Liberal Mark Carney wins Canada election amid Trump’s 51st state comments
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(WASHINGTON) — While final seat totals are still pending, Canadian broadcasters have called that Mark Carney led the Liberals to victory in Canada’s election on Monday.
It is still not clear whether the Liberals will form a minority or majority government. As of Tuesday morning, the Liberals had won or were leading in 168 out of 343 ridings. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are set to remain in opposition, with 144 ridings so far. Parties need 172 seats to form a majority.
Carney’s victory cements the Liberal Party’s decade in power, replacing former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had been leading the country since 2015.
Carney stepped in as prime minister-elect when Trudeau resigned in March.
In a social media post on the day of Canada’s election, President Donald Trump suggested that Canadians should vote for him in order for Canada to become the 51st state.
“Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, with ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America,” Trump said on Monday, seeming to refer to himself as the candidate.
He added, “America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!”
Despite Trump’s suggestion, Canadians cannot vote for him since he is not on the ballot. There are 16 registered political parties in Canada — with the Liberals and the Conservatives being the most dominant. Other parties include the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the United Party and the Canadian Future Party.
In response to the president’s post, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre issued a sharp reply, saying Trump should “stay out of our election.”
“The only people who will decide the future of Canada are Canadians at the ballot box. Canada will always be proud, sovereign, and independent, and we will NEVER be the 51st state,” Poilievre wrote in a post on X. “Today, Canadians can vote for change so we can strengthen our country, stand on our own two feet, and stand up to America from a position of strength.”
Canadian Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader Mark Carney posted a video on X on Monday with the message: “This is Canada — and we decide what happens here.”
Canada has a parliamentary system, meaning if the Liberals win a majority of seats in the election, or are able to form a minority government with members of another party, Carney will continue to serve as prime minister.
Nearly all of the polls for the election are expected to close by 9:30 p.m. ET on Monday.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that an Oklahoma man convicted of murder, Richard Glossip — who has been scheduled for execution nine times and served his “last meal” three times — must now receive a new trial because errors committed by prosecutors violated his constitutional rights.
The 5-3 decision marks an extraordinary turn in a case that has seen decades of failed appeals, including a prior unsuccessful bid before the Supreme Court in which Glossip challenged the constitutionality of lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment.
“We conclude that the prosecution violated its constitutional obligation to correct false testimony,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her majority opinion, invoking the 14th Amendment’s right to due process. “We reverse the judgement below and remand the case for a new trial.”
Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Sotomayor. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett dissented. Justice Neil Gorsuch recused from the case because of prior involvement as an appellate judge.
Glossip was convicted by an Oklahoma jury for involvement in the 1997 murder of his former boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, only by testimony from the confessed killer, Justin Sneed, who later recanted the claim that he was paid by Glossip to perform the killing. He has maintained his innocence. There was no physical evidence.
Sneed — who received a life sentence in exchange for testifying against Glossip — had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and been taking psychiatric medication, but denied it during trial — facts uncorrected by prosecutors who knew the truth.
“Had the prosecution corrected Sneed on the stand, his credibility plainly would have suffered,” Sotomayor wrote. “That correction would have revealed to the jury not just that Sneed was untrustworthy … but also that Sneed was willing to lie to them under oath. Such a revelation would be significant in any case, and was especially so here where Sneed was already nobody’s idea of a strong witness.”
The state’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, who is a death penalty advocate, came out strongly against execution after reviewing the trial record.
“The death penalty doesn’t turn on, you know, ideology or politics,” Drummond told ABC News last year. “It should turn on the rule of law. This has been a wildly unpopular position for me to take, but it’s the right thing to do.”
Drummond has said he does not believe Glossip is innocent but that a new trial is imperative.
“We are thankful that a clear majority of the Court supports long-standing precedent that prosecutors cannot hide critical evidence from defense lawyers and cannot stand by while their witnesses knowingly lie to the jury. Today was a victory for justice and fairness in our judicial system,” said Glossip’s attorney Don Knight in a statement. “Rich Glossip, who has maintained his innocence for 27 years, will now be given the chance to have the fair trial that he has always been denied.”
