List of All Articles with Tag 'politics'

Donald Trump's attorneys are requesting a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding the investigation by the special counsel's office.

The House Ethics Committee announced it has ended its investigation into Rep. Eric Swalwell, according to a new letter obtained by CNN.

The South Carolina Senate on Tuesday passed a six-week abortion ban despite the fact that every woman senator in the chamber, Republican and Democrat, voted against it. The abortion ban will now go to the desk of Gov Henry McMaster, a Republican. If Mr McMaster does sign the bill as expected, it will be another blow to people seeking abortion care in the southeast. Nearly every other state in the region has enacted abortion bans since the fall of Roe v Wade last year. If Mr McMaster signs the ban into law, it is likely to face a legal challenge. The South Carolina Supreme Court earlier this struck down a previous version of a six-week abortion ban as unconstitutional. But that didn’t stop Republican men in the state legislature and the male Republican governor from pushing to pass a ban anyway. Six-week bans on abortion are considered near total bans because many people don’t know they’re pregnant until more than six weeks after conception. This bill may make it hard for people to get legal abortion care in the state even if they do know they’re pregnant before six weeks are up. The bill requires people to have two in-person doctors’ visits and two ultrasounds before they can get an abortion. Many Republican-controlled states have passed severely restrictive abortion bans over the past year-plus. But the optics in South Carolina, a state Donald Trump carried by just over 11 points in the 2020 election, are striking. The five women in the South Carolina Senate all united in opposition to the bill, calling themselves the “Sister Senators.” On two previous occassions, they and several male Republican senators had united to block the Senate from passing an abortion ban sent to them by the state House. This time, however, those male Republican senators relented and voted for the bill — meaning that it passed with only men voting for it. The Republican women senators who opposed the bill, Sens Sandy Senn, Katrina Shealy, and Penry Gustafson, pushed to put the issue to voters in the form of a ballot measure or pass a 12-week ban instead. But they were rebuffed by the more conservative state House and Republican leadership. The New York Times reported that Shane Massey, the Senate majority leader, argued that the state had become “the abortion capital of the Southeast.” If that was ever the case, it likely won’t be for long — and with North Carolina passing an abortion ban of its own in recent weeks, many people in the South will likely be unable to obtain legal abortion care. Read More Mother forced to give birth to stillborn son joins lawsuit against Texas abortion ban South Carolina's only women senators to resist new abortion restrictions up for debate

By Luis Jaime Acosta BOGOTA (Reuters) -Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe could be tried on allegations of witness tampering, after

The senior general in charge of US forces in the Middle East ordered that his command announce on Twitter that a senior al Qaeda leader had been targeted by an American drone strike in Syria earlier this month -- despite not yet having confirmation of who was actually killed in the strike, according to multiple defense officials.

Sen Rick Scott of Florida announced on Tuesday that he was issuing a “formal travel advisory” for “socialists” visiting the state of Florida. Mr Scott’s so-called travel advisory comes after the NAACP issued its own travel advisory warning Black people about the perils of visiting a state that has become a bastion of far right policy in the last several years under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis. “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals,” the NAACP advisory read. “Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.” The NAACP warning comes just more than a month after Equality Florida, one of the state’s leading LGBTQ+ organisations, issued a travel advisory for LGBTQ+ visitors. Mr Scott, a former governor of Florida whose personal worth is well over $200m, mocked the language used by the NAACP in his press release. “Florida is openly hostile toward Socialists, Communists, and those that enable them,” Mr Scott said. “Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by Socialists and others who work in the Biden Administration. Mr Scott also claimed that he was issuing the press release in response to “Biden Administration attempts to erase capitalism,” though he offered no evidence to substantiate his claim. Mr Scott has long been considered one of the most ambitious members of the Republican Senate caucus. Last year, he led the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NSRC) as the Republicans failed to retake the chamber, then challenged Sen Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for the position of minority leader. He was soundly defeated. The travel advisories issued by the NAACP, Equality Florida, and the Florida Immigrant Coalition highlight the extent to which those and other civil rights groups are alarmed by Florida’s political trajectory. In the last year-plus, the state has banned gender affirming care for minors, limited or banned discussions of race, gender, and sexuality in public schools, banned abortion after six weeks, and more. Mr DeSantis, the governor driving much of that legislation, is expected to announce that he’s running for president on Wednesday in a conversation with Twitter’s Elon Musk. Mr Scott, who at one point was considering a presidential campaign of his own, will instead run for re-election to the Senate. Read More DeSantis’s wife launches his presidential campaign with first 2024 video Montana first to ban people dressed in drag from reading to children in schools, libraries Florida school bans poem recited by Amanda Gorman at Biden inauguration NAACP advises against traveling to Florida: ‘Openly hostile toward African Americans’

