Month: March 2024

President Joe Biden delivered his third State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress Thursday evening and took the opportunity to make his case to voters to elect him for a second term, listing his achievements and outlining his future agenda. The president’s speech seemingly served as the kickoff for his presidential re-election campaign against the presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

Biden began by promising Ukrainians that the U.S. would not back away from defending them in the face of the ongoing oppression and war by Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying: “we have to stand up to Putin. We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down. In a literal sense, history is watching.”

Referencing the January 6th, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Biden did not name Donald Trump directly, but said: “my predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6th. I will not do that. This is a moment to speak the truth and bury the lies. And here’s the simplest truth. You can’t love your country only when you win.”

Speaking on the decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, Biden vowed: “in its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court majority wrote ‘women are not without electoral or political power’. No kidding. Clearly those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America. But they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022, 2023, and they will find out again in 2024. If Americans send me a Congress that supports the right to choose I promise you: I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.”

President Biden also officially announced the construction of a temporary port along the coast of Gaza to allow more humanitarian aid into the region as the war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza continues, saying: “no U.S. boots will be on the ground. This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day. But Israel must also do its part. Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and ensure that humanitarian workers aren’t caught in the crossfire.”

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Six people have been arrested months after the death of a 16-year-old who was beaten outside a Halloween party in Arizona on October 28, 2023, and died two days later in the hospital.

A Maricopa County grand jury indicated two more suspects on charges stemming from the gang-style, fatal beating of Preston Lord:  Taylor Sherman, 19, was booked late Wednesday by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office on one count of first-degree murder and one count of kidnapping; and Jacob Meisner, 17, was charged Thursday with first-degree murder, kidnapping and aggravated robbery, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. He was in custody on other charges when he was served with the charges connected to Lord’s death.

Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said at a news conference on Wednesday that four others have been charged so far in Lord’s death — Dominic Turner, 20, William Owen Hines, 18, and Talan Renner and Talyn Vigil, both 17, were indicted on first- and second-degree murder charges, as well as kidnapping. Renner and Vigil are juveniles but will be charged as adults.  Turner also was charged with aggravated robbery.

All six defendants are being held on $1 million bonds, according to the county attorney’s office. In a statement obtained by NBC News through their attorney, Lord’s parents, Nick Lord and Autumn Curiel, thanked community members “who stepped up to provide information to secure these arrests … But for law enforcement’s collective efforts and community members’ invaluable cooperation, these arrests would not have happened. Each arrest represents a step towards accountability and justice for our son Preston.”

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On Wednesday, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell endorsed Donald Trump for president in a drastic turnaround. McConnell declared his support in a short statement after Trump’s Super Tuesday victories, which pushed the GOP front-runner closer to the party nomination. McConnell’s statement read: “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

McConnell, Trump’s onetime critic who criticized his as “morally responsible” for the “disgraceful” acts in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, has not spoken to the former president since 2020 – after he declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner of the that year’s presidential election.

The endorsement from McConnell comes after he announced last week he would step down after this term as leader, a position he has held longer than any other senator. Despite his concerns about Trump, McConnell seems to be in favor of the outcomes the former president was able to accomplish during his term, saying that he and Trump “worked together to accomplish great things for the American people.”  With McConnell leading the Senate, Trump signed a GOP tax cuts package into law, and was able to have the Senate confirm three justices to the Supreme Court while fulfilling conservatives’ long-term goal of overturning Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion.

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Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Republican Steve Garvey will face each other in California’s November Senate race. seeking to fill late Sen. Diane Feinstein’s Senate seat. Feinstein, D-Calif., died last September, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler to serve out the remainder of her term.

Schiff and Garvey defeated progressive Democrats Katie Porter and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and will face-off in the general election. Under California’s primary election system, the two candidates with the most votes advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation.  Porter and Lee will also vacate their House seats at the end of the term.  The results mean that for the first time in 30 years, California will not be represented by a woman in the U.S. Senate. Either Schiff or Garvey will be the first White male U.S. senator representing California in 32 years. Democrats are favored to win the general election in the solidly blue state.

Schff said in a recent interview that if elected senator, his top priorities will be to “make the economy work for people. For millions of people, they’re working harder than ever and they’re still struggling to get by. We need to bring down the cost of housing first and foremost here in California … But the other two big existential threats are to our democracy and to our planet. And these are the issues I’ve been talking about throughout the state. The need to fight for an economy that, you know, that rewards folks who are working hard with a good quality of life and, but also save our democracy from a would-be dictator.”

Garvey, a political newcomer who played for Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, hailed his performance as a “California comeback” and said at an election night celebration that “what you’re all feeling tonight is what it’s like to hit a walk-off home run … but keep in mind this is the first game of a doubleheader. So keep the evening of November 5 open.”

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The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday morning that Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is ending her campaign, ceding the nomination to Donald Trump and setting up a rematch of the 2020 election against President Joe Biden.

The move comes after Haley’s disappointing results in Super Tuesday’s primary contests, after former President Donald Trump won across nearly all the states holding Republican nominating contests. Haley was victorious in Vermont’s Republican primary, just her second win of the primary season.  Trump is on track to reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination.

Sources close to Haley say she will officially announce to the press she’s ending her campaign in remarks at 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning in Charleston, in her home state of South Carolina.. She is not expected to announce an endorsement Wednesday.

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Meta restored access to Facebook and Instagram early Tuesday afternoon after more than half a million users reported widespread issues beginning @10 a.m. ET, with many saying they were booted out of the social media platforms and unable to log back in. WhatsApp, another Meta product, seemed to be largely unaffected by the outage, while users of Threads reported a lesser degrees of users issues. There were also reports that some Meta Quest headset users were also experiencing issues logging in.

NetBlocks, a global internet monitor, posted on X : “Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads are currently experiencing outages related to login sessions in multiple countries; incident not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.”

A Meta Spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday: “Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have difficulty accessing some of our services. We resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience.” The specific cause of the outage is not publicly known, though Meta said it was a “technical issue.”

According to crowdsourced data collected by DownDetector (a site that monitors internet service outages) more than 500,000 reports of problems by U.S. Facebook users and more than 70,000 reported problems with Instagram as of about 10:30 a.m. ET. The most frequently reported problems were with logging into the Facebook app and issues with the Instagram app.  Facebook Messenger also received thousands of reports, according to Downdetector. Some users on social media expressed concern that their accounts had been hacked because they had been booted out of the service and were unable to get back in with their passwords.

The outage occurred the same day as Super Tuesday, when voters in 15 states and one territory are set to head to the polls for GOP primary contests.

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