The Van Treese family had asked the Supreme Court to uphold Glossip’s conviction.
Justice Thomas, in a written dissent, said the high court had no authority to override Oklahoma state court’s, which had refused to give Glossip a new trial.
“The Court stretches the law at every turn to rule in his favor,” Thomas wrote. “It finds a due process violation based on patently immaterial testimony about a witness’s medical condition. And, for the remedy, it orders a new trial in violation of black-letter law on this Court’s power to review state-court judgments.”
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday downplayed the use of a Signal group chat among top officials to discuss a U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen — brought to light when a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, was “inadvertently” added to the chat.
Peppered with questions on the reported mishap during a meeting with his ambassadors at the White House, Trump came to the defense of national security adviser Michael Waltz and touted the military operation as a success.
“There was no classified information as I understand it,” Trump claimed. “They used an app, if you want to call it an app, that a lot of people use. A lot of people in government use, a lot of people in the media use.”
When asked if anyone would be fired as a result of the firestorm, Trump responded: “We’ve pretty much looked into it. It’s pretty simple, to be honest … It’s just something that can happen. It can happen.”
Trump attacked The Atlantic as well as Goldberg and doubled down on the success of the airstrikes.
“Well, I mean, look, we look at everything and, you know, they’ve made a big deal out of this because we’ve had two perfect months,” Trump said.
Waltz said he had technical experts — rather than the FBI — looking into the matter and told Trump, “We’re going to keep everything as secure as possible. No one in your national security team would ever put anyone in danger.”
Earlier Tuesday, Democrats grilled Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe over the use of Signal and the information discussed on the chat.
The intelligence officials, who were testifying as part of a previously scheduled hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also asserted there was no classified information included in the message chain.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, wrote in a piece published Monday that he was added to a group chat in the commercially available Signal app in which officials, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Waltz, were discussing impeding strikes on Houthi militants in Yemen. Goldberg said he was apparently added to the chat by Waltz.
Facing questions from Senate Democrats on why information on attack sequencing or timing, as reported by The Atlantic, would not be considered classified, Ratcliffe said Defense Secretary Hegseth had authority to determine what was classified or not. Gabbard deferred such questions to the Defense Department.
Ratcliffe also said he believed national security adviser Waltz intended the chat to be “a mechanism for coordinating between senior level officials, but not a substitute for using high side or classified communications for anything that would be classified.”
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the panel, slammed the incident as “sloppy” and said others would have been fired for the same conduct. Warner also pressed officials to share the messages with lawmakers after they said they contained no classified information.
“If there was no classified material, share it with the committee. You can’t have it both ways,” he said.
Republicans on the panel did not raise as many questions on the issue during the hearing, which had been set to focus on worldwide threats. Though Sen. Todd Young, a Republican of Indiana, said he would be asking questions about the Signal incident in a closed-door session.
Officials with the White House’s National Security Council said they “are reviewing” how Goldberg could have been mistakenly added to the 18-member group chat that included several of the nation’s top military officials.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the review on Tuesday, but said that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed.” She added that no classified material was sent to Signal group chat.
“The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible,” she said.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” NSC spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement, which was sent to ABC News after first being published by The Atlantic.
The scope of the review, including whether it would attempt to determine why high-level discussions about military planning were taking place outside of official channels, was not immediately clear from Hughes’ statement.
Trump did not commit to changing procedure or cutting off completely the use of Signal within the administration as a result of the fiasco.
“I don’t think it’s something we’re looking forward to using again. We may be forced to use it. You may be in a situation where you need speed as opposed to gross safety, and you may be forced to use it, but, generally speaking, I think we probably won’t be using it very much,” he said.
Despite his effort to downplay the incident, President Trump repeatedly indicated he does not like this means of communication, saying he thinks it is best to be in the Situation Room for these conversations.
“Sometimes somebody can get onto those things. That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room with no phones on, which is always the best, frankly,” Trump said.
