September, 2021 | últimas notícias

Arizona Governor Hits Back at Donald Trump Over Audit: ‘No Decertification’ – Newsweek

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has said there will be “no decertification” of the state’s 2020 presidential election results following an audit in Maricopa County that was highly anticipated by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Ducey, who is a Republican, took to Twitter on Friday to say the election outcome would not be decertified and that the law did not allow for decertification despite demands from Trump.

The controversial audit found that President Joe Biden had won Maricopa county in line with the election results and three previous audits. It was conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a firm with no previous experience auditing elections.

Trump issued a statement on Friday calling on Arizona to decertify the election results.

“It is not even believable the dishonesty of the Fake News Media on the Arizona Audit results, which shows incomprehensible Fraud at an Election Changing level, many times more votes than is needed,” Trump said.

“The Fake News Media refuses to write the facts, thereby being complicit in the Crime of the Century. They are so dishonest, but Patriots know the truth! Arizona must immediately decertify their 2020 Presidential Election Results,” the statement went on.

However, Ducey made clear that was not going to happen and his state would follow the law.

“When it comes to the audit, like the three audits that preceded it, it’s now over. The outcome stands and the 2020 election in Arizona is over,” Ducey tweeted.

When it comes to the audit, like the three audits that preceded it, it’s now over. The outcome stands and the 2020 election in Arizona is over. 3/

— Doug Ducey (@dougducey) September 25, 2021

“Any meaningful policy recommendations identified should be addressed in the next session of the legislature. Any findings of fraud should be referred to the Attorney General and the Department of Justice for them to take action,” he wrote.

“There will be no decertification of the 2020 election — the audit does not call for one, and even if it had, there is no lawful way to decertify. As we have every step of the way, Arizona will follow the law,” the governor said.

However, Ducey also acknowledged “that we’ve seen confidence erode in our election system in recent years” and that the issue needed to be addressed. He said there was “work to do to strengthen confidence in our elections system.”

The Cyber Ninjas’ audit had faced severe criticism, including for pursuing conspiracy theories such as looking for bamboo fibers in ballots. This was based on the unfounded claim that thousands of ballots had been shipped in from Asia in order to affect the outcome of the election. The final report did not mention bamboo.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey (L) speaks beside US President Donald Trump during a dinner with US state governors to discuss border security in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington, DC, May 21, 2018. Ducey has said the 2020 election results in Arizona will not be decertified.
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/arizona-governor-hits-back-donald-trump-over-audit-no-decertification-1632678

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The Biden effect: GOP starts linking down-ballot Democrats to an increasingly unpopular president – Fox News

Video

Chaffetz: Biden’s crises, cratering poll numbers are ‘self-inflicted wounds’

A new TV ad by a pro-GOP group that backs party candidates running in state legislative elections is going where Republicans have been hesitant to go until recent weeks.

The spot ties an incumbent Democratic state delegate in Virginia who’s running for reelection this November to President Biden, whose approval ratings have taken a major hit over the past month and a half.

The commercial, by the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), uses a recording of Virginia state lawmaker Alex Askew saying that he and other Democrats in the commonwealth can “run on the record that President Biden and our folks and partners in Washington, D.C., are doing.”

WHAT’S BEHIND THE DROP IN PRESIDENT BIDEN’S POLL NUMBERS

The spot targeting Askew is part of a six-figure ad buy launched last month by the RSLC in the Virginia contests, which are being seen by many pundits as a bellwether ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Up until now, Republican ads targeting Democratic members of Congress and state lawmakers who face challenging reelections this year and next year have often tied them to such Democratic leaders as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, progressive champion Sen. Bernie Sanders, liberal firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the so-called “Squad.”

WHERE BIDEN STANDS IN THE LATEST FOX NEWS NATIONAL POLL

Biden, who until early last month enjoyed healthy poll numbers, was not to be seen. But the president’s standing among Americans is flagging in the wake of Biden’s much criticized handling of the turbulent U.S. exit from Afghanistan, and amid a surge in COVID cases this summer among mainly unvaccinated people due to the spread of the highly infectious delta variant.

And that appears to be changing the way Republican operatives and strategists view the president.

“This is the most directly we’ve linked a Virginia House Democrat to President Biden so far this cycle. Given the president is under water in this district and in other targets of ours, stay tuned for more of us holding Virginia Democrats accountable for standing by the failures of Biden and his radical liberal allies in Washington,” an official with the RSLC told Fox News.

And it’s not just the RSLC.

Michael McAdams, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the reelection arm of the House GOP, told Fox News that “Joe Biden’s failed policies will be weaponized in races around the country and serve as an anchor around the neck of every vulnerable House Democrat.”

Meanwhile, Biden also co-stars in a recent spot by the America’s Job Creators for a Strong Recovery, a coalition of more than 30 business and industry groups. Last month they launched the first in a series of planned ads taking aim at the $3.5 trillion spending package being pushed by the president and congressional Democrats.

“Biden, Pelosi, and Bernie are pushing a job-killing agenda that will hammer Main Street businesses and working families,” charges the narrator in the digital spot, which targets moderate Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, who could face a challenging reelection next year.

