Tag: Government appointments and nominations

Walz tramps through tall grass on pheasant hunting season opener but bags no birds

MINNEAPOLIS — Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz spent Saturday morning tramping through tall grass on the opening day of Minnesota’s pheasant hunting season, giving the campaign a chance to highlight the governor’s rural roots and love of outdoor sports.

Neither Walz nor Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan managed to bag any pheasants as they hunted near Sleepy Eye, a town about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Minneapolis. One person in the governor’s own party shot a bird, while nobody in the lieutenant governor’s group did, but six birds were harvested among other hunting parties that participated in a community luncheon afterward, the governor’s office said.

“They can hide, they can get under the grass,” Walz could be heard saying as they searched for one downed bird.

The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has been openly confronting the question of whether some men are reluctant to vote for her because she’s a woman. Key supporters are starting to make more direct appeals to male voters, hoping to overcome sexism — and apathy — as Election Day approaches. Harris disclosed during her debate with former President Donald Trump last month that she’s a gun owner.

On Friday, the Democratic ticket announced the launch of Hunters and Anglers for Harris-Walz, a national organizing program to engage sportspeople, conservationists and rural voters in key states.

The Trump campaign mocked the outing, accusing Walz of “desperately attempting to make up ground with male voters.” The campaign’s statement also falsely said there were no guns in sight during the hunt, calling it “a sign of the future under a Harris-Walz administration.”

While it’s true that a 36-second video clip from MSNBC tweeted by the Trump campaign didn’t show any guns, it was recorded before Walz and his party had donned their blaze orange safety vests and hats and and headed into the field after a safety briefing from a conservation officer. They held their shotguns raised to avoid endangering the energetic pointers and Labradors that tried to sniff out birds for the hunters.

While Walz had a top rating from the National Rifle Association during his 12 years in Congress, he changed his positions on gun issues after a series of school shootings. As governor, he signed legislation in 2023 expanding background checks for gun transfers and a “red flag law” allowing courts to temporarily take firearms away from people judged to be in imminent risk of harming themselves or others. His wife, Gwen, has been a champion of gun safety legislation.

“Sorry Tim, men aren’t voting for a gun grabber,” the Trump campaign tweeted from an official account.

The Minnesota Governor’s Pheasant Hunting Opener has been a tradition since 2011, patterned after the state’s older fishing and deer season opener celebrations. It rotates through host communities in the pheasant country of southern and western Minnesota.

Walz went hunting the morning after attending a football game in Mankato, where he was once was an assistant coach.

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October 12, 2024
Harris is still introducing herself as she sets out on a media tour with voting already underway

NEW YORK — When Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for an interview with podcaster Alex Cooper, the conversation didn’t start by parsing policy positions. The goal, Cooper told the Democratic nominee, was “to get to know you as a person.”

And that was just fine with Harris, who said she was on the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast because “one of the best ways to communicate with people is to be real.”

Long past the midway point of her unexpected presidential campaign and with voting already underway, Harris is still introducing herself to Americans who will determine her fate in this year’s presidential election.

On Tuesday, her media blitz will take her to studios across Manhattan as the Democratic nominee tries to reach as many people as possible in the shortest period of time. It’s a sharp shift after largely avoiding interviews since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, and it’s an implicit acknowledgment that she needs to do more to edge out Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Harris will sit for a conversation with the women of ABC’s “The View,” speak with longtime radio host Howard Stern and tape a show with late-night comedian Stephen Colbert. The trio of appearances comes after Harris granted interviews to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which aired Monday night, and Cooper’s podcast, which was released Sunday.

“Call Her Daddy” is often raunchy, with frank talk about sex, but Harris and Cooper began by talking about their mothers.

Harris said her mother’s first instinct was never to comfort her eldest daughter when she ran into problems. Instead, she asked, “What did you do?”

Although that might sound cold, the vice president said, “she was actually teaching me, think about where you had agency in that moment, and think about what you had the choice to do or not do. Don’t let things just happen to you.”

It’s interactions like those that Harris’ team is prioritizing for the vice president in the final four weeks before Election Day. She has yet to give an interview to a newspaper or magazine, but her staff is pondering additional podcasts where they believe Harris can reach voters who aren’t following traditional news sources.

Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said Harris has to energize people who have tuned out politics because they believe “all the politicians are the same, they all say the same thing, they don’t know anything about my life, I can’t relate to them at all.”

“They want to like and trust you,” she said.

Jennifer Harris, the former White House senior director of international economics, said Harris has a steeper hill to climb because of the way she became the Democratic nominee.

“We did not have a good long primary to meet Kamala Harris in the way most voters are accustomed to,” she said. Harris has to find a way to demonstrate the instincts and principles that ”will be guiding any number of hundreds of specific policy questions that will come up in the course of the presidency.”

While Harris has unveiled some policy proposals during her two and half months at the top of the ticket — such as increasing the child income tax credit and taking a range of actions to help lower the cost of housing — she’s given prime billing to speeches about her “economic philosophy,” like one she delivered in Pittsburgh two weeks ago.

There, Harris pushed back against Trump’s claims that she’s advancing “communist” ideas, embraced capitalism and positioned herself as a pragmatist who “would take good ideas from wherever they come.”

“As president, I will be grounded in my fundamental values of fairness, dignity and opportunity,” Harris said. “And I promise you, I will be pragmatic in my approach.”

Senior campaign officials have largely blocked out criticism from some corners that Harris hasn’t articulated more policy positions. Instead, they say that small yet pivotal numbers of still-undecided voters say they want to know more about Harris before making up their minds, and that the more those voters see Harris, the more they like her.

Republican communications strategist Kevin Madden said defining Harris in voters’ eyes is the central challenge of the campaign.

“This race is actually pretty simple in the sense that the next few weeks are about who’s going to fill in the blanks on who Harris is,” he said.

Being a vice president confers a certain amount of basic name recognition. In October 2019, while Harris was one of many candidates in the Democratic presidential primary, AP-NORC polling found that about 3 in 10 Americans didn’t know enough about her to have an opinion. That share dropped to around 1 in 10 Americans by early 2021, when she and Biden took office, where it stayed until earlier this summer.

Now, nearly all Americans know enough to have at least a surface opinion — whether positive or negative — of Harris.

But that doesn’t mean perspectives on Harris are settled, or that Americans know as much as they would like about her. Harris’ favorability numbers shifted slightly over the course of the summer, suggesting that opinion of her may still be somewhat malleable.

Other polls indicate that some voters are still looking for more information about Harris, while views of Trump appear to be more settled. One-quarter of likely voters said they still feel like they need to learn more about Harris, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted after her debate against Trump, while about three-quarters say they pretty much already know what they need to know about her.

Trump, on the hand, was more of a known quantity. One in 10 likely voters said they feel like they need to learn more about Trump, while roughly 9 in 10 said they pretty much already know what they need to know.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also is spending more time doing interviews to help people get to know him better rather than going deep on policy. In an appearance on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Monday night, Walz talked about the “surreal” experience of being on the ticket, his background as a high school teacher and football coach, and even how he lists Harris in his phone contacts — as the “dry cleaner.”

On “Call Her Daddy,” Cooper told Harris that people are “frustrated and just exhausted with politics in general.”

“Why should we trust you?” she asked.

Harris answered by saying “you can look at my career to know what I care about.”

She continued: “I care about making sure that people are entitled to and receive the freedoms that they are due. I care about lifting people up and making sure that you are protected from harm.”

___

Megerian reported from Washington. AP writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

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October 8, 2024
Andy Kim and Curtis Bashaw clash over abortion and immigration in New Jersey Senate debate

NUTLEY, N.J. (AP) — Democratic Rep. Andy Kim and Republican Curtis Bashaw clashed over abortion and immigration Sunday in their first debate for New Jersey’s Senate seat, open this year after Bob Menendez’s conviction on bribery charges and resignation.

Kim, a three-term representative from the 3rd District, hammered Bashaw for his support of former President Donald Trump and expressed skepticism about Bashaw’s position as an abortion rights supporter. Bashaw, a hotel developer from southern New Jersey and first-time candidate, sought to cast himself as a moderate and Kim as a Washington insider.

The debate was briefly derailed at the start when Bashaw stopped speaking mid-sentence and stared ahead, nonresponsive. He was helped from the stage and left the room for roughly 10 minutes.

“I got so worked up about this affordability issue that I realized I hadn’t eaten so much food today,” Bashaw said when he returned. “So I appreciate your indulgence.”

Among the most pointed exchanges was over abortion. Both candidates support abortion rights, but Bashaw has said he supported the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that ended Roe v. Wade. New Jersey has enshrined abortion protections in state law.

“I just fundamentally have a problem with using the term ‘pro-choice’ to describe yourself when you have talked about the important of the Dobbs decision being correctly decided,” Kim said.

He also hammered Bashaw for his support of Trump, who has twice lost New Jersey’s electoral votes.

“The one endorsement that he has made is for Donald Trump to be president of the United States,” Kim said. “And I guess we get a sense of his judgment from that.”

Bashaw, who defeated a Trump-endorsed rival in the primary, didn’t defend the former president explicitly.

“Elections are binary choices, and we all have to make a decision,” he said.

He touted his own candidacy based on his credentials as a businessperson and resisted being typecast as a traditional Republican, pointing out that he backs abortion rights and is a married gay man.

“I am pro-choice, congressman. I am for freedom in the home,” Bashaw said. “I don’t think government should tell me who I can marry. I don’t think it should tell a woman what she can do with her reproductive health choices.”

Bashaw hammered on immigration repeatedly throughout, saying it’s “a crisis in New Jersey” and is costing the state.

In a reflection of how Democratic-leaning New Jersey has been in Senate races, which Republicans haven’t won in more than five decades, Bashaw addressed his closing statements to women and moms of New Jersey.

“I am a moderate, common-sense person that will work to be a voice for New Jersey,” he said.

Kim declared his candidacy a day after Menendez’s indictment last year, saying it was time for the state to turn the page on the longtime legislator. It looked as if the Democratic primary in a must-win state for the party would be contentious when first lady Tammy Murphy entered the race, winning support from influential party leaders.

But Kim challenged the state’s unique ballot-drawing system widely viewed as favoring the candidates backed by party leaders. A federal judge sided with Kim in his legal challenge, putting the system on hold for this election. Murphy dropped out of the race, saying she wanted to avoid a divisive primary, leaving a clear path to Kim’s nomination.

What to know about the 2024 Election

Kim first won office to the House in 2018, defeating Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur. He got national attention after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection when he was photographed picking up trash in the building.

