Sunday, January 28, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.
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There was quite a bit to take in this past week.
Some of the highlights -
Monday. The 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade was on Monday. The President and Vice President made clear that a top priority for their second term was for the President to sign a new law passed by a Democratic House and Democratic Senate, restoring abortion rights protected by Roe.
The Vice President visited Wisconsin on Monday and both President Biden and Vice President Harris were in Virginia on Tuesday to assert their support for Roe and abortion rights.
It is clear that from now until November, abortion rights will be on the ballot.
Tuesday. Suddenly, there were reports in the press and on social media and television that consumer confidence is growing. These reports proclaim that the effects of Bidenomics are reaching the American public.
Tuesday was the New Hampshire Primary. Only the Republican Primary had meaningful competition -Trump v. Haley.
The turnout was low, 50% lower than in the 2020 primary.
Trump was embraced by about 51% of the Republican voters, while 49% of those voting preferred an alternative. This led to a brouhaha between Trump and Haley, with a Trump meltdown and his declaration of retribution and revenge against Haley donors.
Though the first official Democratic Primary will not occur until Tuesday, February 3rd in South Carolina, President Biden won handily without campaigning in New Hampshire, getting 69.3% of the votes, by write-in votes.
Wednesday. Trump and his opponent Nikki Haley were at each other’s throats following the New Hampshire Primary. Trump continued to boast that he had ended Roe v. Wade and his opponent Nikki Haley promised a national abortion ban.
On Wednesday, President Biden received the endorsement of the United Auto Workers. UAW President Shawn Fain proceeded to call Donald Trump a scab and added “Donald Trump stands against everything we stand for as a union, as a society.”
On Wednesday, the White House said President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden have invited Kate Cox, the Texas woman at the center of a high-profile abortion case, to the State of Union address in March.
Thursday. A study led by researchers from Planned Parenthood of Montana found that in the 18 months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June 2022, 519,981 rapes had occurred in the 14 states which imposed abortion bans from July 2022, and 65,000 babies, conceived in rapes, were born.
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The Academy Award nominations were announced on Thursday. “Barbie,” which was a cultural phenomenon and the top-grossing movie of 2023 and of all time - $1.4 billion dollar gross - was snubbed in the Oscar nominations.
The movie had 8 nominations but Barbie herself - Margot Robbie - wasn’t nominated in the best actress category nor was the movie’s director, Greta Gerwig, given a director nomination.
Friday. On Friday, new economic numbers were revealed, making clear that, as Tresury Secretary Janet Yellen declared, “despite the predictions of many forecasters, there wasn’t a recession in 2023. Instead, inflation has come down significantly and we’ve maintained a healthy labor market. The unemployment rate is near historic lows. And we’ve had the fastest – and fairest – recovery on record.” The economy grew 3.1% in 2023, with 3.3% growth during the last 3 months of the year.
Last year’s expansion tops GDP growth in every year of President Donald Trump’s term, including 2019, when the economy grew by 2.95 percent. Joe and Kamala are earning serious bragging rights on the economy.
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A New York jury on Friday ordered Donald Trump to pay a total of $83.3 million to the columnist E. Jean Carroll for defamation.
The jury awarded Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, $11 million for the damage to her reputation and another $7.3 million for emotional harm. Trump has begun to appeal the verdict but it is unlikely that the verdict will be overturned.
He deposited $5 million in an escrow account for Carroll on Friday, the amount a jury awarded Carroll in an earlier trial, where Trump was found to have forcibly inserted his fingers in her vagina without permission.
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Saturday. Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, calling attention to the antisemitic intention behind Hamas’s barbaric atrocities on October 7 and the painful ‘rising tide’ of antisemitism in the U.S., in the U.K, in Germany and in Australia.
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Sunday.
Joe is always busy.
He is in South Carolina, campaigning for the Primary on February 3rd.
Biden Returns to South Carolina to Show His Determination to Win Back Black Voters in 2024.
The president has been getting mixed reviews from some Black voters in the state that came through for him in 2020, including discontent over his failure to deliver on voting rights legislation and other issues.
Last year, at the outset of Biden’s reelection bid, conflicting views among the same South Carolina Democratic voters whose support had been so crucial to his nomination provided an early warning sign of the challenges he faces as he tries to revive his diverse winning coalition from 2020.
Overall, just 50% of Black adults said they approved of Biden in a December poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. That is compared with 86% in July 2021, a shift that is generating concern about the president’s reelection prospects.
