Tag: Speech

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Politics

Endorses successor Kathy Hochul in farewell speech

Endorses successor Kathy Hochul in farewell speech

This image made from video provided by the New York Governor’s Office shows New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo giving a farewell speech, Monday, Aug. 23, 2021 in New York.

The New York Governor’s Office | AP

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday said he believes his successor, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, will “step up to the challenge” just hours before he was set to step down from his job of 10 years amid a sexual harassment scandal.

“We all wish her success,” Cuomo said of Hochul at the end of a farewell speech, in which he also decried the politicization of the numerous harassment claims against him and touted his administration’s accomplishments and handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The truth will [come] out in time, of that I am confident,” Cuomo said, speaking directly to camera in the roughly 15-minute video address.

Hochul, also a Democrat, who will become the state’s first female governor after a private swearing-in ceremony after midnight Tuesday, The Associated Press reported.

The speech came after a Cuomo aide told media outlets that the embattled governor “has no interest in running for office again.”

“You know me. I am a fighter, and my instinct is to fight this because it is unfair and unjust in my mind,” Cuomo said. “But you also know that I love New York, and I serve you … and in this moment, I believe the right thing is that my service come first.”

“Prolonging the situation could only cause governmental paralysis,” he said.

Cuomo, 63, made the shocking announcement of his resignation two weeks earlier, after vigorously defending himself against numerous allegations of sexual harassment compiled in a damning report from the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Cuomo had initially appeared poised to try to cling to his title after the damning report came out, even as many of his political allies, including President Joe Biden, called on him to step down. But in mid-August, Cuomo said that, “given the circumstances, the best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to government.”

His departure will not stop an impeachment investigation launched by New York state lawmakers, who restarted their probe days after being heavily criticized for deciding to suspend it following Cuomo’s resignation announcement.

New York Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul speaks during a news conference the day after Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation at the New York State Capitol, in Albany, New York, August 11, 2021.

Cindy Schultz | Reuters

At least five district attorney’s offices around the state have also begun probes of possible crimes by Cuomo against some of his accusers. A staffer for Cuomo has filed a criminal complaint against him, the Albany County Sheriff’s Office said earlier this month.

“Between [his time as Housing and Urban Development secretary], [New York attorney general and] Governor, Andrew Cuomo has spent nearly 25 years in public service. And the way he does it, it’s 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” Cuomo’s close aide, Melissa DeRosa, said in a statement to NBC News.

“He looks forward to spending time with his family and has a lot of fishing to catch up on. He is exploring a number of options, but has no interest in running for office again,” DeRosa’s statement said.

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Politics

In Resignation Speech, Cuomo Makes a Final Play to Protect His Legacy

In Resignation Speech, Cuomo Makes a Last Play to Preserve His Legacy

But as it became clearer that the State Assembly intended to seek impeachment, the situation became less tenable. Under New York rules, if the congregation is charged, a governor must resign before a Senate trial has reached a verdict. Mr. Cuomo, used to the trappings of power, would have been reluctant to stand trial as a private individual, say people who know him.

“Today was about giving him 14 days to figure out the next phase of his life, as opposed to an impeachment vote that would have triggered his immediate removal from his actual home and the Executive Chamber,” said State Senator Todd Kaminsky, a Nassau. Democrat district.

“He wants to go on his own terms and he wants it to be as convenient and unembarrassing as possible, and he bought himself 14 days for it,” he added. “I don’t think voters think any differently about the deeds, the disgusting behavior in the attorney general’s report.”

When asked whether Mr. Cuomo could run again, Mr. Kaminsky replied: “I absolutely don’t think so.”

Just before Mr Cuomo spoke on Tuesday, his lawyer Rita Glavin made a lengthy presentation criticizing the news media and explaining the details of the report.

After she laid the foundation, Mr. Cuomo came on his own defense. The political environment was to blame for his predicament, he claimed.

Even on the verge of stepping down, Mr Cuomo seemed to believe that if he had only had more time, he could have won in the public opinion court.

“This is about politics, and our political system is now too often driven to extremes: rash has replaced reasonableness, loudness has replaced solidity,” he said. “If I could communicate the facts through the frenzy, New Yorkers would understand. I believe that.”