Democrats are defending the governor’s office and their control of both houses of state legislature in Virginia this November. And nationally, Democrats are defending their razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate in the 2022 midterm elections.

TRUMP, WITH SPATE OF 2022 ENDORSEMENTS, GOES WHERE NO FORMER PRESIDENT’S GONE BEFORE

When the president’s party controls both chambers of Congress, the midterms are usually a referendum on that president’s record and performance in office. And the presidential approval rating is a key barometer heading into midterms elections.

Video

From President Obama in the 2010 midterms to President Trump in the 2018 elections, there’s a history of the minority party and their allies targeting a first-term president their ads.

“There’s still a long way to go until next year’s midterms but the growing political parallels for the Democrats between President Obama’s and President Biden’s first terms are hard to ignore,” longtime GOP consultant Brian Walsh argued. “In both instances, they campaigned as a moderate but then pursued a very partisan and liberal political agenda once in office that ultimately backfired for their party in the midterms.”

Walsh, a former top strategist for GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas who also served as National Republican Senatorial Committee communications director during the 2010 and 2012 cycles, forecast that “there’s no question that House and Senate Democrats running in battleground races are going to be much more hesitant to hitch themselves to President Biden in the way that they might have nine months ago.”

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But Democratic operative and strategist Chris Moyer argued that “the thought that tying vulnerable candidates to President Biden is going to work in the long term seems like a little bit of a risky bet. I think there’s a sense that it may have been a rough few weeks for President Biden. But I think folks have known who Joe Biden is for a long time and he’s going to have a chance to right the ship and he’s taking a lot of actions to do that already.”

Moyer, a veteran of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and Sen. Cory Booker’s bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, predicted that “the decision to try to tie candidates to the president may not look so good in hindsight, a few months down the road.”

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-links-down-ballot-democrats-biden

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Germans Will Choose A New Government As Angela Merkel Steps Down As Chancellor – NPR

On Thursday, people in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, pass election posters of chancellor candidates Armin Laschet (from right) of the Christian Democratic Union, Annalena Baerbock of the Greens, Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party and Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party.

Martin Meissner/AP

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Martin Meissner/AP

BERLIN — Millions of Germans will head to the polls in a federal election on Sunday that will determine who will succeed Angela Merkel after 16 years as Germany’s chancellor.

According to the latest polls, Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party is narrowly ahead of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union. They’re closely followed by the Greens, the far-right Alternative for Germany and the libertarian Free Democratic Party, all holding onto double-digit poll numbers going into Sunday’s election.

Josef Janning, a senior associate fellow with the German Council on Foreign Relations, says the two traditional big-tent parties have failed to attract support outside their traditional bases in a more diversified Germany with many voters who are no longer bound by class or religion.

“They are less willing to make a compromise within their own segment of society,” Janning says. “They would rather pursue their own specific interests and preferences with like-minded groups.”

And, he says, that results “in a much more fragmented party system, where a major party probably has to be considered a party that can achieve more than 20% of the vote.”

Another factor impacting this wide spectrum of electoral politics is the vacuum left by the departure of Angela Merkel.

“I wish she were running again and were staying on as chancellor,” says 27-year-old voter Jessica Laufer, a scientist who lives in the Baltic Sea city of Stralsund. “I don’t like the CDU chancellor candidate, and it’s not likely we’ll see a Green chancellor, so it’s a real shame she’s stepping down.”

Laufer was 11 years old when Merkel became chancellor. Now that Laufer has children of her own, she says she would prefer Green party chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock to prevail, but she doesn’t see Baerbock’s party receiving a lion’s share of the vote. Like many young parents in Germany, Laufer is voting for the Greens because she says she wants a better climate for her children and she believes Germany’s traditional parties aren’t doing enough to tackle climate change.

Another voter, Christoph Homes, lives near Hamburg and has traditionally voted for Merkel’s center-right party, but he isn’t thrilled with the CDU’s candidate for chancellor, Armin Laschet.

“He’s like a puppet,” Homes says, acknowledging that he believes front-running candidate Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats will likely prevail. “Yes, Olaf Scholz will be a good chancellor, but he’ll probably end up governing with the Greens and then things will get expensive for us voters.”

Both the CDU and the Social Democrats have expressed interest in forming a coalition with the Greens. What’s clear from polling data is that whoever comes out on top, Germany’s next government will likely be a coalition of three political parties — a rarity in German politics.

Esme Nicholson contributed to this story from Berlin.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2021/09/25/1040421916/germany-election-chancellor-merkel-parties-vote

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The search for Brian Laundrie in a swampy Florida nature reserve enters its second week – CNN

(CNN)Since being informed a week ago by Brian Laundrie’s parents that they had not seen him for days, dozens of local and federal officers have searched high and low in a swampy Florida nature reserve for the 23-year-old following the disappearance and then the discovery of the body of his fiancée Gabby Petito in Wyoming.