Bashaw won a contested primary in June, defeating a Trump-backed opponent. The hotel developer from Cape May is running for office for the first time.

Menendez was convicted this summer on federal charges of accepting bribes of gold and cash from three New Jersey businesspeople and acting as an agent for the Egyptian government. He has vowed to appeal the conviction.

He resigned in August, capping a career in politics that spanned roughly five decades. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy appointed George Helmy as interim senator. Helmy said he’ll resign after the election is certified so Murphy can appoint whoever wins the election to the seat for the remainder of Menendez’s term, which expires in January.

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October 7, 2024
Walz says he’ll ‘own up’ when he misspeaks as the Democratic ticket steps up media interviews

WASHINGTON — Nearly a week after verbal stumbles in the only vice presidential debate, Democrat Tim Walz used his debut campaign appearance on a Sunday news show to try to fend off criticism of his stand on abortion rights and “own up” to past misstatements.

The interview on “Fox News Sunday” reflected a broader media blitz by presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate as the Democrats seek to garner public attention in the final 30 days of the campaign against Republicans Donald Trump and JD Vance.

Harris has taped an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that will air Monday night. She is booked Tuesday on Howard Stern’s satellite radio show, ABC’s “The View” and “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert on CBS. Her interview on the podcast “Call Her Daddy” is scheduled to be released later Sunday. Walz will be on Jimmy Kimmel’s ABC show on Monday.

Walz’s Fox appearance also touched on the turmoil in the Middle East, with anchor Shannon Bream pressing the Minnesota governor on whether Israel has a right to preemptively attack Iran’s nuclear and oil facilities in response to Tehran’s firing of missiles against Israel. It was a question that Walz did not fully answer during his debate this past week with Vance, an Ohio senator.

Walz said Sunday that “specific operations will be dealt with at the time.” He said Israel has a right to defend itself and that Harris worked with Israel this past week to repel the Iranian attack. President Joe Biden said last week he would not support an Israeli strike on sites related to Tehran’s nuclear program.

Walz defended a law that he signed as governor to ensure abortion protections, saying it “puts this puts the decision with the woman and her health care providers.” He questioned the statement by Trump that he would not sign a national abortion ban into law.

On the economy, Walz said Harris’ proposals would make life more affordable for the middle class by helping with the construction of 3 million new homes and expanding tax credits for parents. He said tariffs floated by Trump could increase costs by an estimated $4,000 a year on a typical family.

Walz also faced questions in the interview about misstatements pertaining to his military service, drunken driving arrest, infertility treatment for his family and claims to have been in Hong Kong before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China.

“I will own up when I misspeak,” Walz said.

He said he believes voters are more concerned by the fact that Vance could not acknowledge during their debate that Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden and that there could restrictions on the infertility treatment of intrauterine insemination that his wife, Gwen, received.

“I think they’re probably far more concerned with that than my wife and I used IUI to have our child and that Donald Trump would restrict that,” Walz said. “So I think folks know who I am.”

Bream noted that Trump has come out in support of fertility treatments, even as he has said that abortion questions should be decided by states.

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October 6, 2024
Elon Musk makes first appearance at Trump rally casting election in dire terms

Billionaire tech executive Elon Musk cast the upcoming presidential election in dire terms during a Saturday appearance with Donald Trump, calling the Republican presidential nominee the only candidate “to preserve democracy in America.”

The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla who also purchased X, Musk joined Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the former president survived an assassination attempt in July. He warned “this will be the last election” if Trump doesn’t win and, clad in a black-on-black cap bearing the “Make America Great Again” slogan of Trump’s campaign, appeared to acknowledge the foreboding nature of his remarks.

“As you can see I am not just MAGA — I am Dark MAGA,” he said.

The appearance marked the first time Musk joined one of Trump’s trademark rallies and represented the growing alliance between the two men in the final stretch of a competitive presidential election. Musk created a super PAC supporting the Republican nominee that has been spending heavily on get-out-the-vote efforts in the final months of the campaign. Trump has said he would tap Musk to lead a government efficiency commission if he regains the White House.

Trump joined Musk in August for a rare public conversation on X, an overwhelmingly friendly chat that spanned more than two hours. In it, the former president largely focused on the July assassination attempt, illegal immigration and his plans to cut government regulations.

Before a massive crowd on Saturday, Musk sought to portray Trump as a champion of free speech, arguing that Democrats want “to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your fight to vote, effectively.” Musk went on to criticize a California effort to ban voter ID requirements.

Saturday’s rally took place at the same property where a gunman’s bullets grazed Trump’s right ear and killed his supporter, Corey Comperatore. The shooting left multiple others injured.

Several members of Comperatore’s family, as well as other attendees and first responders from the July rally, returned to the site on Saturday. Also appearing with the former president were his running mate Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance, son Eric Trump, daughter-in-law and RNC co-chair Lara Trump, along with Pennsylvania lawmakers and sheriffs.

___

Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.

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October 5, 2024
The Latest: Candidates try to counter criticisms in dueling speeches

Derided by Donald Trump as a “communist,” Vice President Kamala Harris is playing up her street cred as a capitalist. Attacked by Harris as a rich kid who got $400 million from his father on a “silver platter,” Trump is leaning into his raw populism.

The two presidential candidates delivered dueling speeches Wednesday that reflect how they’re honing their economic messages for voters in battleground states. Both are trying to counter criticism of them while laying out their best case for a public that still worries about the economy’s health.

Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here’s the latest:

Speaker Johnson demands Zelenskyy remove Ukraine’s ambassador to US after Pennsylvania visit

House Speaker Mike Johnson is calling on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to fire his country’s ambassador to the U.S. as Republicans criticize the war-torn leader’s visit to a swing-state Pennsylvania site producing munitions for the Russia-Ukraine war as a political stunt.

The Republican Johnson’s demand Wednesday came as Zelenskyy addressed the United Nations in New York on the eve of his visit to Washington, D.C., where he has plans Thursday to brief senators on Capitol Hill about the war effort before meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House.

“The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference,” Johnson wrote in a letter to Zelenskyy.

Johnson said no Republicans were invited to the plant tour arranged by Ambassador Oksana Markarova to Scranton, Pennsylvania, which is Biden’s hometown.

Johnson called the visit an “intentionally political move” and said it “has caused Republicans to lose trust in Ambassador Markarova’s ability to fairly and effectively serve as a diplomat in this country. She should be removed from her post immediately.”

Read more here.

Majority of Chinese Americans plan to vote this November

More than three-fourths of Chinese Americans say they plan to vote in the upcoming general election, according to a survey conducted by the Committee of 100 and the NORC Center for Public Affairs at the University of Chicago.

Potential voter turnout is one of several findings released Wednesday from the survey of 504 Chinese American adults. Other questions examine the threats and discrimination members of the community face, along with concerns over the impact of China-U.S. relations on the community.

Chinese Americans make up more than a quarter of the Asian American population, the fastest growing segment in the U.S., the survey said. In an election expected to be decided by just thousands of votes in a small number of states, voter turnout will be critical.

Vivien Leung, an assistant professor of Political Science, Santa Clara University, who worked on the report estimated that the Chinese American turnout was 55 percent in 2020. She said the turnout was lower than for other Asian American Pacific Islander groups. “Understanding the mental health, discrimination and political perspectives of Chinese Americans is essential to create inclusive and informed policies,” said Cindy Tsai, Interim President, Committee of 100. The Committee of 100 is a New York-based advocacy group for Chinese Americans.

A Democratic group is setting aside money to give to states for post-election litigation

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State says it’s setting aside $5 million to give to states’ top elections officers for post-election litigation.

What to know about the 2024 Election

The group is launching a legal defense fund to help the Democratic Secretaries of State in Maine, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina with expected litigation over the results of the 2024 election. The step comes as former President Donald Trump has signaled that he’ll challenge a possible loss in court.

“This effort will help ensure that Secretaries of State can do their jobs of administering free and fair elections, and ensure that voters have their voices heard at the ballot box,” Travis Brimm, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

Trump’s campaign says he’ll hold a rally in town that was site of July assassination attempt

Trump next month plans to return to Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was struck by a bullet in an assassination attempt.

The former president’s campaign said Wednesday that Trump will hold a rally Oct. 5 at the same place he did during the July 13 attack.

The Republican presidential candidate plans to honor Corey Comperatore, the ex-fire chief who was shot and killed at the July rally, along with two other attendees who were injured by the shooter.

“After not one, but two attempts on his life in the past nine weeks, President Trump is more determined than ever to see his mission through to the end,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement.

Biden’s advice for Harris to win the election is for her to ‘be herself’

President Joe Biden said his advice to Vice President Kamala Harris for winning the November election was to “be herself.”

Biden was in New York on Wednesday and sat down with the co-hosts of ABC’s “The View.” He fielded a range of questions about the presidential race, ending his reelection campaign and tensions in the Middle East.

Biden endorsed Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination and said she is “smart as hell.”

“She has the energy. She has the intelligence. She has the grit. She has the stamina, and she has the guts to do the right thing,” he said.

Biden, 81, also said he was “at peace” with his decision to end his campaign but remained confident he could have defeated Republican Donald Trump.

Harris will visit the US-Mexico border on Friday

Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona on Friday as her campaign increasingly tries to make the issue of immigration more of a strength.

That push could counter a line of attack from Harris’ opponent, former President Donald Trump.

Two people familiar with the matter confirmed the trip but insisted on anonymity Wednesday to confirm details that had not been announced publicly.

Trump has built his campaign partly around calling for cracking down on immigration and the southern border, even endorsing using police and the military to carry out mass deportations should he be elected in November.

Since taking over for President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, Harris has leaned into her experience as a former attorney general of California, saying she frequently visited the border and prosecuted drug and people smuggling gangs in that post.

As she campaigns around the country, the vice president has also frequently criticized top Republicans for voting down a sweeping, bipartisan immigration package in Congress earlier this year after Trump opposed it.

— By Zeke Miller and Colleen Long

Wisconsin mayor says he did nothing wrong when he removed an absentee ballot drop box

The mayor of a central Wisconsin city who ran for office on his opposition to absentee ballot drop boxes said Wednesday he did nothing wrong when he put on work gloves, donned a hard hat and used a dolly to cart away a drop box outside City Hall.

Wausau Mayor Doug Diny posed for a picture Sunday to memorialize his removal of the city’s lone drop box that had been put outside City Hall around the same time late last week that absentee ballots were sent to voters.

