"The Talk of the Town"
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump has been named Time magazine’s “2024 Person of the Year,” it was announced on Thursday.
The feature story includes an interview with Trump, in which he discusses immigration, abortion and his incoming administration.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(GREENLAND) — Donald Trump, Jr., son of President-elect Donald Trump, arrived in Greenland on Tuesday after emphasizing that the trip is just a personal one, indicating he is not meeting with government officials.
His trip comes as his father continues to float the possibility of the U.S. purchasing and taking over Greenland, an autonomous territory administered by Denmark. Trump had also suggested the possibility during his first administration.
Abut the same time as his eldest son landed, the president-elect, celebrating his son and his advisers’ trip to Greenland, floated a “deal” that he claims “must happen,” while not elaborating on what deal that is.
“Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland. The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen,” Trump wrote in a social media post Tuesday morning. “MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
Danish officials have continued to emphasize that Greenland is not for sale.
Traveling on a Trump plane, Donald Trump Trump Jr. landed in Nuuk, Greenland, Tuesday morning, joined by incoming White House Director of the Presidential Personnel Office Sergio Gor, incoming White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative, Political and Public Affairs James Blair, and conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
Trump Jr. posted photos of himself and others in Greenland on X on Tuesday, writing, “Greenland is beautiful!!!”
On Monday, Trump Jr. discussed the visit while emphasizing that it is not a political trip.
“No, I am not buying Greenland,” Donald Trump Jr. said on Monday on his podcast show on Rumble. “Funny enough, I’m actually going on a very long personal day trip to Greenland tomorrow [Tuesday].”
“So, I’m going as a tourist. But apparently someone leaked that, so it made all sorts of news, so I figured I’d address it here. No meetings with the government officials, none of that. But I do love Greenland,” Trump Jr. said.
A source familiar with the matter told ABC News that Donald Trump Jr. is visiting Greenland just for the day to shoot videos for a podcast and reiterated he’s not scheduled to meet with any government officials or political figures.
President-elect Trump, on Monday, mentioned his son’s visit in a post on his social media platform, and wrote, “Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation.”
The president-elect had reintroduced his proposal to take over Greenland in December during his announcement of Ken Howery as United States Ambassador to Denmark.
“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity. Ken will do a wonderful job in representing the interests of the United States,” Trump wrote in the announcement.
On Christmas, Trump claimed in a social media post that Greenland needs the United States to be there for “national security purposes,” before adding, “and we will!”
During his first administration, Trump tried to buy the country; however, the United States ended up giving the island $12 million for economic development instead.
Officials from Greenland and Denmark have pushed back both explicitly and implicitly against Trump’s stated desire to purchase the territory.
In December, Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede wrote in a statement, “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale.”
Separately, The Independent reported on Tuesday that the king of Denmark has adjusted the Danish coat of arms to show symbols representing Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the two autonomous territories administered by Denmark.
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(HOUSTON) –With only a little more than a week until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris is stopping in Houston on Friday where she will give a speech on abortion rights with some help from megastar singer, Beyoncé, according to sources familiar with the planning.
Although Texas seems to be a strange choice in the final stretch before the election when both candidates target key battleground states, the campaign argues it was chosen because of the state’s restrictive abortion ban, which bans abortion in almost all circumstances. It also allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and those who assist patients who are seeking an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy.
Abortion remains a rallying issue among Democrats who were able to stave off a “red wave” during the 2022 midterms by centering their messages around it. The campaign claims reproductive freedom is still one of the top issues among undecided voters, and they consider Texas to be “ground zero.”
The campaign said it plans on featuring powerful stories from several women whose lives have been put at risk over these abortions bans. That includes Ondrea, a Texas woman who first shared her story in a new Harris campaign ad out this week. Ondrea was pregnant in the fall of 2022, but when her water broke at 16 weeks, she was told her daughter wouldn’t survive. She was not offered necessary medical care — an abortion, the ad says. The ad shows the wound and scars Ondrea says she incurred after undergoing a six-hour emergency surgery — during which doctors cut her open from her breast to her pelvis in order to save her life.
On Friday, Harris said the abortion ban in Texas will be central to the event.
“It is a very important state, and we are here to really highlight that, sadly, the elected leaders of Texas, a lot of them have made Texas ground zero in this fundamental fight for the freedom of women to make decisions about their own body. So, tonight we will be discussing the impact of that, not only to the women and their families, but to people around the country because of Trump abortion bans,” she said.
