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Post by Webster on Jun 7, 2024 18:53:38 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Trump rakes in $12m with San Francisco fundraiserSan Francisco is known for its liberal politics, but Donald Trump yesterday brought in $12m from a fundraiser in the city hosted by tech and crypto entrepreneurs friendly to his campaign to the White House, Reuters reports. Trump has seen a fundraising surge following his conviction last week on felony business fraud charges in New York. Here’s more from Reuters about how yesterday’s fundraiser, which brought Trump-flag waving supporters to San Francisco’s chilly, foggy streets, came about: Venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, as well as Sacks’ wife Jacqueline, held the reception and dinner with Trump at the Sacks’ swanky mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, according to an invitation seen by Reuters.
The gathering - where top tickets were $500,000 per couple - was sold out, a source with knowledge of the fundraiser told Reuters. It raised some $12 million, according to Republican National Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon and another source.
While San Francisco is heavily liberal - Democrat Joe Biden won 85% of the city’s vote in the 2020 election against then-President Trump - a growing number of high-profile local venture capitalists and crypto investors have thrown their support behind Trump ahead of his November rematch against Biden. “President Trump is relaxed, happy, and cracking jokes about AI,” Dhillon, a conservative lawyer, posted on X from the event.
Executives from crypto exchange Coinbase, crypto investor twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and other crypto leaders were in attendance, Dhillon added. Trump talked about how Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has warned about crypto being used by scam investors and criminals, is “going after crypto,” according to Dhillon.
Biden last week vetoed what he described as a Republican-led resolution that would “inappropriately constrain the SEC’s ability to set forth appropriate guardrails and address future issues” relating to cryptocurrency assets.
Trevor Traina, a San Francisco-based tech executive and former Trump ambassador to Austria, said business regulations implemented during Biden’s presidency had alienated some people in the tech industry.
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Post by Webster on Jun 7, 2024 18:58:18 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump’s felony conviction may have been a boon for his fundraising, but as the Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports, it may be costing him support in his general election rematch against Joe Biden: After a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts last week, Republicans rallied around the former president, insisting the verdict would only damage Joe Biden’s standing in the presidential election.
But some new polling data casts doubt upon that argument, as a small but crucial number of Americans in key voting blocs appear to be moving toward Biden in the aftermath of the verdict.
According to a post-verdict analysis of nearly 2,000 interviews with voters who previously participated in New York Times/Siena College surveys, Trump’s advantage over the president has narrowed from three points to one point. That shift may seem insignificant, but it could prove decisive in a close presidential election, as is expected in this year’s contest. In 2020, just 44,000 votes across three battleground states prevented a tie in the electoral college.
Perhaps more worrisome for Trump is the specific areas where he appears to be bleeding support. According to the Times analysis, disengaged Democratic-leaning voters and those who dislike both Trump and Biden were more likely to say that the verdict made them reconsider their options in the election.
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Post by Webster on Jun 10, 2024 18:22:38 GMT -5
(The Guardian) More than half of Joe Biden’s supporters are primarily motivated to cast their vote for the president in order to prevent a return of Donald Trump to the White House, according to a new poll. Opposing Trump is the main reason to back Biden for 54% of the Democratic incumbent’s voters, the new CBS/YouGov poll found, up from 47% in a similar survey conducted in March, which was prior to the presumptive Republican nominee being found guilty of business fraud by a New York jury. A further 27% of Biden voters are supporting the president because they like him – down from 31% in March – while 19% say that they are backing him because he is the Democratic nominee for president. The poll comes as the Biden campaign has ramped up its rhetoric in attacking Trump directly in recent weeks, pointing to the former president’s felony conviction and string of past controversies. Last week, Biden said his predecessor is “reckless and dangerous” for complaining that his New York trial was rigged and claimed that he had been driven “crazy” by his 2020 election loss. The outcome of this year’s presidential election remains in the balance, with the new CBS poll finding Biden and Trump are essentially tied nationally and in key swing states. Trump is on 50% of support among likely voters, and Biden is on 49%, with these figures switched for likely voters in battleground states.