“This is no different than the maintenance guy moving it out there,” Diny said Wednesday. “I’m a member of staff. There’s nothing nefarious going on here. I’m hoping for a good result.”

The move, which prompted a protest in the city Tuesday night and anger among drop box advocates, is the latest example in swing state Wisconsin of the fight over whether communities will allow absentee ballot drop boxes. Several Republican-run municipalities, including six in Milwaukee County, two in Waukesha County and three in Dodge County, have opted against using drop boxes for the presidential election in November, while they’re being embraced in heavily Democratic cities including Milwaukee and Madison.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, then controlled by conservatives, banned the use of drop boxes in 2022. But in July, the now-liberal controlled court reversed that decision and said drop boxes could be used. However, the court left it up to each community to decide whether to install them.

Vance says the war in Ukraine has taken resources ‘at a time when Americans are suffering’

Vance says the “biggest problem” with the Russia-Ukraine war is that it “has distracted and consumed a lot of resources at a time when Americans are suffering.”

During a call Wednesday with reporters about union support for the Trump-Vance campaign, the GOP vice presidential nominee echoed Trump’s claims that “Russia would have never invaded Ukraine” if Trump, not Biden, had been in office.

And if Trump is returned to the White House, Vance said “everything is going to be on the table, but I think that nothing is going to definitively be on the table” in terms of Trump’s approach to negotiating an end to the war.

Vance did not respond directly when asked about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent criticism of him as “too radical” in an interview with The New Yorker. The Ohio senator has criticized U.S. support for Ukraine in the war, saying in his speech at the Republican National Convention this summer that there should be “no more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.”

Vance says he doesn’t think he needs to prepare as much as Walz is for the debate

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance says he’s not planning to have a debate camp because “we have well developed views on public policy.”

Speaking to reporters on a call with union supporters Wednesday, the Ohio senator said he feels no pressure to do “anything similar” to the debate preparation being done by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

“I don’t think we have to prepare that much” because “we don’t have to hide our record from the American people,” Vance said.

Vance also said former President Donald Trump supports the rights of workers to unionize and collectively bargain, but he demurred from full-throated support by also saying states should choose their own labor laws that can support or reduce unionization efforts.

Trump’s supporters gather at a manufacturing plant ahead of speech

Trump was set to address a relatively small crowd inside a massive Charlotte-area manufacturing plant.

The Republican former president’s supporters gathered among metal machines and and palettes of red, white and blue tubing. Trump’s podium was flanked by rows of work stations, metal beams and a large campaign sign that proclaimed, “JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!”

Harris will do a sit down interview with MSNBC

Vice President Kamala Harris will sit down with Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC on Wednesday in Pittsburgh.

The Democratic candidate is visiting the city to give a speech on the economy and manufacturing.

Harris has faced criticism for avoiding media interviews during her abbreviated campaign for the presidency. The conversation with Ruhle will be her first one-on-one interview with a national network since becoming her party’s nominee. Harris previously sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash alongside Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her running mate.

Top Muslim-voter organization endorses Harris as Middle East conflict escalates

Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the endorsement of one of the nation’s largest Muslim American voter mobilization groups, marking a significant boost to her campaign since many Muslim and Arab American organizations have opted to support third-party candidates or not endorse.

Emgage Action, the political arm of an 18-year-old Muslim American advocacy group, endorsed Harris’ presidential campaign Wednesday, saying in a statement provided first to The Associated Press that the group “recognizes the responsibility to defeat” former President Donald Trump in November.

The group, based in Washington D.C., operates in eight states, with a significant presence in the key battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania. The organization will now focus its ongoing voter-outreach efforts on supporting Harris, in addition to down-ballot candidates.

A tale of crushing security lapses and missed chances to stop the man who shot Trump

The acting director of the Secret Service was incensed at what had happened that July evening. “What I saw made me ashamed,” Ronald Rowe Jr. said. “I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.”

The unguarded roof, easily within shooting distance of the rally stage, is just one of the myriad questions behind the worst Secret Service security failure in decades. The more that investigators unpack from that day, the more missed opportunities that could have prevented the attack are revealed.

As the United States grapples with a second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, in Florida, there remains a reckoning to be done from the Pennsylvania shooting on July 13 that killed one man and wounded three — the ex-president among them.

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September 25, 2024
Trump Media plummets to new low on the first trading day the former president can sell his shares

Shares of Trump Media have slumped to new lows on the first trading day that its biggest shareholder, former President Donald Trump, is free to sell his stake in the company behind the Truth Social platform

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group slumped to their lowest level ever at the opening bell Friday, the first trading day that its biggest shareholder, former President Donald Trump, is free to sell his stake in the company behind the Truth Social platform.

Shares of Trump Media, commonly called TMTG, tumbled almost 7% to $13.73, putting the value of the company at less than $3 billion. Trump owns more than half of it.

Trump and other insiders in the company have been unable to cash in on the highly volatile stock due standard lock-up agreements that prevent big stakeholders from selling stakes for a set period after a company becomes publicly traded. TMTG began trading publicly in March.

Trump owns nearly 115 million shares of the company, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Based on TMTG’s share price early Friday, Trump’s holdings are worth, at least on paper, about $1.6 billion. It’s usually not in the best interest of big stakeholders to even attempt to sell large tranches of their stock because it could risk a broader sell-off.

Since going public, shares in Trump Media have gyrated wildly, often depending on news related to Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.

One week ago, the company’s shares jumped nearly 12% after Trump said he wouldn’t sell shares when the lock-up period lifted. The stock dipped more than 10% following the debate earlier this month between Trump and the Democrats’ nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. In mid-July, shares climbed more than 31% in the first day of trading following the first assassination attempt on Trump.

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. is now worth considerably less than several months ago. When the company made its debut on the Nasdaq in March, shares hit a high of $79.38.

Truth Social came into existence after he was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Based in Sarasota, Florida, Trump Media has been losing money and struggling to raise revenue. It lost nearly $58.2 million last year while generating only $4.1 million in revenue, according to regulatory filings.

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September 20, 2024
Trump vows to be ‘best friend’ to Jewish Americans, as allegations of ally’s antisemitism surface

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump on Thursday decried antisemitism hours after an explosive CNN report detailed how one of his allies running for North Carolina governor made a series of racial and sexual comments on a website where he also referred to himself as a “black NAZI.”

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson vowed to remain in the race despite the report, and the Trump campaign appeared to be distancing itself from the candidate while still calling the battleground state a vital part to winning back the White House. Trump has frequently voiced his support for Robinson, who has been considered a rising star in his party despite a history of inflammatory remarks about race and abortion.

Trump did not comment on the allegations during his Thursday address to a group of Jewish donors in Washington. His campaign issued a statement about the CNN story that did not mention Robinson, saying instead that Trump “is focused on winning the White House and saving this country” and that North Carolina was a “vital part of that plan.”

Robinson’s reported remarks — including a 2012 comment in which he said he preferred Adolf Hitler to the leadership in Washington — clashed with Trump’s denunciations of antisemitism in Washington and his claim that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, sympathized with enemies of Israel. The story also could threaten Trump’s chances of winning North Carolina, a key battleground state, with Robinson already running well behind his Democratic opponent in public polls.

“This story is not about the governor’s race in North Carolina. It’s about the presidential race,” said Paul Shumaker, a Republican pollster who’s worked for Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and warned that Trump could risk losing a state he won in 2016 and 2020.

“The question is going to be, does Mark Robinson cost Donald Trump the White House?” Shumaker added.

After allegations against Robinson became public, a spokesman for Harris’ campaign, Ammar Moussa, reposted on social media a photo of Trump and the embattled candidate. “Donald Trump has a Mark Robinson problem,” he wrote.

The North Carolina Republican Party issued a statement standing by Robinson, noting he “categorically denied the allegations made by CNN but that won’t stop the Left from trying to demonize him via personal attacks.”

Trump has angled to make inroads among Black voters and frequently aligned himself with Robinson along the campaign trail, which has more and more frequently taken him to North Carolina. At a rally in Greensboro, he called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids” in reference to the civil rights leader, for his speaking ability.

Robinson has been on the trail with Trump as recently as last month, when he appeared with the GOP nominee at an event in Asheboro, North Carolina.

Recent polls of North Carolina voters show Trump and Harris locked in a close race. The same polls show Democrat Josh Stein with a roughly 10-point lead over Robinson.

Both Trump and Harris, the Democratic nominee, were making appearances meant to fire up their core supporters, with Harris participating in a livestream with Oprah Winfrey.

Trump appeared Thursday with Miriam Adelson, a co-owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and widow of billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

“My promise to Jewish Americans is this: With your vote, I will be your defender, your protector, and I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House,” Trump said during the donor event in Washington, titled “Fighting Anti-Semitism in America.”

“But in all fairness, I already am,” Trump added.

Trump also has been criticized for his association with extremists who spew antisemitic rhetoric such as far-right activist Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. And when former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke endorsed Trump in 2016, Trump responded in a CNN interview that he knew “nothing about David Duke, I know nothing about white supremacists.”

But during his four years in office Trump approved a series of policy changes long sought by many advocates of Israel, such as moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.

In his remarks, Trump criticized Harris over the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war and for what he called antisemitic protests on college campuses and elsewhere.

“Kamala Harris has done absolutely nothing. She has not lifted a single finger to protect you or to protect your children,” Trump said. He also repeated a talking point that Jewish voters who vote for Democrats “should have their head examined.”

Multiple attendees at the event said they weren’t familiar with the story about Robinson or declined to discuss it. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a conservative North Carolina Republican who was asked about the CNN report beforehand, told reporters she wasn’t taking questions.

Later Thursday, Trump was scheduled to address the Israeli-American Council National Summit to honor the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. That summit will also focus on the fight against antisemitism.

Harris on Thursday faced pressure from parts of her liberal base over the war. Leaders of the Democratic protest vote movement “Uncommitted” said the group would not endorse Harris for president, but also urged supporters to vote against Trump. The group, which opposes the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to U.S. weapons transfers to Israel.

“Uncommitted” drew hundreds of thousands of votes in this year’s Democratic primaries, surfacing a rift within the party. The group has warned that some Democratic voters may stay home in November, particularly in places like Michigan.

Harris’ campaign did not directly address the group’s announcement, but said in a statement that she will “continue working to bring the war in Gaza to an end in a way where Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”

_______

Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

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September 19, 2024
Leading Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury dies at 76

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury who dedicated much of his writings to the Palestinian cause and taught at universities around the world, making him one of Lebanon’s most prominent intellectuals, has died. He was 76.

