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Day: July 26, 2024

What issues do Trump and Harris want to fight the election on?

What issues do Trump and Harris want to fight the election on?

US presidential candidates attack each other in first major speeches since Biden dropped out of race. Donald Trump attacks his likely opponent in the presidential election as a “radical left lunatic”. Kamala Harris points to Trump’s convictions and scandals, saying he offers voters “chaos, fear and hate”. What kind of campaign will it be? Presenter: Sami Zeidan Guests: Eric Ham – Political analyst and co-author of The GOP Civil War: Inside the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party Thomas Gift – Director of the Centre on US Politics at University College London whose research focuses on comparative politics and the political economy Jennifer Victor – Associate professor of political science at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University Adblock test (Why?)

Bangladesh minister defends gov’t response to protests amid calls for probe

Bangladesh minister defends gov’t response to protests amid calls for probe

Bangladesh’s minister of state for information and broadcasting has defended the government’s handling of mass protests, as United Nations experts called for an independent investigation into the government’s deadly crackdown on demonstrators. In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera on Thursday, Mohammad Arafat said the country’s security forces had done everything “to bring back the peace” amid the student protests. He accused “third-party” actors, including “extremists and terrorists”, of fuelling the unrest. “We’re not referring to the students [as] the terrorists and anarchists. It is the third party, those who intruded into this movement and started doing all this,” Arafat said on Talk to Al Jazeera. “We tried our best to de-escalate the tension,” he said, adding that “some people are trying to add fuel to the fire, are trying to create a situation where they can take advantage … and topple the government”. Thousands of Bangladeshi students took to the streets earlier this month to demand reforms to the South Asian country’s quota system, which allocates 30 percent of government jobs to the descendants of veterans who fought for Bangladesh in the 1971 war. More than 150 student protesters have been killed and thousands have been arrested in the crackdown on the demonstrations, according to local media, fuelling tensions across the nation of more than 170 million people. [Al Jazeera] The protests turned violent on July 15 after members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) – the student wing of the country’s ruling party – allegedly attacked the protesters. Police then cracked down on the demonstrations and imposed a curfew. Students were asked to vacate universities, which were shut down; businesses were shuttered, and internet access was disrupted nationwide. The Bangladeshi government has come under international scrutiny for its handling of the protests. On Thursday, United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Turk called for “an impartial, independent and transparent investigation into all alleged human rights violations” that occurred during the crackdown. “We understand that many people were subjected to violent attacks by groups reportedly affiliated with the Government, and no effort was made to protect them,” Turk said. In a separate statement, a group of UN experts also called for an independent probe into what they described as the government’s “violent crackdown on protesters”. “The government is blaming other people, others are blaming the government; we need a full impartial investigation,” one of the experts, Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion, told Al Jazeera. Bangladeshi military forces stand guard on a street in Dhaka, on July 20 [Rajib Dhar/AP Photo] “But since there is no trust in the government, it has to be done with the international community,” Khan said on Thursday. “We are calling on the government to invite the UN to conduct such an investigation to find out what went wrong, to take responsibility, and to hold the perpetrators to account.” Official death toll not yet determined: Minister In his interview with Talk to Al Jazeera, Arafat – the minister – denounced the protesters for storming the headquarters of state broadcaster Bangladesh Television (BTV) in the capital, Dhaka. He said policemen guarding the building were outnumbered, and “because they were not permitted to open fire … those miscreants went inside the BTV, literally invaded, and set fire and started vandalising and destroying all the assets”. Arafat said the government has yet to determine an official death toll from the unrest. “When it comes to the casualties, injuries, and deaths, we’re not willing to discriminate between the police and general people, or the protesters, or the people from the supporters of the government,” he said. The minister told Al Jazeera that an independent judicial committee would ensure a thorough investigation into what happened, “so that everyone responsible for any of these casualties can be brought to book.” Arafat also dismissed any calls for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign, adding she had only been “protecting the people”. An injured protester is rushed to hospital after a clash with police and Awami League supporters in the Rampura area of Dhaka on July 18 [Anik Rahman/Reuters] On Tuesday, protesters extended the suspension of their protests until Friday, but they were slated to meet on Thursday to discuss whether they would extend the pause further. Among their key demands is a stipulation that Hasina must publicly apologise for the killings of students. They have also called on Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader, Education Minister Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury Nowfel, and Law Minister Anisul Haque to resign from the cabinet and the party. Adblock test (Why?)

