John Kirby says U.S. diplomatic efforts continue in the Middle East amid rising tensions
(WASHINGTON) — With fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah intensifying throughout the weekend, White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby said the U.S. is doing “everything we can to try to prevent this from becoming an all-out war there with Hezbollah across that Lebanese border.”
“We have been involved in extensive and quite assertive diplomacy,” Kirby told ABC’s “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.
Asked if escalation in the region is inevitable, Kirby replied that there are “better ways” to return Israeli citizens back to their homes to avoid a heightened conflict. On cease-fire negotiations, he told Stephanopoulos that “We are not achieving any progress here in the last week to two weeks.”
Kirby also reiterated that the U.S. was “not involved” in Israel’s covert pager and walkie-talkie attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon last week.
This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates.
(PHILADELPHIA) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump presented different visions for the future of abortion rights during their presidential debate Tuesday. A back-and-forth between the candidates ended with Harris saying the government shouldn’t be deciding what women do with their bodies, but that is what Trump wants — a claim he denied.
Harris promised to sign a bill that reinstates protections for abortion rights that existed under Roe v. Wade if it reaches her desk as president while Trump would not commit to vetoing a national abortion ban if it comes to his desk.
During the debate, Trump — who claimed he wouldn’t have to veto a national ban — said he believes in exceptions for abortions in cases of rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother.
“There’s no reason to sign a ban because we have gotten what everyone wanted,” Trump said, referring to leaving the regulation of abortion up to state governments.
Harris had falsely asserted that Trump supported a national abortion ban.
At least 22 states have abortion bans or restrictions in effect since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe — ending federal protections for abortion rights. Of those states, 14 have ceased nearly all abortion services and four have six-week bans in effect, prohibiting abortion care before most women know they are pregnant.
Three of the five U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe were appointed by Trump when he was president.
Ten states will have reproductive rights-related questions on the ballot this November, nine of which specifically address abortion.
Voters in all six states that have had abortion questions on the ballot since Roe was overturned have voted to uphold abortion rights.
During the debate, Trump also falsely claimed that some states allow for the killing of an infant after birth. Killing a baby after birth is illegal in all 50 states.
Most states that allow abortions do so until fetal viability. But, there are no gestational limits on abortion in 9 states — including Colorado, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Gov. Tim Walz’s state of Minnesota — and Washington, DC.
Advocates for abortion rights say the absence of legal consequences after fetal liability doesn’t mean doctors will try to terminate full-term, healthy pregnancies. In fact, access to third-trimester procedures is limited, costly and medically complex — typically done only when a woman’s life is threatened or the fetus isn’t expected to survive.
Many Democrats say they want to pass legislation that would codify the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe vs Wade, which protects abortion rights up until viability.
(WASHINGTON) — Less than two hours after President Joe Biden last week announced his decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, the Republican National Committee released a two-minute campaign ad blasting Vice President Kamala Harris as “dangerously liberal” and claiming she “was liberal on illegal immigration before she ever reached the White House.”
The ad highlighted the 2008 story of a San Francisco woman who was attacked by a man who was in the country illegally and had been arrested months earlier on drug charges — but was released as part of a new program that had been launched by Harris, then the city’s district attorney.
Now, as Harris tries to frame her campaign against former President Donald Trump as a choice between a tough prosecutor and a convicted felon, the victim of the 2008 assault, Amanda Kiefer, is calling that message from Harris “laughable.”
“When a policy negatively affects you, you wake up,” Keifer, now 45, told ABC News, speaking about her experience publicly for the first time in 15 years.
According to the RNC ad, Harris “allowed illegal immigrant drug dealers to enter job training” instead of entering prison.
The program, called Back on Track, was billed as a “smart on crime” initiative that could reduce rates of recidivism by empowering lower-level nonviolent offenders to redirect their lives away from crime. Offenders who received job training and completed the program had their records expunged.
A spokesperson for Harris declined to comment on the record for this story.
‘Most Americans would disapprove’
In July 2008, when Kiefer was 29, she was walking with a group of friends in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco when 20-year-old Alexander Izaguirre stole her purse and jumped into a waiting SUV. The driver of the vehicle then attempted to run Kiefer down, leaving her with a fractured skull.
“If people who committed crimes were allowed to stay out of prison to train for jobs they couldn’t legally hold, I think most Americans would disapprove of that,” Kiefer told ABC News.
Harris seemed to agree with that even 15 years ago, telling the Los Angeles Times then that “the whole point of the program [was] … to obtain and hold down lawful employment” — and that someone in the country illegally “probably would not be able to do that, so it would go against the very spirit of the program.”
“I believe we fixed it,” Harris said of the loophole at the time. “So moving forward, it is about making sure that no one enters Back on Track if they cannot hold legal employment.”
In total, fewer than a dozen undocumented immigrants gained entry into the program, which reportedly became a model for other law enforcement agencies around the country.
