President Trump to Back Michael Whatley for North Carolina Senate as Lara Trump Bows Out
Whatley is moving ahead just as Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, said Thursday she won't run for the seat. The president had said he would have backed her if she had chosen to run.
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Yahoo
a minute ago
- Yahoo
Trump backs Israel and rebukes Starmer over Palestinian state recognition
Donald Trump has doubled down on his backing for Israel after having appeared to give a green light to the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, to recognize a Palestinian state. Amid signs of mounting opposition among his Maga base to Israel's military operation in Gaza, Trump criticized Starmer's plan to grant recognition as 'rewarding Hamas' even after having not taken issue with it when the pair met in Scotland this week. Talking to journalists onboard Air Force One on his return to Washington, Trump said the US was 'not in that camp', referring to Starmer's pledge, which followed a similar declaration by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, days earlier that France would formally recognize Palestinian statehood. 'We never did discuss it,' Trump said, in reference to Starmer's announcement. He added: 'You're rewarding Hamas if you do that. I don't think they should be rewarded.' His comments were in line with the US state department, whose spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, called the recognition decision 'a slap in the face' to victims of Hamas's deadly 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the current war. But they contrasted with his restrained stance when he and Starmer met at Turnberry in Scotland on Monday, after the UK prime minister said Britain would give recognition by September unless Israel met certain conditions, including allowing for a ceasefire in Gaza and allowing UN food aid to enter the territory to feed its population. 'I'm not going to take a position, I don't mind him taking a position,' Trump told reporters when asked if he objected to Starmer's move. The US president's response to Starmer seemed markedly softer than his riposte after Macron's statehood announcement last week, which angered Israel and its supporters. 'What he says doesn't matter,' Trump told reporters at the White House. 'He's a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn't carry weight.' The initial softer public posture toward Starmer came as Trump publicly contradicted Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, over conditions in Gaza, which numerous international aid agencies have described as famine. Netanyahu had said that, in contrast to the aid group assessments and searing images of hungry children, no one was starving in Gaza. Asked if he agreed, Trump said: 'Based on television, I would say 'not particularly', because those children look pretty hungry to me. There's real starvation, you can't fake that.' Some of Trump's most prominent supporters have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of Israel's conduct, amid polling evidence that Americans generally are losing sympathy for a country that has traditionally been viewed as one of the US's closest allies. Related: 'The war needs to end': is the US right turning on Israel? Steve Bannon, Trump's former adviser and still one of his leading cheerleaders with his War Room podcast, told Politico that the president's condemnation of the food situation in Gaza would hasten Israel's loss of support among his base. 'It seems that for the under-30-year-old Maga base, Israel has almost no support, and Netanyahu's attempt to save himself politically by dragging America in deeper to another Middle East war has turned off a large swath of older Maga diehards,' Bannon said. 'Now President Trump's public repudiation of one of the central tenets of [Netanyahu's] Gaza strategy – 'starving' Palestinians – will only hasten a collapse of support.' Another Trump supporter, the far-right Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, became the latest – and perhaps most surprising – public figure to label Israel's actions in Gaza 'genocide'. 'It's the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,' she posted on X. The comments came as a new Gallup poll showed support among Americans for Israel's actions in Gaza down to 32%, the lowest since the organization began asking the question in November 2023 – a month after the murderous Hamas raid that killed almost 1,200 mostly Israeli civilians and led to another 250 to be taken hostage. Israel's military response has led to about 60,000 Palestinians being killed, according to the Gaza health ministry. While Gallup's poll showed support for Israel's offensive still high, at 71%, among Republicans, Thom Tillis, a GOP senator for North Carolina who plans to step down at the next election, said Gaza could be a political problem for Trump, the Hill reported. 'I think that the American people at the end of the day are a kind people. They don't like seeing suffering, nor do I think the president does,' Tillis said. 'If you see starvation, you try to fix it.' Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told Fox News that Trump's backing for Netanyahu remained unshaken. 'Let me assure you that there is no break between the prime minister of Israel and the president,' he told Fox News. 'Their relationship, I think, [is] stronger than it's ever been, and I think the relationship between the US and Israel is as strong as it's ever been.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
a minute ago
- Yahoo
Texas Republicans propose new congressional maps
