List of All Articles with Tag 'us politics'

EDITORS/NEWS DIRECTORS: The Associated Press is offering a video of Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear speaking about his campaign and plans for the future. Attorney General Daniel Cameron won the Republican primary for Kentucky governor and will face Beshear in November. Use the video on your websites, broadcasts, social media platforms and elsewhere. ___ GET THE VIDEO Gov. Beshear focuses on Kentucky families in campaign ___ READ AP’S COVERAGE Trump-backed Daniel Cameron to face Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear in November ___ PUBLISH THIS Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear sat down with the Associated Press on Wednesday to discuss his bid for second-term as Kentucky’s governor. He touted economic development, his work at the border and his response to natural disasters throughout the state. “We are at a moment of time and opportunity in Kentucky, the likes of which we’ve never seen. Getting picked for the largest investments of Ford and Amazon. More jobs than ever before. R&D facilities. I got to announce a steel facility in Bell County and a distillery in Fulton County on the same day. More rural jobs than we’ve ever seen. Now, this election for me is about seeing through this work and turning years of great economic development into decades of prosperity,” Beshear said. On Tuesday, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron became the first Black nominee for either party in the state of Kentucky—the republican will be facing off against Beshear in the election. “It’s taken far too long to have a Black nominee of either party for governor. But I think what the attorney general said last night is right, that in this campaign, people are going to judge us by our record and our values. And I know that my campaign will show those values by lifting us up, by moving us forward, by focusing on on better jobs, by living out our collective faith of being there for our neighbor and not stoking division, calling each other names and trying to turn people against each other,” Beshear said. Beshear also defended his decisions while handling the COVID-19 pandemic, something his republican opponents have been keen to use against him. He also defended abortion rights in the state and pushed back on current strict state laws. “In Kentucky, they passed a total ban that leaves victims even of rape and incest without any options. It forces women who are pregnant to carry to term, even when it’s not going to be viable. And they’re going to have to go through the most heart wrenching moments and know they’re going to face that for many, many months. Listen, that’s wrong. And I believe the vast majority of Kentuckians believe that it’s wrong,” Beshear said. Beshear also said he is supporting President Biden for his bid for a second term. ___ Localize It is an occasional feature produced by The Associated Press for its customers’ use. Questions can be directed to Katie Oyan at koyan@ap.org. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide AP News Digest 3:30 am AP News Digest 3:20 am Kentucky Republicans pick nominee to challenge Democratic Gov. Beshear

Just a week after her return to the United States Senate after a roughly three month absence, questions continue to swirl around Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her mental capacity to serve in the world's greatest deliberative body.

A former Washington, DC, Metro transit system contractor retained access to "critical and sensitive" Metro data from his computer in Russia after he left his job in a breach that raises broader security concerns about one of the nation's largest transit systems, according to a report released Wednesday.

The State Department offered Wednesday to allow the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to view a classified cable from U.S. diplomats in Kabul sent shortly before the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas had threatened earlier this week to make an unprecedented push to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress if he did not turn over the so-called dissent cable. It was not immediately clear whether the State Department's offer would appease the Republican lawmaker, who also wanted to see Blinken's response to the cable. State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters Wednesday that McCaul, as well as Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, would be invited to the department to view the cable “with appropriate personal information redacted.” “Chairman McCaul himself has said that this is what he is interested in,” Patel said. "And so it is our sincere hope that our offer here will be sufficient to satisfy their request for information.” McCaul was planning to have the committee vote next week on a resolution to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress. It would have then proceeded to a full vote in the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority. The State Department had previously briefed McCaul on the substance of the cables, but he said he was not satisfied. The vast majority of the 123 cables sent since 1971, when the dissent channel was created during the Vietnam War, have remained classified, according to the National Security Archives at George Washington University. The State Department has long protected the cables from being released publicly. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide

The State Department will allow the top two members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to view a dissent cable on the withdrawal from Afghanistan at the State Department -- a significant concession to Republican Chairman Michael McCaul ahead of a planned resolution to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress.