CNN’s Randi Kaye, Leyla Santiago, Dakin Andone, Steve Almasy, Kate Conerly, Christina Maxouris, Rebekah Riess, Gregory Lemos and Sara Weisfeldt contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/25/us/gabby-petito-brian-laundrie-update-saturday/index.html

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‘He knows he lost’: Georgia Republican braces for Trump rally in Perry – The Guardian

The top election official in Georgia, a Republican, said Donald Trump unequivocally lost the state in 2020, a day before a rally there on Saturday night at whih Trump is set to repeat baseless accusations of voter fraud.

On the eve of the rally in Perry, Brad Raffensperger told the Washington Examiner: “He’s going to come, and he’s going to say what he’s going to say, but he knows in his heart that he lost.”

Last January, the Georgia secretary of state resisted pressure from Trump to “find 11,780 votes” and thereby overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state.

The phone call in which Trump made that demand is at the heart of an investigation in Fulton county.

On Friday, a Brookings Institution report said Trump faces “substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes”.

Regardless, the former president will travel to Georgia on Saturday for a rally in part to support Herschel Walker, a controversial former NFL running back running to challenge the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock in midterm elections next year.

Warnock and another Democrat, Jonathan Ossoff, won Georgia’s two Senate seats in runoffs in January. Observers on both sides of the aisle said Trump’s claims of electoral fraud depressed Republican turnout.

Final results in the runoffs were confirmed on 6 January, the day Trump supporters he told to “fight like hell” stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn his defeat.

Raffensperger has since received death threats and attracted a Trump-backed challenger. He also presided over a new state voting law widely seen as aimed at depressing turnout in communities likely to vote Democratic.

Nonetheless, he remains ranged against Trump’s lie that Biden won the presidency illegally.

“He’s continued to promote the big lie,” Raffensperger told the Examiner, “and then he’s also fundraising off this issue, just like Stacey Abrams has.”

Abrams is a Democratic former state representative who ran for governor against the Republican Brian Kemp in 2018, losing a closely contested race and protesting that Kemp, then secretary of state, oversaw voter suppression.

She has since campaigned widely for voting rights and voter registration, efforts widely credited with helping to elect Ossoff, Warnock and Biden.

“Every time we’ve looked into all of these concerns, it’s clear that Donald Trump lost the election fair and square,” Raffensperger said.

“What bothers me, and it really should bother everyone, after 10 months since the last ballots were counted, we’re still dealing with this misinformation and disinformation surrounding the elections.”

Trump is happy to stoke such misinformation and disinformation, this week gaining new election audits in Texas even as a partisan audit in Arizona ended with no proof of fraud and more votes for Biden.

On Friday, Trump released numerous statements about events in Arizona. In one, perhaps tellingly, he called Republicans’ efforts there a “fraudit”. In another, he said: “I will be discussing the winning results of the Arizona forensic audit, which will show 44,000 possibly illegal ballots cast, tomorrow at the great state of Georgia rally, which will be packed!”

In a letter released last week, the former president claimed to have found 43,000 “invalid” ballots in Georgia and told Raffensperger and Kemp to “start the process of decertifying the election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner”.

Happy to sling mud inside his party, this week Trump attacked Kemp as “almost like a Democrat in disguise” and “a disaster” and predicted: “He’s not going to be able to win the general election anyway, because the base isn’t going to show up for him.”

In a radio interview, Trump also said Walker had jumped into the Senate race “at my behest”.

On Friday, perhaps speaking for establishment Republicans across the US, Raffensperger seemed resigned to what was coming at the Trump rally in Perry.

“We are not going to win that bullhorn argument,” he said.

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/25/trump-rally-perry-georgia-republican-raffensperger-herschel-walker

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Germany is the biggest economy in Europe. What if it shifts left? – CNN

By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business

Updated 2:19 AM ET, Sat September 25, 2021

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/25/business/germany-elections-economy/index.html

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Last Haitian migrants removed from Del Rio encampment, homeland security chief says – The Guardian

The last of up to 15,000 Haitian migrants have been cleared from their encampment underneath and near a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, the US homeland security secretary announced on Friday, ending one stage of a damaging episode for the Biden administration.

Repercussions continued at the end of a week that brought “horrifying” images of migrants being rounded up by border agents on horseback, and others of pregnant women and children without food or water in blazing desert heat.

“As of this morning, there are no longer any migrants at the camp underneath the Del Rio international bridge,” Alejandro Mayorkas said at a White House briefing, confirming that 2,000 migrants had been “repatriated” to Haiti on 17 flights.

About 8,000 had voluntarily returned to Mexico, he said, and about 5,000 were being processed by homeland security agents.

“Some have been returned to Haiti, indeed,” Mayorkas said. “Others have been moved to different processing facilities along the border in light of operational capacity. And then many of them will be returned to Haiti from there.

“If any of the exceptions apply they will not be returned to Haiti but placed in immigration enforcement proceedings. Some of them are detained, some of them are placed on alternatives to detention. We remain in touch with them, we monitor them to ensure their appearance in court at the designated time.”

The administration has faced blistering criticism for its handling of the crisis, from Republicans and Democrats including Julián Castro, a former presidential candidate and housing secretary under Barack Obama.

