WASHINGTON: Republicans aggressively defended law enforcement on the third night of their convention, as the nation faced renewed tensions following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man in Wisconsin that sparked protests in a state that could decide the fall election.
Vice President Mike Pence, the evening's featured speaker, seized on the national reckoning over racial injustice to argue that Democratic leaders are allowing lawlessness to prevail in cities from coast to coast. He and others described cities wracked by violence, though protests in most locations have been largely peaceful.
“The American people know we don’t have to choose between supporting law enforcement and standing with African American neighbors to improve the quality of life in our cities and towns,” he said in remarks released before his appearance. He also assailed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for saying there is an “implicit bias” against minorities and “systemic racism” in the U.S.
“The hard truth is ... you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” Pence said.
Meanwhile, the steady image Republicans were aiming to portray of President Donald Trump at the convention was running into a turbulent outside reality: the police shooting of Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the potentially catastrophic hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast, wildfires that have ravaged huge areas of California and the still-raging coronavirus pandemic that is killing more than 1,000 Americans a day.
The historic convergence of health, economic, environmental and social emergencies is only increasing the pressure on Trump, as he looks to reshape the contours of his lagging campaign against former Vice President Biden with Election Day just 10 weeks off and early voting beginning much sooner.
While Trump has issued tweets about the hurricane, few convention speakers addressed it or the wildfires. The convention lineup also included speakers who have been at odds with the Black Lives Matter movement, including a St. Louis couple who brandished guns and the Kentucky attorney general who has not yet filed charges in the death of a woman killed by police.
But the program Wednesday night was — as the president often says of Biden — low energy, with no major headline speaker beside the vice president and few boldface names. And it lacked some of the production elements that had made previous nights memorable, including slickly produced videos and surprise announcements, such as an unexpected presidential pardon and a citizenship ceremony.
Not that the proceedings lacked tough talk.
“From Seattle and Portland to Washington and New York, Democrat-run cities across this country are being overrun by violent mobs,” contended South Dakota Gov Kristi Noem. “People that can afford to flee have fled. But the people that can’t — good, hard-working Americans —are left to fend for themselves.”
Adding another controversial element, late Wednesday the NBA postponed three playoff games after the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court for their game following the shooting of Blake. The WNBA and Milwaukee Brewers quickly followed suit with their Wednesday games.
That was a few hours before Pence was to speak from Baltimore’s Fort McHenry, where an 1814 battle inspired the National Anthem. Trump has strongly criticized athletes who kneel rather than stand during the anthem in protest of racial injustice.
Adding to the sense of convention uncertainty, another speaker was abruptly pulled from the lineup. The Trump campaign confirmed that Robert Unanue, the president and CEO of Goya Foods, would not be speaking Wednesday night, citing a “logistical problem.” Unanue’s appearance at the White House earlier this month and his praise of Trump sparked a boycott movement of his company’s products.
Organizers on Tuesday had pulled another featured speaker, “Angel Mom” Mary Ann Mendoza after she directed her Twitter followers to a series of anti-Semitic, conspiratorial messages hours before her pre-recorded segment was to air.
Wednesday night's lineup was expected to include Clarence Henderson, who participated in the 1960 Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins for what Trump's team said would be a discussion of “peaceful protest" and the president's record of trying to help Black Americans.
“These achievements demonstrate that Donald Trump truly cares about black lives," Henderson was to say. "His policies show his heart. He has done more for black Americans in four years than Joe Biden has done in 50.”
Convention speakers were also reinforcing Trump’s law-and-order message, warning that electing Biden would lead to violence in American cities spilling into the suburbs, a message with racist undertones. Trump on Wednesday tweeted about sending federal agents to Kenosha to help quell unrest, and the Justice Department said it was sending in the FBI and federal marshals.
Trump's campaign believes his aggressive response will help him with suburban women voters who may be concerned by the protests — though it may only deepen his deficit with Black voters.
Michael McHale, the president of the National Association of Police Organizations, told the convention, “The violence and bloodshed we are seeing in these and other cities isn’t happening by chance. It’s the direct result of refusing to allow law enforcement to protect our communities. Joe Biden has turned his candidacy over to the far-left, anti-law enforcement radicals."
And Burgess Owens, a former NFL player now running for Congress in Utah, declared, “This November, we stand at a crossroads. Mobs torch our cities while popular members of Congress promote the same socialism that my father fought against in World War II.”
While the Democrats’ convention last week included musical performances and celebrity guests, Trump’s on Wednesday become little more than a series of speeches, delivered one after the next.