The pause on federal student loan payments is still set to end later this year, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona confirmed this week.

The House is expected to take up a resolution to expel embattled GOP Rep. George Santos Wednesday evening, but Republicans appear on track to avoid a politically painful up-or-down vote on the resolution.

A school district and school board in Florida’s Escambia County were sued in federal court by free expression group PEN America and Penguin Random House, one of the largest book publishers in the world, and several prominent authors and families following dozens of challenges to books and materials discussing race, racism and LGBT+ people. The lawsuit filed in US District Court on 17 May argues that school officials have joined an “ideologically driven campaign to push certain ideas out of schools” and against the recommendation of experts. “This disregard for professional guidance underscores that the agendas underlying the removals are ideological and political, not pedagogical,” the lawsuit states. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has ushered through sweeping laws to control public school education and lessons and speech he deems to be objectionable while characterising reporting on the impacts of such policies as a “hoax” and a “fake narrative” manufactured by the press. In Escambia County alone, nearly 200 books have been challenged, at least 10 books have been removed by the school board, five books were removed by district committees, and 139 books require parental permission, according to PEN America. Challenging such materials is “depriving students of access to a wide range of viewpoints, and depriving the authors of the removed and restricted books of the opportunity to engage with readers and disseminate their ideas to their intended audiences” in violation of the First Amendment, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit also argues that singling out materials by and about nonwhite and LGBT+ people is an intentional violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment “This is no accident,” according to the lawsuit. “The clear agenda behind the campaign to remove the books is to categorically remove all discussion of racial discrimination or [LGBT+] issues from public school libraries. Government action may not be premised on such discriminatory motivations.” Two Penguin Random House Titles – Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Push by Sapphire – have been removed. And several other Penguin titles – including Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five – are currently under review. “Books have the capacity to change lives for the better, and students in particular deserve equitable access to a wide range of perspectives,” Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya said in a statement. “Censorship, in the form of book bans like those enacted by Escambia County, are a direct threat to democracy and our Constitutional rights.” Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, added that “children in a democracy must not be taught that books are dangerous.” “In Escambia County, state censors are spiriting books off shelves in a deliberate attempt to suppress diverse voices,” she added. “In a nation built on free speech, this cannot stand. The law demands that the Escambia County School District put removed or restricted books back on library shelves where they belong.” Titles from authors who joined the suit – including Sarah Brannen, David Levithan, George M Johnson, Ashley Hope Perez and Kyle Lukoff – have either been removed or faced restrictions for students to access them. “As a former public high school English teacher, I know firsthand how important libraries are,” Ashley Hope Perez, author of Out of Darkness, one of the books targeted by the school district, said in a statement. “For many young people, if a book isn’t in their school library, it might as well not exist.” The book removals followed objections from one language arts teacher in the county, and in each case the school board voted to remove the books despite recommendations from a district review committee that approved them. The teacher’s objections appear to be lifted from a website called Book Looks, founded by a member of Moms for Liberty, a right-wing group aligned with Governor DeSantis to pressure school boards and libraries to remove content it deems objectionable, largely around LGBT+ rights, race and discrimination. The basis for that teacher’s challenges “are nakedly ideological,” according to the lawsuit. In one instance, she admitted that she had never heard of the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower but included the title and a “parental book rating” and excerpts that appear to have been lifted from Book Looks. Her challenge to Race and Policing in Modern America, a nonfiction book for middle school readers, claims that the book promotes “the idea that all police are bad” and that “non-blacks are racist” and its purpose is to “race bait”. She did not include any specific examples of objectionable content, and “her sole objection was that the book addresses a topic – the intersection of race and policing – that she did not consider suitable for discussion in schools.” The Independent has requested comment from Escambia County school board members. The district is unable to comment on pending litigation. There have been at least 1,477 attempts to ban 874 individual book titles within the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, according to PEN America. The figures mark a nearly 30 per cent spike from book challenges over the previous year. Last year, a record high of more than 1,200 attempts to remove books from schools and libraries were reported to the American Library Association. More than 100 bills in state legislatures across the country this year threaten to cut library budgets, implement book rating systems, regulate the kinds of books and materials in their collections, and amend obscenity definitions that preempt First Amendment protections, according to a database from EveryLibrary. Read More The book ban surge gripping America’s schools and libraries The school librarian in the middle of Louisiana’s war on libraries ‘They were trying to erase us’: Inside a Texas town’s chilling effort to ban LGBT+ books John Green on book bans, bad faith, and the ‘history of folks trying to control what other folks can read’