He told the Guardian in an interview he was “baffled” why Biden had said little about “images of Haitians being treated like animals”.

Castro said Biden risked the collapse of the coalition that helped to elect him if he didn’t live up to his campaign promise of “compassion and common sense” in immigration.

Mayorkas promised an investigation into conditions in Del Rio and treatment of those who were there.

“In the midst of meeting these challenges, we, our entire nation, saw horrifying images that do not reflect who we are, who we aspire to be, or the integrity and values of our truly heroic personnel in the Department of Homeland Security,” Mayorkas said.

“We know that those images painfully conjured up the worst elements of our nation’s ongoing battle against systemic racism.”

In response to a question about the scale of the inquiry, Mayorkas promised it would be far-reaching and probably uncomfortable, but said his department would have no problem making its findings public.

“I know how to maintain the integrity of an investigation, and this investigation will have integrity,” he said.

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/24/del-rio-encampment-immigration-texas

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Maricopa County rebuts Cyber Ninjas claim about mail-in ballots – Business Insider

According to the Arizona Secretary of State, voters can have mail-in ballots sent to a temporary address.
That vote, when cast, will be linked to their previous residence.
Cyber Ninjas falsely implies such votes are illegal.

Republican-led Maricopa County on Friday rebutted claims from the company behind Arizona’s controversial, partisan election review that more than 23,000 mail-in ballots should not have been cast during the 2020 election.

In its long-anticipated report, Cyber Ninjas did not find any evidence that votes were changed or that ballots were made out of Chinese bamboo. But the company — whose founder, Doug Logan, had previously claimed the election was “rigged” — appears to have tried to save face among its right-wing supporters by intimating that there was still wrongdoing.

One of Cyber Ninjas “critical findings” was that 23,344 mail-in ballots were cast by people who no longer resided at their address on file. These voters, the company asserted, “should not have received their ballots by mail because they had moved,” suggesting that they had been wrongly forwarded to the voters’ new address, a claim amplified by the spokesperson for former President Donald Trump.

But that is not true.

According to the office of Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican elected in November 2020, “As required by law, all election materials, such as ballots, are marked ‘Do Not Forward — Return Service Requested.'” Returned ballots initiate a process of removing the person from the voter roll.

But sometimes people move in the weeks before an election; they are allowed to request that their ballot be sent to a temporary address. According to Maricopa County, 20,933 voters did so in 2020.

As for the rest? Former Maricopa County residents who are in the military and deployed overseas — and other Americans who live abroad but previously called the Phoenix metropolitan region home — have to list their “address in the state in which [they] were last domiciled” in order to participate in a federal election, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program, “Your voting residence is your address in the state in which you were last domiciled, immediately prior to leaving the United States.”

“Cyber Ninjas still don’t understand this is legal under federal election law,” the county posted on its official Twitter account. “To label it a ‘critical’ concern is either intentionally misleading or staggeringly ignorant.”

Source Article from https://www.businessinsider.com/maricopa-county-rebuts-cyber-ninjas-claim-about-mail-in-ballots-2021-9

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Canadians released after Huawei CFO resolves U.S. charges – NBC News

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Biden swipes American press in front of Indian PM Modi: ‘The Indian press is much better behaved’ – Fox News

Video

Biden selling $1.2 infrastructure bill as ‘all paid for’

Fox News congressional correspondent Chad Pergram has the details on ‘Your World’

President Biden took a swipe at the American press while sitting down in the Oval Office with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“I think what we’re going to do is bring in the press,” Biden began on Friday as they sat down. “The Indian press is much better behaved than the American press.”

BIDEN JOKES ABOUT RUNNING OVER REPORTER WITH VEHICLE WHEN ASKED ABOUT ISRAEL DURING FORD TEST DRIVE

“I think, with your permission, you could not answer questions because they won’t ask any questions on point,” Biden later added.

The comments went viral with critics knocking the president in response.

“I thought Modi had said this when I heard about it, but nope that’s the American president,” New York Times reporter Katie Rogers tweeted.

BIDEN CALLS REPORTER ‘PAIN IN THE NECK’ FOR QUESTION ABOUT VETERAN AFFAIRS COVID-19 VACCINE MANDATE

“Pretty Trumpian,” Washington Examiner correspondent Christian Datoc reacted.

Washington Free Beacon reporter Chuck Ross highlighted that India ranks “142nd” in the world when it comes to press freedom according to Reporters Without Borders while the U.S. is ranked “44th.”

As Breitbart’s Charlie Spierling noted, Biden’s comments were not included in the official White House transcript on the White House’s website.

Despite having praised the value of journalists on the campaign trail, Biden has since hurled insults and jabs towards the press throughout his presidency.

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In July, Biden called NBC News correspondent Kelly O’Donnell a “pain in the neck” for asking him a question that was off his preferred topic.

The president once snapped at CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins for grilling him on his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling her she was “in the wrong business,” later claiming “to be a good reporter you gotta be negative. You’ve got to have a negative view of life.”

