RALEIGH, N.C.: Vice President Kamala Harris announced a sweeping set of economic proposals on Friday meant to cut taxes and lower the cost of groceries, housing and other essentials for many Americans.
“Look, the bills add up,” she declared, trying to address the financial concerns that are at the top of voters’ minds and that Republican Donald Trump is attempting to blame on her.
During a speech in the battleground state of North Carolina, Harris said that “building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency” as she promoted her plan for a federal ban on price gouging by food producers and grocers. She also proposed $25,000 in down payment assistance for certain first-time homebuyers and tax incentives for builders of starter homes.
“Every day across our nation, families talk about their plans for the future, their ambitions, their aspirations for themselves, for their children. And they talk about how they’re going to be able to actually achieve them financially, because, look, the bills add up,” Harris said. “Food, rent, gas, back to school clothes, prescription medications. After all that, for many families, there’s not much left at the end of the month.”
She stressed tax breaks for families, as well as middle- and lower-income people, promising to expand the child tax credit to up to $3,600 — and $6,000 for children in their first year of life. The vice president also wants to enlarge the earned income tax credit to cover people in lower-income jobs without children — which the campaign estimates would cut their effective tax rate by $1,500 — and lower health insurance premiums through the Affordable Care Act.
Overall, the plans represent a continuation of many Biden administration priorities.
Harris isn’t looking for any radical departures from President Joe Biden, who stepped down from the race last month and endorsed her. Still, the vice president has embraced a dash of economic populism, shifting away from Biden’s emphasis on job creation and infrastructure to matters more closely tied to easing the cost of living -– food prices, housing costs and tax breaks for families.
Much of what she’s proposing would require congressional approval, which is far from assured in the current political environment, though, and Harris’ campaign has offered scant details on how to pay for the ideas.
The vice president is seeking to blunt Trump’s attacks on her. He responded to her speech by posting on his social media account, “Kamala will implement SOVIET style price controls.” He gave his own speech Thursday, during which he displayed popular grocery store items meant to represent the high cost of food.
Some of Trump’s economic advisers offered further rebuttals to Harris’ plans before she spoke on Friday, with Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the former president’s campaign, calling them representative of a “socialist and authoritarian model.”
Kevin Hassett, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump administration, called it “completely preposterous” for the government to play a role in setting food prices, a reference to Harris’ proposed federal ban on “corporate price-gouging” on food.
In her speech, Harris offered stark contrasts with Trump’s economic proposals, including his call for steep tariffs on foreign goods. She said that her opponent “wants to impose what is, in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other countries.”
“It will mean higher prices on just about every one of your daily needs,” Harris said. “A Trump tax on gas, a Trump tax on food, a Trump tax on clothing, a Trump tax on over-the-counter medication.”
She added, “At this moment, when everyday prices are too high, he will make them even higher.”
Year-over-year inflation has reached its lowest level in more than three years, but food prices are still 21 percent above where they were three years ago. A Labor Department report this week showed that nearly all of July’s inflation reflected higher rental prices and other housing costs, a trend that, according to real-time data, is easing. As a result, housing costs should rise more slowly in the coming months, contributing to lower inflation.
Harris’ grocery pricing proposal would instruct the Federal Trade Commission to penalize “big corporations” that engage in price spikes and it singles out a lack of competition in the meat-packing industry for driving up meat prices.
Monica Wallace, a county clerk who attended Harris’ speech, called the vice president’s economic plans “what we need.”
“I have a mother who is receiving services, and just in food stamps alone, she’s still not able to afford food that will last her,” Wallace said.
Comparing Harris to Trump, Wallace said she sees the vice president as someone “definitely for the middle and lower class,” whereas the former president is “for the people who make the money to do any and everything that they want.”
Polls nonetheless show that Americans are more likely to trust Trump over Harris when it comes to handling the economy: Some 45 percent say Trump is better positioned to handle the economy, while 38 percent say that about Harris. About 1 in 10 trust neither Harris nor Trump to better handle the economy, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.
Riding a resurgence of enthusiasm since the Democrats’ campaign reboot, Harris has embarked on a battleground state blitz in recent weeks that has broadened the number of races viewed as competitive by strategists. In North Carolina, Democrats are navigating renewed energy with caution in an economically dynamic state that hasn’t been won by a Democratic presidential candidate since Barack Obama in 2008.
Gov. Roy Cooper told Friday’s crowd, “I have that 2008 feeling.”
“That’s the last time we voted for a Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama,” Cooper said.
North Carolina State University political science professor Steven Greene said that the state “went from a situation where Joe Biden was almost surely going down in defeat here, whereas Kamala Harris has a very real chance of winning,”
Deborah Holder, a 68-year-old Raleigh resident who runs six McDonalds restaurants, said of the vice president, “Her culture is something that is going to be a huge strength for her, because she’ll be able to look at the rest of us not just as her constituents, but as people that she has dealt with in all walks of life,”
Harris is trying to strike a balance in defining her own image and economic agenda while still giving credit for the Biden administration’s track record. Her speech in North Carolina came a day after the president was asked if Harris might distance herself from his economic record and responded, “She’s not going to.”