In recent days, social media has been flooded with videos of truck drivers claiming they are boycotting Florida after the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law a strict immigration enforcement bill. According to the social media posts, truckers across the United States had decided en masse to cease deliveries to the Sunshine State, citing the tough immigration policies. One TikToker who made a video about his own concerns about the law, sanchezmanuel33, told The Independent that he thought “thousands” of truckers were participating. However, it does not appear that such a mass demonstration has been taking place as of yet. The Florida Trucking Association, which lobbies on behalf of the state’s trucking industry at the Florida statehouse, was able to shed some light on the situation. The group’s president told The Independent that she was aware of the TikTok videos but as of yet was not noticing any impacts on trucking businesses operating in the state. “I’m aware of the reports, but have not heard of any issues,” Alix Miller said. Other news reports indicate that there were no shortages reported at grocery stores in the state as of yet. One immigrants’ rights advocate who spoke to a local Florida news outlet said that she had spoken to several local organisations about pulling together a possible boycott, but those plans had not materialised so far. A series of TikTok videos quickly spread across left-leaning accounts on Twitter, boasting of a looming boycott. One TikTok video of a man recording a line of empty store shelves at a grocery store was viewed hundreds of thousands of times as evidence of shortages supposedly cropping up in the state. Aiding the growing story was a series of TikToks from individual truckers making bold claims about how they themselves would participate in a boycott, circulated on Twitter by an independent journalist focused on the immigration beat. His thread has been viewed more than 3 million times. “Do not enter Florida. Let’s support immigrants. What they’re doing in Florida is not okay. I’m going to say it again, I won’t enter Florida and neither will my truck. Let’s not pretend like we’re not all immigrants here,” one driver said in Spanish on TikTok. “Look at all the truck drivers here, there are long long lines. If we stand together and say ‘F*** it, we are not going to Florida.’ Let’s see who is going to bring (goods) to Florida? ... There’s more being imported to Florida than being exported. If we don’t bring anything to Floridians, what are they going to do? What’s the governor going to do?” another driver added. Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also appeared to voice support for a trucker boycott. “Anti-immigrant policies reap what they sow. DeSantis’ Florida is about to find that out,” she said on Twitter, adding, “No más. Time to stop biting the hands that feed.” The issue has even received media coverage: A local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat, covered the TikToks and explained the basics of the immigration law, adding that “we don’t know for sure that (drivers) are” boycotting the state. A review of various Publix locations – Florida’s largest supermarket chain – across the state indicated no service disruptions or shortages, and there was no evidence on social media of any stores with empty shelves beyond the one TikTok filmed by a user named “PJ’s Journey”. The Independent has contacted a number of grocery chains in the state and made multiple attempts to reach Publix for comment. Read More Schoolboy almost dies from swallowing magnets for TikTok challenge Woman shares honest review of New York City apartment TikTok mom slammed after making 5-year-old son run in 104 degree heat Florida school district hit with lawsuit over ‘unconstitutional’ book bans Supreme Court refuses to block Illinois assault weapons ban Biden says he’s ‘confident’ US won’t default on debt

With work requirements for safety net programs emerging as a central issue in the debt ceiling negotiations, President Joe Biden's past support of such mandates is a point of optimism for Republicans and of concern for his fellow Democrats.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday sought to lay out how he'll continue to negotiate with congressional leaders on the budget to raise the debt ceiling -- underscoring that all parties agreed that the United States would not default.

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Daniel Werfel acknowledged in a letter to the US Senate on Monday that Black taxpayers are audited at significantly higher rates than non-Black taxpayers, a revelation he said has left the agency "deeply concerned."