He even joked about running over a reporter with a car while he was test-driving a Ford after the reporter asked him a question about Israel.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-narendra-modi-american-press-indian-press-much-better-behaved

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Three Dismembered Bodies Found In Fort Worth Dumpster, Police Asking For Tips – CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – Fort Worth Police are asking for the public’s help after the dismembered bodies of three people, including a child, were found in a burning trash dumpster.

The discovery came early Wednesday morning outside a business in the 3100 block of Bonnie Drive in West Fort Worth.

Firefighters responded to the dumpster fire just after 6:15 a.m. Once it was put out, they found body parts inside.

Developing story in Fort Worth.

Dumpster on fire at this spot Wednesday morning had dismembered bodies of adult male, teen/adult female and a young child inside. pic.twitter.com/avsg5rYAew

— Jason Allen (@CBS11JasonAllen) September 24, 2021

Fort Worth Police and homicide detectives were called to the scene. They report the bodies appeared to be that of an unknown child, a young teenage or adult female, and an adult male.

The bodies were badly burned and heavily dismembered, and there are body parts missing, police said.

Investigators said the composition of the body parts is making identification difficult.

The adult male has been identified as 42-year-old David Lueras.

Credit: Fort Worth Police

Public records show Lueras has a lengthy criminal history, including charges of fraud, drug possession, and theft.

Police did not have a definitive home town, but said he frequented areas near Dallas, Bedford and Euless.

Police are asking anyone with information to call Fort Worth Police.

MORE NEWS: State Fair Offers Hundreds Of Free Acts, Shows And Exhibits

Source Article from https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2021/09/24/three-dismembered-bodies-dumpster-fort-worth/

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Check out these images of the erupting volcano in La Palma – The Washington Post

On Sept. 11, an earthquake swarm began rocking the volcano, foreshadowing an ominous development to come. Authorities issued a yellow alert for part of the island on Sept. 13, the second-highest tier of advisory that can be issued for an imminent or expected eruption. According to Spanish newspaper El País, about 35,000 people were included in the alert.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/09/24/la-palma-volcano-canary-islands/

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Biden Declines to Shield Trump WH Records From 1/6 Committee, Invoke Executive Privilege – Newsweek

President Joe Biden will not use executive privilege to protect former President Donald Trump by hiding his records from an investigation into the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday.

A journalist had asked Psaki at a briefing about comments Trump had made regarding his intent to use executive privilege to block subpoenas issued to former Trump advisors by the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 attack.

Psaki said she was not aware of any outreach from the former president and said the administration does not “get regular outreach” from the Trump camp. In regards to how the Biden administration would proceed, she offered the following comments:

“The president has already concluded that it would not be appropriate to assert executive privilege,” she said. “And so, we will respond promptly to these questions as they arise and certainly as they come up from Congress.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said President Joe Biden would not shield the Trump administration from the 1/6 committee. Here, she speaks during a news briefing on February 16 in Washington, D.C.
Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images

Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/biden-declines-shield-trump-wh-records-1-6-committee-invoke-executive-privilege-1632605

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Arizona election audit confirms Biden victory over Trump – New York Post

A review of the 2020 election results in Arizona’s most populous county confirmed that Democrat Joe Biden won the Grand Canyon State’s 11 electoral votes legitimately and without the aid of fraud, the CEO of the cybersecurity firm that ran the audit indicated Friday.

Cyber Ninjas chief executive Doug Logan told state senators that his company’s review of the results in Maricopa County showed that Biden gained 99 votes over the official results. Trump lost 261 votes from the official total — which showed him losing the county to Biden by more than 45,000 votes.

“These are all very small numbers when we’re talking about 2.1 million ballots [cast],” Logan said. “These are very small discrepancies. We can say that the ballots that were provided to us to count … very accurately correlate with the official canvas numbers.”

Former President Donald Trump has implied to his supporters for months that the audit would turn up malfeasance that would prove he was removed from office through widespread election fraud. Though witnesses at the hearing where the audit report was presented raised questions about Maricopa County’s ballot-collecting and security procedures, no proof of such fraud was forthcoming.

Former President Trump lost Trump lost 261 votes in the audit.

LM Otero, File/AP

County officials pushed back particularly hard against claims made by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, a failed GOP Senate candidate from Massachusetts who claims to have invented email and was once married to the actress Fran Drescher.

In his remarks, Ayyadurai — who was referred to as “Dr. Shiva” throughout the hearing — charged that he had found thousands of mail-in ballot envelopes that were missing voter signatures or bore an illegible scribble.

Ayyadurai also alleged that thousands of duplicate ballots were received and may have been counted by the county, as well as that ballot envelopes with blank signature lines were marked as verified and approved by officials — and that the number of unsigned ballot envelopes submitted to officials increased in the days after Election Day.

Even then, Ayyadurai stopped short of accusing election officials outright fraud, saying at one point that “I don’t want to accuse that,” but called for a “full signature verification audit.”

The audit said President Biden took Maricopa County by 45,000 votes.

Matt York, Pool, File/AP

The county said in a series of statements on Twitter that election officials contacted voters who mailed ballots in an unsigned envelope “to ensure their vote counts.”

