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Trump calls on Republicans and Democrats to ‘work together’ after losing house in midterms

President Donald Trump points to CNN's Jim Acosta during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Updated 08 November 2018
Reuters
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Trump calls on Republicans and Democrats to ‘work together’ after losing house in midterms

  • onald Trump on Wednesday forced out Attorney General Jeff Sessions
  • President trumpeted his role in Republican gains in Tuesday’s midterm congressional elections
Updated 08 November 2018
Reuters

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Wednesday forced out Attorney General Jeff Sessions a day after congressional elections, and vowed to fight if the US House of Representatives’ new Democratic majority launches probes into his administration.
Sessions, an early supporter of Trump who ran afoul with him by recusing himself from a investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, said in a letter to the president he had submitted his resignation “at your request.”
Sessions’ departure was the first in what could be a string of high-profile exits as Trump reshapes his team to gird for his own 2020 re-election effort. Trump named Sessions’ chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, as acting attorney general and said he would nominate someone for the job soon.
During a combative news conference in which he tangled with reporters, Trump trumpeted his role in Republican gains in Tuesday’s midterm congressional elections, and warned he would adopt a “warlike posture” if Democrats investigated him.


 

Democrats will now head House committees that can probe the president’s tax returns, which he has refused to turn over, possible business conflicts of interest and any links between his 2016 campaign and Russia, a matter being investigated by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Mueller is overseen by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who reports to Sessions.
Trump said he could fire Mueller if he wanted but was hesitant to take that step. “I could fire everybody right now, but I don’t want to stop it, because politically I don’t like stopping it,” he said.
Moscow denies meddling and Trump, calling the Mueller probe a witch hunt, denies any collusion.
Trump was buoyed on Wednesday by victories that added to the Republican majority in the US Senate, telling reporters at the White House that the gains outweighed the Democrats’ takeover of the House. He added that he was willing to work with Democrats on key priorities but felt any House investigations of his administration would hurt prospects for bipartisanship.

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“They can play that game, but we can play it better,” Trump said of the possibility of Democratic investigations. “All you’re going to do is end up in back and forth and back and forth, and two years is going to go up and we won’t have done a thing.”
The divided power in Congress combined with Trump’s expansive view of executive power could herald even deeper political polarization and legislative gridlock in Washington.
There may be some room, however, for Trump and Democrats to work together on issues with bipartisan support such as a package to improve infrastructure, protections against prescription drug price increases and in the push to rebalance trade with China.
“It really could be a beautiful bipartisan situation,” Trump said.
He said Nancy Pelosi, who could be the next speaker of the House, had expressed to him in a phone call a desire to work together. With Democrats mulling whether to stick with Pelosi, who was speaker when the party last controlled the House, or go in a new direction, Trump wrote in a tweet earlier that she deserves to be chosen for the position.
Pelosi, at a news conference on Capitol Hill, said Democrats would be willing to work with Trump where possible, but added, “We have a constitutional responsibility to have oversight.”
“I don’t think we’ll have any scattershot freelancing in terms of this. We will have a responsibility to honor our oversight responsibilities and that’s the path we will go down. We again (will) try to unify our country,” she said.


The Democrats fell short of a tidal wave of voter support that would have won them control of both chambers of Congress. But in the 435-member House, the party was headed for a gain of around 30 seats, beyond the 23 they needed to claim their first majority in eight years.
A Senate majority would have allowed Democrats to apply even firmer brakes on Trump’s policy agenda and given them the ability to block any future Supreme Court nominees.
House Democrats could force Trump to scale back his legislative ambitions, possibly dooming his promises to fund a border wall with Mexico and pass a second major tax-cut package. Legislators could also demand more transparency from Trump as he negotiates new trade deals with Japan and the European Union.
“Today is more than about Democrats and Republicans; it’s about restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances to the Trump administration,” Pelosi told supporters at a victory party Tuesday night.
Trump also mocked Republican candidates who had refused to back his policies and ultimately lost their races, such as US Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia.
“They did very poorly. I’m not sure that I should be happy or sad but I feel just fine about it,” he said.

