestinian groups refuse White House meeting over Israel's killings in GazaDozens of American Muslim and Palestinian-American organizations and leaders in Chicago have turned down a White House meeting over the lack of policy change on Israel’s ongoing killings in Gaza. In a letter sent to White House officials, the organizations said: “First, there is no point in more meetings … With a genocide that has flattened Gaza … the White House has not only refused to call for a ceasefire, but also enabled this blatant campaign of ethnic cleansing to take place by providing financial and military means, as well as diplomatic support at the United Nations. A meeting of the minds is nowhere in sight.
Second, there is no confusion as to our consistent demand for an immediate and permanent ceasefire to end the mass murder of civilians and stave off the worst humanitarian crisis in modern times. We believe another meeting would only act to whitewash months of White House inaction followed by meek handouts …
… we demand, at minimum, an immediate and permanent ceasefire, complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, ultimately ending the siege and blockade of Gaza, allowing the natural flow of humanitarian aid, reinstating funding to UNRWA, a cessation of weapons sales or transfers to Israel, and accountability measures for all war crimes, crimes against humanity, the crime of genocide, and justice and liberation for the Palestinians.
That is what history will judge us by, not more token meetings when every day is of the essence.”
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Post by Webster on Mar 15, 2024 17:07:32 GMT -5
(The Guardian) "Vast majority of Congress" wants to stand up to Russia - BidenJoe Biden and Mike Johnson have been shaking hands, smiling, sitting next to each other. You’d almost think Congress was functioning and the Democratic-controlled White House was happy with everything that’s going on in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The US president and the Speaker of the House are at, to quote the White House, the Friends of Ireland Caucus St Patrick’s Day Luncheon. You know that when someone says “luncheon” it’s an official function calling for decorum and delicacies, both diplomatic and gastronomic. The White House pool report says that Johnson stepped to the microphone first in the Rayburn Room. He introduced Biden, who was smiling while he sat nearby listening, as “someone who is known everywhere as America’s most famous Irishman.” Pool continues: The president, in a blue suit and green tie, then made general remarks about Ireland – Irish poets, Irish history, Irish American heritage. “And excuse me for saying this,” Biden said turning his attention to the situation in Ukraine after noting the shared US and Irish commitment to freedom, “but I think the vast majority of members of Congress” are willing to do their part” to stand up to Russian aggression. The latest tranche of US funding for Ukraine to counter the Russian invasion passed the Senate but has stalled in the House. Irish leader Leo Varadkar is visiting Biden today and is attending the luncheon.
Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, is in Washington today visiting Joe Biden and attending happenings on Capitol Hill. Varadkar used his remarks at a luncheon to thank the United States for its work to bring peace between Ireland and Northern Ireland — part of the United Kingdom — with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, The Associated Press reports. Joe Biden said: May the hinge of our friendship never grow rusty.”Both the US president and the Irish taoiseach, or prime minister, spoke up for continued international support for Ukraine in its grinding resistance two years into Russia’s invasion. -- Ukraine must not fall and together, we need to stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes. We look forward to working with America for the next 100 years,” said Varadkar.
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Post by Webster on Mar 18, 2024 18:49:36 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Americans overwhelmingly reject Trump’s presidential immunity claim in new pollA large majority of Americans surveyed in a new poll reject Donald Trump’s argument that presidents should be immune from criminal prosecution for crimes committed while in office. The Politico/Ipsos poll, released today, found that 70% of respondents rejected this position, including 48% of Republicans. Only 11% of respondents agreed with Trump’s position that presidents should have criminal immunity for conduct while in office. It comes after the supreme court decided late last month to take up the claim that Trump has absolute immunity from prosecution in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The survey found that about half of the country does not trust the supreme court to issue a fair and nonpartisan ruling on the question of whether Trump is immune from prosecution. The court’s public standing has taken a major hit since Trump and his Republican allies installed a conservative supermajority in the court that, most notably, overturned Roe v Wade. -Read more: www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/18/poll-conviction-trump-2024-elections-00147338?nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=d66b2db2-0400-407f-afcc-3b1d45707d8e&nlid=630318
The latest poll by Politico/Ipsos also found that half of respondents believe that Donald Trump is guilty of the alleged crimes charged in Manhattan, which concerns the former president’s alleged falsification of business records in connection with a hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. Although many respondents said a conviction in Manhattan would have no impact on their likelihood to support Trump for president, among those who said that a conviction would matter, by a more than two-to-one margin, they said it would make them less likely to support Trump.
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Post by Webster on Mar 18, 2024 18:50:25 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump’s continuing lavish praise and support for Vladimir Putin are fueling alarm among former intelligence officials and other experts who fear another Trump presidency would benefit Moscow and harm American democracy and interests overseas. Trump praised the Russian president as a “genius” and “pretty savvy” when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. Trump also recently greenlit Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato members who don’t pay enough to the alliance. More recently, instead of criticizing Putin for the death of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure, who the Kremlin once tried to kill with poison, and who died suddenly last month in an Arctic penal colony, Trump weirdly equated the four criminal prosecutions he faces with Navalny’s fate. “Trump views Putin as a strongman,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and a national security official in the first two years of Trump’s administration. -- In a way they’re working in parallel because they’re both trying to weaken the US, but for very different reasons.
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