Texas Weekly Online

Menu
Menu
Facebook Twitter Youtube

Author:

Battleground state face-off: Harris, Trump hold dueling rallies miles apart

Battleground state face-off: Harris, Trump hold dueling rallies miles apart

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump held competing rallies at the same Friday night, just a few miles apart in battleground Wisconsin’s largest city. With just four days until Election Day, the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees made their final stops in Wisconsin, where nearly all the latest public opinion polls indicate a margin-of-error race between the two candidates. “We got four days to get this thing done. Four days. No one can sit on the sidelines,” the vice president emphasized to her supporters. “For you who have not yet voted, no judgment, but please get to it when you can.” NOVEMBER SURPRISE: DISMAL JOBS REPORT HANDS TRUMP INSTANT AMMUNITION TO FIRE AT HARRIS The Harris campaign said that over 12,000 packed into the Wisconsin State Fair Park Exposition Center, in West Allis, just yards outside the Milwaukee city limits. Trump, holding court at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum – the same arena where he accepted his party’s presidential nomination during the Republican National Convention in July – told his supporters “I want your damn vote.” VICE PRESIDENT KEEPS HER DISTANCE FROM BIDEN IN FINAL STRETCH TO ELECTION DAY Speaking ahead of Harris at her rally was popular rapper and songwriter Cardi B, who told the crowd she hadn’t planned on voting in the presidential election until Harris replaced President Biden in July atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket. “I wasn’t going to vote this year. … But Kamala Harris joining the race, she changed my mind completely,” the entertainer said. The rallies were Harris and Trump’s final appearances in Wisconsin ahead of Election Day – and it was the second time this week that the major party nominees held rallies on the same day in Wisconsin. “As of this weekend, the way to predict the winner is to flip a coin. It’s that close,” University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor emeritus Mordecai Lee told Fox News. CHECK OUT THE LATEST FOX NEWS POWER RANKINGS IN THE 2024 ELECTION The Democratic and Republican Parties’ vice presidential nominees — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, respectively — have also both crisscrossed Wisconsin, and major surrogates — including former Presidents Obama and Clinton for Harris — have parachuted into the Badger State. Obama returns on Sunday. Both campaigns and their aligned committees and super PACs have also flooded Wisconsin airwaves with TV ads in the closing stretch leading up to Election Day next week. Wisconsin, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, are the three Rust Belt states that make up the Democrats’ so-called “blue wall.” Democrats reliably won all three states for a quarter-century before Trump narrowly captured them in the 2016 election over Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton to win the White House. Four years later, in 2020, President Biden swept all three states by razor-thin margins to put them back in the Democrats’ column and defeat Trump. In Wisconsin, Biden carried the state by just over 20,000 votes out of more than 3.2 million cast. Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

Armed group in Bolivia takes over military post in latest flare-up

Armed group in Bolivia takes over military post in latest flare-up

The takeover is latest chapter in standoff between the Arce government and supporters of ex-president Evo Morales. An armed group in Bolivia has taken over a military post outside the city of Cochabamba while holding some soldiers captive, the armed forces said in a statement, ramping up tensions in the already restive Andean nation. Cochabamba, located in central Bolivia, is home to many supporters of former President Evo Morales. Friday’s standoff over the military post, located about 100 miles (160 km) east of Cochabamba, marks the latest escalation in Bolivia’s increasingly volatile and often violent politics. The military’s statement described the armed group as “irregular”, noting it had also taken control of firearms and ammunition, and stressed that such actions amounted to treason. Authorities urge group to disperse ‘immediately and peacefully’ It urged those responsible for the takeover to “immediately and peacefully” abandon the facility. “The lives of my instructors and soldiers are in danger,” warned an unnamed military official in a recording broadcast on local media. Televised images showed a row of uniformed soldiers with their hands behind their backs, possibly tied, surrounded by members of the armed group. Earlier on Friday, some soldiers stationed in the area as well as their families fled their homes, as police stations shut down to prevent further confrontations. After police and military units sought to remove a key highway blockade that connects Cochabamba with the city of Oruro, some protesters retaliated by launching dynamite at them from nearby hills. Police then hurled tear gas canisters at them. The seizure of the military outpost is seen as a response to efforts earlier this week by security forces under the control of President Luis Arce to dislodge highway blockades organised by supporters of Morales since mid-October. The two leftist leaders, both with roots in Bolivia’s ruling socialist party, have gone from close allies to bitter rivals in recent months as they jockey for position ahead of next year’s presidential election. In an address to the nation on Wednesday, Arce called for an end to the blockades, estimating that the disruptions to key transport routes have already cost the impoverished South American country’s economy over $1.7bn. Adblock test (Why?)