In their first joint speaking event since Biden dropped out, he and Harris were in Maryland on Thursday where they showcased successful negotiations to lower prices for Medicare recipients on 10 prescription drugs.
But Harris spent far more time talking about Trump than Biden in North Carolina, promising “to build an America where everyone’s work is rewarded and talents are valued, where we work with labor and business to strengthen the American economy.”
“And where everyone has the opportunity,” she said “not just to get by, but to get ahead.”
Harris offers proposals to cut food and housing costs, trying to blunt Trump’s economic attacks
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Harris offers proposals to cut food and housing costs, trying to blunt Trump’s economic attacks
Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram jihadists
N’DJAMENA: Chad’s military inflicted “many dead and wounded” in air strikes against Boko Haram jihadists, President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said on Thursday.
“We carried out several air strikes on enemy positions that resulted in many dead and wounded,” Deby told reporters in the Lake Chad region, without giving specific numbers.
Deby, who gave an interview in full military fatigues, said he had “personally” launched the counter-attack against Boko Haram, which targeted the Chadian army in an attack last month in the western region, close to the border with Nigeria.
The Chad government had vowed to “obliterate” Boko Haram when launching its operation in late October after the jihadists killed around 40 people and wounded dozens more in a raid on a military garrison.
The operation “aims not only to secure our peaceful population” but also to “hunt down, root out and obliterate the capability of Boko Haram and its affiliates to cause harm,” interim Prime Minister Abderahim Bireme Hamid told reporters last week.
In a vast expanse of water and swamps, the Lake Chad region’s countless islets serve as hideouts for jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram and its offshoot Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), who carry out regular attacks on the country’s army and civilians.
Chad and its neighbors Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon set up a multinational force of some 8,500 soldiers in the area in 2015 to tackle the jihadists.
Boko Haram launched an insurgency in Nigeria in 2009, leaving more than 40,000 people dead, and the organization has since spread to neighboring countries.
In March 2020, the Chadian army suffered its biggest ever one-day losses in the region, when around 100 troops died in a raid on the lake’s Bohoma peninsula.
Undocumented immigrants in US ‘terrified’ as Trump returns
- Trump repeatedly rail against illegal immigrants during the election campaign
The 22-year-old, a graduate student in biomedical engineering who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, is haunted by the incoming president’s promises of mass deportations.
“I was terrified,” said Palazuelos, reflecting on the moment he heard the news.
“I am in fear of being deported, of losing everything that I’ve worked so hard for, and, most importantly, being separated from my family.”
Born in Mexico, he has lived in the United States since he was four years old. He is one of the country’s so-called “Dreamers,” a term for migrants who were brought into the country as children and never obtained US citizenship.
Throughout the election campaign, Palazuelos heard Trump repeatedly rail against illegal immigrants, employing violent rhetoric about those who “poison the blood” of the United States.
Trump has never specified how he intends to go about his plan for mass deportation, which experts warn would be extremely complicated and expensive.
“What do mass deportations mean? Who does that include?” Palazuelos asked.
“Does it include people like me, Dreamers, people that came here from a very young age, that had no say?“
Compounding the stress, the southwestern state of Arizona has just approved by referendum a law allowing state police to arrest illegal immigrants. That power was previously reserved for federal border police.
If the proposition is deemed constitutional by courts, Palazuelos fears becoming the target of heightened racial profiling.
“What makes someone a suspect of being here illegally, whether they don’t speak English?” he asked.
“My grandma, she’s a United States citizen, however, she doesn’t speak English very well. Meanwhile, I speak English, but is it because of the color of my skin that I would possibly be suspected or detained?“
Jose Patino, 35, also feels a sense of “dread” and “sadness.” His situation feels more fragile than ever.
Born in Mexico and brought to the United States aged six, he now works for Aliento, a community organization helping undocumented immigrants.
He personally benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigrant policy brought in by Barack Obama, offering protections and work permits for those in his situation.
But for Patino, those safeguards will expire next year, and Trump has promised to end the DACA program.
Indeed, Trump already tried to dismantle it during his previous term, but his decree was scuppered by a US Supreme Court decision, largely on procedural grounds.
Faced with this uncertainty, Patino is considering moving to a state that would refuse to report him to federal authorities, such as Colorado or California.
He remembers well the struggle of being undocumented in his twenties — a time when he could not obtain a basic job like flipping burgers in McDonald’s, and could not apply for a driver’s license or travel for fear of being deported.
“I don’t personally want to go back to that kind of life,” Patino said.
For him, Trump’s electoral win is not just scary, but an insult.