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Post by Webster on Jun 10, 2024 18:31:21 GMT -5
(The Guardian) The South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, said on Sunday that Donald Trump should pick a woman to be his running mate amid reports that her fellow Republican’s shortlist is nearly all men. “I think that that would be beneficial, according to the polling that I’ve seen for him and a lot of swing states, is that having a woman that is helping his campaign makes a difference,” she told Dana Bash during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. -- One in four Republican women haven’t made up their minds because they want to have a woman talking to them about the issues they care about. And women aren’t monolithic. They don’t care about just one issue.Noem’s comments come amid reports that the former president’s campaign for a second term in the White House is vetting possible picks. Only one of them, congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York, is a woman. Others include senators JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and Tom Cotton. The North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, congressman Byron Donalds, and Ben Carson, the former secretary of housing and urban development, are also reportedly under consideration. Until recently, Noem was considered a top possible pick for the No 2 spot on the Republican ticket for November’s election. But her chances reportedly fell significantly after she published a story in her recently published memoir about killing her dog.
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Post by Webster on Jun 10, 2024 18:55:04 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump has been compared to Jesus Christ by the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene at a campaign rally for the former president in Las Vegas, a city more renowned for evoking images of gambling than biblical scenes. Greene, who makes frequent references to her Christian faith, cited Trump’s supposed Christ-like qualities to challenge the Democrats’ efforts to capitalise on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s status as a convicted felon following his recent conviction in a case involving hush money paid to an adult film actor and falsified business records in a New York court. “The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about ‘President Trump is a convicted felon’,” she told a crowd that waited in soaring early-summer temperatures. -- Well, you want to know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted felon. And he was murdered on a Roman cross.It is not the first time Greene has drawn parallels between Trump and Christ – whom Christians consider to be the messiah and son of God – as well as other historical martyr figures. When he was arrested in New York on corruption charges in April last year, she likened Trump to Jesus and Nelson Mandela, who became South Africa’s first post-apartheid president after being jailed for 27 years by the racist regime.
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Post by Webster on Jun 10, 2024 18:58:38 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Dozens of Donald Trump’s supporters have been requiring medical help at his rallies in the scorching US south-west but it seems lost on him that his plans to reverse climate policies and “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels will only worsen extreme weather, campaigners say. A total of 24 people at a Trump rally in Las Vegas on Sunday required medical attention due to the heat, according to the Clark county fire department, with six taken to hospital for treatment. The hospitalizations come after a further 11 people needed to be admitted to hospital for heat exhaustion as they waited for Trump to speak at a rally in Phoenix on Thursday. Trump himself noted the severe heat during his speech on Sunday, with the Las Vegas rally starting around noon when the temperature was about 90F (32C) and climbed to around 102F (38C). The rally was held in a park with little shade, although organizers provided water and cooling tents, and allowed attendees to hold shading umbrellas. “It’s 110, but it doesn’t feel it to me,” said Trump, who wore a suit jacket and signature red baseball cap. -- I’m up here sweating like a dog. They don’t think about me. This is hard work.Trump then said: I don’t want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.He later said he was joking about not caring about his own voters and complained the media would criticize him for this. Record-breaking heat enveloped much of the US south-west last week, with temperatures soaring beyond 110F (43C) in areas stretching from California to Arizona. Roughly half of Arizona and Nevada were under an excessive heat alert, even though the official start of summer is still a week away, with Las Vegas hitting 110F on Friday and Phoenix reaching 113F (45C).