MP Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat, compared Mr Cuomo’s trajectory to a Greek tragedy.

“It is the steepest collapse in the history of government policy,” he said. “And as with all Greek tragedies, hubris is the focus.”

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Politics

Biden condemns Trump’s ‘Massive Lie’ in main voting rights speech in Philadelphia

Biden condemns Trump's 'Big Lie' in major voting rights speech in Philadelphia

President Joe Biden on Tuesday delivered a major speech on voting rights in Philadelphia, slamming his predecessor’s “Big Lie” claim that the 2020 election was stolen. 

“It’s clear, for those who challenge the results or question the integrity of the election, no other election has ever been held under such scrutiny or such high standards. The ‘Big Lie’ is just that: a big lie,” Biden said at the National Constitution Center, just steps away from Independence Hall.

The speech comes as his administration faces growing pressure from civil rights activists and other Democrats to do more to combat attacks on voting rights, an issue that Biden called “the most significant test” of American democracy since the Civil War. 

Biden blasted former President Donald Trump’s claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the 2020 election, a claim that has pushed GOP leaders to enact a flurry of new voting laws in key states, including Florida and Georgia. Critics argue the new laws are discriminatory and restrict access to the ballot. 

The president directly denounced these efforts by GOP-controlled legislatures as a “Jim Crow assault” and compared them to behaviors seen in autocracies around the world. 

“To me, this is simple. This is election subversion. It’s the most dangerous threat to voting in the integrity of free and fair elections in our history,” Biden said. “They want the ability to reject the final count and ignore the will of the people if their preferred candidate loses.”

Protecting voting rights

Biden pressed for the passage of federal voting rights legislation during his remarks, saying that the fight to protect voting rights begins with passing the For The People Act.  

“That bill would help end voter suppression in states, get dark money out of politics, give voice to people, create fair district maps and end partisan political gerrymandering,” Biden said. 

He criticized Republicans for opposing the sweeping Democratic voting rights and government ethics bill, which failed to pass in the Senate last month after Republicans deployed the filibuster.

Biden also underscored the importance of passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would “restore and expand voting protections and prevent voter suppression.” He pressured Republican lawmakers to support such Democratic legislation that would protect voting rights. 

“We’ll ask my Republican friends in Congress and states and cities and counties to stand up, for God’s sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote,” Biden said. 

The president criticized the Supreme Court’s “harmful” decisions that weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, noting that the court first gutted a key provision of the act in 2013 and on July 1 it upheld two Republican-backed Arizona voting laws that Democrats say violate the act. 

The court has also limited the ability to “prove intentional racial discrimination,” according to a White House memo sent before the speech, making it difficult for advocacy groups and the Department of Justice to combat restrictive voter laws.

Biden called on Congress to repair the “damage done” by passing voting rights legislation.

Preparing for the midterms

Biden warned that the U.S. will “face another test in 2022” during the midterm elections, adding that the nation needs to prepare for voter suppression and election subversion. 

“We have to prepare now. As I said time and again, no matter what, you can never stop the American people from voting. They will decide, and the power must always be with the people. That’s why just like we did in 2020, we have to prepare for 2022,” Biden said. 

As of mid-June, at least 17 states have enacted laws that restrict access to voting, with more being considered, according to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. 

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia signed a restrictive election bill into law in March after it was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature. The law requires voters to provide identification for mail-in ballots and prohibits people from giving food and water to voters waiting in line, punitive steps that critics say could harm turnout in minority communities. 

Biden’s administration has turned to the courts in response. The Department of Justice sued the state of Georgia on June 25, arguing that the election bill infringed on the rights of Black Georgians. 

Passing new legislation in Congress to protect voting rights would likely require a change to filibuster rules, especially as Democrats hold a razor-thin majority in the Senate. But Biden has backed reforming rather than eliminating the filibuster, making the future of new voting laws uncertain. 

Looking beyond Washington

Now, with Democrats’ legislative efforts stalled, the White House is beginning to look outside of Washington for ways to combat the wave of new voting restrictions. 

