Imane Khelif Wins Semi-Final Fight, Will Fight for Olympic Gold
The venue may have been different but the result was familiar.
At Roland Garros Imane Khelif, the boxer at the heart of the gender row that has rocked these Olympics, demolished another opponent. She is now three rounds from gold. ‘I don’t care,’ she declared to her doubters.
The Algerian, 25, cruised to a unanimous victory over Thailand’s Janjaem Suwannapheng, who simply had no answers to her opponent’s speed and power.
The questions for Games bosses, however, will now grow even louder.
Khelif was banned from last year’s World Championships by Russian-led governing body IBA after failing a gender test shortly before she was due to fight for a gold medal.
According to the IBA, which was stripped of the right to run boxing at the Games amid corruption and governance issues, she was found to have the male ‘XY’ chromosome.
Imane Khelif advances to the women’s final by unanimous decision 🥊
Another totally dominant performance 👏#Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/AprUg0Ll4C
— Eurosport (@eurosport) August 6, 2024
However, no such tests have been carried out at Paris 2024, with eligibility based around which sex is listed in a participant’s passport.
Khelif, who comprehensively stamped her ticket to the final, had a two-inch height advantage and was roared on by a noisy Algerian contingent. She has rapidly become a hero in the country.
She has also now won 12 straight bouts and will return to this tennis landmark, which has taken over from the North Paris Arena, for the final set on Friday night.
‘I don’t care what anyone is saying about me with the controversy,’ she said. ‘All that is important to me is that I stay on the level and give my people the performance they deserve. I know I’m a talented person and this is a gift to all Algerians.’
From the opening bell, that gift was being wrapped. Khelif took immediate control. The left jab-right hand combination we saw in her previous fights were again in full flow. She landed clean, big shots and forced the Thai into a rare standing eight-count in the last round of what was largely a no-contest.
When the verdict came in Khelif she launched into a delighted victory jig, with a beaming smile.
There not be many of those in the International Olympic Committee’s plush hotel suites. The prospect of gold for Khelif is likely to cause a continued headache for IOC bosses, who have been forced to defend her presence in Paris on an almost-daily basis.
They will have to do so again, no doubt, although this was a performance not without a high level of skill.
Eyes will now turn to the second boxer who failed the gender test at World Championships, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting, who fights her semi-final Wednesday against Turkey’s Esra Yildiz Kahraman.
Khelif will fight China’s Yang Liu in the final.
Earlier, Lewis Richardson suffered a cruel split decision defeat to Mexico’s Marco Verde as Team GB’s boxing squad ended the competition with a solitary bronze.
The Colchester light-middleweight, could feel incredibly hard done by after a gutsy performance that was somehow not enough to land a place in the final.
To many onlookers, Richardson appeared to have secured a shot at gold with a composed performance behind an improving jab. But the judges, in front of a raucous Mexican support, had other ideas.
‘It’s devastating, it’s raw,’ Richardson said. ‘I’ve stepped out the ring moments ago so emotions are very high. I’m obviously disappointed to miss out on the final and box for a gold on Friday night.’
Richardson did reflect that he had performed well, and that his efforts had ensured that if the Brits were to land a medal the only way would be Essex. His solo effort, however, is five less than the two-of-each-colour haul in Tokyo.
‘I hope to look back and be really proud of what I have achieved because I have created history within my city, Colchester, he said. ‘I’m the only British boxer to medal at these Games so hopefully I will look back with pride and happiness in the future.’
Former President Donald Trump repeatedly found himself on the back foot Tuesday night during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris — as Republicans seethed over repeated fact-checks of the GOP candidate and a noticeably lighter touch for the Democrat’s own disputed statements.
Harris, 59, arrived well-prepared to rattle Trump by claiming that military leaders had told her that the Republican nominee and 45th president was a “disgrace,” that world leaders were “laughing” at him and even asserting that “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom” after he was “fired by 81 million people” in 2020.
Trump, 78, found himself having to answer not only Harris’ repeated and pointed attacks on both his pride and policy, but also a pair of moderators who quibbled with some of his statements despite what his supporters viewed as a lack of even-handedness.
When Trump argued that crime in the US is increasing because of migrants allowed into the country on Harris’ watch, “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir interjected: “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down.”
Trump fired back with his own fact check that “they didn’t include the cities with the worst crime,” referencing the omission of data from Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago.
The 45th president also was brought up short when he said that Biden “sent [Harris] in to negotiate with [Ukraine President Volodymyr] Zelensky and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and she did, and the war started three days later, and that’s the kind of talent we have with her,” referring to the veep being deployed to Europe in February 2022 to try to prevent the Kremlin invasion of Kyiv.
Muir asked Harris, “Vice President Harris, have you ever met Vladimir Putin?” — with the Democrat duly citing it as one of Trump’s “lies.”
At another point, “World News Tonight Sunday” host Linsey Davis intervened after Trump made reference to former Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s 2019 remarks about aborting babies after birth, part of an extended commentary by the former president about his belief in state autonomy and legal access to the procedure in cases of rape, incest and the health of the mother.
“You can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia … he said, ‘the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby,’” Trump said, misidentifying Northam’s state. “The Democrats are radical in that.”
“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” stated Davis after Trump concluded, drawing howls from conservatives who noted that six states and the District of Columbia currently do not place any limits on the procedure.
At one point near the end of the debate, a Trump campaign spokesperson texted a Post reporter “3 on 1” in reference to the dynamic on the National Constitution Center stage.
The 59-year-old Harris, meanwhile, delivered a far stronger appearance than the dismal showing by President Biden in June that stoked Democratic fears of a Trump landslide victory — with the former prosecutor avoiding major gaffes and deflecting potentially damaging questions about her record and evolving stances on a range of major issues.
The VP was helped by her opponent, who proved unable to resist when Harris used what she described as Trump’s strategy of “lies, grievances and name calling” against him.
In one illuminating exchange, after Harris accused Trump of persuading Capitol Hill Republicans to kill a border security spending bill, she claimed his signature rallies had lost their action-packed, blockbuster quality.
Rather than responding to the immigration attack, Trump defended his showmanship, saying: “People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there and then showing them in a different light, so she can’t talk about that.
“People don’t leave,” the former president went on. “We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That’s because people want to take their country back. Our country is being lost. We’re a failing nation.”
Ahead of the debate, Republicans focused on Harris’ close friendship with Dana Walden, a senior Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, and questioned the impartiality of the network.
Those fears appeared justified as the debate gave cursory focus to Harris’ liabilities, including a series of policy flip-flops on stances from her 2019 run for president — such as past vows to eliminate private health insurance, decriminalize illegal border crossings, ban fracking for oil and natural gas, and ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 — and her role as President Biden’s designated point person on reducing illegal immigration, which surged to annual record highs in the first three years of her role as the so-called “border czar.”
Trump allies and Republican commentators were left fuming and compiling a long list of missed opportunities for Muir and Davis to rebuke Harris, such as when she said that police had died during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot; that Trump had imperiled access to IVF treatment and that Trump would implement the provisions of the right-wing Project 2025 governing blueprint, despite the former president disavowing it repeatedly.
Other falsehoods by Harris that went unchallenged included her comment that Trump was threatening a “bloodbath” if he lost the election, when the context of that remark was in reference to the US auto industry, and for invoking his statement in 2017 that there were “very fine people” on both sides of Charlottesville race riot, when the ex-president’s supporters insist he was not referring to the white supremacists involved.
“David Muir is out of control,” tweeted Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton, writing, “It isn’t ‘fact-checking,’ it is attacking.”
“ABC is making a huge mistake trying to fact check this live. They’re only proving how biased they are. Harris fabricated an attack on Trump over IVF. ABC sat there and said nothing,” tweeted Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary under President George W. Bush.
“She’s shaking her head as he mentions her Minnesota bail fund action, which is a fact. Her tweet is still live,” tweeted conservative political commentator Guy Benson.
“Harris just said that police died on January 6th[.] No police died on January 6th[.] It’s a blatant lie from Harris — yet ABC doesn’t fact check it,” tweeted Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) wrote, “ABC’s selective ‘Fact Checking’ is why no one believes biased ‘Fact Checking’.”
