List of All Articles with Tag 'ame'

Former US vice president Mike Pence officially announced that he is running for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election, pitting him against Donald Trump. In a speech in Iowa on his 64th birthday, Mr Pence trod a fine line between embracing the record of the Trump administration and attacking Mr Trump for his role in the deadly Capitol riot of 6 January 2021. In a CNN town hall on Wednesday evening, Mr Pence reasserted his conservative culture war credentials on abortion, gun rights, crime, school choice, and climate change. When asked about his estranged former boss, he called on the Department of Justice not to prosecute Mr Trump for his alleged mishandling of classified documents, immediately after saying that everyone should be treated equally under the law. Significantly, he refused to say he would pardon the ex-president if he won the White House. In an increasingly crowded GOP field, Mr Pence faces competition from the likes of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, senator Tim Scott and ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley. On Thursday, Mike and Karen Pence celebrated their 38th wedding anniversary on the campaign trail. Read More Mike Pence isn’t even a contender for 2024. Why are we pretending? Mike Pence suffered the wrath of Trump. Now the ex-vice president wants his old boss’s job in 2024 The Republican presidential field is largely set. Here are takeaways on where the contest stands.

A Donald Trump-supporting New York billionaire says that he wants to buy embattled CNN from Warner Bros. Discovery. Grocery mogul John Catsimatidis told The New York Post that he would “go run the place tomorrow morning and all I’d want is $1 per year.” The news network has been hit by falling ratings and earlier this week under-fire CEO Chris Licht, who attempted to drag CNN to the right, was fired after a searing profile in The Atlantic. Greek-born Mr Catsimatidis, 74, refused to tell the newspaper how much he would be willing to offer for CNN. “It’s up to the investment bankers to come up with the numbers,” he said, as he suggested that finance to complete the deal would not be an issue. “We could always bring partners in, but I want to run the place,” he continued. “We are capable of putting down a substantial amount of money.” And he added: “I’d go run the place tomorrow morning, and all I’d want is $1 per year and a piece of the upside.” Mr Catsimatidis, who has a reported personal wealth of more than $4bn, is already in the media business having bought New York’s WABC radio station for $12.5m in 2019. “Whoever is running that company (CNN) is wrong,” Mr Catsimatidis said, telling the newspaper the network should not have fired Mr Licht, who supported the controversial Donald Trump town hall. “If the network is getting half a million (viewers) a night and they have Trump on and they get 3 million (viewers), to fire the CEO for getting that many people…” he said. But he insisted that if took over CNN he would continue to try and ensure that Republicans got equal coverage to Democrats. “I want the truth, not opinions. If people say there’s two truths, let’s voice both truths and let the viewers decide.” Read More How Chris Licht’s botched effort to drag CNN to the right ended with his own stunning downfall CNN CEO Chris Licht out days after devastating expose CNN’s own media reporter turns on embattled CEO The folly of trusting Trump claims two more victims. Why do they do it?