In another tweet, the county noted that voters who are unable to sign their name to a ballot receive assistance from special election boards who “visually affirm the marks are the voter’s correct sig.”

Officials also defended their process for counting duplicated ballots, insisting that “only one ballot [from each voter] is counted.”

“Unfortunately, AZ Senators gave unvetted, unqualified, private companies with known biases a platform to share misguided theories and faulty assumptions about Maricopa County elections,” the county said in another Twitter message.

Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan waits for the Arizona Senate Republicans hearing review of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County at the Arizona Capitol on Sept. 24, 2021.

Ross D. Franklin/AP

For his part, the 45th president insisted in a series of emailed statements that “[m]assive fraud was found in the Arizona Forensic Audit, sometimes referred to as ‘Fraudit.’ The numbers are Election Changing!”

In a subsequent message, Trump called on Arizona to “immediately decertify their 2020 Presidential Election Results” due to “incomprehensible Fraud at an Election Changing level, many times more votes than is needed.”

Trump closed with a promise to discuss the audit at his rally in Georgia Saturday night, which is expected to include remarks by Republican US Senate candidate Herschel Walker.

Source Article from https://nypost.com/2021/09/24/arizona-election-audit-confirms-biden-victory-over-trump/

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NY’s Letitia James joins group of 17 AGs in letter to Biden decrying lack of ‘humanity’ toward Haitians – Fox News

Video

Biden, Harris denounce border agents after false claims of ‘whipping’ migrants

Fox News host Chris Wallace discusses Biden’s comments on the use of horses at the border and the true cost of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion bill.

New York Attorney General Letitia James joined a group of 17 attorneys general across the country in writing a letter to President Joe Biden expressing concern over the treatment of Haitian nationals attempting to illegally cross the southern border.

“I have seen the devastating and disturbing photos of border patrol officers on horseback using whips to corral Haitian refugees seeking asylum, and it’s clear that they have not been shown the humanity and concern they are owed,” James, a Democrat, said in a statement Friday.

TOM COTTON ON ‘AMERICA’S NEWSROOM’: ‘DISGRACEFUL’ FOR BIDEN TO BLAME BORDER PATROL FOR HIS FAILURES

“We are a nation built by immigrants, and we cannot be callous and cruel towards individuals fleeing natural disaster, political instability, extreme poverty, and violence in their home country,” James added. “I stand with my fellow attorneys general in urging the Biden Administration to end the mistreatment of Haitians at the border and demonstrate the morality and compassion that they deserve.”

Several prominent Democrats and liberal groups across the country have expressed outrage over photographs of horseback Border Patrol agents rounding up fleeing illegal immigrants from Haiti at the southern border and claimed that the agents were “whipping” the migrants.

“This is beyond repulsive,” MSNBC anchor Joy Reid tweeted in response to the viral images. “Are these images from 2021 or 1851??”

President Biden pledged that the agents responsible would “pay” for their actions, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday that those involved were contributing to “systemic racism.”

BIDEN WARNS MOUNTED BORDER PATROL AGENTS CHARGING MIGRANTS IN DEL RIO SECTOR: ‘THOSE PEOPLE WILL PAY’

Border Patrol officials and the photographer who took the picture have firmly rejected the characterization that agents were “whipping” the migrants.

“I’ve never seen them whip anyone,” Paul Ratje, the man who took the controversial photos, said, explaining that the “whips” in question were actually the reins of the horse. “He was swinging it, but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”

Brandon Judd, head of the National Border Patrol Council, also defended the agents.

“Nobody was struck by a rein. Not one person was struck by a rein. Not one person was run over by those horses,” Judd told Fox News. “They used the tactics they were trained to use, to do the job [Biden] sent them out to do — these are executive branch employees. He sent them out there to do the job, and now he’s criticizing them because his base wants them to.”

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Fox News did not immediately receive a response after reaching out to the office of Attorney General James.

A camp of up to 15,000 illegal immigrants, many of them Haitian, had gathered under the Del Rio Bridge in Texas over the past couple weeks but have now been dispersed both back into Haiti and into the United States. An estimated two out of three migrants in the camp have been released into the United States with notices to self-report to ICE offices.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/letitia-james-joins-total-of-17-attorneys-general-in-letter-to-biden-on-haitian-migrants

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Biden likely won’t shield Trump records from Jan. 6 investigators, White House says – NBC News

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Two Canadians imprisoned by China have been released, Prime Minister Trudeau says – CNN

Ottawa, Canada (CNN)Two Canadians detained by China for nearly three years have been released, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday night.

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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/24/asia/canada-china-kovrig-spavor-release-intl-hnk/index.html

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How Democrats Could Shrink Their $3.5 Trillion Budget Bill – The New York Times

The expansion of the child tax credit has already been hailed as a sea change in anti-poverty policy. Right now, the House is planning to extend it through 2025 at a cost to the Treasury of around $500 billion.

The law also greatly expanded subsidies for the purchase of health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and extended those subsidies further into the middle class through 2022. Extending them for 10 years would cost $210 billion.