“Harris just lied about the SCOTUS ruling on immunity. Zero fact-checks from the moderators after multiple fact-checks against Trump. Really bad look for ABC News,” tweeted the influential conservative commentator AG Hamilton.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) tweeted, “ABC News has refused to ‘fact-check’ Kamala Harris on lying about Trump’s positions on: – Project 2025 – Charlottesville comments – ‘Bloodbath’ comments – IVF”
Former Trump White House spokesman Hogan Gidley wrote, “Wait. Did [Muir] and [Davis] NOT factcheck Kamala’s clear and repeatedly debunked lies about ‘Charlottesville’ and ‘bloodbath?’ What the hell?!?”
Former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany added, “Kamala just invoked the Charlottesville ‘both sides’ hoax that has been fact checked as false by left-wing Snopes and the ‘bloodbath’ hoax. Why is Trump having to debunk this and not the moderators?? The ABC moderators only fact check Trump.”
“David Muir fell asleep for four years,” one former Trump White House official bitterly told The Post, “and woke up thinking Americans were stupid enough to believe the same lies on J6.”
On the other side, Democrats were left crowing over the moderator complaints, which they said proved it was a poor night for Trump.
“He wants to be president of the United States, I would hope that he can manage a few obvious questions,” said one former Harris-Biden administration official, adding that the attacks were “just like the former president — always blaming someone else for your failures.”
Another Democratic source noted that Trump himself undercut his own claims about the destabilizing effect of illegal immigration by invoking disputed accounts of Haitian migrants eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio.
“Eating cats and dogs? You have to be kitten me,” the Democrat joked, adding, “Moderators are letting Trump be himself. That’s never ideal.”
In a sign of Democratic confidence about the VP’s performance, Harris reps immediately pitched a second debate next month, to which the Trump camp responded by noting that the former president is still interested in more faceoffs with Harris, having made offers to take part in forums that would have been hosted by both Fox News and NBC News.
There was no immediate word Tuesday about the prospect of a second Trump-Harris showdown.
Pop superstar Taylor Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy on Tuesday night after the high-stakes debate with former President Donald Trump, calling the Democratic nominee a “steady-handed, gifted leader.”
“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Swift said in a post on Instagram to her more than 283 million followers. “I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”
Swift went on to say that she was “heartened and impressed” by Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, praising him as a champion of “LGBTQ+ rights, IVF and a woman’s right to own her body for decades.”
“I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice,” the Grammy-winning artist added. “Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make. I also want to say, especially to first time voters: Remember that in order to vote, you have to be registered! I also find it’s much easier to vote early. I’ll link where to register and find early voting dates and info in my story.”
Swift, 34, signed her post “Childless Cat Lady” — a reference to language used by Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, to describe women who do not have kids. Swift included a photo of herself holding her cat, Benjamin Button, who has graced the cover of Time magazine with the singer.
Swift’s endorsement came as a surprise to the Harris campaign, two campaign officials told NBC News. The campaign views the singer’s backing as part of a “decisive victory” for the vice president on the debate stage and speaks to her ability to attract support, one of the officials said.
View this post on Instagram
The endorsement had been widely anticipated. Swift threw her support behind President Joe Biden and Harris during the 2020 presidential election. Swift allowed the Biden-Harris campaign to use her song “Only the Young” in an advertisement during the 2020 cycle.
Swift once shied away from weighing in on American politics. But with the release of her documentary “Miss Americana” in 2020, she became more vocal. The movie chronicled her behind-the-scenes fight to publicly denounce Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., then a member of the House. She endorsed Blackburn’s Senate opponent, Phil Bredesen.
Blackburn ultimately won the race, but Swift’s post on Instagram encouraging people to register to vote activated waves of young people, Vote.org said at the time.
In November, a national NBC News poll found 40% of registered voters had positive views of Swift, while 16% had negative views. A majority of Democrats (53%) viewed her positively, while 28% of Republicans said the same.
In the Instagram post, Swift also criticized social media users who have circulated images generated by artificial intelligence falsely stating that she had endorsed the Trump-Vance ticket. Trump shared a series of those images on his Truth Social platform.
“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she said. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”
Swifties for Kamala, a group of fans who have no official affiliation with either woman, said they were “thrilled.”
“We’ve had no doubt that Taylor would endorse at the right time and are excited about the momentum she will bring to this campaign,” Irene Kim, the group’s co-founder, said in a statement.
Trump was asked to react to the news Swift’s endorsement of his opponent after he walked into the “spin room” after the debate. “I have no idea,” the GOP nominee said in response.
Police in Springfield, Ohio, said Monday they had received no credible reports of immigrants harming pets.
The Springfield Police Division said in a statement that they were aware of the “rumors” and had no information to support them.
“In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” the police said in a statement emailed to NBC News.
They added that they had no information to support similar assertions about immigrants squatting or disrupting traffic.
“Additionally, there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes. Furthermore, no reports have been made regarding members of the immigrant community deliberately disrupting traffic,” the police said.
In a post on X, Vance wrote Monday that “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
After NBC News asked the Vance campaign about the lack of evidence for his claim, a spokesperson said that the senator had received “a high volume of calls and emails over the past several weeks from concerned citizens in Springfield” and that “his tweet is based on what he is hearing from them.”
Viles Dorsainvil, president of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, a nonprofit organization in Springfield, condemned the recent rumors as uninformed and racist.
“It’s just bigotry, discrimination and racism,” he said. “There is a group of people who have been fabricating some news just to denigrate Haitians.”
Dorsainvil said his organization helps immigrants with job applications, legal support and more. He added that Haitians have moved to Ohio because of the gang conflict and political turmoil in their home country.
“They are looking for a place to raise their family and look for a job. But it happens that the city has not been prepared for the influx of Haitians coming here,” he said.
The claims about threats to pets began going viral on social media over the weekend, fueled in part by a fourth-hand story that appeared to come from a Facebook group focused on local crime in Springfield.
The group was set to private on Monday, but according to screenshots posted on X, someone in the Facebook group posted that “my neighbor informed me that her daughters friend had lost her cat.” The poster went on to describe Haitians allegedly taking the cat for food.
Conservative pundit Charlie Kirk posted a screenshot of the Facebook post Sunday on X, and within 24 hours, it had received more than 3 million views.
The rumor was picked up by other right-wing commentators, including Jack Posobiec, who posted about it on X more than 30 times Sunday and Monday. Others echoed the allegations, including X owner Elon Musk, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
“Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us,” Cruz wrote on X, as a caption on a photo of cats.
By midday Monday, Haitians were the No. 1 trending topic in the U.S. on X.
In his post on X, Vance attributed his information about pets to unspecified “reports” and suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris was to blame for Haitian immigrants’ “generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.” In 2021, President Joe Biden tasked Harris with tackling the “root causes” of migration.
As many as 20,000 Haitian immigrants have arrived in the Springfield area in recent years. In May, a jury found a Haitian immigrant guilty of causing a school bus crash that killed an 11-year-old boy.
Man carrying a dead goose
The picture taken by Reddit user isitmeyourelooking4x on Sunday, July 28, was captured not in Springfield but in Columbus, nearly 50 miles away. The identity of the black man carrying a dead goose is unknown.
Woman being arrested in Ohio for eating a cat
A police bodycam video of a black woman being arrested in Ohio for allegedly eating a cat also went viral.
The 27-year-old Allexis Telia Ferrell, accused of eating the cat, is not Haitian and was born in the U.S. She was arrested in the city of Canton, roughly 172 miles away from Springfield.
Communities are begging city councils to address hundreds to thousands of indigent migrants living on their neighborhood streets…
—> This Haitian woman arrested in Ohio for allegedly eating a woman’s pet CAT! #BodyCam #OpenBorder pic.twitter.com/MJ0xuiRWRG
— Roger D. Hudson (@RogerHudsonCO) September 9, 2024
In a video posted by Robert F. Kennedy on X Tuesday, the former independent presidential candidate encouraged all of his supporters to vote for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump because “a Trump victory is a Kennedy victory”
Kennedy posted on X: “Bottom line: No matter what state you live in, VOTE TRUMP. A Trump victory is a Kennedy victory.”
Bottom line: No matter what state you live in, VOTE TRUMP. A Trump victory is a Kennedy victory. pic.twitter.com/GBn2p2RLnX
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) September 10, 2024
In the video, Kennedy clarified any confusion among his supporters about who they vote for on Nov. 5 and urged them to do so in a massive way. “President Trump needs to win in a landslide, both in the Electoral College and in the popular vote. He can’t do that unless my supporters join in,” he said.
“Look at the big picture. We have to unify. We have to overthrow the entrenched elites who are now ruining our country. So let’s get Donald Trump elected on Nov. 5, so that we can restore our Constitution, so that we can revive the middle class, so that we can rescue our democracy and censorship and surveillance unravel the war machine,” he continued.