“Look, if it was up to me, everybody would be sitting in a room together,” Trump later said. “The room would have solid lead walls and ceiling and a lead floor. But, you know, life doesn’t always let you do that.”
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Luis Martinez, Lauren Peller, Lalee Ibssa, Isabella Murray and Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Education Secretary Linda McMahon interrupted a press conference by House Democrats outside the Department of Education to give an impromptu statement after they met in a closed-door meeting earlier Wednesday.
With about a minute’s notice, the secretary’s team told some attendees that McMahon would be making a statement.
Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., was speaking at the podium as the secretary appeared at the press conference.
“We are extraordinarily grateful that the secretary gave us the space to have these conversations, but with all due respect, madam, I think my biggest concern is that the states will not be able to protect the programs and services that you would like to devolve with them,” she said before ceding the microphone, noting that the mood during the meeting was “collegial.”
Then, the secretary stepped to the podium in front of the group of Democratic lawmakers, who had met with her in her office for about an hour.
“I just want to express my gratitude to all of these folks who came today so we can have an open discussion about what I believe is one of the most important things that we can have a discussion on or action on in our country, and that is the education of our young people,” McMahon said upon taking the podium.
“This is not a partisan issue. This is about the children of America and its next generation after that, and if we want to have our leaders and if we want to have that next group of engineers and doctors and lawyers and plumbers and electricians and HV/AC operators, then we need to focus on how they can best have their education,” she added.
“And I believe, and I know the president believes as well, the best education is that that is closest to the child where teachers and parents, local superintendents, working together and local school boards to develop the curriculum for those students is the best way that it can happen,” she said.
Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., who spearheaded the effort to meet with McMahon, and several reporters peppered the secretary with questions.
“When are you going to shut down the department?” Takano asked.
“We had our discussion,” McMahon replied.
She declined to answer any further questions before exiting the presser.
Takano and a coalition of lawmakers had requested the meeting after the secretary was sworn into office last month.
“She came down here to upstage the news press availability, trying to give the impression that she’s trying a different approach — that she’s actually meeting with members of Congress,” Takano told ABC News after the event.
Later Wednesday, McMahon posted on X about the meeting.
“This morning, I hosted a meeting with House Democrats to hear their concerns,” she said. “Our collective goal should be to support students, not the broken bureaucracy.”
The meeting comes after weeks of confusion in Washington as the Department of Education slashed nearly half its workforce and lawmakers have been demanding answers from the Trump administration.
Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., Don Beyer, D-Va., and Greg Casar, D-Texas, also attended the meeting..
Chaos ensued outside the agency the last time Democrats tried to meet with department officials as Takano and around two dozen lawmakers were rejected access inside the building.
This time they met with McMahon amid the administration’s attempt to dismantle and spearhead the historic overhaul of the department as directed by President Donald Trump.
The members said McMahon took the right step in meeting with them and that she assured them she would work with Congress to move statutory functions to other agencies and follow federal law. However, Wilson said McMahon indicated she is following the president’s directive in moving the student loan portfolio for more than 40 million people to the Small Business Administration.
McMahon also told the Democratic lawmakers in the meeting that there will be additional workforce cuts at the department, Takano said.
Meanwhile, the meeting seemed to leave many with unanswered questions, and after McMahon left the podium, Stanbury said the secretary has no plans that she shared with them.
Casar, the Congressional Progressive Caucus chairman, said he grew frustrated and even more alarmed during the meeting because he suggested McMahon’s mission will gut public schools.
“What she tried to say, in the nicest of terms, is that she wants to get rid of the guardrails and protections for all of our kids and instead say, No, we can have it set up so that states can give money to the private schools that we like and take away money from the public schools that we may not like,” Casar said.
Wilson, a senior member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, passionately defended public education.
“For the Department of Education to be dismantled, it is going to bring a shock to this nation,” said Wilson, a former principal and lifelong educator. “Schools are the bedrock of this nation. When schools are working, our country is, too.”