Biden has had several meetings at the White House with civil rights groups, who pushed the administration to keep fighting for voting rights despite resistance from Republicans. The groups have opposed the Republican-backed voting restrictions, which critics say are aimed at Hispanic, Black and younger voters. 

Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been tasked to lead the administration’s efforts to protect voting rights, also recently announced a new $25 million investment by the Democratic National Committee to expand its program that will help boost voter engagement in the upcoming midterm elections. 

During the first few months of his presidency, Biden also signed an executive order directing agencies to promote voter access. This includes developing better methods of distributing voting information and increasing opportunities to participate in the electoral process, which includes voters with distinct needs, such as service members, people with disabilities and tribal communities, among others.

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Politics

Supreme Courtroom guidelines for Pennsylvania cheerleader in class free speech case

Supreme Court rules for Pennsylvania cheerleader in school free speech case

Microphones placed in front of the US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, the United States, on Tuesday, November 10, 2020.

Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a Pennsylvania high school violated the First Amendment rights of a cheerleader by punishing her for using vulgar language criticized on social media by the school.

The 8-1 statement upheld the lower court rulings against Mahanoy Area High School’s decision to suspend then-student Brandi Levy from her junior cheerleading roster for a year via two Snapchat posts she sent off-school .

The judges had weighed whether a 1969 Supreme Court ruling that gave public schools the ability to regulate certain idioms was applicable to a case where the speech was off campus.

In its ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Court said, “Courts must be more skeptical of a school’s efforts to regulate off-campus language as it may mean the student cannot make this type of speech at all.”

“The school itself has an interest in protecting a student’s unpopular expression, especially when the expression is off-campus,” because “America’s public schools are the kindergartens of democracy,” wrote Judge Stephen Breyer, who wrote the majority opinion.

Judge Clarence Thomas, who turned 73 on Wednesday, disagreed.

Levy said in a statement, “The school has gone too far and I’m glad the Supreme Court approves.”

“I was frustrated, I was 14 years old and I expressed my frustration the way teenagers do today. Young people need the ability to express themselves without worrying about being punished in school,” said Levy.

“I never imagined that a simple snap would turn into a Supreme Court case, but I’m proud that my family and I stood up for the rights of millions of public school students.”

Brandi Levy, a former cheerleader at Mahanoy Area High School in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, poses in an undated photo taken by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Danna Singer / ACLU | REUTER’S METHOD

Levy, whose name was abbreviated to “BL” in court records, did not make it into her school’s cheerleading team as a high school student in May 2017, but instead won a place on the junior college roster.

While at a Cocoa Hut convenience store, she posted two messages on Snapchat to vent her frustration at missing out on college and not getting the position she’d been on the softball team the school wanted.

“F — school f — softball f — cheer f — everything,” she wrote in the first snap, which showed a picture of Levy and a friend with their middle fingers raised.

The second picture had a caption that read, “Love, like me and [another student] I am told that we need a year jv before we go to college, but that is[t] doesn’t matter to others? “This post also featured an upside-down smiley face emoji.

The news was reported to the cheerleading coaches and principal at Mahanoy City School, who found they had broken the rules and suspended Levy from the squad for the coming year.

The Supreme Court’s opinion found that the 3rd District Court of Appeal had ruled in favor of Levy on the grounds that the 1969 decision – Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District – “did not apply because schools did not have a special license to regulate student speaking off campus. “

But the Supreme Court on Wednesday disagreed with that view.

Instead, it noted that “Although public schools may have a particular interest in regulating some students’ off-campus speech, the particular interests offered by the school are insufficient to reflect BL’s interest in freedom of expression in this case overcome.”

Breyer wrote that there were three characteristics of the language of off-campus students that influenced a school’s ability to regulate it, as opposed to on-campus language.

The first characteristic, according to the court, is that a school is rarely “in loco parentis” – instead of the parents – when a student is off campus.

Its second characteristic is that schools have a “heavy burden” justifying off-campus language rules, otherwise they would be technically able to intervene in what a student is saying throughout the 24-hour day.

