Nancy Pelosi hospitalized during a congressional delegation trip abroad, her office says
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(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, 84, was hospitalized while abroad on a congressional delegation, her office said on Friday.
“While traveling with a bipartisan Congressional delegation in Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi sustained an injury during an official engagement and was admitted to the hospital for evaluation,” her spokesperson Ian Krager said in a statement.
“Speaker Emerita Pelosi is currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals,” the statement read. “She continues to work and regrets that she is unable to attend the remainder of the CODEL engagements to honor the courage of our servicemembers during one of the greatest acts of American heroism in our nation’s history.”
“Speaker Emerita Pelosi conveys her thanks and praise to our veterans and gratitude to people of Luxembourg and Bastogne for their service in World War II and their role in bringing peace to Europe,” Krager added.
Eighteen House members are part of the delegation, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson. They were to take part in observances of the anniversary of the pivotal World War II battle on Friday and Saturday.
Other lawmakers on the trip include Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Mark Takano, ranking member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
Pelosi in November won reelection to her California seat, clinching a landmark 20th term.
Despite stepping down from leadership in 2022 after Republicans won control of the House, Pelosi remains a key Democratic power player. She worked behind the scenes to urge President Joe Biden to step out of the 2024 race after his CNN debate performance, ABC News reported at the time.
Pelosi later said Biden’s late exit from the race was a key factor in Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to President-elect Donald Trump.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has nominated former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
“Mike has been a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years,” Trump said in a statement. “He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”
The role, which will need to be confirmed by the Senate, will be a key appointment as tensions remain high in the Middle East.
Trump has long touted in campaign speeches that he would work to bring peace to the region. The president-elect has argued for Israel to “finish the job” on Hamas, but he’s offered little guidance on what action he might take in the region.
“He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him,” Trump said of Huckabee in the statement.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, is an outspoken supporter of the Israeli settlement movement.
“I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria,” he said on a 2017 visit to Israel, according to CNN, using the biblical names for the West Bank.
“There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee said. “There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
As a 2008 presidential candidate, Huckabee also said “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” according to Buzzfeed, and has suggested that a Palestinian state could be constructed with land from Arab countries surrounding Israel.
Huckabee is the father of current Arkansas governor and former press secretary under Trump, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
News of Huckabee’s selection comes as Trump’s new administration begins to take shape with a handful of picks either being shared by Trump or reported by ABC News.
Senator JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio and Republican vice-presidential nominee, left, and Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota and Democratic vice-presidential nominee, during the first vice presidential debate at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump praised their respective running mates — Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance — as their campaigns worked to spin how well they performed at Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate.
Despite several missteps from both candidates over the course of the debate, Harris said in a fundraising email Wednesday morning that Walz “offered a powerful showcase of the kind of leadership we deserve,” and Trump said in an interview Wednesday there was “brilliance” in Vance’s debate performance.
With just over 30 days until Election Day, the debate stage offered both candidates an opportunity to appeal to undecided voters and share their running mates’ visions for America — and now the Harris and Trump campaigns and surrogates are working to smooth over any moments where the vice-presidential candidates stumbled.
Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler told CNN Wednesday morning that the campaign is “excited” by Walz’s performance.
“I think Vice President Harris’ reaction is the same as voters across the country, independent voters in particular, and those undecideds who saw Gov. Walz lay out a very clear vision for where he and the vice president want to take this country,” Tyler said.
Tyler called Vance a “slick debater,” but said “Gov. Walz clearly articulated the case in a plain-spoken way.”
But Walz struggled to explain why he had in the past “misspoke” about being in Hong Kong and witnessing the Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989, despite the weekslong protest concluding in June, months before he traveled there.
Walz argued “my community knows who I am” and that he’s “not been perfect” and can be “a knucklehead at times.”
“No, I think he was pretty clear,” Tyler said when asked if Walz needed to go further than his comments during the debate in clearing up his misstatement on the protests.
“He said he misspoke. He was there in August. I think he’d earlier said it was June. This is a matter of months, 35 years ago. He was there during the summer of protests,” Tyler added.
In a play-by-play live commentary on social media, Trump painted Walz as appearing “nervous,” incompetent and even “weird.” Trump in particular seized on Walz struggling to answer for the alleged discrepancy in his visit to Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests, portraying him as a liar.