Supreme Court rejects bid by GOP not to count some Pennsylvania ballots

Supreme Court rejects bid by GOP not to count some Pennsylvania ballots

Republicans wanted some so-called provisional ballots to be rejected. The United States Supreme Court has dismissed an effort by Republicans to prevent the counting of provisional ballots in Pennsylvania – a move that would have meant thousands of votes were not tallied. Republicans in the state, which Joe Biden and the Democrats narrowly won in the 2020 US presidential election on their way to victory, had argued that “tens of thousands of votes” could be at stake and ought to have been rejected. Reports suggested that as of late this week, somewhere close to 9,000 ballots out of more than 1.6 million were returned, as they had arrived at election offices around Pennsylvania lacking a secrecy envelope, a signature or a date. The ruling is a victory for voting-rights advocates, who had tried to force various counties, especially Republican-controlled counties, to allow voters to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day if they had realised their mail-in ballot was to be rejected for any of a variety of errors. Provisional ballots generally protect voters from being excluded from the voting process if their eligibility is uncertain on Election Day. The vote is counted once officials confirm eligibility. The Associated Press said the court ruling could apply to thousands of ballots, and possibly more, according to elections experts. ‘The right to vote means the right to have your vote counted’ The Supreme Court justices left in place a decision by Pennsylvania’s top court that elections officials must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected. Democrats had intervened on the side of the activists, arguing that if a defective mail-in ballot could not be counted, that person had not yet voted and a provisional ballot must be counted. Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler and Democratic National Committee spokesperson Rosemary Boeglin said in a joint statement after the Supreme Court acted: “In Pennsylvania and across the country, Trump and his allies are trying to make it harder for your vote to count, but our institutions are stronger than his shameful attacks. [This] decision confirms that, for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted.” Adblock test (Why?)

Arizona top prosecutor investigating Trump’s comments about ‘gunfire’

Arizona top prosecutor investigating Trump’s comments about ‘gunfire’

Arizona’s top prosecutor is investigating whether Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump violated state laws for suggesting that one of his most prominent critics should face “gunfire” in combat. Trump has been widely criticised for comments he made about former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney at a campaign event in Arizona on Thursday. “She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump said of Cheney. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there, with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.” On Friday, speaking to a local TV station, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said Trump might have violated state laws that prohibit death threats. “I have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analysing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws,” Mayes told 12News. Mayes said it was not yet clear if Trump’s comment amounted to protected free speech or a criminal threat. “That’s the question, whether it did cross the line. It’s deeply troubling,” Mayes said. “It is the kind of thing that riles people up, and that makes our situation in Arizona and other states more dangerous.” Cheney endorsed Democrats Cheney, a former top Republican in the US House of Representatives, has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and called the former president “a danger”. Harris told reporters the comments were a sign Trump has become increasingly unhinged. “Anyone who wants to be president of the United States who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president,” she said in Madison, Wisconsin. Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said his remarks were misinterpreted. “President Trump is 100 percent correct that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves,” she said. Trump goes after former VP At a rally in Warren, Michigan, earlier in the day, Trump attacked Harris and Cheney again, and this time his comments included her father – former Vice President Dick Cheney. “They want the Arab American vote. They want to get the Muslim votes, so she picks Liz Cheney whose father virtually destroyed the Middle East,” he said. He added: “It’s easy for her to say she wants to start wars from the comfort of her nice home, or her father’s lavish home, that he got from killing a big portion of the Middle East. You know that, right? You know he headed up a company, that was a big company, a big beneficiary of the wars.” Cheney was vice president under President George W Bush and played a key role in the so-called “war on terror” – the US response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Before he served as vice president, Cheney was the former CEO of Halliburton, a multinational oil services company that won multibillion-dollar contracts with the US military in Iraq. Cheney has also refused to back Trump’s third presidential run and has endorsed Harris. Both Harris and Trump held evening campaigns in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Friday as part of a final push for votes in the crucial swing state. Adblock test (Why?)