U.S. News

Archive link

A group of Deadheads plan to commemorate Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia’s birthday with a virtual fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

Spearheaded by David Gans, host of the national radio show “The Grateful Dead Hour,” and Steve Leventhal, owner of Acid Flashback Radio, the event dubbed Deadheads for Kamala aims to mobilize voters to support the Oakland native at the polls.

The free online gathering, which promises special guests, is scheduled for 8 p.m. Aug. 13.

Garcia, who died in 1995, was born on Aug. 1, but organizers were unable to pull together the event on the day due to scheduling conflicts. The San Francisco musician would have been 82 this month.

[...]

Deadheads for Kamala is one of many fundraising efforts to support the vice president, who swiftly launched her presidential campaign after President Joe Biden announced his exit from the race on July 21. Earlier this week, a group called White Dudes for Harris hosted a virtual rally, with appearances from fellow Oakland native Mark Hamill of “Star Wars” fame, director J.J. Abrams and “The Big Lebowski” actor Jeff Bridges.

[...]

Other celebrities such as pop singer Charli XCX, whose “kamala IS brat” tweet sparked countless memes of the candidate; Grammy-winning crooner John Legend, who shouted out the “wonder woman” during his recent performance with the San Francisco Symphony; and rapper Cardi B, who tweeted her excitement for Harris, have voiced their support.

Archived version

The Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC) and Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) on Tuesday released a new joint report titled “Exporting Repression: Attacks on Protestors During Xi Jinping’s Visit to San Francisco in November 2023”. The report meticulously documents 34 extensive cases of transnational repression (TNR) executed by the supporters of Chinese Communist Party against protestors during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to San Francisco from November 14 to 17, 2023, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

• Spanning 160 pages, the report provides a detailed chronological narrative of the attacks, drawing primarily from interviews and testimonies of 26 protesters and one journalist, most of whom were victims of TNR. It unveils the mobilisation and transportation of Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) united front groups across the US to San Francisco, where they engaged in acts of assault, harassment, and intimidation.

• This created a pervasive atmosphere of fear and hostility against Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, and Chinese democracy activists, including individuals as young as 16 years old, for demonstrating their opposition to Xi and the CCP.

• The report also scrutinised the response mechanisms of US policymakers and law enforcement authorities at both federal and local levels. “Despite strong awareness of CCP TNR at the federal level and a general commitment to countering it, agencies were unprepared to do so in San Francisco. Local law enforcement authorities exhibited a lack of awareness of TNR, were often unresponsive when alerted to the attacks, and took little and inadequate action in response to the attacks. The result was that protesters were insufficiently protected and perpetrators have not been held accountable,” the report stated.

The report urges the U.S. authorities to investigate whether the united front groups in the U.S. are operating as unregistered foreign agents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), implementing vetting processes for diplomatic visas issued to PRC applicants, screening for connections to TNR activities, offering protection to groups in the US subjected to TNR, and enacting legislation to create resources to combat TNR.

Now, Kunesh is the first Native woman to serve in the Minnesota state Senate.

Last year, she authored legislation that returned sacred land to the Upper Sioux community, and this year she successfully pushed through a bill to give land back to the Mille Lacs Band of the Ojibwe. She is also working on two bills to return state land in White Earth State Forest back to the White Earth Nation and land in Upper Red Lake back to the Red Lake Nation. The latter two bills died this year after generating lots of pushback locally, but Kunesh said she doesn’t plan to give up.

Virginia Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton used a artificial intelligence (AI) programme to address the House on Thursday. A year ago, the lawmaker was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, which makes it difficult for her to speak.

The AI programme allowed Wexton to make a clone of her speaking voice using old recordings of appearances and speeches she made in Congress. Wexton appears to be the first person to speak on the House floor with a voice recreated by AI.

It's almost like endless mergers lead to homogeneity.

Feels like enshittification is now hitting our main wire service. AP is not (or at least never has been) in the business of bitching that something already being floated by reliable sources Thursday is A) a surprise; and B) left them scrambling for art alongside video outlets. And the angle certainly isn't "It's a Sunday in summer."

I know what scrambling for art looks like when the entirety of your filers are physical and need to be scanned again. But this is not 1998, and falling down the rabbit hole of believing you need video for a major newsbreak makes me wonder just how many rounds of buyouts they've done that this is the public-facing reaction.

It's a stupid stance, ignoring the utter unprofessional nature of the piece. Y'all are supposed to be providing outlets with what they need, not handwringing that everyone was blindsided. That's demonstrably false, so bitch in the newsroom, do a bit of swearing, and then put out competent copy.

The Los Angeles City Council is considering whether to give public funds to private, armed security patrols to protect its religious communities, following a protest against the marketing of West Bank settlement properties at an LA synagogue last month that turned violent.

In the immediate wake of the incident, city council members introduced a motion to give $1 million to several Jewish security organizations that would expand their work around Jewish schools, religious institutions, and neighborhoods.

Magen Am, a nonprofit that runs armed patrol services and firearm training programs for the Jewish community, was named as the recipient of $350,000 in the motion. The group is largely made up of former Israeli soldiers, along with U.S. military veterans, according to the group’s website and social media posts, and was founded by a former MMA fighter with ties to the National Rifle Association. The majority of the former Israel Defense Forces soldiers in the group are “lone soldiers,” according to several reports, the term for individuals with no direct ties to the state of Israel who immigrated there to serve in the nation’s military.

In 2021, Fox cancelled the TV programme hosted by Dobbs after he was accused of using his platform to spread baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election and was named in a defamation lawsuit filed by a voting machine maker against the network.

A statement from Fox News said the company was "deeply saddened" by his death.

Many details of his life in article. He will be missed.

Active until late in life as a guest star on some of prime time’s most popular shows, Newhart died after a “series of short illnesses,” his longtime publicist Jerry Digney told The Times in a statement Thursday. He was 94.

Newhart is survived by four children, Jennifer, Courtney, Timothy and Robert, and numerous grandchildren. His wife of 60 years, Virginia “Ginnie” Newhart, died in 2023.