US President Joe Biden accidentally called UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “Mr President” as the two met in the Oval Office of The White House during Mr Sunak’s two-day visit to Washington, DC. “Well Mr President ...I just demoted you, Mr Prime Minister,” Mr Biden said as he quickly corrected himself. Mr Biden assured Mr Sunak that the US-UK special relationship is in “real good shape” and that the US has no “closer ally than Great Britain,” adding that he was “delighted” to see the prime minister in the US capital. Mr Sunak welcomed Mr Biden’s “warm words” and lauded the “strength of our partnership, our friendship”. “We will put our values front and centre as we’ve always done,” he said. Mr Biden mentioned that Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt met in the very same place more than seven decades before, according to the Mirror. “They asserted to the strength of the partnership between Great Britain and the United States with the strength of the free world. I still think there’s truth to that assertion,” he said. Mr Sunak recalled that Mr Churchill was once found wandering the halls of the White House in the middle of the night, joking that he wouldn’t be. He has been staying at the presidential guest house, Blair House, during his hectic visit. The US government bought the property after Eleanor Roosevelt discovered Mr Churchill carrying a cigar as he headed towards the private area of the first family at about 3am. “There’s an awful lot of stories that are told, probably a bunch apocryphal about former prime ministers,” Mr Biden said. “Wondering around at 3am in the morning? Winston Churchill bothering Mrs Roosevelt,” Mr Sunak said. “Sir, don’t worry, you won’t see me there bothering you and the First Lady.” “In the past few months we have met each other in San Diego and then we met in Belfast and we met Hiroshima,” Mr Biden noted. “And now we’re here we’re going solve all the problems of the world in the next 20 minutes.” “Together, we’re providing economic humanitarian aid and security assistance to Ukraine in their fight against the Russians,” the president added. Mr Sunak said that “it’s daunting to think of the conversations that our predecessors had in this room when they had to speak of wars that they fought together, peace won together, incredible change in the lives of our citizens”. “And again, for the first time in over half a century, we face a war on the European continent,” he added in reference to Russia’s war in Ukraine. “And as we’ve done before, the US and the UK, have stood together to support Ukraine and stand up for the values of democracy and freedom and make sure that they prevail, as I know we will.” Read More Budget 2022: Hunt says UK in recession as he announces huge tax rises Jeremy Hunt increases energy windfall tax in budget Jeremy Hunt freezes tax allowances and hits 45p rate payers Watch live as Biden and Sunak hold press conference after White House talks Leaders reflect on Churchill’s early hours visits to Roosevelt Government must ‘speed up and scale up’ AI in education – Lord Hague

Watch live as Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak hold a press conference after their meeting at the White House on Thursday (8 June). The war in Ukraine and artificial intelligence (AI) were two topics expected to be high on the agenda in their talks, which took place in Washington DC. Mr Biden and Mr Sunak met days after the Nova Kakhovka dam, which lies along the Dnipro river in Russia-held Kherson, was blown up. As a result of the incident, water gushed into nearby villages and towns in the region with a 42,000-strong population at risk of losing their homes, food, safe water and livelihoods. Ukraine has blamed Russia for an attack on the dam, and Mr Sunak said earlier this week that the destruction would be “new low” if Moscow was indeed responsible. “What I can say is if it is intentional, it would represent, I think, the largest attack on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since the start of the war, and just would demonstrate the new lows that we would have seen from Russian aggression,” he said. Read More Budget 2022: Hunt says UK in recession as he announces huge tax rises Jeremy Hunt increases energy windfall tax in budget Jeremy Hunt freezes tax allowances and hits 45p rate payers

Chris Christie is punching back at Donald Trump after the former president responded to his campaign announcement with a juvenile video edit making fun of Mr Christie’s weight. The former New Jersey governor appeared on CNN on Wednesday after launching his campaign with a town hall event at St Anselm College a night earlier. During his interview, he was questioned by The Lead host Jake Tapper about a video Mr Trump posted on Truth Social of Mr Christie delivering remarks edited to appear as if the candidate is holding a plate of food while he talks. Mr Christie responded that the move reinforced, for him, the childishness of his opponent. “It just renewed in my own mind what a child he is. He’s a baby. Whenever you want to criticise him, in any way, that’s the way he responds,” Mr Christie said. Likening that behaviour to that of a toddler, he added that Mr Trump should be “sent to [his] room, not to the White House”. “It’s so juvenile. He is such a spoiled baby,” Mr Christie continued. He then noted that he had been struggling with his weight and health for many years, quipping derisively that Mr Trump was “breaking news” with his response. Separately, Mr Trump accused the former governor of having a fixation on the word “small” during his town hall event in another Truth Social statement. “How many times did Chris Christie use the word SMALL? Does he have a psychological problem with SIZE? Actually, his speech was SMALL, and not very good. It rambled all over the place, and nobody had a clue of what he was talking about. Hard to watch, boring, but that’s what you get from a failed Governor (New Jersey) who left office with a 7% approval rating and then got run out of New Hampshire,” barked the former president. “This time, it won’t be any different!” It was, generally, a sign of the aggressive tone that both Mr Christie and Mr Trump plan to adopt in the GOP primary, which has heated up this week with the addition of three separate candidates in the field. Comparatively, their fellow candidates in the Republican primary have shied away from directly attacking the former president or responding to his own jabs at them. Not so for the New Jerseyan two-time presidential candidate, who laid into his opponent during his appearance in New Hampshire this week and accused the entire Trump family of the same “grift” and corruption which they accuse the Biden family of undertaking. He also tore into the former president’s record, characterising Mr Trump as an inefficient president who failed to address a number of problems — but namely immigration reform — during his four years in the White House. Read More Mike Pence isn’t even a contender for 2024. Why are we pretending? Fox News host apologises for ‘milkshake’ Chris Christie comment Pence accuses Trump of treating abortion issue as an ‘inconvenience’ Trump ridicules Chris Christie’s weight in edited 2024 campaign launch video The Republican presidential field is largely set. Here are takeaways on where the contest stands. Doug Burgum, little-known governor of North Dakota, announces White House run

