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Post by Webster on Mar 25, 2024 13:44:55 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant is in Washington, meeting with national security adviser Jake Sullivan today and will meet with US defense secretary Lloyd Austin tomorrow. (Guardian correspondent) Julian Borger wrote earlier that after the vote at the UN [this morning], the office of Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a planned visit to Washington by two of his ministers, intended to discuss a planned Israeli offensive on the southernmost Gazan city of Rafah, which the US opposes. The White House said it was “very disappointed” by the decision. However, a previously arranged visit by the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, went ahead. US national security spokesperson John Kirby said just now at the White House press briefing underway that Israel was still “a friend and ally” and that the US was still supplying Israel with aid and weapons. But the US is adamant that Israel should not only agree to a ceasefire tied to a hostage deal but should not invade Rafah, the city closest to Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, which is packed with more than 1.5 million desperate Palestinians who fled the military operation that has decimated a lot of Gaza further north. “We have the same concerns about a ground offensive in Rafah that we had yesterday and the day before,” Kirby said. The Israeli military bombed parts of Rafah overnight.
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Post by Webster on Mar 25, 2024 13:45:28 GMT -5
(The Guardian) National security spokesman John Kirby has just wrapped up his part of the press briefing at the White House and left the room, leaving press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre handing questions about congressional matters now involving the stuck legislation over aid to Ukraine. Kirby said of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s canceling of the high level delegation visit to the White House tomorrow for talks on Gaza:“It’s disappointing, we would have preferred to have had that meeting.” Kirby said that Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant is currently at the White House for a long-scheduled visit, meeting with national security adviser Jake Sullivan. “Humanitarian assistance will be on the agenda,” Kirby emphasized. He said that the US abstained in the UN Security Council resolution vote this morning calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages by Hamas, which controls Gaza. “We chose to abstain [rather than veto] because it did not include language condemning Hamas,” Kirby said. And it did link a ceasefire to a hostage deal. The US put forward a ceasefire resolution last Friday but it was more conditional than the one it abstained on today. The US resolution last week was vetoed by Russia and China. Kirby added: “Hamas could solve all these problems right now by putting down their arms and releasing the hostages.”
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Post by Webster on Mar 26, 2024 15:26:54 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden says government will 'move heaven and earth' to rebuild collapsed Baltimore bridge, reopen portJoe Biden says he has instructed the federal government to “move heaven and earth” to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore and reopen its economically vital port. The government will also cover the cost of the reconstruction, the president added in a speech from the White House. “I’m directing my team to move heaven and earth to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge as soon as humanly possible,” Biden said. “We’re going to work with our partners in Congress to make sure the state gets the support it needs. It’s my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect the Congress to support my effort. It’s gonna take some time, and people of Baltimore can count on us so to stick with them at every step of the way till the port is reopened and the bridge is rebuilt.” The port is currently closed due to the span’s collapse, which occurred early this morning after the cargo ship Dali collided with it. The president noted that 15,000 workers rely on the its operations, and “we’re gonna do everything we can to protect those jobs and help those workers”.
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Post by Webster on Mar 27, 2024 14:12:22 GMT -5
(The Guardian) The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will travel to France and Belgium next week, a state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Wednesday, Reuters reports. Blinken will meet with the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, and the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, while in Brussels for a Nato meeting, Miller said at a regular news briefing. Meanwhile, the state department does not think hostage talks with Israel and Hamas are over, Miller said, adding that Washington thinks there is an ability to continue to pursue the release of hostages. He also said “we do” when asked if the department believed a limited military campaign in Rafah, in the south of Gaza, can take out remaining commanders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Hamas controls the territory and led the attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year in which more than 1,200 people were massacred and more than 240 people were taken hostage into Gaza, with more than 100 remaining captive at this time.
Israel has asked to reschedule a meeting with US officials to discuss its military plans in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, a US official said on Wednesday, days after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, abruptly scrapped the planned talks, Reuters reports. Netanyahu called off a planned visit to Washington by a senior Israeli delegation after the US allowed passage of a Gaza ceasefire resolution at the United Nations on Monday, in a move that appeared to reflect growing US frustration with the Israeli premier. US officials said the Biden administration was perplexed by the Israeli cancellation and considered it an overreaction to the security council resolution, insisting there had been no change in policy. On Wednesday, a US official said Netanyahu’s office “has said they’d like to reschedule the meeting dedicated to Rafah. We are now working with them to set a convenient date.” Netanyahu is considering sending a delegation for a White House meeting on Rafah as early as next week but the scheduling is still being worked out, an Israeli official in Washington told Reuters on condition of anonymity. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli prime minister’s office. The planned talks are expected to focus on Israel’s threatened offensive in Rafah, the last relatively safe haven for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The White House said last week it intended to share with Israeli officials alternatives for eliminating the Palestinian militant group Hamas without a ground offensive in Rafah that Washington says would be a “disaster”.