Khoury, a leading voice of Arab literature, had been ill for months and admitted and discharged from hospital several times over the past year until his death early Sunday, Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily that he worked for said.

The Lebanese writer, born and raised in Beirut, was outspoken in defense of freedom of speech and harsh criticism of dictatorships in the Middle East.

In addition to his novels, Khoury wrote articles in different Arab media outlets over the past five decades making him well known throughout the Arab world.

Two days after the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7, Khoury wrote an article in Al-Quds A-Arab daily titled “It’s Palestine.” Khoury wrote then that “the biggest open-air prison, the besieged Ghetto of Gaza, has launched a war against Israel, occupied settlements and forced settlers to flee.”

Born in Beirut on July 12, 1948, Khoury had been known for his political stances from his support of Palestinians to his harsh criticism of Israel and what he called its “brutal” settling policy in Palestinian territories. He studied at the Lebanese University and later at the University of Paris, where he received a PhD in social history.

“The Catastrophe began in 1948 and it is still going on,” he once wrote referring to Israel’s settlement policies in occupied Palestinian territories. The “nakba,” or “catastrophe” is a term used by many Arabs to describe the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians when Israel was created in 1948.

Khoury was an outspoken supporter of Arab uprisings that broke out in the region starting in 2011 and toppled several governments.

“The question is not why the Arab revolts broke out,” Khoury wrote after uprisings that toppled long-serving leaders such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. “The question is not how people tore down the wall of fear but how fear built Arab kingdoms of silence for five decades.”

Khoury, who belonged to a Greek Orthodox Christian family, took part in Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war and was wounded in one of the battles.

From 1992 until 2009, Khoury was the editor of the cultural section of Lebanon’s leading An-Nahar newspaper. Until his death, he was the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Studies magazine, a bulletin issued by the Beirut-based Institute for Palestine Studies.

His first novel was published in 1975, but his second, Little Mountain, which he released in 1977 and was about Lebanon’s devastating civil war was very successful.

Bab al-Shams, or Gate of the Sun, released in 2000, was about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon since 1948. A movie about the novel was made in Egypt.

His novels were translated to several languages including Hebrew.

Khoury also taught at different universities including New York University, Columbia, Princeton and Houston, as well as the University of London.

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September 16, 2024
Donald Trump doesn’t share details about his family’s cryptocurrency venture during X launch event

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday launched his family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, with an interview on the X social media platform in which he also gave his first public comments on the apparent assassination attempt against him a day earlier.

Trump did not discuss specifics about World Liberty Financial or how it would work, pivoting from questions about cryptocurrency to talking about artificial intelligence or other topics. Instead, he recounted his experience Sunday, saying he and a friend playing golf “heard shots being fired in the air, and I guess probably four or five.”

“I would have loved to have sank that last putt,” Trump said. He credited the Secret Service agent who spotted the barrel of a rifle and began firing toward it as well as law enforcement and a civilian who he said helped track down the suspect.

World Liberty Financial is expected to be a borrowing and lending service used to trade cryptocurrencies, which are forms of digital money that can be traded over the internet without relying on the global banking system. Exchanges often charge fees for withdrawals of Bitcoin and other currencies.

Other speakers after Trump, including his eldest son, Don Jr., talked about embracing cryptocurrency as an alternative to what they allege is a banking system tilted against conservatives.

Experts have said a presidential candidate launching a business venture in the midst of a campaign could create ethical conflicts.

“Taking a pro-crypto stance is not necessarily troubling; the troubling aspect is doing it while starting a way to personally benefit from it,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said earlier this month.

During his time in the White House, Trump said he was “not a fan” of cryptocurrency and tweeted in 2019, “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.” However, during this election cycle, he has reversed himself and taken on a favorable view of cryptocurrencies.

He announced in May that his campaign would begin accepting donations in cryptocurrency as part of an effort to build what it calls a “crypto army” leading up to Election Day. He attended a bitcoin conference in Nashville this year, promising to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and create a bitcoin “strategic reserve” using the currency that the government currently holds.

Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who has done research on cryptocurrencies, said she was skeptical of Trump’s change of heart on crypto.

“I think it’s fair to say that that reversal has been motivated in part by financial interests,” she said.

Crypto enthusiasts welcomed the shift, viewing the launch as a positive sign for investors if Trump retakes the White House.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has not offered policy proposals on how it would regulate digital assets like cryptocurrencies.

In an effort to appeal to crypto investors, a group of Democrats, including Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, participated in an online “Crypto 4 Harris” event in August.

Neither Harris nor members of her campaign staff attended the event.

____

Gomez Licon contributed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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September 16, 2024
FACT FOCUS: A look at claims made by Trump at news conference

In his first news conference since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, former President Donald Trump said he would debate her on Sept. 10 and pushed for two more debates. The Republican presidential nominee spoke for more than an hour, discussing a number of issues facing the country and then taking questions from reporters. He made a number of false and misleading claims. Many of them have been made before.

Here’s a look at some of those claims.

CROWD SIZES

FILE – Crowds are shown in front of the Washington Monument during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington. (AP Photo, File)

CLAIM: “The biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken — I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me. If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not we had more. And they said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people.”

THE FACTS: Trump was comparing the crowd at his speech in front of the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, to the crowd that attended Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial.

But far more people are estimated to have been at the latter than the former.

Approximately 250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King gave his speech, according to the National Park Service. The Associated Press reported in 2021 that there were at least 10,000 people at Trump’s address.

Moreover, Trump and King did not speak in the same location. King spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which looks east toward the Washington Monument. Trump spoke at the Ellipse, a grassy area just south of the White House.

___

JAN. 6

CLAIM: “Nobody was killed on Jan. 6.”

THE FACTS: That’s false. Five people died in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and its immediate aftermath. Pro-Trump rioters breached the U.S. Capitol that day amid Congress’ effort to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Among the deceased are Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter shot and killed by police, and Brian Sicknick, a police officer who died the day after battling the mob. Four additional officers who responded to the riot killed themselves in the following weeks and months.

Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego, was shot and killed by a police officer as she climbed through a broken part of a Capitol door during the violent riot. Trump has often cited Babbitt’s death while lamenting the treatment of those who attended a rally outside the White House that day and then marched to the Capitol, many of whom fought with police.

___

DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

CLAIM: “The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden, and I’m no Biden fan, but I tell you what, from a constitutional standpoint, from any standpoint you look at, they took the presidency away.”

THE FACTS: There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents the Democratic Party from making Vice President Kamala Harris its nominee. That process is determined by the Democratic National Committee.

Harris officially claimed the nomination Monday following a five-day online voting process, receiving 4,563 delegate votes out of 4,615 cast, or about 99% of participating delegates. A total of 52 delegates in 18 states cast their votes for “present,” the only other option on the ballot.

The vice president was the only candidate eligible to receive votes after no other candidate qualified by the party’s deadline following President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race on July 21.

What to know about the 2024 Election

___

THE ECONOMY

CLAIM: Suggesting things would be different if he had been in office rather than Biden: “You wouldn’t have had inflation. You wouldn’t have had any inflation because inflation was caused by their bad energy problems. Now they’ve gone back to the Trump thing because they need the votes. They’re drilling now because they had to go back because gasoline was going up to 7, 8, 9 dollars a barrel.”

THE FACTS: There would have been at least some inflation if Trump had been reelected in 2020 because many of the factors causing inflation were outside a president’s control. Prices spiked in 2021 after cooped-up Americans ramped up their spending on goods such as exercise bikes and home office furniture, overwhelming disrupted supply chains. U.S. auto companies, for example, couldn’t get enough semiconductors and had to sharply reduce production, causing new and used car prices to shoot higher. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March 2022 also sent gas and food prices soaring around the world, as Ukraine’s wheat exports were disrupted and many nations boycotted Russian oil and gas.

Still, under Biden, U.S. oil production reached a worldwide record level earlier this year.

Many economists, including some Democrats, say Biden’s $1.9 trillion financial support package, approved in March 2021, which provided a $1,400 stimulus check to most Americans, helped fuel inflation by ramping up demand. But it didn’t cause inflation all by itself. And Trump supported $2,000 stimulus checks in December 2020, rather than the $600 checks included in a package he signed into law in December 2020.

Prices still spiked in countries with different policies than Biden’s, such as France, Germany and the U.K., though mostly because of the sharp increase in energy costs stemming from Russia’s invasion.

___

IMMIGRATION

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

CLAIM: “Twenty million people came over the border during the Biden-Harris administration — 20 million people — and it could be very much higher than that. Nobody really knows.”

THE FACTS: Trump’s 20 million figure is unsubstantiated at best, and he didn’t provide sources.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports 7.1 million arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico from January 2021 through June 2024. That’s arrests, not people. Under pandemic-era asylum restrictions, many people crossed more than once until they succeeded because there were no legal consequences for getting turned back to Mexico. So the number of people is lower than the number of arrests.

In addition, CBP says it stopped migrants 1.1 million times at official land crossings with Mexico from January 2021 through June 2024, largely under an online appointment system to claim asylum called CBP One.

U.S. authorities also admitted nearly 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela under presidential authority if they had financial sponsors and arrived at an airport.

All told, that’s nearly 8.7 million encounters. Again, the number of people is lower due to multiple encounters for some.

There are an unknown number of people who eluded capture, known as “got-aways” in Border Patrol parlance. The Border Patrol estimates how many but doesn’t publish that number.

___

CLAIM: Vice President Kamala Harris “was the border czar 100% and all of a sudden for the last few weeks she’s not the border czar anymore.”

THE FACTS: Harris was appointed to address “root causes” of migration in Central America. That migration manifests itself in illegal crossings to the U.S., but she was not assigned to the border.

___

NEW YORK CASES

CLAIM: “The New York cases are totally controlled out of the Department of Justice.”

THE FACTS: Trump was referring to two cases brought against him in New York — one civil and the other criminal.

Neither has anything to do with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The civil case was initiated by a lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James. In that case, Trump was ordered in February to pay a $454 million penalty for lying about his wealth for years as he built the real estate empire that vaulted him to stardom and the White House.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a state-level prosecutor, brought the criminal case. In May, a jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

___ Associated Press writers Melissa Goldin and Elliot Spagat and economics writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this article. ___

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

__

An earlier version of this story mixed up “latter” and “former” in the third paragraph. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, drew a far larger crowd than Donald Trump’s speech near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021.