In a victory for voting rights and Alabama voters, the US Supreme Court has ruled that the state likely violated the Voting Rights Act with a congressional redistricting plan that diluted the voting power of Black voters. The state likely discriminated against Black voters with a Republican-drawn map that packs most of the state’s Black residents into a single district, out of seven, despite Black residents making up 27 per cent of the state’s population. A key ruling in the case of Allen v Milligan on 8 June means that the state will have to re-draw its congressional map to include a second majority-Black district. The surprise 5-4 decision on the conservative-majority panel was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, with partial but crucial concurrence from conservative Brett Kavanaugh. Consertive justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented. Last year, a lower court ordered the state to draw new political boundaries that would create at least two districts in which Black voters would be more likely to elect a representative to Congress that more closely resembles the state’s demographics. The Voting Rights Act was drafted to prevent that kind of race-based dilution of Black voters. But attorneys for the state argued the opposite – that considering race to redraw political boundaries would mark an unconstitutional consideration of “racial targets” and “race-based sorting”, in violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. The justices rejected that argument. A decision that sided with Alabama attorneys would have radically reduced Black voters’ political power and landed a critical blow to a state with a long history of racist violence and discrimination. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits voting laws and election policies from discriminating on the basis of race. The state’s suggestion that “race should play no role whatsoever” to determine whether redistricting plans violate Section 2 would “rewrite” the law and “overturn decades of settled precedent,” according to the map’s challengers. Attorneys for President Joe Biden’s administration argued that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act should be considered when “pervasive racial politics would otherwise deny minority voters equal electoral opportunities.” The map’s challengers argued that is precisely what is at stake in Alabama. The case stems from a lawsuit filed on behalf of Greater Birmingham Ministries, Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, and a group of voters represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, among others. A group of Black voters filed a similar lawsuit in 2018 and lost. The state’s sole majority-Black district – currently represented by Democratic US Rep Terri Sewell – has a voting population that is 60 per cent Black, roughly one-third of the state’s Black population. The state’s remaining Black population is “cracked” across the First, Second and Third congressional districts – all represented by white Republicans. “This decision is a crucial win against the continued onslaught of attacks on voting rights,” according to a statement from NAACP Legal Defense and Educational senior counsel Deuel Ross, who argued the case before the court last October. “Alabama attempted to rewrite federal law by saying race had no place in redistricting. But because of the state’s sordid and well-documented history of racial discrimination, race must be used to remedy that past and ensure communities of color are not boxed out of the electoral process,” he added. This is a developing story Read More Supreme Court to review South Carolina congressional map for discrimination against Black voters Supreme Court rules in favor of Black voters in Alabama redistricting case Main suspect in 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway due to be extradited to US Alabama senator says Space Command prefers Huntsville for HQ, but command has no comment