“A lot of people are asking me, if they live in a red state or a blue state, should they still be voting for me? What about swing states? The answer is easy: no. No matter what state you live in, you should be voting for Donald Trump,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy also talked about the need to save free speech, which is “under relentless and withering attack in America and across the globe, but at least we still have enough of it here that you can watch this video. We can still run an opposition political campaign. Well, in a lot of countries, you can’t do that anymore, because the state now controls the media,” Kennedy noted, referring to how Brazil has just banned X because Elon Musk refused to censor the social media platform and how Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris supports that decision.
Kennedy endorsed Trump at a rally in Arizona and announced that Trump had promised to establish an independent commission of presidential assassinations and that the former president had promised to put Kennedy in charge of his “Make America Healthy Again” program. Since promising to have his name removed from the presidential ballots of 10 swing states, Kennedy has had mixed results with Michigan refusing to do so but the North Carolina Supreme Court ruling in his favor.
Ukraine targeted the Russian capital on Tuesday in its biggest drone attack so far, killing at least one and wrecking dozens of homes in the Moscow region and forcing around 50 flights to be diverted from airports around Moscow.
Russia, the world’s biggest nuclear power, said it had destroyed at least 20 Ukrainian attack drones as they swarmed over the Moscow region, which has a population of more than 21 million, and 124 more over eight other regions.
At least one person was killed near Moscow, Russian authorities said. Three of Moscow’s four airports were closed for more than six hours and almost 50 flights were diverted.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the drone attack was another reminder of the real nature of Ukraine’s political leadership, which he said was made up of Russia’s enemies.
“There is no way that night time strikes on residential neighbourhoods can be associated with military action,” said Peskov.
“The Kyiv regime continues to demonstrate its nature. They are our enemies and we must continue the special military operation to protect ourselves from such actions,” he said, using the expression Moscow uses to describe its war in Ukraine.
Kyiv said Russia, which sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, had attacked it overnight with 46 drones, of which 38 were destroyed.
The drone attacks on Russia damaged at high-rise apartment buildings in the Ramenskoye district of the Moscow region, setting flats on fire, residents told Reuters.
A 46-year-old woman was killed and three people were wounded in Ramenskoye, Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said.
Residents said they awoke to blasts and fire.
“I looked at the window and saw a ball of fire,” Alexander Li, a resident of the district told Reuters. “The window got blown out by the shockwave.”
Georgy, a resident who declined to give his surname, said he heard a drone buzzing outside his building in the early hours.
“I drew back the curtain and it hit the building right before my eyes, I saw it all,” he said. “I took my family and we ran outside.”
The Ramenskoye district, some 50 km (31 miles) southeast of the Kremlin, has a population of around a quarter of a million people, according to official data.
More than 70 drones were also downed over Russia’s Bryansk region and tens more over other regions, Russia’s defence ministry said. There was no damage or casualties reported there.
As Russia advances in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv has taken the war to Russia with a cross-border attack into Russia’s western Kursk region that began on Aug. 6 and by carrying out increasingly large drone attacks deep into Russian territory.
Drone war
The war has largely been a grinding artillery and drone war along the 1,000 km (620 mile) heavily fortified front line in southern and eastern Ukraine involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
Moscow and Kyiv have both sought to buy and develop new drones, deploy them in innovative ways, and seek new ways to destroy them – from using shotguns to advanced electronic jamming systems.
Both sides have turned cheap commercial drones into deadly weapons while ramping up their own production and assembly to attack targets including tanks and energy infrastructure such as refineries and airfields.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has sought to insulate Moscow from the grinding rigours of the war, has called Ukrainian drone attacks that target civilian infrastructure such as nuclear power plants “terrorism” and has vowed a response.
Moscow and other big Russian cities have largely been insulated from the war.
Russia itself has hit Ukraine with thousands of missiles and drones in the last two-and-a-half years, killing thousands of civilians, wrecking much of the country’s energy system and damaging commercial and residential properties across the country.
Ukraine says it has a right to strike back deep into Russia, though Kyiv’s Western backers have said they do not want a direct confrontation between Russia and the U.S.-led NATO military alliance.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine about Tuesday’s attacks. Both sides deny targeting civilians.
Tuesday’s attack follows drone attacks Ukraine launched in early September chiefly targeting Russia’s energy and power facilities.
Authorities in the Tula region, which neighbours the Moscow region to its north, said drone wreckage had fallen onto a fuel and energy facility but that the “technological process” of the facility was not affected.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) faced bipartisan congressional scrutiny Tuesday as he testified before the House on his early handling of the pandemic, with particular attention paid to how his office managed nursing homes.
Cuomo’s presence at the hearing was preceded by a subpoena issued by subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), a damaging investigative report put out the day before as well as several dozen hours of testimony given earlier this year by Cuomo and former staffers of his administration.
At the hearing, Wenstrup announced additional subpoenas for current New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) for documents related to Cuomo’s nursing home directive. Wenstrup accused Hochul of improperly withholding these documents.
When reached for comment, Hochul’s office said it was surprised by the decision to issue a subpoena while adding, “We fully intend to comply with the law in this matter.”
Along with the governor, families of New York nursing home residents who died during the pandemic attended the hearing.
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R) heated demand that Cuomo apologize to the families drew applause from those in the audience.
Cuomo addressed the families, saying he is sorry for their losses and believes “you are owed an apology, because this country should have done better.”
Over the course of more than two hours, Cuomo vehemently defended his record on the COVID-19 pandemic as Republicans tore into his COVID-era polices for nursing homes.
The former governor’s opponents allege that directives made by him early in the COVID-19 pandemic led to nursing home exposures resulting in avoidable deaths. Cuomo is further accused of making efforts to obscure the number of deaths among nursing home residents.
Here are three takeaways from the hearing:
Fights over wording
Wenstrup dedicated a significant portion of his time pressing Cuomo on the language he used in his directive for nursing homes to accept patients testing positive for SARS-CoV-2.
In March 2020, a directive issued by Cuomo stated nursing homes were to accept patients from hospitals who were deemed medically stable to return.
The memorandum issued by the New York State Department of Health read: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”
Cuomo, who rescinded that directive less than two months later in response to public backlash, maintained he was following federal guidance. But Wenstrup took issue with this defense, noting the difference in language that federal authorities used.
Shortly before the New York governor issued his directive, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued guidance stating nursing homes “can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19 and still under Transmission Based Precautions for COVID-19 as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance for Transmission-Based Precautions.”
“You’re a lawyer, so you know the difference between permissive versus prescriptive language, I assume. And the word ‘shall’ and ‘must,’ are they permissive or prescriptive?” Wenstrup asked, to which Cuomo responded that it depended on the “context.”
When pressed by Wenstrup, Cuomo said he did not speak with CMS or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) before issuing his nursing home directive.
He further defended the directive by arguing New York state laws requiring nursing facilities to deny admission to people known to have communicable diseases were still in effect at the time.
Blame Trump
Throughout the hearing, both Cuomo and Democrats on the panel repeatedly pointed to former President Trump’s conduct during the pandemic response.
“I often vehemently disagreed with President Trump, because from day one, he willfully deceived the American people,” Cuomo said in his opening remarks.
“Trump literally said, ‘I take no responsibility,’ and he fabricated political attacks, blaming Democratic governors, including saying that New York issued a health order on March 25 having COVID-positive people enter nursing homes from hospitals, which recklessly and needlessly cost thousands of deaths,” said Cuomo.
The former New York governor mentioned Trump nearly 10 times in his first statement at the hearing.
Subcommittee ranking member Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) said in his own opening remarks that issues including the lack of personal protective equipment were exacerbated “at the hand of former President Trump and his administration’s early blunders.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, accused the GOP majority on the panel of deciding to “evade and bypass the central events of the epidemic for totally political reasons,” including “Donald Trump’s reckless and incompetent pandemic response.”
“I appreciate the fact that Governor Cuomo has appeared voluntarily to answer the questions,” said Raskin. “Where is Donald Trump, to answer the questions about his horrific negligence, as identified by his own COVID-19 adviser?”
Questions about numbers
Another primary issue for Republicans at the hearing was whether Cuomo purposely obscured the number of COVID-19 deaths occurring in New York nursing homes.
The staff memorandum released by the subcommittee Monday concluded that Cuomo’s office decided to remove out-of-facility deaths, those that occurred after nursing home residents were transferred out of the facility.