The third characteristic, wrote Breyer, is that schools, as “kindergartens of democracy”, should have an interest in protecting unpopular expressions of opinion, “especially when the expression of opinion takes place off-campus.”

David Cole, the American Civil Liberties Union legal director who campaigned in the Supreme Court on Levy’s case, said, “Protecting the freedom of young people to speak outside of school is vital, and this is a great victory for the freedom of speech Millions of students attending our country’s public schools. “

“The school has asked the court in this case to punish speech that it considers ‘disruptive’ regardless of where it occurs,” said Cole in a statement. “If the court had accepted this argument, it would have jeopardized all manner of speech by young people, including what they said about politics, school operations and general teenage frustrations.”

“The message of this judgment is clear – freedom of speech is for everyone, and that includes public school students,” said Cole.

But Thomas, in his solitary disagreement, wrote that “the majority fail to consider whether schools will often have more, not less, authority to discipline students who broadcast language on social media.”

Thomas explained that since language spoken on social media can be seen and shared on campus, “there is often a greater tendency to harm the school environment than face-to-face conversation off campus.”

He also wrote that the majority could not explain why they were breaking a previous rule that schools can regulate language off campus “as long as it tends to harm the school, its faculty or students, or its programs”.

The “basis” of majority decision-making is independent of anything stable, “wrote Thomas,” and courts (and schools) will almost certainly not know what exactly the opinion of the court means today. “

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Business

Twitter Calls on Indian Authorities to Respect Free Speech

Twitter Calls on Indian Government to Respect Free Speech

NEW DELHI – Twitter on Thursday opposed India’s increasingly persistent efforts to control online language, urged the government to respect freedom of expression and criticized the country’s police force “intimidating” tactics.

The statement comes as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Indian government faces mounting pressure to deal with a devastating second wave of the coronavirus. Many of these complaints have been broadcast on Twitter and elsewhere online.

The government has tried hard to get the narrative back. On Thursday, Twitter said it had received a notice of non-compliance with Indian information technology laws. The notice asked the company to remove content critical of the government’s handling of the coronavirus and farmers’ protests, including some published by journalists, activists and politicians.

Under Indian law, Twitter executives in India could face up to seven years’ imprisonment if the company fails to follow government instructions to remove content it deems subversive or a threat to public order and national security adheres to.

In its statement, the San Francisco-based social media service said it plans to persuade India’s leaders to change new regulations that give authorities more leverage over online platforms.

“At the moment we are concerned about recent events regarding our workforce in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve,” the statement said.

Citing the new information technology regulations, he added, “We have concerns, along with many in civil society in India and around the world, about the police’s use of intimidation tactics in response to enforcement of our global terms of use, as well as core elements of the new IT rules. “

Twitter’s statement came just days after officers from an elite counter-terrorism police force visited the company’s New Delhi offices. They protested the way the company had labeled posts by high-ranking officials from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

These officials had posted documents on Twitter that provided evidence that opposition politicians were planning to use the country’s coronavirus crisis as a political stick. Twitter described them as “manipulated media” in response to allegations that the documents were forged.

Even before the coronavirus hit, Mr Modi’s government and the BJP had taken ever stronger steps to contain disagreements in the 1.4 billion country.

In February, Twitter blocked over 500 accounts and removed an unspecified number of other accounts in India after the government accused those accounts of making inflammatory remarks about Mr Modi in connection with protests by angry farmers. Farmers have been camping outside of New Delhi for at least six months to protest the farming laws.

Twitter previously said it would not take action against accounts owned by media organizations, journalists, activists or politicians, and it did not believe the order to block those accounts was “in accordance with Indian law.”

However, on Thursday the company admitted that it had withheld some unverified accounts in these categories from India despite believing the content was “legitimate free speech” under Indian and international law. The company announced last week that it was reopening its review process to allow government officials, media organizations, journalists and activists to apply for a blue tick, a token of credibility online, a process that has been on hold since 2017.

In April, Mr Modi’s government ordered Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to remove dozens of social media posts that were critical of how the pandemic was being handled. The order was addressed to around 100 opposition politicians and included calls for Mr. Modi to step down.