California Governor Gavin Newsom has called on states to join him to adopt a 28th Amendment to the US Constitution that would enshrine constitutional protections and gun safety measures while preserving the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. His proposal – which would require a convention of the states, with two-thirds of all state legislatures joining in support – would raise the federal minimum age to purchase a firearm to 21, mandate universal background checks and a “reasonable” waiting period for buying a gun, and prohibit all civilian purchases of assault weapons “that serve no other purpose than to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time – weapons of war our nation’s founders never foresaw,” according to the governor’s office. “Our ability to make a more perfect union is literally written into the Constitution,” according to a statement from the Democratic governor of the nation’s most-populous state. “The 28th Amendment will enshrine in the Constitution common sense gun safety measures that Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and gun owners overwhelmingly support – while leaving the [Second Amendment] unchanged and respecting America’s gun-owning tradition,” he added. It’s a long-shot effort in a nation dominated by Republican-led state legislatures and a resistance to adopting gun safety measures widely supported by most Americans. A federal ban on so-called assault weapons expired in 2004, and congressional Republicans have refused to revive it, even as public massacres and mass shootings with AR-style rifles have surged. More than 18,000 people have died from gun violence, including suicide, in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive. There have been at least 279 mass shootings, in which at least four people were killed or wounded, as of 8 June. The nation is on pace to hit a record number of mass killings in 2023, with an average of one every week. This is a developing story Read More DeSantis defends flying migrants to California as he meets with sheriffs near border Florida officials share video boasting of role in California migrant flights Gavin Newsom suggests kidnap charges over Ron DeSantis’s migrant flights

A string of sports games and practices have been postponed as smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to choke the Midwest, Northeast and Southeast parts of the United States.

The Department of Justice is preparing to ask a Washington, DC grand jury to indict former president Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and for obstruction of justice as soon as Thursday, adding further weight to the legal baggage facing Mr Trump as he campaigns for his party’s nomination in next year’s presidential election. The Independent has learned that prosecutors are ready to ask grand jurors to approve an indictment against Mr Trump for violating a portion of the US criminal code known as Section 793, which prohibits “gathering, transmitting or losing” any “information respecting the national defence”. Mr Trump reacted to the news on Wednesday, saying “No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong”. This comes as Mr Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to several federal charges. A separate grand jury that is meeting in Florida has also been hearing evidence in the documents investigation. Meanwhile, the former president is facing more competition in his quest to return to the White House in 2024. Read More Prosecutors ready to ask for Trump indictment on obstruction and Espionage Act charges Trump reacts with fury at news of possible indictment in classified documents case: ‘I’ve done NOTHING wrong’ Trump has been indicted: Here are the other major lawsuits and investigations he is also facing