A probe conducted by the New York attorney general’s office in 2021 found that reported COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes were likely undercounted.
Cuomo told the panel that he was not trying to hide deaths but wanted to avoid reporting inaccuracies.
“Let’s go count those that were in hospitals, what they call out of facility,” Cuomo said. “Those numbers, in my opinion, were very sketchy and they, depending on the day, they moved around a lot. I was not going to report inaccurate information, so we specifically said, here is the nursing home number without the outer facility number and when we have it, we will provide it.”
When asked by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) why it took his office until February 2021 to include out-of-facility deaths when the initial numbers were released in July 2020, Cuomo again directed blame toward Trump, saying the investigation the Justice Department had launched into New York at the time led to his office auditing the numbers.
Former first lady Melania Trump demanded answers Tuesday about the recent assassination attempt against her husband — and questioned law enforcement’s role in the bloody ordeal.
“The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” Donald Trump’s wife said in a 30-second clip posted on her social media accounts.
“Now, the silence around it feels heavy.”
“I can’t help but wonder: Why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech?” the 54-year-old Melania continued. “There is definitely more to this story and we need to uncover the truth.”
The video, which was posted ahead of the 45th president’s debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, ended with a push for Trump fans to pre-order her memoir, “Melania,” due out Oct. 8.
Watch:
https://t.co/ZCTwZSqZND pic.twitter.com/KKA6anTEYC
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) September 10, 2024
Tuesday’s comments are one of the few times the ex-first lady has addressed the attempt on her husband’s life during a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pa.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Melania issued a lengthy statement thanking law enforcement for protecting the ex-commander-in-chief.
“When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change,” she said at the time.
“I am grateful to the brave Secret Service agents and law enforcement officials who risked their own lives to protect my husband.”
Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was killed by a counter-sniper after his bullets cut down audience member Corey Comperatore and wounded Trump, 78, as well as two other spectators.
Federal investigators said last month that Crooks had considered attacking a number of events featuring both the Republican nominee and President Biden before settling on the Butler rally as a “target of opportunity.”
Authorities also noted that while Crooks espoused a “mixture of ideologies,” he did not appear to have a “definitive” world view and could not determine a motive for the shooting.
Eight days before the rally, investigators revealed, Crooks had searched for “When is the DNC convention” and “When is the RNC in 2024.”
Other alarming searches asked, “Where will Trump speak from at Butler farm show,” “Butler farm show podium,” “Butler farm show photos,” “detonating cord,” “blasting cap,” “How to make a bomb from fertilizer” and “how do remote detonators work.”
As far back as September 2023, authorities found, an account associated with Crooks had searched Trump’s “schedule” for Pennsylvania events.
The Secret Service has also faced a firestorm of criticism after Crooks managed to crawl across the top of a shed about 130 yards from where Trump was speaking and squeeze off multiple rounds.
Kimberly Cheatle, the protective agency’s then-director, stepped down July 23 amid intense pressure, while at least five other officials have been moved to administrative duty over the debacle.
The Federal Aviation Administration says a Delta Airbus A350 and an Endeavor Bombardier CRJ900 jet clipped each other Tuesday morning on the tarmac at an Atlanta airport.
The FAA said in a statement to Fox News Digital that “while Delta Air Lines Flight 295 was taxiing for departure at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, its wingtip struck the tail of Endeavor Air Flight 5526.”
“The Delta Airbus A350 was headed to Tokyo. The Endeavor Bombardier CRJ900 was headed to Lafayette, Louisiana,” the agency added. “The FAA will investigate the incident, which occurred at the intersection of two taxiways around 10:10 a.m. local time on Tuesday, Sept. 10.”
Images being posted on social media show heavy damage to the tail of one of the planes, whose vertical stabilizer appears to have been severed from the aircraft.
“Well that was terrifying. Taxiing out for the flight from Atlanta to Louisiana and another plane appears to have clipped the back of our plane,” WFTS Meteorologist Jason Adams posted on X. “Very jarring, metal scraping sounds then loud bangs. We’re fine. No fire or smoke.”
Delta said in its own statement that “the wing of an Airbus A350 taxiing out as DL295 from Atlanta to Tokyo-Haneda made contact with the tail of an Endeavor Air CRJ-900, DL5526 to LaFayette, Louisiana, on an adjacent taxiway, resulting in damage to the tail of the regional jet and the wing of the A350.
Watch:
CCTV captures the ground collision earlier today between a Delta Air Lines A350-941 and Delta Connection CRJ-900LR at Atlanta International Airport. https://t.co/NAtkeotC5H pic.twitter.com/E4yH35U4UY
— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) September 10, 2024
“There have been no reported injuries at this time,” the airline said. “There were 221 customers on DL295 and 56 customers on DL5526. At this time, no additional operational adjustments are expected. ”
Delta later issued a second statement saying it has “worked with each customer… to provide accommodation on alternate aircraft scheduled to depart Tuesday afternoon. We apologize to our customers for the experience.
“Meanwhile Delta is cooperating with the NTSB and other authorities while Delta TechOps teams prepare to safely move both aircraft to maintenance hangars,” it also said.
The Michigan Supreme Court ruled Monday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will remain on the battleground state’s presidential ballot in November, reversing a ruling from a lower court that had agreed to remove him last week.
The high court’s majority wrote in its order that Kennedy, who ended his independent White House bid last month and endorsed former President Donald Trump, did not point to a specific “source of law” that called on the state to take him off the ballot.
As a third-party presidential candidate, Kennedy had fought to secure ballot access in the key swing state, but sought to remove himself after dropping out in hopes of avoiding playing a spoiler role in the race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
After Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said it was too late to remove Kennedy from the ballot, he went to court in pursuit of his removal.
Kennedy’s legal efforts delayed the start of election officials sending out mail ballots on North Carolina, where he won an appeal to remove his name from the ballot.
Michigan officials sought a speedy resolution as the state’s ballots must be printed soon in accordance with the law. Military and overseas ballots must be mailed by Sept. 21, with absentee ballots following shortly thereafter on Sept. 26.
In a blistering dissent, Michigan Supreme Court Justices David Viviano and Brian Zahra argued the decision will seek only to harden distrust in the electoral system by forcing voters to have to consider a candidate who is unwilling to serve if elected.
“The ballots printed as a result of the Court’s decision will have the potential to confuse the voters, distort their choices, and pervert the true popular will and affect the outcome of the election,” they wrote.
“In short, the Court’s ruling will do nothing to rebuild the public’s trust in the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
The conservative activist who led the crusade to overhaul the US legal system is making a $1bn push to “crush liberal dominance” across corporate America and in the country’s news and entertainment sectors.
In a rare interview, Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightward shift on the Supreme Court under Donald Trump, said his non-profit advocacy group, the Marble Freedom Trust, was ready to confront the private sector in addition to the government.
“We need to crush liberal dominance where it’s most insidious, so we’ll direct resources to build talent and capital formation pipelines in the areas of news and entertainment, where leftwing extremism is most evident,” Leo told the Financial Times.
“Expect us to increase support for organisations that call out companies and financial institutions that bend to the woke mind virus spread by regulators and NGOs, so that they have to pay a price for putting extreme leftwing ideology ahead of consumers,” he said.
Leo has spent more than two decades at the influential Federalist Society, guiding conservative judges into the federal courts and the Supreme Court itself. In 2018, conservative justice Clarence Thomas joked that Leo was the third most important person in the world.
Leo’s efforts culminated under Trump’s presidency, when three Federalist Society-backed judges were appointed to give conservatives on the Supreme Court a 6-3 supermajority, and profound influence over US law. The court has since then ruled to overturn the right to an abortion, among other long-sought rightwing causes.
In 2020, after Trump lost the election, Leo stepped back from running the daily operations of the Federalist Society, while remaining its co-chair.
The following year, Leo founded Marble, with a $1.6bn donation from electronic device manufacturing mogul Barre Seid, to be a counterweight to what he said was “dark money” of the left. He spent about $600mn in its first three years, according to public financial disclosures.
Leo said his goal was to find “very leveraged, impactful ways of reintroducing limited constitutional government and a civil society premised on freedom and personal responsibility and the virtues of western civilisation”.
The $1bn money machine is now funding the conservative mission against private institutions, opposing diversity, equity and inclusion policies, climate and social concerns in investing and the “debanking” of politically conservative customers, in addition to taking on the public sector.