Ron DeSantis’s wife Casey launched her husband’s 2024 presidential bid by posting a video of the Florida governor getting ready to go on stage in front of an American flag. Florida’s first lady posted the video to Twitter on Tuesday night, the day before Mr DeSantis is set to formally announce his campaign in a Twitter event with Elon Musk. “America is worth the fight... Every. Single. Time,” Ms DeSantis tweeted along with the expensively produced video. Mr DeSantis, who is seen as the leading rival to Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, will kick off his bid for the White House during a Wednesday night Twitter Spaces event with the Tesla billionaire. The Twitter Spaces event will take place from 6pm ET and be moderated by tech entrepreneur David Sacks, who is a supporter of Mr DeSantis and a close business adviser to Mr Musk, according to NBC News. Ms DeSantis also posted a cheeky response to reports of her husband’s imminent 2024 campaign launch. The first lady of the Sunshine State shared a Fox News article reporting on the announcement, tweeting: “Big if true...” with a smiling face emoji. Mr DeSantis has been widely expected to join the race for months, travelling to – unofficially – campaign in the early primary states. The governor is set to make the announcement at 6pm ET on Wednesday when he’s also expected to file the required documents with the Federal Election Commission. He’s then set to appear on Fox News at 8pm. Read More Everything Elon Musk has said about the 2024 election so far David Sacks: The controversial entrepreneur hosting Ron DeSantis 2024 event with Elon Musk Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to announce 2024 run in live Twitter event with Elon Musk on Wednesday - latest

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul on Tuesday viewed a dissent cable sent by US diplomats before the frenzied US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the classified information afterward.

A controversial six-week abortion ban bill is headed to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster's desk to be signed into law after the measure cleared the state Senate Tuesday.

For years, Elon Musk kept fairly quiet about his political beliefs. He was a registered independent voter in California and claims to have supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. But the days of Mr Musk keeping his politics quiet are over. Since the onset of Covid-19, Mr Musk has become increasingly vocal about his right-wing politics — railing against Covid restrictions and work-from-home policies, urging people to support Republicans in the midterm elections, being accused of tweeting antisemitic statements, and offering a platform to Tucker Carlson. On Wednesday, Mr Musk will reportedly make his most direct foray into the 2024 presidential election yet when he is expected to help Gov Ron DeSantis of Florida launch his campaign. NBC News first reported the collaboration. Mr Musk said that his appearance with Mr DeSantis on Twitter Spaces is not an endorsement. It is, however, another instance of the Twitter owner providing a friendly platform to a far-right figure. The conversation between Mr Musk and Mr DeSantis will be moderated by tech entrepreneur David Sacks, who has given tens of thousands of dollars to the governor’s political committee. “I will be interviewing Ron DeSantis, and he has quite an announcement to make,” Mr Musk said at a Wall Street Journal event on Tuesday. “And it will be the first time that something like this is happening on social media and with real-time questions and answers, unscripted.” Mr Musk appears to be keeping close tabs on the developing Republican primary field. On Monday, Mr Musk retweeted a live stream of Sen Tim Scott of South Carolina announcing his candidacy for president in North Charleston. But Mr Musk has long praised Mr DeSantis, who has pushed during his tenure as Florida governor to ban gender-affirming care for minors, ban discussions of race, gender, and sexuality in public schools, compromise the state’s tenure system, and punish corporations like Disney for their stances on social issues. “Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America,” Mr Musk tweeted in July of last year. “If DeSantis runs against Biden in 2024, then DeSantis will easily win – he doesn’t even need to campaign.” Mr Musk appears much less bullish on Mr Trump, even though he reinstated the former president’s Twitter account after he took over the platform. Mr Trump was initially banned from Twitter in the aftermath of the events of January 6. “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset,” Mr Musk tweeted last year. “Dems should also call off the attack – don’t make it so that Trump’s only way to survive is to regain the Presidency.” Mr Musk also tweeted that Mr Trump is “too much drama,” and asked whether Americans “really want a bull in a china shop situation every single day!?” He also suggested, in one of his standard attempts at humour, that the maximum age for the start of a presidential term should be 69. The fact that Mr DeSantis is launching his campaign on Twitter speaks to the platform’s rising currency with Republican voters under Mr Musk’s leadership. Mr Musk’s embrace of Republican politicians and right-wing talking points has come as his purchase of Twitter has given him an outsize role in shaping public conversation around the campaign. It’s also led to a barrage of hate speech. Since Mr Musk’s takeover of Twitter and reinstatement of a number of previously banned accounts, the amount of hate speech targeting Black people, LGBTQ+ people, Jews, and other groups has surged. “Elon Musk sent up the Bat Signal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business,” Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told The New York Times last year. “They have reacted accordingly.” Read More Ron DeSantis to launch 2024 presidential bid on Twitter with Elon Musk Twitter HQ was once a paradise. It’s working with Elon that’s ‘morally wrong’ Musk gadfly has a new jet to track - the one used by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Who is David Sacks: the controversial entrepreneur hosting DeSantis 2024 event Casey DeSantis gives cheeky response to reports husband is launching 2024 campaign