Under the new Internet rules in India, social media companies are required to appoint India-based executives who may be criminally liable for violations and create systems to track and identify the “first author” of posts or messages sent by as The government is classified as “offensive”.

The rules apply to a wide variety of media, including digital news agencies, streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, and social media platforms. According to the regulations announced in February, social media companies were given Tuesday to identify the executives who could be held liable. Streaming services and news agencies were not affected by this particular rule.

Twitter called the requirement “dangerous overreach that is inconsistent with open, democratic principles”. On Wednesday, WhatsApp sued the Indian government in a highly unusual move by Facebook’s own messaging platform, arguing that the guidelines were unconstitutional. Digital rights advocates and groups say the rules could fundamentally change the way Indians use the internet.

“The IT rules violate India’s democratic framework and constitutional guarantees,” said Apar Gupta, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, a rights group. “Several requirements among them are unconstitutional and undermine freedom of expression and privacy for millions of Internet users in India.”

Understand India’s Covid Crisis

India isn’t the only country that has tried to enforce stricter regulations on the internet. The steps have raised questions about how freedom of speech can be reconciled with security and privacy.

In the US, politicians have targeted big tech companies like Facebook and Amazon to influence what people buy and read and how companies treat users’ personal information. European officials are working on new laws that would give the government more powers to remove misinformation and other material deemed toxic.

On Thursday, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, the Indian branch of government that pressured Twitter to remove material, released a response to the companies’ statement on Koo, a competing service.

“The new rules are only intended to prevent abuse and abuse of social media,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, said in the statement. “The government welcomes criticism, including the right to ask questions.”

In a separate statement on Thursday, the ministry criticized Twitter for its comments, calling them “completely unfounded, false and an attempt to defame India”. The protection of freedom of expression in India is not the “prerogative” of the company.

Last week, the government urged social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, to remove all content related to coronavirus variants in India, especially those that indicated the variants were spreading in other countries. Twitter confirmed that it had received the request but had not removed the posts until Thursday evening. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At least one of the variants first seen in India, known as B.1.617.2, now outperforms all other versions of the virus in the UK, scientists in the UK have said, and is present in at least 48 other countries. The government request called this claim “totally wrong”.

Free speech attorneys said the government has no legal basis to ask social media platforms to remove this content, which could apply to news reports and major scientific discussions about the virus in India, where it continues to kill thousands of people every day The country’s health system far beyond its borders.

“The new rules are like a choke collar,” said Devdutta Mukhopadhyay, a lawyer working on freedom of speech in India. “The government will pull on it if it wants to.”

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Entertainment

Dua Lipa’s Highly effective BRITs Speech Calls For NHS Pay Rise

LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 11: Dua Lipa accepts the award for Best Female Solo Artist at the 2021 BRIT Awards at the O2 Arena on May 11, 2021 in London, England. (Photo by David M. Benett / Dave Benett / Getty Images)

Dua Lipa just won Best Solo Artist at this year’s BRIT Awards, and her acceptance speech was pretty memorable. After a solid performance medley of all of her best routes that was basically a tribute to the train (with Lipa wearing Vivienne Westwood from head to toe, of course), Lipa went a step further: she called Boris Johnson herself to pay on NHS- Employees fair. We told you it was big.

After winning her award, Lipa said, “The last time I was up here and received this award in 2018, I said I wanted to see more women on these stages and I’m so proud we did that three years later see happen and it’s really a great honor to be part of this wave of women in music. ”

She went on to mention the NHS after dedicating her second award to Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, a British nurse and lecturer. She told the audience: “It is very good to clap for her, but we have to pay her and so I think what we should.” We should all give a massive applause and give Boris the message that we all support a fair wage increase for our front. “

Check out Dua’s powerful speech below.

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Entertainment

Watch John Legend’s Full Duke College Graduation Speech

Watch John Legend's Full Duke University Commencement Speech

John Legend prepares our graduates for success for 2021. On May 2, the “Wild” singer delivered a powerful speech to Duke University graduates. This is John’s first return to a large audience since February 2020 and he prepared some precious words of wisdom especially for the occasion. Everyone should take his advice to heart.