For workers without children, the pandemic relief law raised the maximum earned-income tax credit, which supplements the income of the working poor, from about $540 to about $1,500 and raised the income cap to qualify from about $16,000 to about $21,000, while letting adults as young as 19 access the program for the first time. Extending that would cost $135 billion. Another popular but temporary provision — a much larger child and dependent care tax credit — could be extended by a decade for $95 billion.

Politically, this skinny option should not be a heavy lift, since the House and Senate have already passed both programs. Extending the child tax credit out a full decade would push the price tag to $1.5 trillion.

The cost of such a plan could be covered by proposals drafted by the House Ways and Means Committee to raise taxes on the wealthy and increase the corporate income tax rate.

A middle-ground $1.5 trillion bill that invests huge resources in programs to combat climate change.

Progressive Democrats have indicated that they will not vote for the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that has already passed the Senate and would fund new roads, bridges and tunnels without ensuring passage of the climate change and social welfare bill, which would push the country’s fleet of cars, trucks and buses more toward electric power, supported by electric utilities fortified to handle all those vehicles and fueled by solar, wind and other renewable sources. To pass the former without the latter could actually make global warming worse, they argue.

To answer those concerns, Democrats could include the social welfare components of the lowest-common-denominator option — extending the temporary benefits of the American Rescue Plan — while going big on climate change. Those climate provisions would cost $585 billion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/us/politics/democrats-social-welfare-climate-change-bill.html

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Biden backs top senator’s idea to tax billionaires’ wealth – Business Insider

Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden wants to tax billionaires’ unrealized wealth gains annually.
Biden said he supports the proposal as a potential method to fund Democrats’ social-spending bill.
“I come from the corporate state of America,” Biden said. “I just think it’s about just paying your fair share, for Lord’s sake.”

House Democrats have proposed a whole host of options to pay for their $3.5 trillion social-spending bill which includes measures like universal pre-K, tuition-free community college, and paid leave for workers.

One of those options, proposed by Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, is a change to the way the government taxes earnings on assets like stocks and bonds. It would mainly affect the wealthy, because their wealth usually derives from investments more than salaries. The gains on those assets — which are called capital gains — are taxed at a far lower rate than income brought in through wages. The top marginal tax rate on income is 37%; capital gains for the wealthiest Americans are taxed just up to 20%.

“A priority for me in these negotiations is making it clear that billionaires are not exempt from the general proposition [that] nurses and firefighters see every year: that they have to pay taxes regularly,” Wyden told The Wall Street Journal.

President Joe Biden is on board. On Friday, he leant his support for the measure in a press conference. It’s similar to his earlier proposal to double the capital gains rate to 43%. House Democrats’ proposal to fund their infrastructure plans would increase the capital gains rate from about 20% to 25%, and they estimated it would bring in $2.9 trillion. Wyden’s preferred rate hasn’t been reported yet.

“I come from the corporate state of America,” Biden said. “I just think it’s about just paying your fair share, for Lord’s sake.”

A 2019 analysis from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said that capital gains taxes are “effectively voluntary to a substantial extent,” because the wealthy can either just not sell off those assets, or strategically sell them in periods where they will be also see capital losses to avoid paying or lessen their tax burden. Under Wyden’s proposal, unrealized gains would be taxed.

Given Wyden’s role as the top lawmaker in the Senate finance committee, he could be a key voice in pushing a stronger tax overhaul than House Democrats’ tax framework.

Biden has said that he wants tax hikes to level the “playing field,” while assuring that “the superwealthy are still going to be able to have their three homes.” In a unique move, White House economists released their own analysis this week of just how much America’s 400 wealthiest families pay in taxes. On average, they pay about 8.2% in income taxes annually, far lower than the average rate of 14.3% that the Tax Policy Center found in 2015. The White House’s methodology notably factored in assets — not just wages — into the billionaires’ incomes, similar to the net worths taxed under Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced on Thursday that Democrats have a “framework” for paying for reconciliation, but he declined to provide details and said there are a “menu of options” available to fund the plans.

Source Article from https://www.businessinsider.com/tax-billionaires-wealth-biden-backs-top-senators-plan-capital-gains-2021-9

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PG&E Is Charged With Manslaughter In A California Wildfire That Killed 4 – NPR

A house is seen burning in September 2020 in the Zogg Fire near Ono, Calif. Pacific Gas & Electric was charged with manslaughter and other crimes on Friday in the Northern California wildfire last year that killed four people and destroyed hundreds of homes.

Ethan Swope/AP

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Ethan Swope/AP

SAN FRANCISCO — Pacific Gas & Electric was charged Friday with manslaughter and other crimes after its equipment sparked a Northern California wildfire that killed four people and destroyed hundreds of homes last year, prosecutors said.

It is the latest legal action against the nation’s largest utility, which pleaded guilty last year to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in a 2018 blaze ignited by its long-neglected electrical grid that nearly destroyed the town of Paradise and became the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century.

Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett announced the 31 charges, including 11 felonies, against PG&E, saying it failed to perform its legal duties and that its “failure was reckless and criminally negligent, and it resulted in the death of four people.”