David Sacks, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, will host Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Tesla CEO Elon Musk in an audio chat on Twitter Spaces on Wednesday (24 May) where Mr DeSantis is expected to announce his campaign for 2024 president. Mr Sacks, 50, is a longtime friend of Mr Musk and supporter of Mr DeSantis. Though Mr Sacks’ name is not as prominent as other tech-industry giants, the entrepreneur has a long history of leading and investing in major companies like PayPal, Yammer, Facebook, Airbnb and more. In more recent years, Mr Sacks has become a major donor to political campaigns for individual Republicans like JD Vance and Mr DeSantis. What experience does Mr Sacks have? Mr Sacks – who was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1972 and moved to Tennessee with his family as a child – was the Chief Operations Officer (COO) and head of product for PayPal from 1999 until 2002. He has been dubbed part of the “Paypal Mafia”, a group of former PayPal employees who went on to have successful tech companies- like Mr Musk. In 2008, he founded Yammer which became one of the fastest-growing software-as-a-service companies to exist. In 2012, Yammer was acquired by Microsft for $1.2 bn. Mr Sacks co-founded the venture capital firm Craft Ventures in 2017, where he remains a partner. He also has the podcast All-In alongside fellow entrepreneurs Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg. Last year, Mr Sacks was widely reported to be helping out his longtime friend, Mr Musk, behind-the-scenes when his fellow South African-born friend acquired Twitter. What does Mr Sacks believe in? Like Mr Musk, Mr Sacks says he is a proponent of free speech. In a blog post on Medium in 2021, Mr Sacks criticised big tech social media platforms for permanently banning politicians. His belief in free-speech was echoed more recently in an interview with conservative personality Benny Johnson. Mr Sacks accused the media of not allowing anti-vaccine activists and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr to speak freely and questioned critics’ justification of saying Mr Kennedy was spreading misinformation. The entrepreneur also expressed support for Tucker Carlson after he was unexpectedly fired from Fox News. Mr Sacks has also been an outspoken critic of US policy towards Ukraine following the Russian invasion that began in February 2022. In a piece for The American Conservative last year, Mr Sacks proposed a peaceful end to the war which included holding referendums on the future of Donbas and Crimea, both of which were illegally occupied by Russian forces in 2014. On Twitter, Mr Sacks is vocal in criticising the US for its involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and has repeatedly clashed with critics of Vladimir Putin, including former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. In October Mr Musk retweeted an article Mr Sacks wrote for Newsweek in which he argued that continued military support for Ukraine could lead to “Woke War III”. The article itself was a response to the backlash Mr Musk received over a Twitter poll suggesting a peace deal which would strongly favour Russian interests. In his Newsweek article, Mr Sacks wrote: “There will be no peaceful resolution to this conflict that America doesn’t at least have a hand in negotiating, and we should be leading the effort. Instead, we’ve been deferring to the Ukrainians and their maximalist demands, upping the sanctions on Russia as Putin ups his rhetoric against the West.” While he has been criticised for his outspoken views despite lacking a foreign policy background, he has argued that his lack of expertise is actually an advantage: “Not being a member of the MIC [military industrial complex] is clearly an advantage in understanding the conflict.” What political candidates has Mr Sacks supported? Since the 1990s, Mr Sacks has supported both Republican and Democratic candidates according to OpenSecrets. His largest donations have gone toward the PAC supporting GOP Ohio Senator JD Vance, the conservative Purple Good Government PAC, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Republican National Committee. Over the last two years, Mr Sacks has expressed vocal support for Mr DeSantis on Fox News and Twitter as well as donated to his political campaign. Read More Ron DeSantis to launch 2024 presidential bid on Twitter with Elon Musk Can the chaos from Silicon Valley Bank's fall be contained? Casey DeSantis gives cheeky response to reports husband is launching 2024 campaign The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary

An attorney for an unnamed IRS whistleblower is shedding light on key meetings that exposed divisions between prosecutors and investigators on how to proceed with a criminal investigation into President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, according to a letter to a federal watchdog agency obtained by CNN.