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September 15, 2024
Which candidate is better for tech innovation? Venture capitalists divided on Harris or Trump

LOS ANGELES — Being a venture capitalist carries a lot of prestige in Silicon Valley. Those who choose which startups to fund see themselves as fostering the next big waves of technology.

So when some of the industry’s biggest names endorsed former President Donald Trump and the onetime VC he picked for a running mate, JD Vance, people took notice.

Then hundreds of other VCs — some high profile, others lesser-known — threw their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris, drawing battle lines over which presidential candidate will be better for tech innovation and the conditions startups need to thrive. For years, many of Silicon Valley’s political discussions took place behind closed doors. Now, those casual debates have gone public — on podcasts, social media and online manifestos.

Venture capitalist and Harris backer Stephen DeBerry says some of his best friends support Trump. Though centered in a part of Northern California known for liberal politics, the investors who help finance the tech industry have long been a more politically divided bunch.

“We ski together. Our families are together. We’re super tight,” said DeBerry, who runs the Bronze Venture Fund. “This is not about not being able to talk to each other. I love these guys — they’re almost all guys. They’re dear friends. We just have a difference of perspective on policy issues.”

It remains to be seen if the more than 700 venture capitalists who’ve voiced support for a movement called “VCs for Kamala” will match the pledges of Trump’s well-heeled supporters such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. But the effort marks “the first time I’ve seen a galvanized group of folks from our industry coming together and coalescing around our shared values,” DeBerry said.

“There are a lot of practical reasons for VCs to support Trump,” including policies that could drive corporate profits and stock market values and favor wealthy benefactors, said David Cowan, an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. But Cowan said he is supporting Harris as a VC with a “long-term investment horizon” because a “Trump world reeling from rampant income inequality, raging wars and global warming is not an attractive environment” for funding healthy businesses.

Several prominent VCs have voiced their support for Trump on Musk’s social platform X. Public records show some of them have donated to a new, pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC, whose donors include powerful tech industry conservatives with ties to SpaceX and Paypal and who run in Musk’s social circle. Also driving support is Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency and promise to end an enforcement crackdown on the industry.

Although some Biden policies have alienated parts of the investment sector concerned about tax policy, antitrust scrutiny or overregulation, Harris’ bid for the presidency has reenergized interest from VCs who until recently sat on the sidelines. Some of that excitement is due to existing relationships with Silicon Valley that are borne out of Harris’ career in the San Francisco area and her time as California’s attorney general.

“We buy risk, right? And we’re trying to buy the right type of risk,” Leslie Feinzaig, founder of “VCs for Kamala” said in an interview. “It’s really hard for these companies that are trying to build products and scale to do so in an unpredictable institutional environment.”

The schism in tech has left some firms split in their allegiances. Although venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of the firm that is their namesake, endorsed Trump, one of their firm’s general partners, John O’Farrell, pledged his support for Harris. O’Farrell declined further comment.

Doug Leone, the former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, endorsed Trump in June, expressing concern on X “about the general direction of our country, the state of our broken immigration system, the ballooning deficit, and the foreign policy missteps, among other issues.” But Leone’s longtime business partner at Sequoia, Michael Moritz, wrote in the Financial Times that tech leaders supporting Trump “are making a big mistake.”

Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, posted on X that he donated $300,000 to Trump’s campaign after supporting Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Federal Election Commission records show that Maguire donated $500,000 to America PAC in June; Leone donated $1 million.

“The area where I disagree with Republicans the most is on women’s rights. And I’m sure I’ll disagree with some of Trump’s policies in the future,” Maguire wrote. “But in general I think he was surprisingly prescient.”

Feinzaig, managing director at venture firm Graham & Walker, said that she launched “VCs for Kamala” because she felt frustrated that “the loudest voices” were starting to “sound like they were speaking for the entire industry.”

Much of the VC discourse about elections is in response to a July podcast and manifesto in which Andreessen and Horowitz backed Trump and outlined their vision of a “Little Tech Agenda” that they said contrasted with the policies sought by Big Tech.

They accused the U.S. government of increasing hostility toward startups and the VCs who fund them, citing Biden’s proposed higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and regulations they said could hobble emerging industries involving blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio who spent time in San Francisco working at Thiel’s investment firm, voiced a similar perspective about “little tech” more than a month before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate.

“The donors who were really involved in Silicon Valley in a pro-Trump way, they’re not big tech, right? They’re little tech. They’re starting innovative companies. They don’t want the government to destroy their ability to innovate,” Vance said in an interview on Fox News in June.

Days earlier, Vance had joined Trump at a San Francisco fundraiser at the home of venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks, a longtime conservative. Vance said Trump spoke to about 100 attendees that included “some of the leading innovators in AI.”

DeBerry said he doesn’t disagree with everything Andreesen Horowitz founders espouse, particularly their wariness about powerful companies controlling the agencies that regulate them. But he objects to their “little tech” framing, especially coming from a multibillion-dollar investment firm that he says is hardly the voice of the little guy. For DeBerry, whose firm focuses on social impact, the choice is not between big and little tech but “chaos and stability,” with Harris representing stability.

Complicating the allegiances is that a tough approach to breaking up the monopoly power of big corporations no longer falls along partisan lines. Vance has spoken favorably of Lina Khan, who Biden picked to lead the Federal Trade Commission and has taken on several tech giants. Meanwhile, some of the most influential VCs backing Harris — such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, an early investor in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI — have sharply criticized Khan’s approach.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat whose California district encompasses part of Silicon Valley, said Trump supporters are a vocal minority reflecting a “third or less” of the region’s tech community. But while the White House has appealed to tech entrepreneurs with its investments in clean energy, electric vehicles and semiconductors, Khanna said Democrats must do a better job of showing that they understand the appeal of digital assets.

“I do think that the perceived lack of embrace of Bitcoin and the blockchain has hurt the Democratic Party among the young generation and among young entrepreneurs,” Khanna said.

Naseem Sayani, a general partner at Emmeline Ventures, said Andreessen and Horowitz’s support of Trump became a lightning rod for those in tech who do not back the Republican nominee. Sayani signed onto “VCs for Kamala,” she said, because she wanted the types of businesses that she helps fund to know that the investor community is not monolithic.

“We’re not single-profile founders anymore,” she said. “There’s women, there’s people of color, there’s all the intersections. How can they feel comfortable building businesses when the environment they’re in doesn’t actually support their existence in some ways?”

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September 15, 2024
Venture capitalists are divided on Harris or Trump

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Being a venture capitalist carries a lot of prestige in Silicon Valley. Those who choose which startups to fund see themselves as fostering the next big waves of technology.

So when some of the industry’s biggest names endorsed former President Donald Trump and the onetime VC he picked for a running mate, JD Vance, people took notice.

Then hundreds of other VCs — some high profile, others lesser-known — threw their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris, drawing battle lines over which presidential candidate will be better for tech innovation and the conditions startups need to thrive. For years, many of Silicon Valley’s political discussions took place behind closed doors. Now, those casual debates have gone public — on podcasts, social media and online manifestos.

Venture capitalist and Harris backer Stephen DeBerry says some of his best friends support Trump. Though centered in a part of Northern California known for liberal politics, the investors who help finance the tech industry have long been a more politically divided bunch.

“We ski together. Our families are together. We’re super tight,” said DeBerry, who runs the Bronze Venture Fund. “This is not about not being able to talk to each other. I love these guys — they’re almost all guys. They’re dear friends. We just have a difference of perspective on policy issues.”

It remains to be seen if the more than 700 venture capitalists who’ve voiced support for a movement called “VCs for Kamala” will match the pledges of Trump’s well-heeled supporters such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. But the effort marks “the first time I’ve seen a galvanized group of folks from our industry coming together and coalescing around our shared values,” DeBerry said.

“There are a lot of practical reasons for VCs to support Trump,” including policies that could drive corporate profits and stock market values and favor wealthy benefactors, said David Cowan, an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. But Cowan said he is supporting Harris as a VC with a “long-term investment horizon” because a “Trump world reeling from rampant income inequality, raging wars and global warming is not an attractive environment” for funding healthy businesses.

Several prominent VCs have voiced their support for Trump on Musk’s social platform X. Public records show some of them have donated to a new, pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC, whose donors include powerful tech industry conservatives with ties to SpaceX and Paypal and who run in Musk’s social circle. Also driving support is Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency and promise to end an enforcement crackdown on the industry.

Although some Biden policies have alienated parts of the investment sector concerned about tax policy, antitrust scrutiny or overregulation, Harris’ bid for the presidency has reenergized interest from VCs who until recently sat on the sidelines. Some of that excitement is due to existing relationships with Silicon Valley that are borne out of Harris’ career in the San Francisco area and her time as California’s attorney general.

“We buy risk, right? And we’re trying to buy the right type of risk,” Leslie Feinzaig, founder of “VCs for Kamala” said in an interview. “It’s really hard for these companies that are trying to build products and scale to do so in an unpredictable institutional environment.”

What to know about the 2024 Election

The schism in tech has left some firms split in their allegiances. Although venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of the firm that is their namesake, endorsed Trump, one of their firm’s general partners, John O’Farrell, pledged his support for Harris. O’Farrell declined further comment.

Doug Leone, the former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, endorsed Trump in June, expressing concern on X “about the general direction of our country, the state of our broken immigration system, the ballooning deficit, and the foreign policy missteps, among other issues.” But Leone’s longtime business partner at Sequoia, Michael Moritz, wrote in the Financial Times that tech leaders supporting Trump “are making a big mistake.”

Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, posted on X that he donated $300,000 to Trump’s campaign after supporting Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Federal Election Commission records show that Maguire donated $500,000 to America PAC in June; Leone donated $1 million.

“The area where I disagree with Republicans the most is on women’s rights. And I’m sure I’ll disagree with some of Trump’s policies in the future,” Maguire wrote. “But in general I think he was surprisingly prescient.”

Feinzaig, managing director at venture firm Graham & Walker, said that she launched “VCs for Kamala” because she felt frustrated that “the loudest voices” were starting to “sound like they were speaking for the entire industry.”

Much of the VC discourse about elections is in response to a July podcast and manifesto in which Andreessen and Horowitz backed Trump and outlined their vision of a “Little Tech Agenda” that they said contrasted with the policies sought by Big Tech.

They accused the U.S. government of increasing hostility toward startups and the VCs who fund them, citing Biden’s proposed higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and regulations they said could hobble emerging industries involving blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio who spent time in San Francisco working at Thiel’s investment firm, voiced a similar perspective about “little tech” more than a month before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate.