APVoteCast, an extensive national survey of the electorate, also found that support for Republican candidates ticked up slightly among Black voters during the 2022 midterm elections, although Black voters overwhelmingly supported Democrats.
The Biden campaign is running TV ads in South Carolina highlighting Biden initiatives that it hopes will boost enthusiasm among Black voters.
“On his first day in office with a country in crisis, President Biden got to work — for us,” the ad states. “Cutting Black child poverty in half, more money for Black entrepreneurs, millions of new good-paying jobs and he lowered the cost of prescription drugs.”
The campaign is spending more than $270,000 on the ads through the primary, according to tracking data. The Democratic National Committee also launched a six-figure ad campaign across South Carolina and Nevada, which is next on Democratic primary calendar, to boost enthusiasm for Biden among Black and Latino voters. And first lady Jill Biden was in the state on Friday evening to rally voters.
Biden’s campaign has also hired staff in South Carolina to organize ahead of the primary and through the general election, although for nearly 50 years the state has picked a Republican for president.
Meanwhile, a pro-Biden super PAC, Unite the Country, is airing an ad featuring Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina ticking through what he says are major Biden accomplishments such as reducing student loan debt and cutting insulin costs for older people.
It was Clyburn’s 2020 endorsement of his longtime friend Biden that helped the then-candidate score a thundering win in South Carolina’s presidential primary,
In the new ad, Clyburn references his late wife, Emily, who influenced his 2020 endorsement of Biden. She said “that if we wanted to win the presidency, we better nominate Joe Biden,” Clyburn says in the ad. “She was right then, and she’s still right today.”
While Trump has seen slightly improving levels of support among Black and Latino voters, Biden’s team is more concerned that a lack of enthusiasm for Biden will depress turnout among voters who are pivotal to the Democratic coalition.
Biden’s team is using South Carolina as a proving ground, tracking what messages and platforms break through with voters.
South Carolina, where Black voters make up a majority of the Democratic electorate, is now the first meaningful contest in the Democratic presidential race after the party reworked the party’s nominating calendar at Biden’s call. Leading off with Iowa and New Hampshire had long drawn criticism because the states are less diverse than the rest of the country.
Moving up the South Carolina vote was also a political payback to the state and Clyburn for their role in sending Biden to the White House.
A co-chairman of Biden’s reelection campaign, Clyburn has remained one of the president’s most stalwart advocates in Congress, as well as in his home state. Frequently, he reminds people of the same message he delivered in his 2020 endorsement: “We know Joe, and Joe knows us.”
Biden’s decision to campaign in the state “helps solidify South Carolina’s place as the first in the nation primary moving forward,” said Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler.
It also provides Biden an opportunity to re-engage with Black voters who have connections that extend well beyond South Carolina.
“Obviously the diaspora is strong, familial ties are strong with other key swing states in the area like Georgia and North Carolina,” Tyler said.
This is Biden’s second trip to South Carolina this month. He spoke earlier in the month at the pulpit of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where nine Black parishioners were shot to death in 2015 by a white stranger they had invited to join their Bible study. In his speech, Biden denounced the “poison” of white supremacy in America and said such ideology has no place in America, “not today, tomorrow or ever.”
It was meant as a direct contrast with Trump, whom Biden accused of “glorifying” rather than condemning political violence. (Associated Press)
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On late Saturday night, going into Sunday, the New York Times announced “American-led negotiators are edging closer to an agreement in which Israel would suspend its war in Gaza for about two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas, a deal that could be sealed in the next two weeks and would transform the conflict consuming the region.
Negotiators have developed a written draft agreement merging proposals offered by Israel and Hamas in the last 10 days into a basic framework that will be the subject of talks in Paris on Sunday. While there are still important disagreements to be worked out, negotiators are cautiously optimistic that a final accord is within reach, according to U.S. officials who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive talks.
President Biden spoke by phone separately Friday with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, who have served as intermediaries with Hamas, to narrow the remaining differences. He is also sending his C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to Paris for Sunday’s talks with Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials. If Mr. Burns makes enough progress, Mr. Biden may then send his Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, who just returned to Washington, back to the region to help finalize the agreement.”
And so one week ends and another begins.
Joe and Kamala are making progress toward their re-election, and Donald J. Trump is starting to get his comeuppance.
Trump should expect a verdict in Letitia James’s fraud case against Trump and the Trump Organization on Monday or Tuesday.
New York’s Attorney General has asked for $370 million in financial penalties, and asked that Trump be barred from participating in New York’s real estate industry and from running any company in the state.
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I am taking 2 days off. See you on Tuesday.
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