The night included remarks from the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as well as several administration officials including departing Counselor Kellyanne Conway, the manager of Trump’s 2016 general election campaign, and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
“This is the man I know and the president we need," said Conway, a week before she is to leave the White House. "He picks the toughest fights and tackles the most complex problems. He has stood by me, and he will stand up for you.”
GOP convention defends police as racial tension rises anew
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GOP convention defends police as racial tension rises anew
- The historic convergence of health, economic, environmental and social emergencies is only increasing the pressure on Trump
Trump names loyalist Kash Patel to serve as FBI director
- The child of Indian immigrants and a former public defender, Patel spent several years as a Justice Department prosecutor before catching the Trump administration’s attention as a staffer for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump has picked Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, turning to a fierce loyalist to upend America’s premier law enforcement agency and rid the government of perceived “conspirators.” It’s the latest bombshell Trump has thrown at the Washington establishment and a test for how far Senate Republicans will go in confirming his nominees.
“I am proud to announce that Kashyap “Kash” Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Trump posted Saturday night on Truth Social. “Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.”
The selection is in keeping with Trump’s view that the government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies require a radical transformation and his stated desire for retribution against supposed adversaries. It shows how Trump, still fuming over years of federal investigations that shadowed his first administration and later led to his indictment, is moving to place atop the FBI and Justice Department close allies he believes will protect rather than scrutinize him.
Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” Trump wrote Saturday night.
It remains unclear whether Patel could be confirmed, even by a Republican-led Senate, though Trump has also raised the prospect of using recess appointments to push his selections through.
Patel would replace Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump in 2017 but quickly fell out of favor with the president and his allies. Though the position carries a 10-year term, Wray’s removal was not unexpected given Trump’s long-running public criticism of him and the FBI, including after a search of his Florida’s property for classified documents and two investigations that resulted in his indictment.
Patel’s past proposals, if carried out, would lead to convulsive change for an agency tasked not only with investigating violations of federal law but also protecting the country from terrorist attacks, foreign espionage and other threats.
He’s called for dramatically reducing the FBI’s footprint, a perspective that dramatically sets him apart from earlier directors who have sought additional resources for the bureau, and has suggested closing down the bureau’s headquarters in Washington and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state” — Trump’s pejorative catch-all for the federal bureaucracy.
And though the Justice Department in 2021 halted the practice of secretly seizing reporters’ phone records during leak investigation, Patel has said he intends to aggressively hunt down government officials who leak information to reporters and change the law to make it easier to sue journalists.
During an interview with Steve Bannon last December, Patel said he and others “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media.”
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said, referring to the 2020 presidential election in which Biden, the Democratic challenger, defeated Trump. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
The child of Indian immigrants and a former public defender, Patel spent several years as a Justice Department prosecutor before catching the Trump administration’s attention as a staffer for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Trump also announced Saturday that he will nominate Sheriff Chad Chronister, the top law enforcement officer in Hillsborough County, Florida, to serve as the Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency.
“As DEA Administrator, Chad will work with our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to secure the Border, stop the flow of Fentanyl, and other Illegal Drugs, across the Southern Border, and SAVE LIVES,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social announcing the pick.
British PM Starmer to set out detailed policy targets in week ahead
- Starmer said he would set out a “plan for change” as the next phase of delivering goals including the fastest sustained growth in the Group of Seven advanced economies, a halving of serious violent crime, lower energy bills and less ill health
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will set more detailed targets in the coming week to achieve the government’s five main goals on areas including growth, health care, crime and green energy, as his party approaches five months in power.
Labour won a sweeping majority in Britain’s lower house of parliament in July, taking power for the first time in 14 years, but has fallen just behind the opposition Conservative Party in some recent opinion polls.
Starmer said he would set out a “plan for change” as the next phase of delivering goals including the fastest sustained growth in the Group of Seven advanced economies, a halving of serious violent crime, lower energy bills and less ill health.
“Mission-led government does not mean picking milestones because they are easy or will happen anyway. It means relentlessly driving real improvements in the lives of working people,” Starmer said in a statement released by his office.
Government ministers and officials would be told to focus on these goals rather than individual ministries’ traditional priorities, Starmer’s office added.
Labour has not had an easy start in office. Ministers say the previous government concealed the extent of problems in areas such as prisons and the immigration system, contributing to what finance minister Rachel Reeves said was a 22 billion pound ($28 billion) black hole in public finances.
Conservatives dispute this and say much of the cost overrun reflected Labour decisions to increase pay for public-sector workers and standard in-year spending variations.
Reeves announced 40 billion pounds of tax rises in her first budget last month — up from around 8 billion pounds in Labour’s pre-election plan — on top of higher borrowing to halt a fall in public investment planned by the previous government.
Businesses have complained that they will bear the brunt of the tax rises and will probably cut investment or jobs and need to raise prices as a result.