“The donors who were really involved in Silicon Valley in a pro-Trump way, they’re not big tech, right? They’re little tech. They’re starting innovative companies. They don’t want the government to destroy their ability to innovate,” Vance said in an interview on Fox News in June.

Days earlier, Vance had joined Trump at a San Francisco fundraiser at the home of venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks, a longtime conservative. Vance said Trump spoke to about 100 attendees that included “some of the leading innovators in AI.”

DeBerry said he doesn’t disagree with everything Andreesen Horowitz founders espouse, particularly their wariness about powerful companies controlling the agencies that regulate them. But he objects to their “little tech” framing, especially coming from a multibillion-dollar investment firm that he says is hardly the voice of the little guy. For DeBerry, whose firm focuses on social impact, the choice is not between big and little tech but “chaos and stability,” with Harris representing stability.

Complicating the allegiances is that a tough approach to breaking up the monopoly power of big corporations no longer falls along partisan lines. Vance has spoken favorably of Lina Khan, who Biden picked to lead the Federal Trade Commission and has taken on several tech giants. Meanwhile, some of the most influential VCs backing Harris — such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, an early investor in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI — have sharply criticized Khan’s approach.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat whose California district encompasses part of Silicon Valley, said Trump supporters are a vocal minority reflecting a “third or less” of the region’s tech community. But while the White House has appealed to tech entrepreneurs with its investments in clean energy, electric vehicles and semiconductors, Khanna said Democrats must do a better job of showing that they understand the appeal of digital assets.

“I do think that the perceived lack of embrace of Bitcoin and the blockchain has hurt the Democratic Party among the young generation and among young entrepreneurs,” Khanna said.

Naseem Sayani, a general partner at Emmeline Ventures, said Andreessen and Horowitz’s support of Trump became a lightning rod for those in tech who do not back the Republican nominee. Sayani signed onto “VCs for Kamala,” she said, because she wanted the types of businesses that she helps fund to know that the investor community is not monolithic.

“We’re not single-profile founders anymore,” she said. “There’s women, there’s people of color, there’s all the intersections. How can they feel comfortable building businesses when the environment they’re in doesn’t actually support their existence in some ways?”

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September 15, 2024
Which candidate is better for tech innovation? Venture capitalists divided on Harris or Trump

LOS ANGELES — Being a venture capitalist carries a lot of prestige in Silicon Valley. Those who choose which startups to fund see themselves as fostering the next big waves of technology.

So when some of the industry’s biggest names endorsed former President Donald Trump and the onetime VC he picked for a running mate, JD Vance, people took notice.

Then hundreds of other VCs — some high profile, others lesser-known — threw their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris, drawing battle lines over which presidential candidate will be better for tech innovation and the conditions startups need to thrive. For years, many of Silicon Valley’s political discussions took place behind closed doors. Now, those casual debates have gone public — on podcasts, social media and online manifestos.

Venture capitalist and Harris backer Stephen DeBerry says some of his best friends support Trump. Though centered in a part of Northern California known for liberal politics, the investors who help finance the tech industry have long been a more politically divided bunch.

“We ski together. Our families are together. We’re super tight,” said DeBerry, who runs the Bronze Venture Fund. “This is not about not being able to talk to each other. I love these guys — they’re almost all guys. They’re dear friends. We just have a difference of perspective on policy issues.”

It remains to be seen if the more than 700 venture capitalists who’ve voiced support for a movement called “VCs for Kamala” will match the pledges of Trump’s well-heeled supporters such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. But the effort marks “the first time I’ve seen a galvanized group of folks from our industry coming together and coalescing around our shared values,” DeBerry said.

“There are a lot of practical reasons for VCs to support Trump,” including policies that could drive corporate profits and stock market values and favor wealthy benefactors, said David Cowan, an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. But Cowan said he is supporting Harris as a VC with a “long-term investment horizon” because a “Trump world reeling from rampant income inequality, raging wars and global warming is not an attractive environment” for funding healthy businesses.

Several prominent VCs have voiced their support for Trump on Musk’s social platform X. Public records show some of them have donated to a new, pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC, whose donors include powerful tech industry conservatives with ties to SpaceX and Paypal and who run in Musk’s social circle. Also driving support is Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency and promise to end an enforcement crackdown on the industry.

Although some Biden policies have alienated parts of the investment sector concerned about tax policy, antitrust scrutiny or overregulation, Harris’ bid for the presidency has reenergized interest from VCs who until recently sat on the sidelines. Some of that excitement is due to existing relationships with Silicon Valley that are borne out of Harris’ career in the San Francisco area and her time as California’s attorney general.

“We buy risk, right? And we’re trying to buy the right type of risk,” Leslie Feinzaig, founder of “VCs for Kamala” said in an interview. “It’s really hard for these companies that are trying to build products and scale to do so in an unpredictable institutional environment.”

The schism in tech has left some firms split in their allegiances. Although venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of the firm that is their namesake, endorsed Trump, one of their firm’s general partners, John O’Farrell, pledged his support for Harris. O’Farrell declined further comment.

Doug Leone, the former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, endorsed Trump in June, expressing concern on X “about the general direction of our country, the state of our broken immigration system, the ballooning deficit, and the foreign policy missteps, among other issues.” But Leone’s longtime business partner at Sequoia, Michael Moritz, wrote in the Financial Times that tech leaders supporting Trump “are making a big mistake.”

Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, posted on X that he donated $300,000 to Trump’s campaign after supporting Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Federal Election Commission records show that Maguire donated $500,000 to America PAC in June; Leone donated $1 million.

“The area where I disagree with Republicans the most is on women’s rights. And I’m sure I’ll disagree with some of Trump’s policies in the future,” Maguire wrote. “But in general I think he was surprisingly prescient.”

Feinzaig, managing director at venture firm Graham & Walker, said that she launched “VCs for Kamala” because she felt frustrated that “the loudest voices” were starting to “sound like they were speaking for the entire industry.”

Much of the VC discourse about elections is in response to a July podcast and manifesto in which Andreessen and Horowitz backed Trump and outlined their vision of a “Little Tech Agenda” that they said contrasted with the policies sought by Big Tech.

They accused the U.S. government of increasing hostility toward startups and the VCs who fund them, citing Biden’s proposed higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and regulations they said could hobble emerging industries involving blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio who spent time in San Francisco working at Thiel’s investment firm, voiced a similar perspective about “little tech” more than a month before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate.

“The donors who were really involved in Silicon Valley in a pro-Trump way, they’re not big tech, right? They’re little tech. They’re starting innovative companies. They don’t want the government to destroy their ability to innovate,” Vance said in an interview on Fox News in June.

Days earlier, Vance had joined Trump at a San Francisco fundraiser at the home of venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks, a longtime conservative. Vance said Trump spoke to about 100 attendees that included “some of the leading innovators in AI.”

DeBerry said he doesn’t disagree with everything Andreesen Horowitz founders espouse, particularly their wariness about powerful companies controlling the agencies that regulate them. But he objects to their “little tech” framing, especially coming from a multibillion-dollar investment firm that he says is hardly the voice of the little guy. For DeBerry, whose firm focuses on social impact, the choice is not between big and little tech but “chaos and stability,” with Harris representing stability.

Complicating the allegiances is that a tough approach to breaking up the monopoly power of big corporations no longer falls along partisan lines. Vance has spoken favorably of Lina Khan, who Biden picked to lead the Federal Trade Commission and has taken on several tech giants. Meanwhile, some of the most influential VCs backing Harris — such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, an early investor in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI — have sharply criticized Khan’s approach.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat whose California district encompasses part of Silicon Valley, said Trump supporters are a vocal minority reflecting a “third or less” of the region’s tech community. But while the White House has appealed to tech entrepreneurs with its investments in clean energy, electric vehicles and semiconductors, Khanna said Democrats must do a better job of showing that they understand the appeal of digital assets.

“I do think that the perceived lack of embrace of Bitcoin and the blockchain has hurt the Democratic Party among the young generation and among young entrepreneurs,” Khanna said.

Naseem Sayani, a general partner at Emmeline Ventures, said Andreessen and Horowitz’s support of Trump became a lightning rod for those in tech who do not back the Republican nominee. Sayani signed onto “VCs for Kamala,” she said, because she wanted the types of businesses that she helps fund to know that the investor community is not monolithic.

“We’re not single-profile founders anymore,” she said. “There’s women, there’s people of color, there’s all the intersections. How can they feel comfortable building businesses when the environment they’re in doesn’t actually support their existence in some ways?”

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September 15, 2024
IOC move on election rules puts up legal hurdles to Coe running for top Olympic job

GENEVA — In a move by the IOC that apparently could block Sebastian Coe as an expected presidential candidate, the Olympic governing body has clarified its complex election rules before a deadline Sunday to enter the race.

A letter seen Wednesday by The Associated Press was sent by the International Olympic Committee’s ethics commission to the 111 members, including Coe and several more likely candidates in the contest to succeed Thomas Bach next year.

Details in the two-page letter dated Monday specified reasons why the likes of Coe, the 67-year-old president of track governing body World Athletics, would seem unable to complete a full first IOC mandate of eight years.

The winning candidate must be a member of the IOC on election day, scheduled for March in Greece, “and during the entire duration of their term as IOC President,” the letter stated.

Coe’s IOC membership is conditional on being president of World Athletics, a role he must leave in 2027 on completing the maximum 12 years in office.

Another expected candidate, IOC vice president Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., who turns 65 in November, also could have legal issues with the standard age limit of 70 for members defined in the Olympic Charter rules book.

Members turning 70 can be extended only once for four more years, though such an approval for Coe by the IOC executive board also would still expire during a 2025-33 presidency.

The charter “makes no exceptions for the president, who is an IOC member under the same conditions as all the other members,” stated ethics commission chairman Ban Ki Moon, the former United Nations secretary general, who signed the Sept. 9 letter.

Coe is widely considered a most qualified candidate to next lead the IOC. A two-time Olympic champion in the 1,500-meters, he was later an elected lawmaker in Britain, led the 2012 London Olympics organizing committee and has presided at World Athletics for nine years.

The legal hurdles are stacking up just days before the IOC-set deadline for candidates to send a letter of intent to Bach, who will leave as president next year after reaching his 12-year term limit.

Kirsty Coventry, an Olympic gold medalist swimmer who is sports minister of Zimbabwe, and David Lappartient, the French president of cycling’s governing body, have seemed to have support from Bach in recent years.