John admitted the 2021 class didn’t have the typical college experience. “I feel your pain: you lost something that you won’t get back. I’m not going to gloss over it – it sucks,” he said. “Last year you had to pause to see yourself not only in competition with one another, but also in community with one another.”

He continued, “We all had to slow down, social distance, cover our faces, stop filling our days with maximum productivity, and just protect each other, keep each other alive, take care of each other.” John encouraged graduates to remember that “Love should be your North Star. Let it guide you.” See his full remarks above.

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Politics

Putin Warns Biden in Speech

Putin Warns Biden in Speech

The designation of extremism against Mr Navalny’s organization, which a Moscow court will examine in a secret trial from next week, would effectively drive Russia’s strongest opposition movement underground and could lead to years of imprisonment for pro-Navalny activists.

Meanwhile, Mr. Navalny is on a hunger strike in a Russian prison hospital and insists that he be seen by doctors of his choice. A lawyer who visited him, Vadim Kobzev, reported Tuesday that Mr Navalny’s arms were punctured and injured after three nurses tried and failed to put him on an IV drip six times.

“If you saw me now, you’d laugh,” said a letter from Mr Navalny that his team posted on social media. “A skeleton swaying in its cell.”

The White House has warned the Russian government that it will be “held accountable” if Mr Navalny dies in prison. Western officials – and Mr Navalny’s supporters and allies – reject the idea of ​​the opposition leader acting on behalf of another country.

But in the logic of the Kremlin, Mr Navalny is a threat to Russian statehood by fulfilling the commandment of the West by undermining Mr Putin. It is Mr Putin, said Mr Trenin, who keeps Russia stable by maintaining a balance between competing factions in Russia’s ruling elite.

“If Putin leaves, a fight breaks out between different groups and Russia withdraws into itself, has no time for the rest of the world and no longer stands in anyone’s way,” said Trenin. “The West is, of course, using Navalny and will use it to create problems for Putin and, in the longer term, to help Putin make history one way or another.”

How far Putin will go to defend himself against real or imagined hostility from the West is still open. In the state news media, the mood music is terrible. On Sunday’s flagship weekly news show on the Rossiya 1 channel, host Dmitri Kiselyov closed a section on Putin’s showdown with Mr Biden by reminding viewers of Poseidon – a new weapon in the Russian nuclear arsenal that Mr Putin revealed three years ago .

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Health

Biden speech to put out imaginative and prescient for post-coronavirus world

Biden speech to lay out vision for post-coronavirus world

President Joe Biden will deliver a speech in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC on Saturday, March 6, 2021.

Shaw Thew | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Joe Biden celebrates the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus shutdown Thursday night by remembering American victims and looking to a post-pandemic world.

“I’ll talk about what’s next,” Biden said Wednesday in a preview of what will be his first prime-time address as president. “I’m going to kick off the next phase of the Covid response, explaining what we’re doing as a government and what we’re going to ask of the American people.”

“There is light at the end of this dark tunnel,” he said.

Biden will also use the spotlight on his 50th day as president to kick off a winning lap after his $ 1.9 trillion Covid aid bill was finally passed in Congress.

Biden signed the bill on Thursday afternoon. He’ll be on a nationwide tour next week to announce his government’s first major legislative act.

The president will depart Tuesday for Delaware County, Pennsylvania, an electoral state that was key to Biden’s victory over former President Donald Trump.

Biden’s prime-time speech is scheduled for Thursday night just after 8 p.m. ET and will be broadcast from the east room of the White House. The address is expected to take less than 20 minutes, an administration official said.

The president will acknowledge the devastating death toll from the pandemic – at least 529,267 dead in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University – as well as the life-changing challenges caused by sudden lockdowns across the country, the official said.

Biden is also expected to emphasize his government’s efforts to rapidly ramp up the production, acquisition and distribution of Covid vaccines, an unprecedented operational endeavor, the official said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden will “provide some more details” on how the government will fight the virus in the future.

In a comment Wednesday after meeting executives at Johnson & Johnson and Merck, Biden indicated that his prime-time address would bring a message of hope and promise.

But the Democratic President, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, suggested that this optimism should continue to be tempered with caution.