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Post by Webster on Jun 11, 2024 15:30:14 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden has started speaking at the Everytown for Gun Safety event in Washington DC. As the president began speaking, he was interrupted by a protester who shouted about the “genocide” in Gaza. The crowd drowned out the protester with chants of “four more years”.[hrJoe Biden, addressing the Everytown for Gun Safety event, says the country’s murder rate was the highest increase on record in the year before he came to the presidency. Last year saw the largest drop in murder rates in history, Biden said, adding that those rates are continuing to fall “faster than ever” last year. Biden says last year he established the first ever White House office of gun violence overseen by his “incredible” vice president, in order to coordinate a nationwide effort to reduce gun violence. More children are killed in America by guns than cancer and car accidents combined, Biden says.
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Post by Webster on Jun 12, 2024 17:21:15 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden announces reopening of Baltimore portJoe Biden has announced the reopening of the port of Baltimore after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in March, killing six construction workers. In a statement released via the White House, Biden said: I made clear that my administration would move heaven and earth to reopen the port of Baltimore – one of our nation’s largest shipping hubs. Today, thanks to the tireless work by the men and women in the Unified Command, the full navigation channel is now open to all vessel traffic, allowing a full return of commerce to the port of Baltimore … Our hearts remain with the families of the victims of the bridge collapse, and we will continue to stand with the community throughout this period of recovery. US announces new sanctions on Russia over military invasion of UkraineThe US has announced a new slew of sanctions on Russia over its military invasion of Ukraine. On Wednesday, the treasury and state departments announced sanctions targeting more than 300 targets including entities in Russia as well as in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. In a statement following the sanctions, the US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said: Today’s actions strike at their remaining avenues for international materials and equipment, including their reliance on critical supplies from third countries … We are increasing the risk for financial institutions dealing with Russia’s war economy and eliminating paths for evasion, and diminishing Russia’s ability to benefit from access to foreign technology, equipment, software and IT services.
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Post by Webster on Jun 13, 2024 15:56:38 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Donald Trump to visit Capitol Hill for first time since January 6Donald Trump is set to visit Capitol Hill for the first time since the January 6 riots in 2021. Trump is expected to address House Republicans at the Capitol Hill Club and also meet with Senate Republicans at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters, Politico reports. Speaking to NBC, Mississippi’s Republican senator Roger Wicker said the visit from Trump “will be an expression of unity”. Meanwhile, Democrats including the former House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, have hit back at Trump’s upcoming visit. In a statement on Thursday, Pelosi accused the former president of being on a mission of “dismantling our democracy”. Trump’s visit comes after he was found guilty last month of 34 counts of falsifying business records in his historic hush-money trial involving the adult film star Stormy Daniels. Nancy Pelosi on Trump's Capitol Hill visit: 'Mission of dismantling our democracy'Here is former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s full statement that the she released ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday: Today, the instigator of an insurrection is returning to the scene of the crime. January 6th was a crime against the Capitol, that saw Nazi and Confederate flags flying under the dome that Lincoln built.
It was a crime against the constitution and its peaceful transfer of power, in a desperate attempt to cling to power. And it was a crime against Members, heroic police officers and staff, that resulted in death, injury and trauma that endure to this day.
With his pledges to be a dictator on day one and seek revenge against his political opponents, Donald Trump comes to Capitol Hill today with the same mission of dismantling our democracy. But make no mistake – Trump has already cemented his legacy of shame in our hallowed halls.
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Post by Webster on Jun 13, 2024 16:13:22 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Should Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election, the state department may likely see a mass purge. The Guardian’s Julian Borger reports: America’s career diplomats are braced for the threat of a mass purge if Donald Trump wins the November election and for the potential flooding of the state department with loyalty-tested political appointees.