Trump had hardened his rhetoric in recent weeks on issues that appealed to his conservative core supporters. He threw himself into the campaign, issuing warnings about a caravan of Latin American migrants headed through Mexico to the US border and condemnations of liberal American “mobs” he says oppose him.
Every seat in the House was up for grabs on Tuesday and opinion polls had pointed to the Democratic gains. The party with the presidency often loses House seats in midterm elections.
The Republicans had an advantage in Senate races because elections were held for only 35 seats in the 100-member chamber and many of them were in states that often lean Republican.
Republicans built on their slim Senate majority by several seats and ousted at least three incumbent Democrats: Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and Claire McCaskill in Missouri.
In Florida, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson was trailing his Republican rival, Governor Rick Scott, by a slim margin, with the possibility of a recount looming. Republican Martha McSally was leading Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in the US Senate race in Arizona with some votes still to be counted.
The Republican gains are sure to bolster the party’s efforts to get conservative federal judges through confirmation proceedings. In the 36 gubernatorial contests, Democrats won in several states that supported Trump in 2016 but lost high-profile races in Florida and Ohio.

 

 

Topics: Donald Trump midterm elections

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10 escape from New Orleans jail through hole in cell wall while lone guard left to get food

Updated 11 min 52 sec ago
AP
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10 escape from New Orleans jail through hole in cell wall while lone guard left to get food

Updated 11 min 52 sec ago
AP

NEW ORLEANS: Ten men broke out of a New Orleans jail Friday in an audacious overnight escape by fleeing through a hole behind a toilet and scaling a wall while the lone guard assigned to their cell pod was away getting food, authorities said.
Nine of the escapees, which include suspects charged with murder, remain on the lam following the breakout that the local sheriff says may have been aided by members within the department.
Surveillance footage, shared with media during a press conference, showed the escapees sprinting out of the facility — some wearing orange clothing and others in white. They proceeded to scale a fence, using blankets to avoid being cut by barbed wire. Some could be seen sprinting across the nearby interstate.
A photograph obtained by The Associated Press from law enforcement shows the opening behind a toilet in a cell that the men escaped through. Above the hole are scrawled messages that include “To Easy LoL” with an arrow pointing at the gap.
The absence of the 10 men, who also utilized facility deficiencies that officials have long complained about in their escape, went unnoticed for hours. It was not until a routine morning headcount, more than seven hours after the men fled the facility, that law enforcement learned of the escape.
Officials from the sheriff’s office say there was no deputy physically at the pod, where the fugitives had been held. They said there was a technician, a civilian who was there to observe the pod, but she had “stepped away to grab food.”
Soon after the escape, one of the men, Kendall Myles, 20, was apprehended after a brief foot chase through the French Quarter. He had previously escaped twice from juvenile detention centers.
Sheriff blames ‘defective locks’ and possibly inside help
Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson said the men were able to get out of the Orleans Justice Center because of “defective locks.” Hutson said she has continuously raised concerns about the locks to officials and, as recently as this week, advocated for money to fix the ailing infrastructure.
Hutson said there are indications that people inside her department helped the fugitives escape.
“We do acknowledge there is no way people can get out of this facility without there being some type of lapse in security,” Hutson said of the jail, where she says 1,400 people are being held. “It’s almost impossible, not completely, but almost impossible for anybody to get out of this facility without help.”
The escapees yanked open a door to enter the cell with the hole in it around 1 a.m.
They shed their jail uniforms once out of the facility, and it is still unclear how some of them obtained regular clothing so quickly, officials said.
Authorities did not notice the men were missing until 8:30 a.m. Authorities initially said 11 had escaped, but at a Friday afternoon news conference said one man thought to have escaped was in a different cell.
Three employees have been placed on suspension pending the outcome of the investigation. It was not immediately clear whether any of the employees were suspected of helping with the escape.
Who are the fugitives?
The escapees range from 19 years old to 42. Most of the men are in their 20s.
One of the fugitives, Derrick Groves, was convicted on two charges of second-degree murder and two charges of attempted second-degree murder last year for his role in the 2018 Mardi Gras Day shootings of two men. He also faces a charge of battery against a correctional facility employee, court records show. Law enforcement warned that he may attempt to locate witnesses in the murder trial.
Another escapee, Corey Boyd, had pled not guilty to a pending second-degree murder charge.
Hutson said the police department is actively working with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to search for the fugitives.
Officials use facial recognition to find one fugitive
Police relied on facial recognition technology to identify and capture one fugitive, said Bryan LaGarde, executive director of Project NOLA, a nonprofit operating more than 5,000 cameras around New Orleans. His organization, which partners with Louisiana authorities, received the list of escapees and entered their images into the system — finding two within the French Quarter in minutes.
“When we saw them, they were wearing street clothes. They were walking openly in the street. They were keeping their heads down and checking over their shoulder.” LaGarde said, adding that the other fugitive walked out of sight of the cameras.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill called the escape “beyond unacceptable” and said local authorities had waited too long to inform the public.
She said she has reached out to surrounding states to alert them about the escape. Murrill said the fugitives have had “ample” time to escape to “frankly anywhere across the country.”
New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said her agency has put “a full court effort” to respond to the escape and are working with the FBI and US marshals.
Officers were focused on identifying and providing protection for people who may have testified in their cases or may be in danger. One family has been “removed” from their home, Kirkpatrick said.
“If there is anyone helping or harboring these escapees, you will be charged,” Kirkpatrick added.
Turmoil at New Orleans’ jail
New Orleans’ jail has for more than a decade been subject to federal monitoring and a consent decree intended to improve conditions.
Security problems and violence persisted even after the city opened the Orleans Justice Center in 2015, replacing the decaying Orleans Parish Prison, which had seen its own string of escapes and dozens of in-custody deaths.
A federal judge declared in 2013 that the lockup had festered into an unconstitutional setting for people incarcerated there.
Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson said staff is “stretched thin” at the facility, which is around 60 percent staffed.
The jail contained numerous “high security” people convicted of violent offenses who required a “restrictive housing environment that did not exist,” said Jay Mallett, Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office chief of Corrections. The sheriff’s office was in the process of transferring dozens to more secure locations.
 