Walz’s performance at times was shaky, with some suggesting if Walz did more news interviews since becoming the vice-presidential pick, he’d have been better prepared. When pressed on that, Tyler said “no,” it would not have helped, before pointing to a more aggressive strategy in campaign’s final weeks.
“I think what you will see him and the vice president continue to do over the course of the final month of this stretch is use every tool that we have at our disposal to continue to reach the voters,” Tyler said. “Yes, that will be inclusive of more media appearances, more interviews.”
On the campaign trail on Wednesday, Walz graded his debate performance: “Not bad for a football coach,” he said at a York, Pennsylvania, rally.
“I did not underestimate Sen. Vance as a slick talker,” Walz said. “But I also called out there — you can’t rewrite history. You can’t rewrite history.”
Trump, who said in a video posted before the debate that he planned to call out his own running mate if he made a “mistake,” praised Vance’s performance throughout Tuesday night.
“JD crushed it!” Trump posted on his social media following the conclusion of the debate.
And on Wednesday morning, in a phone call with Fox News Digital, Trump doubled down on his praise, saying Vance’s performance “reconfirmed” his choice of vice-presidential candidate.
“JD was fantastic last night — it just reconfirmed my choice,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “There was a brilliance to what he did.”
Trump campaign’s senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita immediately claimed victory following the debate, saying in a statement that Vance “unequivocally won tonight’s debate in dominating fashion,” and claimed “it was the best debate performance from any vice-presidential candidate in history.”
Walking into the spin room right Tuesday night, the former president’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr., who had strongly supported Vance as Trump’s running mate, told reporters that “there’s nothing to spin.”
Asked about the moment when Vance refused to say if Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump Jr. insisted that the American public are “not worried about that.”
Yet the Harris campaign was quick to zero in on the exchange.
A Harris campaign official claimed a focus group of undecided battleground-state voters they conducted said this back-and forth was the “biggest gap” between the two candidates. The campaign clipped the exchange for a new ad released Wednesday morning.
Jason Miller, senior Trump campaign adviser, in the spin room Tuesday night said, “JD’s a very likable guy. I think his life experience connects with voters.”
“I think Sen. Vance helped us win today because he had a tremendous performance,” Miller said.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys have asked the judge overseeing his federal election interference case to further delay the release of a redacted appendix containing evidence amassed by special counsel Jack Smith in his probe of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a Thursday morning court filing.
The release of the redacted appendix, which was an attachment to the immunity motion unsealed two weeks ago by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that included new details about Trump and his allies’ actions leading up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, is currently scheduled for Thursday.
In their motion Thursday, Trump’s attorneys requested that Chutkan delay the release of the appendix until Nov. 14 — after the presidential election — when Trump’s own reply brief appendix is due. The former president is expected to argue that his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6 should be immune from prosecution.
“Here, President Trump requests only that the Court briefly continue its existing stay of the Order, such that the redacted versions of the SC Appendix and President Trump’s forthcoming appendix may be released concurrently,” the filing said. “Although this stay will not eliminate the harms President Trump identified in his prior opposition filings, certain harms will be mitigated. For example, if the Court immediately releases the Special Counsel’s cherry-picked documents, potential jurors will be left with a skewed, one-sided, and inaccurate picture of this case.”
“If the appendices are released simultaneously, at least some press outlets will attempt to report both sides of this case, reducing (although, again, not eliminating) the potential for irreversible prejudice,” the filing said.
The filing includes arguments that could draw direct a rebuke from Judge Chutkan, after she previously warned Trump’s attorneys to not level any further allegations of partisanship at Smith’s team without providing evidence.
Trump’s attorneys also argue that while Chutkan has previously said the election will play no role in her decisions in the case, she should address “the public’s interest in ensuring that this case does not unduly interfere, or appear to interfere, with the ongoing election.”
Smith did not respond to Trump’s request for a delay, the filing says.
Trump last year pleaded not guilty to federal charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election in order to remain in power.
Smith subsequently charged Trump in a superseding indictment that was adjusted to respect the Supreme Court’s July ruling that Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken as president.