Trump wants pardoned real estate developer Charles Kushner to become US ambassador to France
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday he intends to nominate real estate developer Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France.
Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post, calling Charles Kushner “a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker.”
Kushner is the founder of Kushner Companies, a real estate firm. Jared Kushner is a former White House senior adviser to Trump who is married to Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka.
The elder Kushner was pardoned by Trump in December 2020 after pleading guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations.
Prosecutors alleged that after Charles Kushner discovered his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal authorities in an investigation, he hatched a scheme for revenge and intimidation.
Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have the encounter in a New Jersey motel room recorded with a hidden camera and the recording sent to his own sister, the man’s wife, prosecutors said.
Kushner eventually pleaded guilty to 18 counts including tax evasion and witness tampering. He was sentenced in 2005 to two years in prison — the most he could receive under a plea deal, but less than what Chris Christie, the US attorney for New Jersey at the time and later governor and Republican presidential candidate, had sought.
Christie has blamed Jared Kushner for his firing from Trump’s transition team in 2016, and has called Charles Kushner’s offenses “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was US attorney.”
Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other from real estate circles and their children were married in 2009.
France returns ancient artifacts to Ethiopia
- The artifacts currently stored at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa will be delivered to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday
ADDIS ABABA: France on Saturday began the return of some 3,500 archeolo-gical artifacts to Ethiopia, which Paris held since the 1980s for study.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot handed over two prehistoric stone axes, bifaces, and a stone cutter to Ethiopia’s Tourism Minister Selamawit Kassa during a visit to the National Museum in Addis Ababa.
The tools are “samples of nearly 3,500 artifacts from the excavations carried out on the Melka Kunture site,” a cluster of prehistoric sites south of the capital excavated under the direction of a late French researcher, Barrot said.
France and Ethiopia hold a longstanding bilateral agreement to cooperate in archeology and paleontology.
The artifacts stored at the French Embassy in Addis Ababa will be delivered to the Ethiopian Heritage Directorate on Tuesday.
“This is a handover, not a restitution, in that these objects have never been part of French public collections,” said Laurent Serrano, culture adviser at the French Embassy.
“These artifacts, which date back between 1 and 2 million years, were found during excavations carried out over several decades at a site near the Ethiopian capital,” he added.
Concern grows over rise in fatal migrant shipwrecks in Greece
- UNHCR representative: ‘Counting lives lost at sea cannot become a norm’
ATHENS: The UN refugee agency has voiced concern at a rise in deaths of migrants trying to reach Greece by sea in small boats from Turkiye, following two fatal shipwrecks this week.
The UNHCR said in a statement Friday that 17 people have died in such accidents this month, while the total so far this year is at least 45 deaths.
Some 56,000 people have illegally entered Greece since Jan. 1, mostly by sea. That’s a five-year high, and the number has already exceeded government estimates of some 50,000 arrivals by the year’s end in October.
The UNHCR representative in Greece, Maria Clara Martin, said the migrant deaths “highlight the urgent need for long-term responses and safer and credible alternatives” for people fleeing conflict, persecution, violence, or human rights violations.
“Counting lives lost at sea cannot become a norm — we should not get used to it,” she said.
The UN agency said that this week’s two fatal accidents off the eastern Aegean Sea island of Samos, which is close to the Turkish coast, saw a mother lose three of her children, while another survivor lost his wife and daughter.
Greek authorities have attributed this year’s rise in migrant arrivals to conflicts in the Middle East.
While there’s been a surge in people attempting the long and dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya to the southern Greek island of Crete, most migrants pay smuggling gangs to ferry them from Turkiye to the eastern Aegean islands.
On Friday, the Greek coast guard said it arrested a 17-year-old Turkish youth on suspicion of having landed 16 migrants — including three children — on the eastern island of Chios.
Tunisia and Libya have become vital departure points for migrants, often from other African countries, who risk perilous Mediterranean Sea journeys in the hopes of reaching better lives in Europe.
Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt to make the crossing. Italy, whose Lampedusa island is only 150 km from Tunisia, is often their first port of call.
In the latest incident reported on Friday, two unidentified bodies were recovered off Tunisia’s eastern coast after a migrant boat capsized, with one person still missing and 28 rescued.
The boat had set sail from Teboulba, a coastal town some 180 km south of Tunis.
In late October, the bodies of 15 people believed to be migrants were recovered by authorities in Monastir, eastern Tunisia.
And in late September, 36 would-be migrants — mainly Tunisians — were rescued off Bizerte in northern Tunisia.
Since Jan. 1, at least 103 makeshift boats have capsized, and 341 bodies have been recovered off Tunisia’s coast, according to the Interior Ministry.