Bach placed Lappartient to oversee a long-term project with Saudi Arabia, hosting the Esports Olympic Games, that was sealed in Paris.

Other candidates could include two of the four IOC vice presidents — Nicole Hoevertsz of Aruba and Spaniard Samaranch, whose father was IOC president for 21 years until leaving in 2001.

Prince Feisal al Hussein of Jordan is a potential candidate who could be the first president in the IOC’s 130-year history from Asia or Africa.

The IOC top job ideally calls for deep knowledge of managing sports, understanding athletes’ needs and nimble skills in global politics.

However, Coe’s strong positions in sports politics — against Russia on state-backed doping and the invasion of Ukraine, plus awarding $50,000 cash prizes for Paris Olympics gold medals from track’s share of Olympic revenues — have clashed with the IOC and leaders of other sports bodies.

The letter signed by Ban also suggested a conflict of interest between holding two presidential roles, of the IOC and a sports governing body.

This conflict could be resolved, the letter said, by having a vote after the IOC presidential election “for a change of membership status.”

Britain, however, no longer has a quota space for another IOC member elected as an individual. That’s because Hugh Robertson, the government’s Olympics minister at the time of the 2012 Summer Games, was elected in Paris in July.

The IOC needs a new president only because Bach said in Paris last month he would not seek to stay on by changing the statutory maximum of 12 years for the position.

The IOC has had nine presidents in its 130-year history. All have been men and none were from Africa, Asia or Latin America.

The candidates must come from the IOC membership that comprises invited members including royalty from the Middle East and Europe, a current head of state — the Emir of Qatar — former diplomats and lawmakers, industrialists, and leaders of sports bodies and athletes.

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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September 11, 2024
Democratic primary for governor highlights Tuesday’s elections in Delaware

DOVER, Del. (AP) — A Democratic gubernatorial contest pitting Delaware’s lieutenant governor against the chief executive of the state’s largest county is the marquee race in Tuesday’s primary elections.

Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, who has held public office since winning a state House seat in 2002, is hoping to overcome a campaign finance scandal and succeed Democrat John Carney as governor.

Hall-Long has been endorsed by Carney and Delaware’s Democrat Party establishment. But the two-term lieutenant governor is facing a tough primary challenge from New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer. Former state environmental secretary Collin O’Mara also is seeking the Democratic nomination, but he has been overshadowed by the other two candidates.

Meyer has raised substantially more money than Hall-Long this year, and his current campaign balance is about seven times higher than hers.

Hall-Long reported raising about $582,000 this year, including roughly $52,200 in the three-week reporting period that ended Tuesday. She reported spending $1.18 million, including $182,000 in the three-week period.

Meyer has raised about $1 million this year, including about $200,000 in the past three weeks. He has spent about $2.1 million, including roughly $1.2 million in the three-week sprint toward Tuesday’s primary.

On the Republican side, House Minority Leader Michael Ramone is favored to win a three-way GOP primary for governor.

Meanwhile, Carney, who is prohibited by law from seeking a third term as governor, has taken a step down on the political ladder and is eyeing the Democratic nomination for mayor of Wilmington, Delaware’s largest city. His opponent is former Wilmington city treasurer Velda Jones-Potter, who was also appointed to a two-year stint as state treasurer after then-treasurer Jack Markell defeated Carney in a 2008 primary and was elected governor.

As of Friday, more than 24,000 Delawareans, including more than 17,500 Democrats, had already cast their votes in the primary, either by absentee ballot or in-person early voting at designated sites in each county.

Other races of note on Tuesday include three-way Democratic primaries to succeed Hall-Long as lieutenant governor and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester as Delaware’s lone representative in the U.S. House. Rochester is seeking the U.S. Senate seat currently held by fellow Democrat Tom Carper, who endorsed her in announcing his retirement last year.

Elsewhere, former state auditor Kathleen McGuiness is in a three-way Democratic primary for a state House seat held by retiring former speaker Pete Schwartzkopf. Schwartzkopf, a longtime McGuiness ally, has endorsed her to succeed him in representing the Rehoboth Beach area.

McGuiness was convicted in 2022 on misdemeanor charges of conflict of interest, official misconduct and noncompliance with state procurement rules. A jury acquitted her on felony charges of theft and witness intimidation.

After the trial, the judge threw out the procurement conviction. Delaware’s Supreme Court later vacated the official misconduct conviction but upheld the conflict-of-interest verdict, which involved the hiring of McGuiness’ daughter as a part-time employee in the auditor’s office.

The trial marked the first time in Delaware history that a sitting statewide elected official was convicted on criminal charges, but the misdemeanor conviction does not prohibit McGuiness from holding public office.

What to know about the 2024 Election

McGuiness was prosecuted by Attorney General Kathleen Jennings, a fellow Democrat. In contrast, Jennings has refused to prosecute Hall-Long for campaign finance violations that led several top staffers to abandon her campaign and prompted election officials to commission a forensic audit.

The audit found that during seven years as campaign treasurer for his wife, Dana Long wrote 112 checks to himself or cash, and one to his wife. The checks totaled just under $300,000 and should have been reported as campaign expenditures. Instead, 109 were not disclosed in finance reports, and the other four, payable to Dana Long, were reported as being written to someone else.

The audit also found that Hall-Long and her husband had received payments totaling $33,000 more than what she purportedly loaned her campaign over several years, while not disclosing those loans on campaign finance reports.

Hall-Long has disputed the audit’s findings and described the reporting violations as simple bookkeeping mistakes.

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September 7, 2024
FACT FOCUS: Posts falsely claim video shows Harris promising to censor X and owner Elon Musk

After a nationwide suspension of billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform in Brazil, social media users — including former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are misrepresenting a years-old video of Vice President Kamala Harris to falsely claim that the Democratic presidential nominee has threatened to censor both X and Musk.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: A video clip portrays Harris as saying that she will shut down X if she wins the 2024 presidential election and that Musk has “lost his privileges.”

THE FACTS: That’s false. Harris was referring to Trump long before Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it as X.

The clip is from 2019 and shows Harris speaking with CNN host Jake Tapper after a Democratic primary debate, discussing whether then-President Donald Trump’s profile should be removed from the platform, called Twitter at the time, and how there needs to be increased accountability for social media companies.

Kennedy, who on Aug. 23 suspended his presidential bid and endorsed Trump, used the clip in an X post as alleged proof that Harris was talking about Musk, stating: “Can someone please explain to her that freedom of speech is a RIGHT, not a ‘privilege’?” He also provided his own interpretation of Harris’ comments on social media sites in general as follows: “If they don’t police content to conform to government-approved narratives, they will be shut down.”

The post had been liked and shared approximately 200,300 times as of Tuesday.

Another popular X post that shared the video simply reads: “Kamala will shut down X if she wins.” It has been liked and shared approximately 105,000 times. Other social media users claimed that Harris was speaking in support of a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who made the decision last week to block X.

In extended footage of the interview, part of CNN’s post-debate analysis on Oct. 15, 2019, Tapper asked Harris: “So, one of the topics that you chose to talk a lot about, especially confronting Sen. Warren on, was your push, your call, for Twitter to suspend the account of President Trump. Why was that important?”

Tapper was referring to the moment in the debate when Harris criticized then-fellow Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren for not urging such a suspension. Twitter did eventually ban Trump’s account in January 2021, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with multiple other social media platforms kicking him off around the same time. Musk restored Trump’s account in November 2022 after he bought the platform.

Harris responded during the interview that Trump had “proven himself to be willing to obstruct justice” and that what he says on Twitter “impacts people’s perceptions about what they should and should not do.”

She continued: “And as far as I’m concerned, and I think most people would say, including members of Congress who he has threatened, that he has lost his privileges and it should be taken down.”

Harris did not call for the platform as a whole to be shut down. Rather, she advocated for increased accountability.

“The bottom line is that you can’t say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter,” she stated. “The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.”

What to know about the 2024 Election

The exchange is reflected in CNN’s transcript of the coverage.

The Harris campaign directed an Associated Press inquiry about the false claims to a Democratic National Committee spokesperson, who declined to comment. Representatives for Trump and Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X blocked last Friday for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. His decision was unanimously upheld by a court panel on Monday. X had removed its legal representative from Brazil on the grounds that de Moraes had threatened her with arrest. The platform will stay suspended until it complies with de Moraes’ order and pays outstanding fines.

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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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September 5, 2024
FACT FOCUS: Posts falsely claim video shows Harris promising to censor X and owner Elon Musk

After a nationwide suspension of billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform in Brazil, social media users — including former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are misrepresenting a years-old video of Vice President Kamala Harris to falsely claim that the Democratic presidential nominee has threatened to censor both X and Musk.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: A video clip portrays Harris as saying that she will shut down X if she wins the 2024 presidential election and that Musk has “lost his privileges.”

THE FACTS: That’s false. Harris was referring to Trump long before Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it as X.

The clip is from 2019 and shows Harris speaking with CNN host Jake Tapper after a Democratic primary debate, discussing whether then-President Donald Trump’s profile should be removed from the platform, called Twitter at the time, and how there needs to be increased accountability for social media companies.

Kennedy, who on Aug. 23 suspended his presidential bid and endorsed Trump, used the clip in an X post as alleged proof that Harris was talking about Musk, stating: “Can someone please explain to her that freedom of speech is a RIGHT, not a ‘privilege’?” He also provided his own interpretation of Harris’ comments on social media sites in general as follows: “If they don’t police content to conform to government-approved narratives, they will be shut down.”

The post had been liked and shared approximately 200,300 times as of Tuesday.

Another popular X post that shared the video simply reads: “Kamala will shut down X if she wins.” It has been liked and shared approximately 105,000 times. Other social media users claimed that Harris was speaking in support of a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who made the decision last week to block X.

In extended footage of the interview, part of CNN’s post-debate analysis on Oct. 15, 2019, Tapper asked Harris: “So, one of the topics that you chose to talk a lot about, especially confronting Sen. Warren on, was your push, your call, for Twitter to suspend the account of President Trump. Why was that important?”

Tapper was referring to the moment in the debate when Harris criticized then-fellow Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren for not urging such a suspension. Twitter did eventually ban Trump’s account in January 2021, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with multiple other social media platforms kicking him off around the same time. Musk restored Trump’s account in November 2022 after he bought the platform.

Harris responded during the interview that Trump had “proven himself to be willing to obstruct justice” and that what he says on Twitter “impacts people’s perceptions about what they should and should not do.”