The non-profit is increasingly interested in launching campaigns against “woke” banks and China-friendly companies involved in everything from food production to autonomous vehicles in the US and potentially Europe.
Leo also intends to invest in a US local media company in the next 12 months, although he has not decided which, and is building conservative coalitions through groups such as Teneo Network, a club with chapters across the country.
He also confirmed that Marble had since 2021 helped fund organisations that launched campaigns against companies with DEI, ESG and other initiatives, including BlackRock, Vanguard, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, State Farm, Major League Baseball and Ticketmaster.
This year, Marble aided a variety of conservative groups in their campaigns against TikTok on the grounds that it was a threat to children and US national security. President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest from the video-sharing platform.
Leo’s rise to be among the US’s most powerful conservatives has drawn scrutiny from liberal attorneys and Democratic politicians. Earlier this year, he refused to comply with a subpoena from Senate Democrats investigating undisclosed gifts to Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito revealed by ProPublica.
In 2020, Leo joined the for-profit public advocacy firm CRC Advisors. Bloomberg has reported that an array of non-profits have paid CRC at least $69mn since Leo became its co-owner and chair.
While Marble funds Trump-aligned advocacy groups, it is not donating money to sway the 2024 presidential election, Leo said. The non-profit is instead helping the Republican effort to end the Democratic majority in the Senate, which confirms judges and justices.
“The political environment is more topsy-turvy and more uncertain than it’s ever been in my lifetime,” said Leo. “Political investing is not as good a bet as it used to be.”
It’s a wild viral claim that has been snapped up and memed by Elon Musk, Republican influencers and even former President Donald Trump’s running-mate JD Vance — but it also stems from a serious problem.
Are migrants from Haiti grabbing pets out of yards and ducks from public parks so they they can eat them?
Springfield police told the Springfield News-Sun that migrants turning pets into pâté was “not something that’s on our radar right now. A city spokesperson said, “there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
Critics have said the claims about Haitian migrants eating pets are racist.
The tale, however, hints at much larger concerns about the recent influx of migrants into Springfield — a city of 60,000 people about 45 minutes west of Columbus.
Officials say that up to 20,000 Haitian immigrants have flowed into the city in the last several years, putting a huge strain on city services.
‘They’re in the park grabbing up ducks’
The craze began with an August meeting of the Springfield City Commission, where a 28-year-old man claimed — without evidence — that Haitian migrants were beheading ducks at local parks and then taking them home to eat.
“They’re in the park grabbing up ducks by they neck and cutting they head off and walking up with them and eating them,” the man said, imploring the city commission to rein in the migrants.
Resident in Springfield, Ohio speaks to the City Commission about the influx of crime and disruption to life from the Haitian migrants in their small town. The migrant are grabbing ducks in the park, cutting their head off and eating them.
pic.twitter.com/SOv9HmmoVE— WorldNetDaily (@worldnetdaily) September 9, 2024
Also spreading online are grabs of a post made by someone in a Springfield Facebook group claiming a friend’s cat went missing — and then was purportedly seen strung up and butchered for dinner in a Haitian migrant’s yard.
One of the videos that went viral with the claims shows a woman who was arrested for allegedly eating a cat last month.
The clip appears to show 27-year-old Allexis Telia Ferrell, who according to Fox 12, was charged after a maddened Aug. 16 rampage in which she allegedly stomped on the cat and then devoured it in front of her neighbors.
However, records do not indicate the woman is either Haitian or a migrant — and she was arrested in Canton, about three hours from Springfield.
Another image that is part of the viral story, of a man holding a goose, appears to originate from an August Reddit post in a group dedicated to Columbus, where the poster provided no context beyond bewilderment.
A super viral claim
Vance, who is also an Ohio senator, was one of the first major politicians to amplify the reports of migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
“People have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country,” Vance wrote on X Monday.
Musk has also jumped on the bandwagon — commenting on or reposting AI-generated images of Trump saving ducks and kittens.
Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio! pic.twitter.com/YnTZStPnsg
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) September 9, 2024
Save them! 😢 pic.twitter.com/aLMPTJIPd9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2024
Vance has defended his amplification of the claims.
“Senator Vance has received a high volume of calls and emails over the past several weeks from concerned citizens in Springfield: his tweet is based on what he is hearing from them. The city has faced an influx of 15,000-20,000 Haitian migrants over the past four years, stressing public resources and leading to housing shortages, all thanks to Kamala Harris’s policy of extending temporary protected status designations,” a Vance spokesperson told The Hill.
“Many residents have contacted Senator Vance to share their concerns over crime and traffic accidents, and to express that they no longer feel safe in their own homes. Unlike the liberal media, JD takes his constituents’ concerns seriously.”
The real migrant concerns in Springfield, Ohio
The issue of Haitian migrants have become a flashpoint in Springfield — a former manufacturing hub of 60,000 between Dayton and Columbus.
Over the last four years the city’s migrant Haitian population has grown 15,000 to 20,000 people — increasing Springfield’s population by as much as one-third, according to city officials.
Many residents and local politicians — including Vance — have expressed outrage at the influx, claiming the Haitian population has strained the city’s services and left legal Americans in the lurch.
Tensions have been heightened since August 2023 after a 36-year-old Haitian immigrant – Hermanio Joseph — lost control of a minivan he was driving without a valid US license on highway near Springfield and strayed into the path of an oncoming school bus.
The bus driver swerved to avoid Joseph, and went careering off the road, throwing 11-year-old Aiden Clark from a window and fatally crushing him as it rolled.
Twenty other kids were hospitalized.
Joseph had been living in Springfield for over a year at the time of the accident, according to Spectrum News. He was sentenced to at least 9 years in prison.
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, “The Lion King” and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York’s Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who in 1965 became one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama (“As the World Turns”) and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. He was also given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of “The Gin Game” having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
“The need to storytell has always been with us,” he told The Associated Press then. “I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn’t get him.”
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in “Field of Dreams,” the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit “The Great White Hope,” the writer Alex Haley in “Roots: The Next Generation” and a South African minister in “Cry, the Beloved Country.”
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader (“No, I am your father,” commonly misremembered as “Luke, I am your father”), as well as the benign dignity of King Mufasa in both the 1994 and 2019 versions of Disney’s “The Lion King” and announcing “This is CNN” during station breaks. He won a 1977 Grammy for his performance on the “Great American Documents” audiobook.
“If you were an actor or aspired to be an actor, if you pounded the pavement in these streets looking for jobs, one of the standards we always had was to be a James Earl Jones,” Samuel L. Jackson once said.
Some of his other films include “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Greatest” (with Muhammad Ali), “Conan the Barbarian,” “Three Fugitives” and playing an admiral in three blockbuster Tom Clancy adaptations — “The Hunt for Red October,” “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger.” In a rare romantic comedy, “Claudine,” Jones had an onscreen love affair with Diahann Carroll.
LeVar Burton, who starred alongside Jones in the TV movie “Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones,” paid tribute on X, writing, “There will never be another of his particular combination of graces.”
Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958’s “Sunrise At Campobello” and would win his two Tony Awards for “The Great White Hope” (1969) and “Fences” (1987). He also was nominated for “On Golden Pond” (2005) and “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” (2012). He was celebrated for his command of Shakespeare and Athol Fugard alike. More recent Broadway appearances include “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and “You Can’t Take It With You.”
As a rising stage and television actor, he performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival Theater in “Othello,” “Macbeth” and “King Lear” and in off-Broadway plays.
Jones was born by the light of an oil lamp in a shack in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on Jan. 17, 1931. His father, Robert Earl Jones, had deserted his wife before the baby’s arrival to pursue life as a boxer and, later, an actor.
When Jones was 6, his mother took him to her parents’ farm near Manistee, Michigan. His grandparents adopted the boy and raised him.
“A world ended for me, the safe world of childhood,” Jones wrote in his autobiography, “Voices and Silences.” “The move from Mississippi to Michigan was supposed to be a glorious event. For me it was a heartbreak, and not long after, I began to stutter.”
Too embarrassed to speak, he remained virtually mute for years, communicating with teachers and fellow students with handwritten notes. A sympathetic high school teacher, Donald Crouch, learned that the boy wrote poetry, and demanded that Jones read one of his poems aloud in class. He did so faultlessly.
Teacher and student worked together to restore the boy’s normal speech. “I could not get enough of speaking, debating, orating — acting,” he recalled in his book.
At the University of Michigan, he failed a pre-med exam and switched to drama, also playing four seasons of basketball. He served in the Army from 1953 to 1955.