“We cannot give up our vigilance now or assume that victory is inevitable,” said Biden on Wednesday. “Together we will weather this pandemic and usher in a healthier, more hopeful future.”

“So there is real reason to hope folks,” he said.

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Politics

Trump slams Biden, teases 2024 bid in first put up White Home speech

Trump slams Biden, teases 2024 bid in first post White House speech

Donald Trump slammed President Joe Biden, trying to keep a grip on the future of the Republican Party on Sunday during his first major political address since leaving the White House last month, only to reveal a possible offer sometime in 2024.

Trump told a high profile Conservative activists gathering in Orlando, Florida that his trip was “far from over” and that he might decide to beat the Democrats for the “third time,” alluding to his false claims that he won the 2020 election to have.

“I want you to know that I will continue to fight right by your side,” said Trump.

When Trump said the Republicans would beat the Democrats in 2024, the crowd stood up and sang “USA, USA”.

It is widely expected that Trump will finally make an offer for the president in 2024. Unlike previous presidents, he made it clear that he had no intention of withholding comment on his successor’s actions and followed up on Biden on Sunday.

“We all knew the Biden administration was going to go bad – but none of us imagined how bad it would be or how far it would go,” Trump said.

Consistent with his penchant for dramatic exaggeration, Trump described Biden’s first month in office as “the most disastrous first month of a president in modern history, that’s right”.

“In just a short month we went from America to America first,” said Trump, citing a “new and terrible crisis on our southern border.”

Trump’s political ambitions put Republicans in a difficult position in the elections. The 74-year-old remains hugely popular with the party but failed to beat Biden in the 2020 election after losing support among moderates and independents.

Trump was named the winner of a CPAC straw poll with 55% of the vote on the Sunday before his speech. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took second place in the 2024 presidential poll with 21% and first place in a straw poll without Trump.

After losing the presidential contest, Trump refused to admit for weeks and was charged by the House of Representatives with inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.

While the Senate eventually acquitted him, top Republicans, including Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, have issued stinging reprimands against Trump’s actions. Trump reiterated his false claim that the election was “rigged” during his address.

Trump pursued a litany of Republicans Sunday including Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah and the other lawmakers who voted for his impeachment.

“Get rid of them all,” said Trump. “The RINOs with which we are surrounded will destroy the Republican Party and the American worker,” said Trump, using an acronym for Republicans only in their name.

Donald Trump Jr., the son of the ex-president, attacked Cheney on Friday at the CPAC, saying she was “tied to an establishment that did nothing but fail us”.

Earlier this month, Trump denounced McConnell in a statement as a “grumpy, sullen and unsmiling political hack”.

Despite his attacks on members of the GOP, Trump used the address to refuse to report that he was considering forming a new party.

“We’re not starting new parties,” said Trump. “We have the Republican Party, it will unite and be stronger than ever. I’m not starting a new party.”

“Wouldn’t that be brilliant? Let’s start a new party, share our vote so we can never win,” Trump added sarcastically.

Trump said he would “actively work” to support the Republicans in his form.

While Trump has refused to leave the limelight, he has had less direct access to the public since he was banned by Twitter for violating its guidelines against incitement to violence. The company has announced that the ban will remain in place even if Trump runs for office again.

Trump said during his speech that “we oppose the abandonment culture” and that GOP-led states should seek big tech companies that censor conservatives.

Sunday’s address also included a number of topics that were central to the Republican Party’s political agenda, such as: B. the tough attitude towards China and the demand for stricter immigration rules.

“The future of the Republican Party is a party that defends the social, economic and cultural interests and values ​​of working American families – of all races, colors and creeds,” Trump said. He added that the party was a party of “love”.

In part of his speech on Covid-19, Trump urged Biden to “open schools now,” highlighting his administration’s successful efforts to speed up vaccine production.

Since leaving the White House, Trump has been facing increasing legal threat in New York in which Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is apparently investigating potential banking and insurance fraud related to Trump and his firm, the Trump Organization .

Vance received year-long tax returns from Trump and related documents on Monday after a protracted legal battle that made it to the Supreme Court twice. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and accused Vance of being politically motivated.

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