She continued: “And as far as I’m concerned, and I think most people would say, including members of Congress who he has threatened, that he has lost his privileges and it should be taken down.”

Harris did not call for the platform as a whole to be shut down. Rather, she advocated for increased accountability.

“The bottom line is that you can’t say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter,” she stated. “The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.”

The exchange is reflected in CNN’s transcript of the coverage.

The Harris campaign directed an Associated Press inquiry about the false claims to a Democratic National Committee spokesperson, who declined to comment. Representatives for Trump and Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X blocked last Friday for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. His decision was unanimously upheld by a court panel on Monday. X had removed its legal representative from Brazil on the grounds that de Moraes had threatened her with arrest. The platform will stay suspended until it complies with de Moraes’ order and pays outstanding fines.

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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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September 3, 2024
Brazil Supreme Court panel unanimously upholds judge’s decision to block X nationwide

RIO DE JANEIRO — A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday unanimously upheld the decision of one of its justices to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X nationwide, according to the court’s website.

The broader support among justices undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as an authoritarian renegade who is intent on censoring political speech in Brazil.

The panel that voted in a virtual session was comprised of five of the full bench’s 11 justices, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. It will stay suspended until it complies with his orders and pays outstanding fines that as of last week exceeded $3 million, according to his decision.

The platform has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to block users, and has alleged that de Moraes wants an in-country legal representative so that Brazilian authorities can exert leverage over the company by having someone to arrest.

De Moraes also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X. Some legal experts questioned the grounds for that decision and how it would be enforced, including Brazil’s bar association, which said it would request the Supreme Court review that provision.

But the majority of the panel upheld the VPN fine — with one justice opposing unless users are shown to be using X to commit crimes.

Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, with tens of millions of users. Its block marked a dramatic escalation in a monthslong feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

Over the weekend, many X users in Brazil said they felt disconnected from the world and began migrating en masse to alternative platforms, like Bluesky and Threads.

And the suspension has proceeded to set up a showdown between de Moraes and Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink, which is refusing to enforce the justice’s decision.

“He violated the constitution of Brazil repeatedly and egregiously, after swearing an oath to protect it,” Musk wrote in the hours before the vote, adding a flurry of insults and accusations in the wake of the panel’s vote. On Sunday, Musk announced the creation of an X account to publish the justice’s decisions that he said would show they violated Brazilian law.

But legal experts have said such claims don’t hold water, noting in particular that de Moraes’ peers have repeatedly endorsed his rulings — as they did on Monday. Although his actions are viewed by experts as legal, they have sparked some debate over whether one man has been afforded too much power, or if his rulings should have more transparency.

De Moraes’ decision to quickly refer his order for panel approval served to obtain “collective, more institutional support that attempts to depersonalize the decision,” Conrado Hübner, a constitutional law expert at the University of Sao Paulo, told The Associated Press.

It is standard for a justice to refer such cases to a five-justice panel, Hübner said. In exceptional cases, the justice also could refer the case to the full bench for review. Had de Moraes done the latter, two justices who have questioned his decisions in the past — and were appointed by former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro — would have had the opportunity to object or hinder the vote’s advance.

X’s block already led de Moraes last week to freeze the Brazilian financial assets of Starlink as a means to force it to cover X’s fines, reasoning that the two companies are part of the same economic group. The company says it has more than 250,000 clients in Brazil.

Legal experts have questioned the legal basis of that move, and Starlink’s law firm Veirano has told the AP it has appealed the freeze. It declined to comment further.

In a show of defiance, Starlink told the telecommunications regulator Anatel that it will not block X access until its financial accounts are unfrozen, Anatel’s press office said in an email to the AP. Starlink didn’t respond to a request for comment.

That means a shutdown of Starlink is likely, although enforcement will be difficult given the company’s satellites aren’t inside national territory, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Technology and Society Center at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. It is popular in Brazil’s expansive rural and forested areas.

Anatel’s President Carlos Baigorri told local media GloboNews late Sunday afternoon that he has relayed Starlink’s decision to Justice de Moraes.

Baigorri told GloboNews that the “maximum sanction” for a telecom company would be revocation of its license. He said if Starlink loses its license and continues providing service, it would be committing a crime. Anatel could seize equipment from Starlink’s 23 ground stations in Brazil that ensure the quality of its internet service, he said.

“It is highly probable there is a political escalation,” because Starlink is “explicitly refusing to comply with orders, national laws,” said Belli, who is also a professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s law school.

The arguments from Musk, a self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist,” have found fertile ground with Brazil’s political right, who view de Moraes’ actions as political persecution against Bolsonaro’s supporters.

On Brazilian orders, X previously has shut down accounts including of lawmakers affiliated with Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and far-right activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy. X’s lawyers in April sent a document to the Supreme Court, saying that since 2019 it had suspended or blocked 226 users.

Bolsonaro and his allies have cheered on Musk for defying de Moraes. Supporters rallied in April along Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach with a giant sign reading “Brazil Thanks Elon Musk.”

Earlier that month, de Moraes ordered an investigation into Musk over the dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization.

Bolsonaro is also the target of a de Moraes probe over whether the former president had a role in inciting an attempted coup to overturn the results of the 2022 election that he lost.

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Sá Pessoa reported from Sao Paulo.

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September 2, 2024
Brazil blocks Musk’s X after company refuses to name local representative amid feud with judge

SAO PAULO — Brazil started blocking Elon Musk’s social media platform X early Saturday, making it largely inaccessible on both the web and through mobile apps after the billionaire refused to name a legal representative to the country.

The move escalates a monthslong feud between Musk and a Brazilian Supreme Court justice over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the suspension on Friday.

To block X, Brazil’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, told internet service providers to suspend users’ access to the social media platform. As of Saturday after midnight local time, major operators had begun doing so.

De Moraes had warned Musk on Wednesday night that X could be blocked in Brazil if he failed to comply with his order to name a representative, and established a 24-hour deadline. The company hasn’t had a representative in the country since earlier this month.

“Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” de Moraes wrote in his decision on Friday.

The justice said the platform will stay suspended until it complies with his orders, and also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using VPNs to access it.

In a later ruling, he backtracked on his initial decision to establish a 5-day deadline for internet service providers themselves — and not just the telecommunications regulator — to block access to X, as well as his directive for app stores to remove virtual private networks, or VPNs.

Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, which has struggled with the loss of advertisers since Musk purchased the former Twitter in 2022. Market research group Emarketer says some 40 million Brazilians, roughly one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month.

“This is a sad day for X users around the world, especially those in Brazil, who are being denied access to our platform. I wish it did not have to come to this – it breaks my heart,” X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino said Friday night, adding that Brazil is failing to uphold its constitution’s pledge to forbid censorship.

X had posted on its official Global Government Affairs page late Thursday that it expected X to be shut down by de Moraes, “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

“When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the company wrote.

X has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to comply with orders to block users.

Accounts that the platform previously has shut down on Brazilian orders include lawmakers affiliated with former President Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy. X’s lawyers in April sent a document to the Supreme Court in April, saying that since 2019 it had suspended or blocked 226 users.

In his decision Friday, de Moraes’ cited Musk’s statements as evidence that X’s conduct “clearly intends to continue to encourage posts with extremism, hate speech and anti-democratic discourse, and to try to withdraw them from jurisdictional control.”

In April, de Moraes included Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news and opened a separate investigation into the executive for alleged obstruction.

Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has repeatedly claimed the justice’s actions amount to censorship, and his argument has been echoed by Brazil’s political right. He has often insulted de Moraes on his platform, characterizing him as a dictator and tyrant.

De Moraes’ defenders have said his actions aimed at X have been lawful, supported by most of the court’s full bench and have served to protect democracy at a time it is imperiled. He wrote Friday that his ruling is based on Brazilian law requiring internet services companies to have representation in the country so they can be notified when there are relevant court decisions and take requisite action — specifying the takedown of illicit content posted by users, and an anticipated churn of misinformation during October municipal elections.

The looming shutdown is not unprecedented in Brazil.

Lone Brazilian judges shut down Meta’s WhatsApp, the nation’s most widely used messaging app, several times in 2015 and 2016 due to the company’s refusal to comply with police requests for user data. In 2022, de Moraes threatened the messaging app Telegram with a nationwide shutdown, arguing it had repeatedly ignored Brazilian authorities’ requests to block profiles and provide information. He ordered Telegram to appoint a local representative; the company ultimately complied and stayed online.

X and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in several countries — mostly authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest. Twitter was banned in Egypt after the Arab Spring uprisings, which some dubbed the “Twitter revolution,” but it has since been restored.

A search Friday on X showed hundreds of Brazilian users inquiring about VPNs that could potentially enable them to continue using the platform by making it appear they were logging on from outside the country. It was not immediately clear how Brazilian authorities would police this practice and impose fines cited by de Moraes.

“This is an unusual measure, but its main objective is to ensure that the court order to suspend the platform’s operation is, in fact, effective,” Filipe Medon, a specialist in digital law and professor at the law school of Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Rio de Janeiro, told The Associated Press.

Mariana de Souza Alves Lima, known by her handle MariMoon, showed her 1.4 million followers on X where she intends to go, posting a screenshot of rival social network BlueSky.

On Thursday evening, Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet service provider, said on X that de Moraes this week froze its finances, preventing it from doing any transactions in the country where it has more than 250,000 customers.

“This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied—unconstitutionally—against X. It was issued in secret and without affording Starlink any of the due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution of Brazil. We intend to address the matter legally,” Starlink said in its statement. The law firm representing Starlink told the AP that the company appealed, but wouldn’t make further comment.

Musk replied to people sharing the reports of the freeze, adding insults directed at de Moraes. “This guy @Alexandre is an outright criminal of the worst kind, masquerading as a judge,” he wrote.

Musk later posted on X that SpaceX, which runs Starlink, will provide free internet service in Brazil “until the matter is resolved” since “we cannot receive payment, but don’t want to cut anyone off.”

In his decision, de Moraes said he ordered the freezing of Starlink’s assets, as X didn’t have enough money in its accounts to cover mounting fines, and reasoning that the two companies are part of the same economic group.

While ordering X’s suspension followed warnings and fines and so was appropriate, taking action against Starlink seems “highly questionable,” said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s Technology and Society Center.

“Yes, of course, they have the same owner, Elon Musk, but it is discretionary to consider Starlink as part of the same economic group as Twitter (X). They have no connection, they have no integration,” Belli said.

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Ortutay reported from San Francisco and Biller from Rio. AP writer Mauricio Savarese contributed from Sao Paulo.

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August 30, 2024