In New York, he moved in with his father and enrolled with the American Theater Wing program for young actors. Father and son waxed floors to support themselves while looking for acting jobs.
True stardom came suddenly in 1970 with “The Great White Hope.” Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play depicted the struggles of Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, amid the racism of early 20th-century America. In 1972, Jones repeated his role in the movie version and was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor.
Jones’ two wives were also actors. He married Julienne Marie Hendricks in 1967. After their divorce, he married Cecilia Hart, best known for her role as Stacey Erickson in the CBS police drama “Paris,” in 1982. (She died in 2016.) They had a son, Flynn Earl, born in 1983.
In 2022, the Cort Theatre on Broadway was renamed after Jones, with a ceremony that included Norm Lewis singing “Go the Distance,” Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “Make Them Hear You” and words from Mayor Eric Adams, Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson.
“You can’t think of an artist that has served America more,” director Kenny Leon told the AP. “It’s like it seems like a small act, but it’s a huge action. It’s something we can look up and see that’s tangible.”
Citing his stutter as one of the reasons he wasn’t a political activist, Jones nonetheless hoped his art could change minds.
“I realized early on, from people like Athol Fugard, that you cannot change anybody’s mind, no matter what you do,” he told the AP. “As a preacher, as a scholar, you cannot change their mind. But you can change the way they feel.”
Attorneys for “Trump Train” supporters being sued in civil court denied accusations that their clients harassed or threatened those aboard the Biden–Harris campaign bus driving on a Texas highway in 2020.
Opening statements in the U.S. Western District courtroom on Sept. 9 detailed allegations that the Trump Train defendants planned “dangerous and illegal” actions to run the campaign bus out of town.
Defense attorneys countered that the case against their clients was nothing more than “lawfare” and an attempt by Democrats to silence the First Amendment rights of Trump supporters and punish their political opponents.
Plaintiff’s attorneys showed the jury video clips of the Trump Train—a caravan of Republican activists displaying flags on their vehicles in support of former President Donald Trump—recorded by Democrats on the bus.
Plaintiffs include Biden campaign staffer David Gins; former Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, who once ran against Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott; and bus driver Timothy Holloway.
They sued several members of the caravan, claiming that they violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 by conspiring to disrupt President Joe Biden’s campaign for president in 2020 and intimidate those on the bus.
“Those driving knew what they were doing was wrong,” plaintiff’s attorney Samuel Hal told the jury.
Videos shared on social media, including some recorded by Trump supporters, show cars and pickup trucks riding alongside the campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin on Oct. 30, 2020.
The lawsuit states that Trump supporters boxed in the bus while slowing it down and kept it from exiting the highway. The bus driver allegedly had to make evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision.
Plaintiff’s attorneys introduced social media posts, some laced with profanity, by the defendants in an attempt to show their intent and coordination.
Also, attorneys for the plaintiffs said their clients suffered “mental anguish” and deserved unspecified compensation.
Defendants who remain in the lawsuit include Steve and Randi Ceh, Eliazar Cisneros, Dolores Park, and Joeylynn and Robert Mesaros. Different attorneys represent them.
Jason Geaves, an attorney for Pastor Steve Ceh and his wife, Randi, of Canyon Lake, said they didn’t participate in the Trump Train that day because they were working.
Geaves was hired by Citizens Defending Freedom, which helps pastors with legal needs. Geaves told The Epoch Times his clients were surprised they were added to the lawsuit. “It was a boisterous political rally. It’s certainly something that people shouldn’t be sued over,” he said of the bus incident.
Steve Ceh told The Epoch Times that he believes he and his wife were a target because they are Christians who are active in politics.
Up until a couple of weeks before the trial, the couple, who live in a 40-foot recreational vehicle, represented themselves because no attorney would take their case.
“I believe this is an act of God. He stepped in to get us attorneys,” Steve Ceh said.
Defendants Joeylynn and Robert Mesaros of New Braunfels told The Epoch Times they did nothing wrong.
“We believe we will win at trial but fear the plaintiffs will keep appealing because the point for them isn’t the truth. It’s intimidation,” Joeylynn Mesaros claimed. She added that she and her husband launched a fundraiser at www.FreeSpeechDefender.com to pay for their legal fees.
“My clients have been unfairly maligned for three years because these plaintiffs and their attorneys deliberately took clips of video out of context. As I told the jury today, we will now show the whole story and the plaintiffs’ own evidence will make our case,“ their attorney, Jerad Najvar told The Epoch Times.
Videos of Trump Train members surrounding the bus as it traveled on Interstate 35 near Austin, Texas, went viral and drew praise from Trump.
The FBI investigated the incident, which resulted in a collision after a Biden supporter’s white vehicle appeared to cross into the lane of a truck driven by a Trump supporter. No charges were filed.
Defense attorneys argued that it was the plaintiffs who were at fault, accusing the bus driver of swerving to intimidate Trump supporters.
One defense attorney used a video introduced by the plaintiffs to show that the bus could have exited numerous times from the highway.
Another drew attention to what appeared to be a lack of fear exhibited by Democrats on the bus.
Plaintiff’s attorneys also intend to call an expert safety witness to the stand who will testify that Trump supporters escorting the bus on the highway that day allegedly violated criminal and motor vehicle laws.
However, the defense said that the expert witness is paid millions to testify.
The trial is expected to last three weeks.
Harvey Weinstein was rushed on Monday from Rikers Island, where he is being held, to Bellevue Hospital for emergency heart surgery after experiencing chest pains, sources told ABC News.
The emergency comes as Weinstein is due in court this week in New York, where prosecutors had been presenting evidence to a grand jury as they work to secure a new indictment against Weinstein on sex crimes charges.
Weinstein, 72, has denied any wrongdoing and has said his sexual encounters with women were consensual.
Weinstein has appeared in court recently in a wheelchair and has asked to stay in custody at Rikers where he has been undergoing medical care.
Weinstein has been in an out of Bellevue Hospital since returning to Rikers Island from state prison in April after an appeals court overturned his 2020 rape and sexual assault convictions and ordered a new trial.
In July, he was hospitalized for treatment for a variety of health problems including COVID-19 and pneumonia in both lungs, his representatives said.
The state’s Court of Appeals found that the judge in the 2020 trial unfairly allowed testimony from women whose claims against Weinstein weren’t part of the case.
Last week, prosecutors disclosed that they’ve begun taking steps to potentially charge him with up to three additional sex assaults.
They said they’ve started presenting evidence to a grand jury of up to three previously uncharged allegations against Weinstein — two sexual assaults in the mid-2000s and another sexual assault in 2016.
A vote on a potential new indictment is expected soon.
At the same time, British prosecutors said last week they were dropping two charges of indecent assault against Weinstein in 2022 because there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.”
Weinstein has denied that he raped or sexually assaulted anyone. He remains in custody in New York while awaiting a retrial in Manhattan that’s tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12. He is due back in court for a pretrial hearing Sept. 12.
Weinstein became the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement, which took root in 2017 when women began to go public with accounts of his behavior.
At the original trial, Weinstein was convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013. Those allegations will be part of his retrial. Weinstein’s acquittals on charges of predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape still stand.
After the retrial, Weinstein is due to start serving a 16-year sentence in California for a separate rape conviction in Los Angeles, authorities said. Weinstein was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022.
Weinstein, the co-founder of Miramax and The Weinstein Company film studios, was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, producing such Oscar winners as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love.”
The Miami-Dade Police Department on Monday released officers’ bodycam footage of the incident involving Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill.
Miami-Dade Police Director Stephane V. Daniels said more than an hour of footage was going to be released as part of a commitment to transparency. An investigation into the incident is ongoing, and an officer involved in the situation was placed on “administrative duties.”
The footage starts with police officers pulling up next to Hill’s car and telling him he was speeding. Hill asks how fast he was going but is instructed to pull over.
The officer knocks on the window and Hill tells the officer not to knock on his window like that as he hands over his driver’s license. Hill then tells the officer to give him his ticket and rolls the window back up. The officer demands that Hill keep his window down.
“Keep your window down, or I’m going to get you out of the car. As a matter of fact, get out of the car,” the officer says.
A second officer threatens to break the window.
“We’re not playing this game,” another officer says as the bodycam shows one officer opening the door, reaching into Hill’s car and pulling him out with a third officer’s help.
“Hey Drew, I’m getting arrested Drew,” Hill is heard saying, apparently speaking with his agent, Drew Rosenhaus.