If the utility is convicted of manslaughter, the punishment would be a fine for each person killed in the Zogg Fire last year near the city of Redding. A corporation “can’t go to jail, so we’re talking fines, fees, the ability for the court to order remedial and corrective measures,” Bridgett said.

“One of our primary functions here is to hold them responsible and let the surviving families know that their loved one did not die in vain,” she added.

PG&E CEO Patti Poppe said failing to prevent the fire was not a crime.

“This was a tragedy, four people died. And my coworkers are working so hard to prevent fires and the catastrophic losses that come with them. They have dedicated their careers to it, criminalizing their judgment is not right,” Poppe said in a statement.

A burned kitten was seen at the Zogg Fire last year.

Ethan Swope/AP

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A burned kitten was seen at the Zogg Fire last year.

Ethan Swope/AP

The wind-whipped Zogg Fire began on Sept. 27, 2020, and raged through rugged terrain and small communities west of Redding, killing four people, burning about 200 homes and blackening about 87 square miles of land. Three of the victims died as they tried to outrun the blaze and were found inside or near their vehicles. A fourth victim died at a hospital.

In March, state fire investigators concluded that the blaze was sparked by a gray pine tree that fell onto a PG&E transmission line. Shasta and Tehama counties have sued the utility alleging negligence, saying PG&E had failed to remove the tree even though it had been marked for removal two years earlier. The utility says the tree was subsequently cleared to stay.

The district attorney determined that the company was criminally liable for the fire. The charges Friday include enhancements for injury to a 29-year-old firefighter who was hit by a falling tree that fractured his spine, paralyzing him from the chest down. They also include felony arson counts linked to several fires started by the utility’s equipment in Shasta County over the last year, Bridgett said.

PG&E, which has an estimated 16 million customers in central and Northern California, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 after its aging equipment was blamed for a series of fires, including the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people and destroyed 10,000 homes in Paradise and neighboring communities.

Company officials have acknowledged that PG&E hasn’t lived up to expectations in the past but said changes in leadership and elsewhere ensure it’s on the right track and will do better. They have listed a wide range of improvements that include using more advanced technology to avoid setting wildfires and help detect them quicker.

PG&E also remains on criminal probation for a 2010 pipeline explosion in the San Francisco Bay Area city of San Bruno that killed eight people, giving a federal judge oversight of the company. The judge and California power regulators have rebuked PG&E for breaking promises to reduce the dangers posed by trees near its power lines.

The company has acknowledged that its equipment may have played a role in sparking this summer’s Dixie Fire, which has burned nearly 1 million acres and is now the second-largest wildfire in state history.

PG&E emerged from bankruptcy last summer and negotiated a $13.5 billion settlement with some wildfire victims. But it still faces both civil and criminal actions, including charges from the Sonoma County district attorney’s office over the 2019 Kincade Fire that forced nearly 200,000 people to evacuate.

In the meantime, most of the roughly 70,000 victims who have filed claims for the devastation caused by PG&E’s past misdeeds still are awaiting payment from a trust created during the bankruptcy. The trust, which is run independently of PG&E, is facing a nearly $2 billion shortfall because half its funding came in company stock.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2021/09/24/1040630538/pacific-gas-electric-manslaughter-charges-california-wildfire-zogg

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No migrants remain at camp under bridge in Texas border town, DHS secretary says – CNBC

No migrants remain at a border camp under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, where thousands, most of them Haitian nationals, had gathered in recent days, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a White House press briefing Friday.

The announcement comes as the Biden administration faces widespread criticism for its handling of an increase in migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

U.S. authorities have encountered nearly 30,000 migrants in Del Rio since Sept. 9, according to Mayorkas. At one point, 15,000 migrants, predominantly Haitians, were camped out under the bridge connecting Del Rio with Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. Yesterday, the administration announced that there were fewer than 5,000 people remaining at the camp.

“As of this morning, there are no longer any migrants in the camp underneath the Del Rio International Bridge,” Mayorkas said at the White House.

Approximately 2,000 Haitian nationals have been taken back to Haiti on 17 repatriation flights organized by the DHS, according to Mayorkas.

An estimated 8,000 returned to Mexico voluntarily and more than 5,000 are being processed by the DHS to determine if they should be placed in immigration removal proceedings or expelled through a public health law known as Title 42, Mayorkas said.

Approximately 12,400 migrants will eventually have their cases heard by an immigration judge who will determine whether they will be deported or remain in the U.S., he added.

Title 42, first implemented by former President Donald Trump at the outset of the pandemic, denies certain migrants the opportunity to apply for asylum. Mayorkas defended the Biden administration’s use of the policy to send Haitian nationals back to Haiti.

“We are doing this out of a public health need. It is not an immigration policy,” Mayorkas said, noting that Title 42 is not specific to Haitian migrants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided in August that Title 42 would remain in place until it determines that there is no longer a danger of Covid-19 being brought across the border into the U.S.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/24/no-migrants-remain-at-camp-under-bridge-in-del-rio-texas-.html

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