New congressional maps were proposed by Republican state legislators in Texas on Wednesday, following a push by President Donald Trump for maps more favorable to Republicans to help the GOP keep the majority in the U.S. House in 2026. The maps come as Texas lawmakers continue meeting for a special legislative session called for by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who set an agenda that included considering congressional district redistricting "in light of Constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice." Trump has said he wants Republicans to pick up five new seats in Texas and others elsewhere; Democrats have decried the maneuver and said it risks hurting minority voters. Blue-state governors have said they're considering mid-decade redistricting in response. MORE: First to ABC: DNC ramps up anti-redistricting efforts in Texas with calls to 'persuadable' GOP votersMORE: Texas Democrats escalate fight against Republican-led redistricting efforts with Pritzker, Newsom meetings The state legislative bill that contains the maps, filed by Republican Texas state Rep. Todd Hunter on Wednesday morning, says it would supersede "all previous enactments or orders adopting congressional districts for the State of Texas" and would take effect first in the 2026 primary and general elections – meaning that if adopted successfully, it would impact the 2026 midterms. The new map could net Republicans between three and five seats if enacted, analysts told ABC News. David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for The Cook Political Report, told ABC News that three of the seats in the map, he said, have been fully redrawn to favor Republicans, while two in south Texas that are currently held by Democratic Representatives Henry Cuellar and Vincente Gonzalez may still be feasible for Democrats to hold onto. More broadly, Wasserman pointed to how Republicans made inroads among Hispanic voters in 2024 and that the map reflects how they likely assume those changes will be durable. "Republicans have very little to lose here, because this map doesn't really weaken any of their own incumbents," he said. Republicans won a narrow three-seat majority last November and currently hold 219 seats to Democrats' 212. Currently, four are vacant. The Texas congressional delegation currently has 25 Republican House members and 12 Democratic House members. (One seat, formerly held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner, has been vacant since he died in March.) While any details of the bill and map plan could change in committee meetings, state House floor debate, or after future litigation, the current proposal shows that multiple Democratic members could be made more vulnerable. Some of those are among five sets of members from opposing parties being redistricted into the same district; and two Democrats – U.S. Reps. Greg Casar and Rep. Lloyd Doggett – would be redistricted into the same district. (These members could run in different districts, retire from the House, or run for a different office – there's no guarantee they'll face each other if the map goes through.) There is no set timing for specifically when the bill needs to go through the motions in the legislature, but the special legislative session, which began July 21st, can only last 30 days and thus ends August 20. Gov. Greg Abbott could call for further special sessions. Republicans hold majorities in both chambers of the Texas legislature, as well as on both the House and Senate special session redistricting committees. One major Republican voice appears to be giving support to the endeavor. Vice President JD Vance, in a since-deleted tweet, criticized how most of the districts in Democratic-dominated California are not Republican even though four-tenths of voters in the state vote Republican. (Trump received almost 40% of the vote in California in 2024.) "Every GOP-controlled state should be following the Texas example," he added. In a subsequent tweet, Vance removed the reference to Texas and simply wrote after discussing the Republican vote in California, "How can this possibly be allowed?" Legislative Democrats have said they're keeping their options open as to how they might respond to any new maps. Multiple Texas state Democrats have said they would consider walking out of the special session or helping break quorum to delay or stymie efforts by legislative Republicans, but they would need 51 Democrats to break quorum and would accrue financial penalties. Some of the members of Congress potentially affected by the new map slammed it as a power grab by Republicans. U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, criticizing how the state's 35th and 37th congressional districts effectively get merged in the new map, wrote, "By merging our Central Texas districts, Trump wants to commit yet another crime -- this time, against Texas voters and against Martin Luther King's Voting Rights Act of 1965. United, we will fight back with everything we've got." In a statement to ABC News, former Attorney General Eric Holder slammed efforts to redistrict in Texas, and says he doesn't oppose Democratic efforts to fight back. Holder runs the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. "In this moment steps must be taken to respond to the authoritarian measures being considered in certain states and now so brazenly taken in Texas," said Holder.
Bloomberg
a minute ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Picks His Doral Club for G-20 Summit
US President Donald Trump plans to host next year's Group of 20 summit at his Doral resort in Florida, and to cut the number of extra participants to narrow the gathering's size, people familiar with the matter said. Preliminary planning is underway with the US set to take over as host country in 2026. No final decisions on the summit's parameters have been made, but Trump has focused discussions around his Miami-area property, the people said.