As it pushes to renew a cornerstone law that authorizes major surveillance programs, the Biden administration faces an American public that's broadly skeptical of common intelligence practices and of the need to sacrifice civil liberties for security. Congress in the coming months will debate whether to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Section 702 authorizes U.S. spy agencies to collect large amounts of foreign communications for intelligence purposes ranging from stopping spies to listening in on allies and foes. Those collection programs also sweep up U.S. citizen communications that can then be searched by intelligence and law enforcement officers. The new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that Democrats and Republicans have similar views on surveillance tactics, while Republicans have become substantially less likely over the last decade to say it's at least sometimes necessary to sacrifice freedom in response to threats. U.S. intelligence officials say Section 702 is necessary to protect national security and to counter China, Russia and other adversaries. They credit the program with better informing U.S. diplomats and enabling operations like last year's strike to kill a key plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But officials will have to overcome sharp divisions in Congress and bipartisan anger at the FBI, though most observers still believe Section 702 will be renewed in some form. Driving a political shift is increasing skepticism among Republican elected officials of the FBI and intelligence agencies. Conservatives have battered the FBI for misleading the primary surveillance court in its investigation into former President Donald Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump and other top Republicans often accuse the so-called government “deep state” of using its powers to target conservatives. Historically, “the left flank has been the more vocal objector to government surveillance on privacy and civil liberties grounds,” said Carter Burwell, who was chief counsel to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, when the law was last renewed in early 2018. ”Over the past five or 10 years, with the rise of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, call it the antigovernment wing of the Republican Party, that is an equally vocal and powerful plurality," said Burwell, now a lawyer at the firm Debevoise & Plimpton. The poll asked U.S. adults whether they support several practices authorized by Section 702. It found that 28% of adults support the government listening to phone calls made outside of the U.S. without a warrant, while 44% oppose the practice. Views are similar about the U.S. reading emails sent between people outside of the U.S. without a warrant. The public was more receptive to surveillance of activity outside of the U.S. a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. That shifted significantly by the 20th anniversary of the attacks in 2021. In the latest poll, 48% of Americans this year said they believed it necessary to sacrifice their rights and freedoms to prevent terrorism, down from 54% in 2021 and nearly two-thirds in 2011. That shift was especially dramatic among Republicans, with just 44% saying that's sometimes necessary compared with 69% in 2011. Among Democrats, 55% still say so, similar to the 59% who said so in 2011. Sarah Apwisch, a 57-year-old from Three Rivers, Michigan, described herself as somewhat opposed to the monitoring of foreign emails and phone calls. A Democrat, Apwisch said she was “mostly pro-FBI” but concerned after years of negative stories about the bureau. “Honestly, I don’t want to hear anything about the FBI,” she said. “I want the FBI to go do their business and not be in the news because they’re doing their job well and not doing things that make waves. How they do that, I don’t know.” Apwisch also said she supports the FBI and other agencies trying to hunt down enemy spies, but was uncertain about whether the FBI should also use foreign intelligence to investigate other U.S. crimes. White adults were somewhat more likely to say they were opposed to various forms of surveillance — 48% said they opposed the government listening to foreign calls without a warrant — than Black or Hispanic adults, each at 34%. Rob Redding, a 47-year-old journalist who lives in New York City, said he was neutral about many surveillance practices — but said he felt that way because as a Black man, he didn't expect to have privacy. Redding mentioned the FBI's spying in the 1960s on Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders as well as officials in Black nationalist movements. “As a Black man in America, as someone who speaks out about the government all the time, I understand that Black people and especially Black leadership cannot trust America," Redding said. In Congress, some Democrats and Republicans have found common cause over their complaints about Section 702. Two lawmakers earlier this year issued a statement calling for an end to U.S. surveillance without a warrant. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chairs the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus, while Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, is a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. “We must take this opportunity to reform Section 702 and overhaul privacy protections for Americans so that they truly protect the civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy rights that are foundational to our democracy,” Jayapal and Davidson said. Previous lawmaker efforts to require warrants for searching intelligence databases have failed. Intelligence officials argue they have ramped up training for agents searching the databases and tightened requirements to consult with lawyers on sensitive queries. Supporters of Section 702 argue most U.S. adults want the government to stop foreign adversaries even if they state misgivings about how American intelligence operates. Glenn Gerstell, a former general counsel at the National Security Agency who is advocating for Section 702 to be extended, noted that while Congress has to be responsive to public opinion, “some of this gets pretty technical and isn’t easily understood by the public.” He said he still believed the law would be renewed with some amendments to bolster civil liberties protections and enshrine into law changes that the FBI has made in response to a series of wrongful uses of foreign intelligence. “At the end of the day, I think most members of Congress understand the value of the statute and understand that when we don’t have the statute, there is no substitute,” Gerstell said. ___ Associated Press writer Emily Swanson contributed to this report. ___ The poll of 1,081 adults was conducted March 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Haitians are dying of thirst and starvation in severely overcrowded jails As winter warms, farmers in southern US find ways to adapt Smoky haze blanketing US, Canada could last for days as wildfires rage, winds won't budge

