Author: chicagoinquirer

by Colleen Long, Darlene Supperville and Nadia Nathan HOUSTON — Vice President Kamala Harris will team up with Beyoncé on Friday for a rally in solidly Republican Texas aimed at highlighting the perilous medical fallout from the state’s strict abortion ban and putting the blame squarely on Donald Trump. It’s a message intended to register far beyond Texas in the political battleground states, where Harris is hoping that the aftereffects from the fall of Roe v. Wade will spur voters to turn out to support her quest for the presidency. Harris will also be joined at the rally by women…

by Alan Rappeport The United States and Europe are close to finalizing a plan to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan backed by Russia’s frozen central bank assets by the end of the year, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Tuesday. An announcement of the loan could come this week as finance ministers and central bank governors convene in Washington for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. American and European policymakers have been negotiating for months over how to use Russia’s central bank reserves, most of which are being held in Europe,…

Julie Carr Smyth COLUMBUS, Ohio — Former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, scion of one of the state’s best-known Republican families, threw his support Sunday behind Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in his hotly contested reelection race against GOP nominee Bernie Moreno. Taft, 82, made known his intention to vote for Brown over Moreno, a Donald Trump-backed Cleveland businessman, in a letter to the editor of the Dayton Daily News. The grandson of “Mr. Republican” Robert A. Taft Sr. and great-grandson of William Howard Taft, the only person in American history to have been president and chief justice of the United States,…

by Andrew Goudsward WASHINGTON – A U.S. judge on Friday made public more evidence collected by prosecutors in the federal criminal case accusing former President Donald Trump of attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. The hundreds of pages, many of which were blanked out and marked “sealed,” include material referenced in a sweeping court filing from Special Counsel Jack Smith made public earlier this month that argued that Trump, the Republican presidential candidate in this year’s election, is not immune from the remaining allegations in the case. The filings unsealed on Friday included excerpts of interviews conducted…

by Nandita Bose and Jarrett Renshaw LA CROSSE, Wisconsin – Billionaire Mark Cuban chided fellow billionaire and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday for his proposal to issue fresh tariffs on most Chinese goods, arguing it will be Americans who will pay the bill, not the Chinese. Cuban appeared with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in Wisconsin on Thursday and is set to hold a town hall for her on Saturday in Phoenix before heading to Michigan. He wasn’t the only billionaire on the campaign trail: Tesla CEO Elon Musk was in Pennsylvania on Thursday mobilizing Trump voters ahead…

by James Oliphant NEW YORK – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tried to poke fun at his opponent Democrat Kamala Harris and embattled New York Mayor Eric Adams while touching upon his own legal troubles in a somewhat light-hearted speech at a charity gala on Thursday. “It’s really a pleasure (to be) anywhere in New York without a subpoena for my appearance,” Trump told the gathering at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. The annual Al Smith dinner, which benefits Catholic charities, is a New York bipartisan tradition that attracts the city’s elite and extends back almost 80 years.…

By Jeff Mason and Sarah Marsh BERLIN -President Joe Biden urged the West on Friday to sustain its support for Ukraine against Russia’s full-scale invasion as Kyiv faces a bleak winter and a looming U.S. presidential election raises worries about the strength of Washington’s own resolve. Biden was speaking to reporters before holding closed-door talks with ally German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a swansong one-day trip to Berlin to discuss matters ranging from Ukraine to the expanding conflict in the Middle East. “As Ukraine faces a tough winter, we must, we must sustain our resolve,” Biden said in a statement.…

by Jarrett Renshaw CHICAGO – Democrat Kamala Harris will campaign for the first time with Barack and Michelle Obama in separate events next week, hoping to inject some political star power in the final dash to election day in November, a senior campaign official said. The former president and his wife remain immensely popular with the Democratic base and are expected to be effective closers in the final stretch of a campaign relying on turnout from loyal Democrats in states where victory margins are thin. Polls show the presidential race between Harris and Republican rival Donald Trump remains extremely close.…

by Rory Carroll LOS ANGELES – Preparations to host the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics are underway and the city welcomed officials from Paris this week to find out what the “secret sauce” is for delivering a successful Games, LA Mayor Karen Bass told Reuters. The Paris Games were widely seen as a triumph of planning and execution and set a high bar for LA when it lights the Olympic flame in Southern California in four years’ time. “What we want to do is dissect what we saw,” Bass said in an interview at City Hall during the second day of…

By Aaron Ross NAIROBI – If Kenyan Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua’s removal on charges of stirring ethnic hatred and undermining judicial independence was unprecedented, aspects of the Senate’s verdict late Thursday were very familiar to close watchers of the country’s politics. On the charge of corruption – which included allegations he had embezzled tens of millions of dollars to buy real estate properties – Gachagua was overwhelmingly acquitted, with 13 senators voting in favour and 53 against. In all, he was convicted of five charges and acquitted of six others after allies of President William Ruto turned against him in…