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Post by Webster on Mar 28, 2024 13:34:59 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden hopes to rake it in this evening at a campaign fundraiser alongside Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, his two Democratic predecessors who won re-election. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly: Joe Biden will appear onstage with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, his two most recent predecessors as a Democratic president, in New York City on Thursday night, a presidential extravaganza the Biden-election campaign said would raise a “historic” $25m.
Such a haul, which Politico called an “NYC money bomb”, will widen Biden’s lead over Donald Trump in fundraising for the November election.
Amid improving polling for Biden, the two presidential campaigns recently posted February fundraising figures. Federal filings showed Biden nearly $40m up in cash raised, leading the president’s campaign to taunt their rival as “Broke Don”.
Biden’s Thursday night show at Radio City Music Hall in midtown Manhattan will be compered by the actor Mindy Kaling, feature performances by artists including Queen Latifah and Lizzo, and culminate with a three-way presidential conversation moderated by the late-night TV host Stephen Colbert.
Tickets start at $250 but top-ups include $100,000 for a picture with Biden, Obama and Clinton – three men recently ranked by political scientists as the 14th-, seventh- and 12th-greatest presidents of all time. In the same survey, Trump finished 45th and last.
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Post by Webster on Mar 29, 2024 13:33:53 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden needles Trump, faces protesters at New York fundraiser that netted campaign more than $26mJoe Biden went to New York City yesterday on a mission: raise a massive amount of money for his presidential campaign in a city that’s long been fertile territory for Democrats. The president accomplished his mission last night at Radio City Music Hall, bringing in what his campaign said was more than $26m in a moderated conversation alongside Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, where Biden said Donald Trump’s ideas “are from the 18th, 19th century”. The president aims to continue raking it in today, spending the morning holding another fundraiser in the city, before flying back to Washington DC. But as has happened repeatedly in recent months, Biden was interrupted during the event by protesters opposed to his support for Israel. Despite the fact that the Biden administration allowed passage earlier this week of a UN security council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and one of his top allies in Congress has broken with its government, the disruptions were a sign that he may have a ways to go in winning back voters disaffected over his policy towards what America considers its top Middle East ally. Biden claimed many Republican lawmakers aren't with Trump, argued old age brings 'wisdom'Sitting next to his former boss Barack Obama and Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton, Joe Biden talked about lots last night in a conversation moderated by comedian Stephen Colbert. That included politically perilous topics such as his advanced age. At 81, he is the oldest president to have ever served, and polls indicate that voters are concerned about his fitness for the job. Reverting to the carefree tone he took when discussing the subject at his State of the Union address earlier this month, Biden said, “one thing age does bring is a little bit of wisdom. And I know I don’t look much over forty, I know that.” He also floated the theory that many Republicans don’t actually want to support the policies that his rival Donald Trump plans to put before them. “The thing that disturbs me most is I don’t know what it is that my predecessor has on these guys. Why they’re not stepping up more like Liz Cheney and others because, I know, I know that they don’t like a lot of what’s going on,” Biden said, accusing Trump of wanting to cut Social Security and tighten abortion access nationwide. “This last guy that I ran against, and am running against again this time … his ideas are from the 18th, 19th century,” he said.
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Post by Webster on Mar 29, 2024 13:43:47 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden may have had a big night of fundraising in New York yesterday, but Donald Trump is looking to outdo him next week, the Guardian’s Joanna Walters and Martin Pengelly report: Joe Biden and Donald Trump are in a new phase of a heavyweight fundraising smackdown as the US president raised a record $25m at a glitzy event with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton on Thursday night, while Trump’s Republican campaign claimed it would outdo Biden next week with a $33m event in Florida, according to reports.
Biden and his Democratic predecessor headlined a star-studded fundraiser with Clinton at the Radio City Music Hall event, hosted by Mindy Kaling and featuring Lizzo, Queen Latifah and Stephen Colbert.
Obama and Biden flew to the city on Air Force One together in a show of unity and Democratic campaign heft as the 2024 election enters an important phase between the main primary season and the summer nominating conventions, which are expected to anoint Biden and Trump as their parties’ candidates.
The glittering Democratic fundraiser was punctuated by protests not just outside but also inside the auditorium, as attendees rose at several different moments to shout over the discussion, referencing Biden’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza.