“And I do believe it is critically important to acknowledge that this is not just a political debate, this is not just some theoretical concept. Real harm has occurred in our country, a real suffering has occurred. People have died,” she added.
Harris’ rally will also feature Houston native, Beyoncé. Although the popular “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer has yet to officially endorse Harris, the vice president uses Beyoncé song “Freedom” as her walk-out song, which is often woven into her messaging.
Also in attendance will be famous folk singer Willie Nelson, another Texas native, along with Beyoncé’s mom, Tina Knowles, who has campaigned for Harris in the past.
It is not yet clear if Beyonce and Nelson will perform.
Roughly two hours away, former President Trump will also be in Texas in Austin where he will speak on immigration before interviewing with influential podcaster Joe Rogan who has the most-listened-to podcast in the United States.
Harris will go on to Michigan on Saturday where she will campaign with former first lady Michelle Obama for the first time after holding her first joint rally with former President Barack Obama at a get-out-the-vote rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday.
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(GEORGIA) — With early voting underway in the key battleground state of Georgia, a top election official in the state forcefully pushed back Wednesday on false claims of voting machine fraud — a debunked conspiracy theory that proliferated after the 2020 presidential election and has now been revived by some prominent Republican figures.
“[There is] zero evidence of a machine flipping an individual’s vote,” said Gabriel Sterling, a top official on the Georgia secretary of state’s office. “That claim was a lie in 2020 and it’s a lie now.”
Sterling, in his comments, called out “certain congresspeople” — appearing to reference Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently pushed an unsubstantiated allegation that a Georgia resident’s early vote had been switched by a voting machine.
Greene, in an interview and social media post, shared an unidentified Whitfield County voter’s claim that a voting machine had printed their ballot with a different selection than the one they had made on the machine — a claim that local officials said was simply a case of human error.
“Humans make mistakes. They’re called mistakes for a reason,” Sterling wrote in a post on X. “This issue is human/user error, always will be. Whitfield Co. handled it & voter voted.”
In her tweet about the alleged incident, Greene told her followers to “please double check your printed ballot” before turning it in, and noted that “we vote on Dominion voting machines” — a reference to the voting machine company that was the target of numerous false conspiracy theories in 2020.
Greene pushed the same claims in an interview last week with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, according to a clip posted online, claiming the machine “kept on switching the votes” of that voter.
“It sounds similar to what we heard in 2020,” Greene said of the incident, which occurred in her district, again noting Georgia’s use of Dominion machines.
X owner Elon Musk — who, like Greene, is a supporter of former President Donald Trump — made similar conspiracy theory claims while speaking at a town hall in Pennsylvania last week.
Dominion, in the wake of the 2020 election, filed a series of defamation lawsuits after it became the center of a false conspiracy theory that voting machines had rigged the election in favor of Joe Biden. Last year the company settled its landmark defamation suit against Fox News for a $787 million. The other suits are still ongoing.
In a statement, Dominion pushed back on Greene’s new claim.
“The false claim that voting machines can switch votes has been repeatedly debunked,” a Dominion spokesperson said. “As both state and local election authorities have confirmed, the issue in Whitfield County was due to voter error. The county provided the voter with an opportunity to mark and print a new ballot with their correct choices and the issue was quickly resolved.”
In a press release, the Whitfield County Board of Elections said there was no issue with the voting machine, and that this was “the only incident among over 6,000 ballots cast.”
“If we had reason to suspect that the machine was in error, we would have immediately taken the machine out of service,” the statement said. “No machines have been taken out of service.”
The statement noted that Georgia law allows voters to void their printed ballot “if they make the wrong selection on the ballot marking device.”
Greene, responding to a separate Facebook post by the election board, thanked the poll workers for “resolving the issues” and defended their work, writing that it is “not their fault.”
“They don’t make the Georgia state election laws and they are just doing their jobs,” Greene said of the poll workers.
Speaking at the press conference on Wednesday, Sterling said the “main situation” they have encountered includes “elderly people whose hands shake and they probably hit the wrong button slightly and they didn’t review their ballot properly before they printed it.”
“Anyone claiming machines are flipping votes are lying or don’t research,” Sterling wrote in a post on X last week.
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