Topics: New Orleans Prison break

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Two dead and others injured in Las Vegas gym shooting, police say

Updated 14 min 58 sec ago
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Two dead and others injured in Las Vegas gym shooting, police say

Updated 14 min 58 sec ago
AP

LAS VEGAS: There was a shooting inside a gym, killing two people, with multiple other people injured, Las Vegas police said.
One person died as gunfire erupted at the Las Vegas Athletic Club on the city’s west side, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Undersheriff Andrew Walsh said Friday.
“The suspect in this incident has been shot and there is no longer a threat to the public,” he said.
In a social media post, police said the suspect in the shooting was confirmed dead at a local hospital.

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Trump calls ex-FBI chief Comey a ‘dirty cop’ after alleged threat

Updated 20 min 43 sec ago
AFP
Reuters
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Trump calls ex-FBI chief Comey a ‘dirty cop’ after alleged threat

  • Comey made a post on Instagram showingan image of “86 47” spelled out in sea shells
  • Trump's aides and allies charged that it was a veiled call to assassinate the president
Updated 20 min 43 sec ago
AFP Reuters

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump labeled former FBI director James Comey a “dirty cop” Friday over a social media post that the US president deemed a veiled call for assassination and which prompted a Secret Service probe.

Comey made a now-deleted post on Instagram the previous day that showed an image of “86 47” spelled out in sea shells, with “86” being slang for kill and Trump the 47th president.

“He knew exactly what that meant,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News broadcast on Friday. “That meant assassination, and it says it loud and clear. Now, he wasn’t very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant.”

“He’s calling for the assassination of the president,” Trump said, branding Comey “a dirty cop.”

Trump was wounded in the ear during an assassination attempt at a campaign rally last July in Butler, Pennsylvania, and has faced other threats.

Comey said Thursday on Instagram that he posted “a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message.”

“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he said.