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Post by Webster on Mar 29, 2024 13:49:11 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Democratic National Committee rapid response director Alex Floyd issued the following statement on Friday in response to Michael Whatley’s appointment as the new chair of the Republican National Committee: Donald Trump hand picked Michael Whatley to take over the RNC because he parroted Trump’s baseless lies about the 2020 election, and Whatley is returning the favor by making election denialism a key litmus test to join the GOP. Putting an election denying extremist like Whatley in charge of the RNC makes it clear that the future of our democracy is on the ballot in this election – and the American people will once again reject Trump and his MAGA allies this November.
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Post by Webster on Apr 1, 2024 15:03:52 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Apr 1, 2024 15:07:57 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden plans to visit Baltimore on Friday, following bridge collapseJoe Biden plans to visit Baltimore on Friday in the wake of the catastrophic collapse last week of the landmark Francis Scott Key Bridge after a massive container ship collided with one of the main supports of the bridge. The White House secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is briefing now at the White House and gave the new detail, that the US president will be heading to the Maryland city, with its huge port, where the shipping channel has been blocked since the incident, which also killed six people who were working on road repair when it happened. The wreckage of the huge bridge, which served as a road artery, fell into the Patapsco River in the early hours of last Tuesday morning, and the steel debris and the stricken container ship are still jamming the main entry and exit for the port. Jean-Pierre had few details of the visit so far and said she couldn’t add any information about whether Biden will be reviewing the site of the bridge collapse by air, land or sea, or whether he will meet the relatives of victims. The huge salvage operation on the bridge is under way.
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Post by Webster on Apr 2, 2024 15:52:01 GMT -5
(The Guardian) A slew of states are holding presidential primaries today – including Wisconsin, where the Guardian’s Alice Herman reports opponents of Joe Biden’s support for Israel hope to send a shot across his campaign’s bow in a swing state crucial to his re-election hopes: Voters in Wisconsin cast their ballots today in an election that will test voter enthusiasm for Joe Biden and Donald Trump – and potentially enshrine two amendments in the state constitution impacting election administration across the state.
The president and former president are already the presumptive nominees and will almost certainly face off in the general election in November, and it seems that the threat of prosecution, general unpopularity and advanced age can’t stop them.
But while the primary will not offer alternative candidates, a group of activists in Wisconsin see it as an opportunity to push Biden on his policy toward Israel’s war on Gaza. The organizers, inspired by Michigan’s “uncommitted” campaign, which garnered more than 100,000 votes there, are calling on voters to choose “uninstructed” instead of Biden. “The margins of our elections are so incredibly close – less than 1% in the last two presidential election cycles – so I think it would behoove the administration to pay attention,” said Reema Ahmad, the lead organizer of the Listen to Wisconsin campaign.
Organizers with the campaign aim to turn out as many voters for “uninstructed” as Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 to demonstrate their critical role in November, Ahmad said. The campaign has relied on the support of a broad network of progressive organizations, including the state’s largest network of Latino voters, Voces de la Frontera Action and Black Leaders Organizing Communities (Bloc), groups that helped propel Biden to his narrow 2020 victory.
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Post by Webster on Apr 2, 2024 15:56:06 GMT -5
(The Guardian) The youth climate group Sunrise Movement is continuing its efforts to support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza by calling on Wisconsin progressives to vote “uninstructed delegation” in today’s primary, which will serve as a test of Joe Biden’s standing in the crucial swing state. Progressive organizers in Wisconsin have launched a campaign, based on similar initiatives in states like Michigan and Minnesota, in support of the “uninstructed” option to protest Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza. “Biden’s best chance to succeed in November is by supporting an immediate and permanent ceasefire and ending unconditional military aid to the Israeli government,” Michele Wiendling, political director of Sunrise Movement, said in a statement. “The president is hemorrhaging the support of young voters by aiding in the destruction of people’s lives and homes in Gaza. If President Biden wants to defeat Trump, he must listen to young people, people of color, and the working class who put him in office in 2020 and immediately change course.” Polls close in Wisconsin at 9pm ET, so Biden will soon learn how much support he is at risk of losing in the battleground state.