Mike Pence says he wants to see an armed guard in every public school in America to try and prevent mass shootings rather than gun control measures. The former vice president told a CNN town hall that he believed there should be more gun-carrying security guards in American schools capable of taking down shooters. “We ought to fund an armed and trained security guard at every public school in America and we ought to do it now,” he told host Dana Bash. Bash pointed out that heavily-armed police had not prevented the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 students and two teachers were murdered. “That is why I always say trained and armed .... they have got to be trained. If it takes federal funding let’s do it,” said Mr Pence. “I just think we ought to end the conversation and Washington DC should stand up and provide the funding for a trained armed guard that can be part of the school community.” Mr Pence was also asked to justify his belief in expediting the death penalty for mass shooters, most of whom are killed or intend to die during the violence. “I follow these stories as closely as you do and of course our years in the White House we saw one tragedy after another and we see evidence in the aftermath that they went in without regard to whether they would survive, but I just believe in the deterrent of the law,” he said. “I believe that if perhaps we made it clear ... the Parkland shooter in Florida is going to spend the rest of his life in jail, that is not justice.” Mr Pence told the town hall that his “heart breaks” for Chicago, where his parents grew up, and the gun violence that has impacted the city. “We need to get serious and tough on violent crime and give our cities and states resources to restore law and order to our streets,” he said. Bash then had a surprising statistic for the former governor of Indiana. “I just want to say, because I’ve heard other people talk about Chicago, just for the record, the ATF data shows that more than half of the recovered guns used to commit crimes in Illinois in 2021, do you know where they came from? Indiana,” she told him. Read More Mike Pence news – live: At CNN town hall Pence says he won’t pardon Jan 6 protesters who called for his death Pence calls on DoJ not to indict Trump but stops short of saying he’d pardon him if elected in 2024 Mike Pence isn’t even a contender for 2024. Why are we pretending? Deputy Scot Peterson could have stopped Parkland school shooting but protected himself instead, trial hears

Mike Pence has called on the Justice Department to not prosecute Donald Trump for his handling of classified documents but refused to say he would pardon the former president if he won the White House. The former vice president told a CNN town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, that he viewed the handling of classified material as “a very serious matter” but told host Dana Bash that federal prosecutors should leave Mr Trump alone. “I would hope not, I really would,” he said when asked if the DoJ special counsel Jack Smith should indict Mr Trump over the documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate. “I think it would be terribly divisive to the country at a time when the American people are hurting. This kind of action by the DoJ would only fuel further division in the country and send a terrible message to the wider world…I hope the DoJ thinks better of it and resolves this in a better way than an indictment,” he continued. Mr Pence told the audience that “no one is above the law” and admitted that he himself had no business having some classified documents at his home in Indiana. “I took full responsibility for it. I would hope there would be a way to move forward without the dramatic, drastic steps of indicting a former president of the United States.” Bash then directly asked Mr Pence, who earlier in the day officially launched his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, if as president he would pardon Mr Trump if he was convicted. “I don’t want to speak about hypotheticals. I am not sure I am going to be elected president of the United States but I believe we have a fighting chance,” he said. Mr Pence was also asked to respond to Mr Trump’s claim he would pardon anyone convicted of taking part in the violent January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. “You know on January 6 I issued a tweet demanding that people leave the Capitol and end the violence and said those who didn’t should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and I believe that today,” he said. “We cannot ever allow what happened on January 6 to ever happen again. I have no interest or intention of pardoning those who assaulted police officers or vandalized the capitol.” Read More Mike Pence news – live: At CNN town hall Pence says he won’t pardon Jan 6 protesters who called for his death Mike Pence isn’t even a contender for 2024. Why are we pretending? Pence accuses Trump of treating abortion issue as an ‘inconvenience’