Rather than leading to a seamless change of course in a rightward Trumpist direction, the diplomats’ union and former ambassadors argue, such an attempted takeover would be much more likely to end in legal challenges, gridlock and chaos. If elected, Trump has threatened to reinstate a policy he unsuccessfully attempted in his first term with the creation of “Schedule F”, a new category of federal employees which would be applied to tens of thousands of civil servants in “policy-related” jobs, robbing them of legal protections and making them liable to be fired at will.-Read more: www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/13/trump-state-department-project-2025-purge
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Post by Webster on Jun 13, 2024 16:36:27 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden’s campaign officials celebrated the supreme court’s ruling preserving access to the abortion medication mifepristone, but they emphasized that the case was “only one tactic in a broader relentless strategy to strip away access to reproductive freedom”. “If Trump regains power in November, Trump’s allies will be ready to deploy their plans to ban abortion access nationwide without the help of Congress or the court,” Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said on a press call. “President Biden is going to make Donald Trump answer for the state of reproductive rights in this country. There’s so much at stake in 2024, and we’re going to continue to make sure that every single voter knows it.” As the country marks two years since Roe v Wade was overturned, Rodriguez indicated that Biden would make the issue of abortion access a central focus of the first general election debate, which will take place later this month. “That’s the contrast we will continue to highlight leading into the debate, using the Dobbs anniversary as another core inflection point,” Rodriguez said.
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, joined the Biden campaign press call and warned that anti-abortion advocates would likely pursue other means to block access to mifepristone after the supreme court’s decision. “Regardless of today’s ruling, Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork to ban medication abortion nationwide,” Timmaraju said. “They want to try and use executive power to jail doctors and patients for sending or receiving abortion medication in the mail, and they could extend that strategy to try to jail those mailing anything intended for producing abortion.” Anti-abortion advocates have already tried to argue that the Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-obscenity law, bans the mailing of abortion-related materials, and Trump could use that strategy to threaten reproductive rights across the country, Timmaraju said. “The road ahead is long. The fight to restore rights will be hard,” she told reporters. “But we know President Biden and Vice-President Harris are on our side. So that’s why I’m so proud to be fighting alongside them.”
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Post by Webster on Jun 14, 2024 16:06:14 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Democrats have seized on Donald Trump’s dismissal of Milwaukee as “a horrible city” by trumpeting the unflattering description on advertising hoardings, a month before the city in the swing state of Wisconsin hosts the Republican National Convention. Trump reportedly made the comment in a meeting with congressional Republicans in Washington on Thursday, his first return to Capitol Hill since extremist supporters broke into Congress on 6 January 2021. Republican party figures found themselves scrambling to contain the fallout from a political own goal over a city purposely chosen to host the convention on 15-18 July, because Wisconsin is expected to be key to the outcome of the 2024 election. Trump and Biden are running neck and neck in the state, according to numerous polls. The remark calling Milwaukee horrible drew immediate condemnation from Democrats. Republicans – recognising the extent of the possible damage – initially denied the comment had been made, before trying to soften the blow by putting it in various contexts. In a graphic sign of the high stakes, the Democratic election machine swiftly commissioned several billboards to be erected in Milwaukee, the local newspaper the Journal Sentinel reported. One featured picture of Trump next to an image of the X post that broke the story. “TRUMP TO HOUSE REPUBLICANS: ‘Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city’.” it read. The other had the incriminating quote next to a picture of the former president against a red background. Ten billboards are planned to be placed throughout the city in the run-up to the convention to maximise the words’ effect.
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Post by Webster on Jun 14, 2024 16:18:43 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Republicans and Democrats alike have targeted Wisconsin as a must-win state in November’s poll. Joe Biden won it by a margin of about 21,000 votes in the 2020 election, although Donald Trump challenged some vote tallies in his drive to prove that the election had been “stolen”. Trump scored a narrow win in the state in the 2016 election, a result that played a crucial role in his victory over Hillary Clinton. Milwaukee is on the western shore of Lake Michigan, north of Chicago and east of the state capital of Madison, and is a minority white, largely industrial city that votes Democratic, with a long history of racial segregation laws against Black residents. African Americans make up almost 39% of the population, with about 20% Hispanic or Latino. In a tacit admission of the potential self-harm inflicted, Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, described the reporting of the comment as “total bullshit”. “He never said it like how it’s been falsely characterized as,” Cheung posted on X, insisting that Trump had been referring to crime and election issues.
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Post by Webster on Jun 14, 2024 16:19:52 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Jun 14, 2024 18:16:21 GMT -5
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