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Post by Webster on Apr 3, 2024 14:30:56 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden campaign's hopes for turnaround hampered by new poll showing Trump leading in swing statesJoe Biden has been an unpopular president for most of his administration, and recent polls have shown him trailing Donald Trump in states he must win in order to remain in the White House. Many Democrats have hoped recent weeks would mark a turnaround for the president, who gave a well-received State of the Union address, and then held fundraisers and campaigned in swing states across the country. But new polling from the Wall Street Journal indicates those efforts have not changed the dynamics of the race yet. Biden is behind Trump in six of the seven crucial swing states – most of which he carried in 2020. Democrats have repeatedly been rocked by such polls in recent months, and hoped that as it becomes clear the November election is set to be a rematch between Trump and Biden, voters will shift their support to the president. We’ll see what they have to say about these latest findings. Biden campaign touts busy March spent engaging voters, raising fundsThe Biden campaign is out with its own data today about what they’re calling the “I’m On Board” Month of Action in March, which they spent fundraising, opening up offices and hiring staff. “Our campaign is making early investments to connect directly with voters on the issues that will define this election and to build the infrastructure we need to win,” Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a press release. “The difference between our ground game and Donald Trump’s nonexistent presence in the battleground states couldn’t be more clear – and the failing Trump campaign and the RNC can’t get this time back.” Their accomplishments include opening up more than 100 offices, sending more than 2m text message and making 385,000 calls, and Joe Biden’s campaigning in all of this year’s swing states in the weeks since his State of the Union address.
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Post by Webster on Apr 3, 2024 14:32:13 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump has lately been doing some campaigning of his own, including yesterday in Wisconsin, where the Guardian’s Alice Herman reports he held a rally and railed against undocumented migrants: On Wisconsin’s presidential primary election day, Donald Trump made his first campaign stop in the state, where he railed against so-called “migrant crime” and doubled down on false election claims.
“We won in 2016 – we did much better in 2020, hate to say it, we did a hell of a lot better,” the former president told the roaring crowd, nodding to the disproven and unfounded “rigging” numerous times during his speech. “We will throw out the sick political class that hates us,” he continued later. “We will route the fake news media, we will drain the swamp and we will liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all.”
Hours earlier, the rainy weather in Green Bay had turned sludgy, icy and painful as gusts of wind blew the precipitation sideways. It did not stop thousands of Trump supporters from thronging there for hours, forming a parade that snaked up and away from the venue and over the bridge crossing the Fox River two blocks away.
Trump is, according to most polling, fighting for his life in Wisconsin, a state he lost to Joe Biden four years ago. But one would never know that in the KI Convention Center, where his red and white and sequined supporters gathered to hear him speak for the first time this campaign season. “I personally like that he’s unashamed,” said Ethan Nielsen, an 18-year-old who attended the rally with his father as he waited in line. “He believes what he believes and he doesn’t go back on what he says.”
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Post by Webster on Apr 3, 2024 14:33:36 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump also campaigned yesterday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, bringing his anti-immigrant message to a city where an undocumented man is accused of murder. During his speech, the former president said he had spoken to “some of [the] family” of murder victim Ruby Garcia. Local broadcaster WOOD reports that did not happen. Here’s more: “He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” Ruby Garcia’s sister, Mavi Garcia, told Target 8.
Mavi Garcia, the family spokesperson, said neither Trump nor anybody from his campaign has contacted her or anybody in her immediate family. She said her family is close and she would know if that had happened. “It was shocking. I kind of stopped watching it. I’d only seen up to that, after I heard a couple of misinformations he said, I just stopped watching it,” Mavi Garcia said.
Trump spent some of his speech on Tuesday focusing on immigration, turning to the March 22 murder of 25-year-old Ruby Garcia. Court records show Brandon Ortiz-Vite, who was in the U.S. illegally, has confessed to killing her and dumping her along US-131 in Grand Rapids.
Donald Trump is once again under a gag order, this time in his New York criminal case over making hush money payments. But will it matter? The Guardian’s Cameron Joseph reports that it probably will not, at least when it comes to the topic of death threats. Here’s what he has to say in the Trump on Trial newsletter, which you can sign up for here: When Judge Juan Merchan issued a gag order last week to bar former president Donald Trump from attacking potential witnesses and others involved in his pending hush-money trial in New York, he left open a loophole that Trump jumped to exploit.
The former president immediately went on the attack against Merchan’s own daughter, falsely accusing her of posting social media content that called for Trump to be jailed.
Merchan’s original gag order had covered potential trial witnesses, jurors, district attorney Alvin Bragg’s staff and Merchan’s staff while excluding the prosecutor and the judge – but hadn’t explicitly included Merchan’s and Bragg’s family members.
Merchan responded by expanding the gag order on Monday to cover their families, writing that Trump’s attacks on his daughter were part of a broader pattern of attacking family members of the judges and attorneys involved in his cases that “serves no legitimate purpose. It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game’ for Defendant’s vitriol.”
That pattern has played out in case after case – and if the past is prologue, his supporters will take it one step further. When Trump attacks those involved in his cases, death threats soon follow.
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