Whitmer charges that Vance has ‘absolutely betrayed’ his blue collar values

Whitmer charges that Vance has ‘absolutely betrayed’ his blue collar values

DURHAM, N.H. – Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan says that Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance of Ohio is a changed man. Former President Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, and his campaign are confident that thanks to Vance’s blue collar roots, the senator will help the Republican ticket in the crucial battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which have long been part of the Democrats’ blue wall. Asked by Fox News if she agreed with the Trump campaign’s argument regarding Vance, Whitmer answered “if it was the JD Vance who wrote Hillbilly Elegy maybe. But it’s a very different person. It’s a person who has absolutely betrayed those values and that book and has become something that is just a reflection of Donald Trump.” 2024 SHOWDOWN: TRUMP QUICKLY MOVES TO TRY AND DEFINE HARRIS  “Maybe even more concerning than a reflection of Donald Trump,” Whitmer added. ” I would say that that kind of leadership is not something that’s going to resonate and that’s why we’ve got to make sure people know who he is.” Asked for a response, Vance in a statement to Fox News argued that “career politicians like Gretchen Whitmer can lie about me all they want, but I’m still always going to put American workers and families first and foremost because I’ll never forget where I came from.” “It’s career politicians like her who support the radical Kamala-Biden agenda to leave our southern border wide open, strangle American energy, kill the automobile industry with their electric vehicle mandates, and drive up the cost of living through inflationary spending who clearly have forgotten about the people she’s supposed to be representing,” Vance charged. TRUMP ANNOUNCES VANCE AS HIS 2024 RUNNING MATE Vance grabbed national attention a couple of years ago after writing “Hillbilly Elegy,” which tells his story of growing up in a struggling steel mill city in southwest Ohio and his roots in Appalachian Kentucky. It became a New York Times bestseller and was made into a Netflix film. The story spotlighted the values of many working-class Americans who became supporters of Trump’s policies. Vance’s working-class parents divorced when he was young, and his mother struggled for years with drug and alcohol abuse. Vance was raised in part by his maternal grandparents. After high school graduation, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in the Iraq War. He later graduated from Ohio State University, earned a law degree at Yale University, and later moved to San Francisco and worked as a principal in a venture capital firm before heading back home to Ohio where he ran for the Senate in 2022. Vance was a vocal critic of Trump when the former president first ran for the White House in the 2016 cycle.  However, Vance eventually supported Trump, praising the former president’s tenure in the White House, and in a Fox News interview in 2021, he apologized for his earlier criticism of Trump. Trump’s endorsement of Vance days before the 2022 GOP Senate primary boosted him to victory in a crowded, competitive and combustible nomination race. After winning election to the Senate, Vance quickly became a top supporter in the chamber of Trump’s America First agenda and a champion of the former president’s MAGA movement. Whitmer, a two-term governor of a crucial midwestern battleground state and a leading figure in the Democratic Party, spoke with Fox News at a house party in Durham, New Hampshire. It was her third and final campaign stop on Thursday in the key New England swing state on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris, who this week replaced President Biden as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. President Biden, in a blockbuster announcement Sunday, ended his 2024 re-election rematch with Trump and endorsed his vice president. Biden made his move amid mounting pressure from within the Democratic Party for him to drop out after a disastrous performance in last month’s first presidential debate with Trump. The embattled president’s immediate backing of Harris ignited a surge of endorsements of Harris by Democratic governors, senators, House members and other party leaders. By Monday night, the vice president announced that she had locked up her party’s nomination by landing the backing of a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates to next month’s Democratic National Convention. She has also hauled in a staggering $129 million since Biden’s announcement, her campaign touted on Thursday morning. “I was grateful and honored to be a co-chair of the Biden campaign. I am similarly grateful and honored to be a co-chair of the Harris campaign,” Whitmer said to cheers from the couple of hundred people at the house party. No Republican has carried New Hampshire in a presidential election in 24 years, but recent polling suggested a margin-of-error contest between Biden and Trump But two new public opinion surveys in the state released on Thursday indicated Harris holding single-digit leads over Trump. Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.