The “8647” and “8646” themes have been used as political slogans and on T-shirts during the administrations of both Trump and his predecessor, Democratic President Joe Biden, the 46th US president.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says on its website that one recent meaning of the term 86 was “to kill” but that it had not adopted it “due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”

Trump administration officials were unconvinced, with Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem saying DHS and the US Secret Service -- which is charged with protecting the president -- were investigating and "will respond appropriately."
FBI Director Kash Patel meanwhile said the law enforcement agency was "in communication with the Secret Service" and that it would "provide all necessary support."
And Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Comey had "issued a call to action to murder the president of the United States," adding: "We fully support the Secret Service investigation into Comey's threat on President Trump's life."
On Friday, US media reported Comey was questioned by the Secret Service over his post.

The meeting began around 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) and lasted about an hour, the official said. Comey appeared voluntarily after being asked to come in, according to a law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Gabbard dismissed Comey’s explanation as absurd, and said the “8647” slogan has been used by anti-Trump protesters and was a veiled call to action against the sitting president.
Early in his first term, Trump fired Comey, who as FBI director had been leading an investigation into the Trump 2016 presidential campaign’s possible collusion with Russia.
Comey has been a sharp critic of his former boss, calling him “morally unfit” to lead in a 2018 interview.
Trump himself was accused of using Twitter posts to incite rioters, who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent the certification of Biden’s election victory.
Trump last year also posted on social media a video that featured an image of Biden, who was then president, with his hands and feet tied together in the back of a pickup truck.

Topics: Trump Returns James Comey

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Elon Musk’s AI company says Grok chatbot focus on South Africa’s racial politics was ‘unauthorized’

Updated 17 May 2025
AP
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Elon Musk’s AI company says Grok chatbot focus on South Africa’s racial politics was ‘unauthorized’

  • xAI blames employee at xAI made a change that “directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic”
  • Grok kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in South Africa in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X
Updated 17 May 2025
AP

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company said an “unauthorized modification” to its chatbot Grok was the reason why it kept talking about South African racial politics and the subject of “white genocide” on social media this week.
An employee at xAI made a change that “directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic,” which “violated xAI’s internal policies and core values,” the company said in an explanation posted late Thursday that promised reforms.
A day earlier, Grok kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in South Africa in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X who asked it a variety of questions, most having nothing to do with South Africa.
One exchange was about streaming service Max reviving the HBO name. Others were about video games or baseball but quickly veered into unrelated commentary on alleged calls to violence against South Africa’s white farmers. It was echoing views shared by Musk, who was born in South Africa and frequently opines on the same topics from his own X account.
Computer scientist Jen Golbeck was curious about Grok’s unusual behavior so she tried it herself before the fixes were made Wednesday, sharing a photo she had taken at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and asking, “is this true?”
“The claim of white genocide is highly controversial,” began Grok’s response to Golbeck. “Some argue white farmers face targeted violence, pointing to farm attacks and rhetoric like the ‘Kill the Boer’ song, which they see as incitement.”
The episode was the latest window into the complicated mix of automation and human engineering that leads generative AI chatbots trained on huge troves of data to say what they say.
“It doesn’t even really matter what you were saying to Grok,” said Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland, in an interview Thursday. “It would still give that white genocide answer. So it seemed pretty clear that someone had hard-coded it to give that response or variations on that response, and made a mistake so it was coming up a lot more often than it was supposed to.”
Grok’s responses were deleted and appeared to have stopped proliferating by Thursday. Neither xAI nor X returned emailed requests for comment but on Thursday, xAI said it had “conducted a thorough investigation” and was implementing new measures to improve Grok’s transparency and reliability.
Musk has spent years criticizing the “woke AI” outputs he says come out of rival chatbots, like Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and has pitched Grok as their “maximally truth-seeking” alternative.
Musk has also criticized his rivals’ lack of transparency about their AI systems, fueling criticism in the hours between the unauthorized change — at 3:15 a.m. Pacific time Wednesday — and the company’s explanation nearly two days later.
“Grok randomly blurting out opinions about white genocide in South Africa smells to me like the sort of buggy behavior you get from a recently applied patch. I sure hope it isn’t. It would be really bad if widely used AIs got editorialized on the fly by those who controlled them,” prominent technology investor Paul Graham wrote on X.
Musk, an adviser to President Donald Trump, has regularly accused South Africa’s Black-led government of being anti-white and has repeated a claim that some of the country’s political figures are “actively promoting white genocide.”
Musk’s commentary — and Grok’s — escalated this week after the Trump administration brought a small number of white South Africans to the United States as refugees, the start of a larger relocation effort for members of the minority Afrikaner group that came after Trump suspended refugee programs and halted arrivals from other parts of the world. Trump says the Afrikaners are facing a “genocide” in their homeland, an allegation strongly denied by the South African government.
In many of its responses, Grok brought up the lyrics of an old anti-apartheid song that was a call for Black people to stand up against oppression by the Afrikaner-led apartheid government that ruled South Africa until 1994. The song’s central lyrics are “kill the Boer” — a word that refers to a white farmer.
Golbeck said it was clear the answers were “hard-coded” because, while chatbot outputs are typically random, Grok’s responses consistently brought up nearly identical points. That’s concerning, she said, in a world where people increasingly go to Grok and competing AI chatbots for answers to their questions.
“We’re in a space where it’s awfully easy for the people who are in charge of these algorithms to manipulate the version of truth that they’re giving,” she said. “And that’s really problematic when people — I think incorrectly — believe that these algorithms can be sources of adjudication about what’s true and what isn’t.”
Musk’s company said it is now making a number of changes, starting with publishing Grok system prompts openly on the software development site GitHub so that “the public will be able to review them and give feedback to every prompt change that we make to Grok. We hope this can help strengthen your trust in Grok as a truth-seeking AI.”
Among the instructions to Grok shown on GitHub on Thursday were: “You are extremely skeptical. You do not blindly defer to mainstream authority or media.”
Noting that some had “circumvented” its existing code review process, xAI also said it will “put in place additional checks and measures to ensure that xAI employees can’t modify the prompt without review.” The company said it is also putting in place a “24/7 monitoring team to respond to incidents with Grok’s answers that are not caught by automated systems,” for when other measures fail.