“We’re contributing to this country. So that’s the hard part: me following the rules, working, paying my taxes, helping this country grow, that’s not enough,” he said.
“So it’s frustrating, and it’s hurtful.”
Patino understands why so many Hispanic voters, often faced with economic difficulties, ended up voting for Trump.
Those who are here legally “believe that they’re not going to be targeted,” he said.
“A lot of Latinos associate wealth and success with whiteness, and they want to be part of that group and to be included, rather than be outside of it and be marginalized and be considered ‘the other,’” he said.
Still, he is angry with his own uncles and cousins who, having once been undocumented themselves, voted for Trump.
“We cannot have a conversation together, because it’s going to get into argument and probably into a fight,” he said.
Putin says Ukraine must remain neutral for there to be peace
- “If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” Putin said
- Putin said Russia had recognized Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders based on the understanding that it would be neutral
SOCHI, Russia: President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Ukraine should remain neutral for there to be a chance for peace, adding that the borders of Ukraine should be in accordance with the wishes of the people living in Russian-claimed territory.
“If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” Putin said.
Putin said Russia had recognized Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders based on the understanding that it would be neutral. The US-led NATO military alliance has repeatedly said that Ukraine would one day join.
If Ukraine was not neutral, it would be “constantly used as a tool in the wrong hands and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine after more than two and a half years of war. Putin on
June 14
set out his terms for an end to the conflict: Ukraine would have to drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from all of the territory of the regions claimed by Russia.
Ukraine rejects those conditions as tantamount to surrender and President Volodymyr Zelensky has presented a “victory plan” for which he has requested additional Western support.
“We are determined to create conditions for a long-term settlement so that Ukraine is an independent, sovereign state, and not an instrument in the hands of third countries, and not used in their interests,” Putin said.
Asked about the future borders of Ukraine, Putin said: “The borders of Ukraine should be in accordance with the sovereign decisions of people who live in certain territories and which we call our historical territories.”
Ukraine says that it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory though even US generals say that such an aim would take massive resources that Ukraine currently does not have.
Russian attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia kills four, wounds 40
- Russian forces have stepped up their attacks in Zaporizhzhia in recent days
- “The death toll as a result of Russia’s strikes on Zaporizhzhia has risen to four,” the emergency services said
KYIV: Russian aerial attacks on the frontline city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday killed at least four people and wounded another 40, including children, officials said.
Another two were killed in a separate attack on the eastern Donetsk region, strikes that followed a wave of overnight drone attacks, including on the capital Kyiv.
Russian forces have stepped up their attacks in Zaporizhzhia in recent days and are making rapid advances in the industrial territory of Donetsk, both of which the Kremlin says are Russian territory.
“The death toll as a result of Russia’s strikes on Zaporizhzhia has risen to four,” the emergency services said in a statement on social media.
“Forty were wounded, including four children,” governor Ivan Fedorov said in a separate statement.
Officials said earlier that a hospital had been damaged in Zaporizhzhia, which had a pre-war population of more than 700,000 people and lies around 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the nearest Russian positions.
A four-month old girl and boys aged one, five and 15 were wounded in the attacks, Fedorov said.
Officials posted images showing rescue workers pulling victims from the rubble and holding back distressed locals from getting to the destroyed buildings.
The strikes later in the Donetsk region killed two people and wounded five more in the village of Mykolaivka, the region’s governor Vadym Filashkin announced on social media.
“One of the shells hit a five-story building and four buildings nearby were damaged,” he wrote on social media.
He posted a photo of a Soviet-era residential building on fire, dozens of its windows blown out with debris littering the ground beneath it.
Grenade attack targeted Israeli embassy in Denmark: report
- The grenades landed on the terrace of a house adjacent to the embassy
- Two Swedes aged 17 and 19 have been detained
COPENHAGEN: Israel’s embassy in Denmark was likely the target of grenades thrown nearby last month, Danish media reported Thursday, citing the pre-indictment of two teenage suspects detained in the case.
Two Swedes aged 17 and 19 went before a judge in Copenhagen who remanded them for another 20 days.
Their pre-indictment, citing investigations, said they were suspected of violating terrorism laws by “throwing hand grenades at the Israeli embassy in Denmark on October 2,” the Ritzau news agency reported.
The grenades landed on the terrace of a house adjacent to the embassy, where they exploded, causing no injuries.
The two suspects were arrested at a Copenhagen railway station hours later initially on suspicion of violating gun laws.
They have since been accused of a terror offense and police, who have arrested a man in his fifties in connection with the incident, are also looking for other accomplices.
“It makes no sense to imagine this is an act they committed alone. There must be accomplices,” Ritzau quoted prosecutor Soren Harbo as saying at the start of the hearing.
The teens deny the accusations.
The case comes against a backdrop of severe tensions in the Middle East, with conflict in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as increasing gang violence with Danish criminal gangs suspected of recruiting underage Swedes to settle scores.