Even so, Trump and his supporters are now seeking to reintroduce Kiefer’s story to counter the vice president’s tough-on-crime posture and to feed into the false narrative that undocumented immigrants have contributed to a spike in crime nationwide, which is contradicted by statistics showing that U.S.-born citizens are more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes than people who are in the country illegally.
Harris’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
It’s not the first time Harris has faced those accusations. During his unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign, Trump used Kiefer’s story to attack Harris and what he alleged was her support for “deadly sanctuary cities.”
“As district attorney in San Francisco, Kamala put a drug-dealing illegal alien into a jobs program instead of into prison. Four months later, the illegal alien robbed a 29-year-old woman, mowed her down with an SUV, fracturing her skull and ruining her life,” Trump said at an August 2020 campaign stop in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. “We believe our country should be a sanctuary for law abiding Americans, not for criminal aliens.”
A ‘red pill moment’
Since becoming the Democratic party’s de-facto nominee, Harris has shied away from discussing the Southwest border, which under the Biden administration saw unprecedented levels of migrant crossings before the numbers began to drop in April.
According to Customs and Border Protection, its agents and officers have encountered more than 8.4 million migrants along the Southwest border since the Biden administration took office — more than four times the amount during the Trump administration. Under Biden, an additional 2 million or so border-crossers were reportedly detected but never captured.
But apprehension rates have dropped significantly in the past two months after the Biden administration announced new asylum restrictions. Government statistics released last week show that migrant encounters along the Southwest border fell by 55% since the restrictions took effect, with June seeing the lowest number of border encounters of any month in the last three years.
Harris, for her part, has continued to press for progressive solutions to both criminal justice and immigration enforcement.
As for Kiefer, the violent assault she suffered was what she called her “red pill moment” — a reference to a pill in the movie “The Matrix” that grants users the ability to see harsh realities.
A self-professed liberal at the time, Kiefer says she now supports the policies of Trump. Government records show she has supported other conservative efforts in recent years, donating small-dollar amounts to Republican causes 17 times since 2020.
Trump earlier this year touted his role in pushing key Republicans to defeat a bipartisan Senate bill that its supporters say would have helped beef up border security and immigration enforcement. Trump described the bill as a political play by Democrats.
Before Izaguirre’s sentencing in 2010, Harris reportedly lent her “full encouragement and support” to his deportation. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement records, Izaguirre was deported to Honduras in 2011.
(DETROIT) — Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota blitzed the country on Labor Day, making a concerted effort to court union workers ahead of the November election.
Harris kicked off Labor Day in Detroit, Michigan, meeting with union members and delivering brief remarks. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Rep. Debbie Dingell joined Harris.
“The way we celebrate Labor Day is we know that hard work is good work; we know that when we organize, when we bring everyone together,” Harris said at the Northwestern High School gym in Detroit. “It’s a joyful moment where we are committed to doing the hard work of lifting up America’s families, and I want to thank everyone here for that work and the way you do it every day.”
“So, on Labor Day, and every day, we celebrate the dignity of work,” she later added. “The dignity of work, we celebrate unions because unions helped build America, and unions helped build America’s middle class.”
Harris also credited union labor with many current workplace standards.
“Everywhere I go, I tell people, look, you may not be a union member, you better thank a union member; for the five-day work week, you better thank a union member; for sick leave, you better thank a union member,” she said. “For paid leave you better thank a union member for vacation time. Because what we know is when union wages go up, everybody’s wages go up.”
Union leaders, including United Autoworkers President Shawn Fain and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, stood behind Harris on stage as he delivered her remarks. They took the stage shortly before Harris.
Harris was set to join Biden later Monday in Pittsburgh at a union hall for the pair’s first joint campaign event since Biden dropped his bid for reelection. They will both deliver informal remarks, the Harris campaign said. The United Steelworkers, AFSCME, and other unions will be in attendance, as well as Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Bob Casey, Mayor Ed Gainey and Reps. Summer Lee, Madeleine Dean and Chris Deluzio.
Walz and his wife, Gwen, started off the day meeting with laborers in St. Paul, Minnesota, before attending Laborfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In addition to prominent labor groups, including SEIU, Teamsters, and United Autoworkers, Gov. Tony Evers, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Rep. Gwen Moore and Mayor Cavalier Johnson were there.
Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff was in Newport News, Virginia, to participate in Rep. Bobby Scott’s annual Labor Day Cookout and deliver remarks, the campaign said.
“Vice President Harris always put workers first and held powerful interests accountable. As California’s attorney general, she fought wage theft to make sure workers got the pay they earned. As senator, she fought tirelessly for the most vulnerable workers, walking the picket line with UAW and McDonald’s workers and introducing a domestic workers’ bill of rights,” the campaign said in a statement.
“Vice President Harris chairs The White House Task Force on Worker Organizing, which made it easier for working people to exercise their right to join a union,” the campaign continued.
“Meanwhile, Trump was one of the most anti-worker and anti-union presidents in history,” the Harris campaign later added, criticizing former President Donald Trump. “He stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-labor advocates. He hurt autoworkers, shipped jobs overseas, and lined the pockets of the super wealthy and big corporations at the expense of the middle class.”