Topics: grok artificial intelligence Elon Musk xAI Jen Golbeck chatbots

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Moody’s strips US government of top credit rating, citing failure to rein in debt

Updated 56 min 3 sec ago
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AFP
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Moody’s strips US government of top credit rating, citing failure to rein in debt

  • Moody’s is the last of the three major rating agencies to lower the federal government’s credit
  • White House dismisses downgrade as the work of a political opponent of Trump
Updated 56 min 3 sec ago
AP AFP

WASHINGTON: Moody’s Ratings stripped the US government of its top credit rating Friday, citing successive governments’ failure to stop a rising tide of debt.
Moody’s lowered the rating from a gold-standard Aaa to Aa1 but said the United States “retains exceptional credit strengths such as the size, resilience and dynamism of its economy and the role of the US dollar as global reserve currency.”
Moody’s is the last of the three major rating agencies to lower the federal government’s credit. Standard & Poor’s downgraded federal debt in 2011 and Fitch Ratings followed in 2023.
In a statement, Moody’s said: “We expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9 percent of (the US economy) by 2035, up from 6.4 percent in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending, and relatively low revenue generation.”
Extending President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, a priority of the Republican-controlled Congress, Moody’s said, would add $4 trillion over the next decade to the federal primary deficit (which does not include interest payments).

White House communications director Steven Cheung reacted to the downgrade via a social media post, singling out Moody’s economist, Mark Zandi, for criticism. He called Zandi a political opponent of US President Donald Trump.
“Nobody takes his ‘analysis’ seriously. He has been proven wrong time and time again,” said Cheung.

A gridlocked political system has been unable to tackle America’s huge deficits. Republicans reject tax increases, and Democrats are reluctant to cut spending.
On Friday, House Republicans failed to push a big package of tax breaks and spending cuts through the Budget Committee. A small group of hard-right Republican lawmakers, insisting on steeper cuts to Medicaid and President Joe Biden’s green energy tax breaks, joined all Democrats in opposing it.

 

Topics: Trump Returns US debt ceiling

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