Author: Reporter

Republicans for Harris: Party elite line up against Trump in push for GOP voters to save democracy

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign on August 4 was launching “Republicans for Harris” as she looks to win over Republican voters put off by convicted felon Donald Trump’s toxic candidacy. The program will be a “campaign within a campaign,” according to Harris’ team, using well-known Republicans to activate their networks, with a particular emphasis on primary voters who backed former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The program will kick off with events this week in Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Republicans backing Harris will also appear at rallies with the vice president and her soon-to-be-named running mate this coming week,...

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Running scared: Trump chided for being chicken after backing out of debate with Vice President Harris

Donald Trump said he was pulling out of a scheduled September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC and instead wanted them to face off on Fox News, making it increasingly unlikely that the candidates would have a fact-to-face confrontation on a public stage before the November election. In a series of Truth Social posts on August 2, the Republican nominee and convicted felon said his agreement to a September 10 debate on ABC “has been terminated” because he will no longer face Democratic President Joe Biden, who ended his campaign last month after a disastrous performance in...

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Biden-Harris role reversal: Organizers for Democratic convention move forward with adjusted plans

After nearly a near year of careful planning, organizers of the Democratic National Convention are in a mad dash to accommodate a new nominee, a re-crafted program, and a highly compressed deadline to pull everything off as though this was the plan all along. With President Joe Biden now out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris pursuing the party’s nomination, a dramatic role reversal for the two is likely to play out before a nationally televised audience when around 5,000 delegates, 12,000 volunteers, and 15,000 media members gather for four days in Chicago starting August 19. Harris...

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Chicago will not post out-of-town police in local neighborhoods for DNC after Milwaukee’s RNC incident

Outside police agencies that will help secure the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August will not be posted in city neighborhoods, Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said recently, as federal authorities released maps of convention security perimeters. The renewed attention on out-of-town police comes after Ohio officers in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention earlier in July fatally shot a man at a park not far from the downtown convention site. As many as 500 officers, mostly from Illinois agencies, will travel to Chicago to boost DNC security. They’ll be directing traffic and working at the numerous checkpoints around...

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Stonewall Inn: Long-vacant storefront space reclaims its place as a landmark in LGBTQ+ history

It was half of the Stonewall Inn, the gay dive bar where a 1969 police raid became a landmark moment for the LGBTQ+ rights movement. Yet for much of the 55 years since, there has been little outward indication that 51 Christopher Street was part of that history. It had housed the Stonewall’s biggest bar and one of the two dance floors that drew its young, diverse crowd. But after the raid sparked an uprising and the Stonewall shut down, 51 Christopher Street became a bagel shop, a gay bar briefly again, a clothing store, a nail salon, then...

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The resilience of love: How a marriage can survive a gender transition and thrive

Marissa Lasoff-Santos and the person she would marry quickly fell head over heels in love. Lasoff-Santos was a gay woman. Her girlfriend was a bisexual woman, or so they thought. Now her partner has become her husband, and they both identify as queer. And things are better than ever. “We’ve always just had this deep connection, so that’s why, like, I never stopped loving him throughout any of this,” said Lasoff-Santos, a 33-year-old librarian in Michigan. “I’ve become more attracted to him. I guess part of it is just, like, that confidence in him and, like, he just seems...

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