One officer says, “When we tell you to do something, you do it, not what you want but when we tell you. You’re a little f—ing confused.”
“Take me to jail, bruh. Do what you got to do,” Hill responds while lying on the ground.
BREAKING: The Tyreek Hill body cam footage has been released. And it is about as disgusting as you would expect:
— Emmanuel Acho (@EmmanuelAcho) September 9, 2024
A bystander in a separate vehicle near the incident appears to ask what is happening with Hill. The wide receiver responds, “I didn’t do nothing.”
Officers appeared to forcefully guide Hill to a sitting position on the curb next to his car. Hill told them he had surgery on his knee as he was going down, and one officer asked if he had surgery on his ears.
Another officer on the scene asks the officer whose bodycam footage was released if he knows the man who is sitting on the ground. The officer on the bodycam says he doesn’t know who he is, and the other officer responds, “That’s one of the Dolphins’ star players.”
The officer wearing the bodycam explains to a superior what happened. In the background, Hill is yelling, “I’m just being a Black man, that’s it.”
Hill was issued traffic citations and left in the passenger seat of his car with Rosenhaus.
Dolphins defensive lineman Calais Campbell then walks up to the scene with his hands up about four minutes into the footage. He is ordered to back away from the scene or that he will be handcuffed as well. Campbell says he wants to know what happened.
Campbell was later placed in handcuffs.
The officer who addressed Campbell also spoke to Jonnu Smith, who had pulled over to make sure everything was OK. The officer demanded Smith’s license.
The lawyers for the officer who was placed on administrative duties following the incident released a statement to Fox News Digital later Monday.
“While we believe the decision to place our client on leave was premature, we respect Director Daniels’ call for a thorough review of the incident involving Mr. Tyreek Hill, a stance we fully support,” lawyers Ignacio Alvarez of ALGO Law Firm and Israel Reyes of the Reyes Law Firm said. “We urge all parties to refrain from making public statements that may misrepresent our client’s actions and mislead the public about Mr. Hill’s detainment.
“We call for our client’s immediate reinstatement, and a complete, thorough, and objective investigation, as Director Daniels has also advocated. Our client will not comment until this investigation is concluded and the facts are fully revealed.”
Apple on Monday introduced a new generation of iPhones that put AI at the forefront of the device’s operating system, a test of consumer appetite for such tools.
The new tools—called “Apple Intelligence”—include an improved Siri voice assistant and a variety of text-generation and photo-editing capabilities, and they will be compatible with the new iPhone 16 and the iPhone 15 Pro. Apple announced most of the AI functions in June.
The company’s shares fell by more than 1% during the presentation, reflecting the market’s skepticism of AI-centric products.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook thanked an audience for attending the event at its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, and said that the new iPhones will be the first “designed from the ground up for Apple Intelligence and its breakthrough capabilities.”
The iPhone 16 line has limited new hardware features outside of new camera capabilities and a new button that will let users slide their fingers to adjust features. Instead, Apple hopes users will be drawn to the new AI features.
“Apple Intelligence draws on the immense power of our silicon to run multiple generative models on the iPhone in your pocket,” said Apple software chief Craig Federighi.
Apple showed examples of the new capabilities to edit text for tone, such as proofreading a message to a boss on Slack or a review of a book. It also can help sift photos or make personalized slideshows using a simple prompt based on pictures or other content. It also offers personalized prioritization of emails and summaries of text messages.
Apple said Siri will have better language understanding and can comprehend even when someone stumbles over their words. Siri will also be able to pull up personal information, such as finding a recommendation for a TV show. Users will be able to use “visual intelligence,” a feature allowing users to take a picture of a dog and ask the breed.
A beta, or early version, of some of the Apple Intelligence features will be available next month. While it will only be available in English for now, Apple said next year it would be ready for Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish.
The new iPhone line has a chip that Apple executives say will help power the new AI features, and Apple says it is faster than competing devices and even some high-end desktop PCs.
The base model iPhone 16 starts at $799 and the larger-size Plus 16 will be $899, while the Pro model starts at $999, and $1,199 for the larger size.
As is typical for its fall event, the “Glowtime” presentation began with other new devices, such as a watch and new airpods, before showing the new iPhone 16 lineup.
The company unveiled a new design for the latest iteration for its smartwatch, the Apple Watch Series 10, which is thinner than previous versions, offers a bigger display and can alert users who may have sleep apnea.
New capabilities for swimmers help gauge water depth and temperature as well. The new watch will cost $399 or higher and will be available on Sept. 20.
Apple announced that an upgrade to its AirPods Pro 2 can make them capable of acting as an over-the-counter hearing aid, and the company said it would offer hearing tests based on findings in scientific research. The baseline model was also updated, and the AirPods 4 cost $129.
So far, consumers have yet to embrace AI capabilities as a primary reason to upgrade. Apple’s leading smartphone rival, Samsung has heavily promoted its latest devices’ AI capabilities. AI was only a minor selling point for carriers after the initial batch of sales, according to surveys BayStreet Research conducted at U.S. carrier stores.
Another recent survey showed that 7% of consumers had a very high inclination to buy a smartphone based on AI features, according to research firm Canalys.
“AI hasn’t resonated yet with the masses,” said Cliff Maldonado, principal analyst at BayStreet Research, which studies the smartphone market.
Some investors expect Apple’s phone sales to surge regardless, as many iPhone consumers are due for an upgrade. Analysts, on average, expect iPhone revenue for its 2025 fiscal year, which ends next September, to grow nearly 5%, according to FactSet.
Demand for Apple’s AI-enabled phones will offer another test of market appetite for the technology. The company’s rivals have spent billions investing in models that can chat and interact with users in humanlike ways, write, and produce images and animations. Yet investors have grown wary of AI spending this year as many companies have yet to show a clear path to profitability.
In contrast to its rivals, Apple hasn’t poured giant piles of cash into its AI efforts. The company, instead, is hoping external partnerships with the most advanced AI players will help it participate in the market.
“Apple is doing partnerships instead of having to reinvent the wheel,” said Trip Miller, managing partner at Gullane Capital Partners, an Apple shareholder. “They’ve already got the platform and the user base that wants to consume this revolutionary technology.”
With Apple Intelligence, Apple is also joining up with AI startup OpenAI—which is helmed by Chief Executive Sam Altman—to embed ChatGPT, which it sees as the current leader in generative artificial intelligence. The iPhone maker plans to work with other AI developers. Apple is currently in talks to invest in OpenAI, The Wall Street Journal recently reported.
The company has yet to announce an AI partner in China, one of its largest markets and an area where sales have stagnated as it faced new competition from homegrown smartphone brands.
Apple’s last big iPhone hit was in 2021, when sales rose 39% compared with the prior year. Sales have fallen in the past two quarters compared with the same period a year earlier, and revenue fell by more than 2% in the 12 months that ended in September 2023, its most recent fiscal year.
Kate Middleton announced Monday that she is now “cancer free.”
“I cannot tell you what a relief it is to have finally completed my chemotherapy treatment,” the Princess of Wales announced in a statement on X.
“Doing what I can to stay cancer free is now my focus. Although I have finished chemotherapy, my path to healing and full recovery is long and I must continue to take each day as it comes.”
The 42-year-old royal has been in hiding for most of the year after revealing in March that she was being treated for an undisclosed type of cancer.
The mother-of-three said she was now “looking forward to being back at work and undertaking a few more public engagements in the coming months when I can.”
Kate went on to thank those who have supported her in her months-long battle with the disease.
“The last nine months have been incredibly tough for us as a family. Life as you know it can change in an instant and we have had to find a way to navigate the stormy waters and road unknown,” she said.
“The cancer journey is complex, scary and unpredictable for everyone, especially those closest to you. With humility, it also brings you face to face with your own vulnerabilities in a way you have never considered before, and with that, a new perspective on everything.”
“Despite all that has gone before I enter this new phase of recovery with a renewed sense of hope and appreciation of life,” the royal added.
As part of the major health update, Kensington Palace also released rare, loved-up footage of the future queen with her husband, William, and their three children – Prince George, 11, Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6.
The three-minute clip, which was shot in Norfolk over the summer, offered a glimpse of Kate and William holding hands, kissing and embracing.
Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, announces that she has successfully completed chemotherapy. pic.twitter.com/AvOTQaA7ha
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 9, 2024
The Hollywood-style footage also captured the royals playing and laughing with their kids.
