Biden confronts crucial day in his campaign, as his team says no Democrat would do better
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden campaign is laying out what it sees as his path to winning the White House in a new memo sent to its staffers. It says winning Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan is the “clearest pathway” to victory. Though senior aides write in Thursday’s memo that they could clinch 270 electoral votes in a number of ways, the new memo, obtained by The Associated Press, says those three states are critical and why President Joe Biden has prioritized those areas in his recent travels. The memo is from campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez and contends that Biden remains the strongest Democratic opponent to Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee.
Biden says pressure on him is driven by elites. Voters paint a more complicated picture
SAGINAW, Mich. (AP) — President Joe Biden says the pressure on him to end his reelection campaign is coming from Democratic Party “elites,” the same kind of people who have doubted him throughout his long journey in public life. The voters, he says, will still have his back in the end. But a sampling of voters and Democratic activists in several key swing states paints a far more complicated picture in the aftermath of Biden’s disastrous debate performance. Many are still with him, but they worry that a lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy could cause a lot of Democratic voters to stay home.
Trump wants Black and Latino support. But he’s not popular with either group, poll analysis shows
WASHINGTON (AP) — As he prepares to accept the Republican nomination for the third time, Donald Trump has promised to expand his coalition — and, in particular, to win over more of the nonwhite voters who largely rejected him during the 2020 election. But an AP analysis of two consecutive polls from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted in June shows that about 7 in 10 Black Americans have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump, as do about half of Hispanic Americans. While both groups do see Trump a little more favorably than when he left office in 2021, their opinion is still more negative than positive.
Gun and ammunition evidence is the focus as Alec Baldwin trial starts second day
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Prosecutors sought to cast Alec Baldwin as someone who flouts rules and has little regard for safety at the first day of his New Mexico trial in the shooting of a cinematographer. Special prosecutor Erlinda Ocampo Johnson repeatedly referred to Baldwin playing “make-believe” with a revolver on the set of the film “Rust.” She says it led to very real danger and the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Baldwin’s attorney, Alex Spiro, told jurors that the actor did only what actors always do — act like the characters they’re playing. He called the death an “unspeakable tragedy,” but said Baldwin had committed no crime.
House rejects GOP effort to fine Attorney General Garland for refusal to turn over Biden audio
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has rejected a GOP effort to fine Attorney General Merrick Garland $10,000 a day until he turns over audio of President Joe Biden’s interview in his classified documents case. A handful of Republicans resisted taking an aggressive step against a Cabinet official Thursday as part of a longstanding fight between the majority in the House and the Democratic administration. Even if the resolution had passed it was unclear how the fine would be enforced as the dispute over the tape of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur plays out in court. The House voted 204-210, with four Republicans joining all Democrats, to halt a Republican resolution that would’ve imposed the fine.
Oil tanker held by Iran for over a year heads reaches international waters, tracking data shows
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An oil tanker held by Iran for over a year after being seized has reached international waters. The Advantage Sweet was traveling on Thursday through the Strait of Hormuz, where it was seized in April 2023 by Iran’s navy. That’s according to tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press. Iran did not acknowledge the ship’s departure. It came after an Iranian court earlier on Thursday ordered the U.S. government to pay over $6.7 billion in compensation over a Swedish company stopping its supply of special dressings and bandages for those afflicted by a rare skin disorder after Washington imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Iran’s government has linked the Advantage Sweet’s seizure to the court case.
He was orphaned in the Holocaust and never met any family. Now he has cousins, thanks to DNA tests
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — An Israeli man orphaned during the Holocaust thought he would never meet any of his relatives. But through modern DNA science, Shalom Koray has been able to hug his second cousin in Charleston, South Carolina. Koray was a toddler in 1943 when he was found in a burning neighborhood of Warsaw, Poland. His family was killed by the Nazis during World War II. In 2023, Koray took a DNA test and it matched Ann Meddin Hellman in Charleston. After some digging, Hellman figured out her grandfather and Koray’s grandfather were brothers. One came to the U.S. and the other stayed in Poland. Koray made his first trip to meet his new family this week.
Houston utility says 500K customers still won’t have electricity next week as Beryl outages persist
HOUSTON (AP) — An executive from Houston’s biggest utility says about 500,000 customers whose power was knocked out by Hurricane Beryl will still be without power next week. The Category 1 storm knocked out power to around 2.7 million customers after it made landfall in Texas on Monday. CenterPoint Energy has struggled to restore power to affected customers, who have grown frustrated that the relatively weak storm could cause such disruption. Jason Ryan, executive vice president of CenterPoint, says power has been restored to more than 1 million homes and businesses and that the company expects to get hundreds of thousands of more customers back online in the coming days, but others will wait much longer.
Two 80-something journalists tried ChatGPT. Then, they sued to protect the ‘written word’
GRAFTON, Mass. (AP) — When two octogenarian buddies named Nick discovered that ChatGPT might be stealing and repurposing a lifetime of their work, they tapped a son-in-law to sue the companies behind the artificial intelligence chatbot. Veteran journalists Nicholas Gage, 84, and Nicholas Basbanes, 81, who live near each other in the same Massachusetts town, each devoted decades to reporting, writing and book authorship. Now their lawsuit against OpenAI and business partner Microsoft is subsumed into a broader case seeking class-action status led by household names like John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and “Game of Thrones” novelist George R. R. Martin; and proceeding under the same New York federal judge who’s hearing similar copyright claims from news media outlets.
Jasmine Paolini wins Wimbledon’s longest women’s semifinal to reach a second Grand Slam title match
LONDON (AP) — Jasmine Paolini has reached her second consecutive Grand Slam final with a 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (10-8) victory over Donna Vekic at Wimbledon. Paolini is the No. 7 seed at the All England Club and her win on Thursday at Centre Court follows her runner-up showing at the French Open last month. The 28-year-old Italian is the first woman to get to the title matches at the French Open and Wimbledon since Serena Williams did it in 2015 and 2016. Paolini will face Elena Rybakina or Barbora Krejcikova for the championship on Saturday.
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