Friday, Feb 20th
Last update09:32:12 AM GMT
Political Glance
A Trump-endorsed candidate lost Tuesday to a fellow Republican in a closely watched Texas congressional race, undermining Trump's claims that his endorsement is essential to a candidate's success and emboldening his political opponents ahead of the 2022 elections.
The victory by Texas state legislator Jake Ellzey makes Trump's endorsement look something like a new smartphone in a world of rapidly evolving technology, analysts said.
Democratic lawmakers in Texas’ legislature are fleeing the state in two chartered flights to Washington DC to prevent the passage of Republican-led bills aimed at restricting mail-in ballots and some early voting procedures.
A coalition of members of the Texas state House announced the move in a statement on Monday. Their flight from the state will prevent the legislature from reaching a quorum needed to pass the bills; while in Washington, members of the group will attempt to lobby their counterparts in the nation’s capital to take greater actions to protect voting rights.
Vice President Kamala Harris praised the lawmakers’ courage during remarks to journalists in Detroit, while adding that fighting for voting rights was “as American as apple pie.”
A California event center reportedly pulled the plug on an America First rally after it found out the hosts and featured speakers were Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
“As soon as we found out who the speakers were we immediately canceled it,” Javad Mirtavoosi, manager of the Pacific Hills Banquet & Event Center in Laguna Hills, told the Orange County Register. “We just want to stay clear of that,” he added, without providing any specifics.
The center had simply been told when the space was booked that the venue would be used for a “gathering,” he said.
The event was cancelled Friday, just days before the July 17 rally. Tickets for the rally were reportedly still up for grabs on Saturday, but the controversial hosts now need a new venue.
Former President Donald Trump reportedly praised Adolf Hitler to his then-chief of staff John Kelly, according to a report in The Guardian.
“Well, Hitler did a lot of good things," Trump allegedly saidduring a 2018 trip to Europe to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the Wall Street Journal's Michael Bender writes in his book "Frankly, We Did Win This Election" and reported in The Guardian.
Bender interviewed Trump after he left office and writes that Trump denied the comments.
Despite it being Pride Month, a month-long, global effort to recognize LGBTQ+ members of society, corporations that display a rainbow flag on their logos continue to support political candidates who block or otherwise restrict equal rights based on gender or sexual orientation.
Major companies have been rated by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) 2020 Corporate Equality Index, a measurement that determines workplace policies and “public commitment to the LGBTQ community.” And while a number of companies scored a perfect 100, the index does not take into account political donations. So it did not factor in CVS’s past donations to Republican state Sens. Dawn Buckingham and Bryan Hughes, co-sponsors of SB1646, a bill that would classify gender-affirming care as child abuse, The Guardian reported.
According to a report released Monday by the newsletter Popular Information, CVS also supported North Carolina state senator Ralph Hise, and The Advocate has said that his primary sponsor of S514 is “the most repressive anti-transgender healthcare bill in the nation.”
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon thought Donald Trump was suffering from early-stage dementia and campaigned covertly to remove him from office via the 25th amendment, according to a veteran TV producer.
Ira Rosen, the author of a new memoir about his work for CBS, Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes, was speaking to Skullduggery, a podcast from Yahoo News.
Rosen told hosts Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman his book was “not a dish on this person or that person”, then gave listeners a taste of the dish inside.
He was asked about his relationship with Bannon, which developed around attempts to set up a 60 Minutes interview. “Steve is a big talker, a big gossiper,” Rosen said. “He became a source for a lot of media people in Washington.”
Saying it's time to act "because that's what faith and morality require us to do," President Biden on Tuesday signed four executive actions aimed at advancing racial equity for Americans the White House says have been underserved and left behind.
Biden said Tuesday that the measures follow one of his core campaign promises: to restore "the soul of the nation," as he often said during the presidential race.
"Our soul will be troubled," he said, "as long as systemic racism is allowed to exist."
In announcing the actions, Biden cited the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer last May, which touched off demonstrations in cities across the United States. Biden called the killing "the knee on the neck of justice," and said that because of it, "the ground has shifted. It changed minds and mindsets."
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