Kate, who has previously acknowledged that she’d had good days and bad days while undergoing treatment, last appeared in public for the men’s final at Wimbledon back in July alongside her daughter, Princess Charlotte.
She was later spotted heading to a morning service at Crathie Kirk church in the Scottish village of Crathie, near the family’s Balmoral Estate, late last month.
The princess’ health update comes as her father-in-law, King Charles II, continues his own cancer treatment.
The 75-year-old monarch was diagnosed with a form of cancer back in February.
After taking a break from royal duties to focus on treatment, Charles returned to public-facing duties in April.
The Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign website has released a policy page seven weeks after the Democratic nominees entered the 2024 race.
The Kamala Harris campaign has taken criticism in recent days for being big on vibes and rhetoric while being light on policy. Just seven weeks after she entered the race amid Biden’s withdrawal, the campaign site finally includes a policy page.
People took note of it online.
NEW
VP Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign now has a policy page up. https://t.co/XF5aWsgdJm pic.twitter.com/yB1b24ATFY
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 9, 2024
The policies most notably feature sections that compare and contrast Kamala’s position with that of “Project 2025,” which the Democrats have been trying to pin on former President Donald Trump for weeks now. The “Ensure Safety and Justice for All” section gets particularly spicy.
“Donald Trump is a convicted criminal who only cares about himself. He’s proven that time and time again – from caving to the gun lobby and doing nothing to address gun violence to killing the bipartisan border security deal that would secure our border and keep America safe, just to help himself politically,” the section says.
“If elected president, Trump will implement his Project 2025 agenda to consolidate power, bring the Department of Justice and the FBI under his direct control so he can give himself unchecked legal power and go after his opponents, and rule as a dictator on ‘day one,’” it continues.
While her proposals make mention, of LGBTQ rights, particularly on discrimination and housing, it makes no mention of transgender ideology, specifically for the transitioning of minors.
On Israel, the campaign says that Kamala Harris will defend the Jewish state’s right to exist and will work to end the war in Gaza.
“Vice President Harris will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and she will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. She and President Biden are working to end the war in Gaza, such that 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,” it says.
Election analyst Nate Silver gave former President Donald Trump a record-high probability of winning against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The bump came partially as a result of Sunday’s New York Times/Sienna poll, which Silver has as one of the highest-rated pollsters. Silver’s newest rating has Trump with a 63.8% probability, compared to Harris’s 36%. The former president is also favored to win every swing state.
Silver’s current odds give Trump a 64% chance of winning Pennsylvania, 54% for Michigan, 53% for Wisconsin, 77% for Arizona, 75% for North Carolina, 68% for Georgia, and 61% for Nevada.
The new probability total is a nearly five-point boost for Trump since Thursday, when he was given a 58.2% probability, itself a boost from the 52.4% a week prior. The prediction shows a further eroding of Harris’s honeymoon support since President Joe Biden dropped out in July.
In a Substack post, Silver explained that the new poll was such bad news for Harris due to the large sample size and reliability of the poll, which he ranks as the second best. He said the new poll “confirms the model’s view that there’s been some sort of a shift in momentum in the race.”
The election analyst zeroed in on perceptions that Harris is too progressive as especially alarming for Democrats — the poll found that 47% of likely voters believe that Harris is too liberal, compared to 32% who see Trump as too conservative.
“I’m not a messaging-and-tactics guy like Dan Pfieffer, but I’m not quite sure how Harris is supposed to spin her way out of this perception,” he wrote.
“Her convention speech was aggressively centrist and aimed at male voters, which I thought was smart. But there’s a track record here of progressive policy advocacy on the 2019 campaign trail and in her voting record in the Senate.”
Her attempt to mitigate this issue presents a problem in itself, Silver argued.
“The flip-flopping may explain why Harris has been weirdly reluctant to do media hits or articulate policy specifics,” he continued. “This strategy may have worked well enough when she was riding high off the vibes of the Democrats’ candidate swap, but it’s causing her more problems now.”
The New York Times/Sienna poll interviewed 1,695 registered voters nationwide from Sept. 3-6, with a margin of error of +/- 2.8%.
New York Democratic Rep. Grace Meng has longstanding ties to an organization reportedly linked to a Chinese intelligence agency and alleged Communist Party operatives, the Daily Caller News Foundation found.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday indicted Linda Sun, who served in two New York governors’ offices as well as Meng’s chief of staff while she served in the state assembly, for allegedly acting as an unregistered foreign agent of China and money laundering.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Sun met the “heads of key groups identifiable in the indictment as being United Front-linked, including the U.S. Federation of Chinese-American Entrepreneurs and the Henan Association of Eastern America.”
China’s so-called “United Front” strategy of influence and intelligence collection is overseen by a Chinese intelligence service called the United Front Work Department.
The heads of these groups were “supervised, directed, and controlled by [Chinese] government officials,” DOJ alleges.
Meng has been associated with Henan Association Of Eastern America (HAEA), a New York-based organization, for over a decade. She previously served as “deputy chairwoman,” according to an archived version of HAEA’s website, and the group now prominently identifies the congresswoman as an “honorary chairwoman.”
The DOJ’s indictment, however, does note that one of Sun’s alleged unnamed co-conspirators, known as CC-1, “served as the president of an association of persons from Henan Province, PRC located in the New York metropolitan area.”
The indictment describes CC-1’s organization, “Association-1,” as “a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization closely associated with the United Front Work Department (‘UFWD’) and the Chinese Communist Party (‘CCP’).”
“Over the last forty years, a network of pro-CCP Chinese-American organizations operating in coordination with the Chinese Consulate has been established, which now has enormous influence on New York’s business and political climate, basically providing an outpost and pro-CCP personnel for directly executing China’s foreign policy from within the United States,” Dr. Lawrence Sellin, a national security and United Front expert, told the DCNF.
Henan Association Of Eastern America
Founded in 1973, HAEA aims to support Chinese participation in politics as well as cultural exchange and trade between the U.S. and China, according to its website.
For more than a decade, Meng has held various roles with HAEA, according to records on the group’s website. Meng and her mother, who is a native of China’s Henan province, were first listed as HAEA members in 2008, the nonprofit’s records state.
Between 2008 and 2012, Meng served as HAEA’s “deputy chairwoman,” according to its website. HAEA later began identifying Meng as “honorary chairwoman” in February 2012, the month before Meng launched her congressional campaign in March 2012, HAEA’s records show.
Meng’s photo and title are currently pictured at the top of HAEA’s website alongside its president.
Sun has not been listed on HAEA’s member roster, but photos on HAEA’s website show Meng with Sun together at events as far back as 2009, the DCNF found.
For instance, Meng and Sun were photographed together at a December 2009 karaoke fundraiser for Meng, who then served in the New York State Assembly.
Photos also show Meng and Sun together at HAEA’s annual Chinese New Year meeting in February 2010.
Sun is accused of having “actively concealed that she took actions at the order, request, or direction of [the Chinese] government and CCP representatives,” the DOJ’s indictment states. “Thus, neither the NYS government nor the greater New York and American public had the opportunity to evaluate her conduct, considering her long-standing relationships with the [Chinese] government and the CCP and her status as their agent.”
In 2019, Sun was allegedly hired as a committee member for the All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), according to the DOJ’s indictment.
ACFROC is an “agency” of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, which attempts to “manage relationships with and generate support for the CCP among elite individuals inside and outside the PRC, including by gathering human intelligence,” the DOJ’s indictment states.
Dr. June Teufel Dreyer, former commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told the DCNF that ACFROC is “unquestionably an organization through which the CCP, through the United Front Work Department, seeks to shape the opinions of the Chinese diaspora to its views.”
‘Co-Conspirator’
Sun previously served as “Asian Outreach Director” for former New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and, most recently, served as New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s deputy chief of staff, government records show.
While working for the two New York governors, the DOJ’s indictment alleges that Sun also worked in secret for a man identified only as a “co-conspirator” who had direct contact with multiple officials in the Chinese government.
Sun’s work with the co-conspirator allegedly “included fraudulently obtaining letters that purported to be from the [New York governor’s office] inviting delegations of PRC officials to visit New York, which the government officials used to unlawfully obtain visas to enter the United States,” according to the DOJ’s indictment.
The invited officials were from China’s Henan province, according to the indictment.
In return, Chinese officials and co-conspirators allegedly funneled contracts to businesses in Henan run by Sun’s husband, Chris Hu, who was also arrested by the FBI and charged by the DOJ.
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