- AP PHOTOS: A lifelong Republican transitions to a new party, years after gender reassignment surgeryOMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A decade ago, Jessie McGrath began a physical transition to make her body match her gender identity. More recently, she underwent a political transformation. A veteran, NRA member and lifelong Republican, McGrath stuck with her political leanings even after starting gender reassignment surgeries in 2014 at the age of 53. Then […]
- WASHINGTON (AP) — The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday upgraded its economic outlook for the United States this year, while lowering its expectations for growth in Europe and China. It left its forecast for global growth unchanged at a relatively lackluster 3.2% for 2024. The IMF expects the U.S. economy — the world’s largest — […]
- Women living in states with abortion bans obtained the procedure in the second half of 2023 at about the same rate as before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to a report released Tuesday. Women did so by traveling out of state or by having prescription abortion pills mailed to them, according […]
- With just over two weeks before the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are hitting the campaign trail in strategic battleground states. Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024. Here’s the latest: Two weeks out from Election Day, the crisis in the Middle East is looming over the race for the White […]
- WASHINGTON (AP) — Georgia voters are once again expected to play a pivotal role in the presidential election on Nov. 5, even as many are focusing on recovering and rebuilding from the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene. Both Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump have visited Georgia in recent weeks […]
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- AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Arizona on Election Dayon October 22, 2024 at 4:18 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in Arizona have no shortage of competitive races to decide in the Nov. 5 general election, with control of the White House, the U.S. Senate and House and both chambers of the state Legislature in the balance. Arizona remains a major electoral battleground four years after President Joe Biden became only the second Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state in nearly 70 years. It is one of four states in the nation’s Sun Belt that has drawn much of the focus of both presidential campaigns in the final sprint to Election Day. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are in a tight race for the state’s 11 electoral votes. They and their running mates have made multiple campaign stops there since securing their parties’ nominations over the summer. Other competitive contests include the race for U.S. Senate, where Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake are running to replace outgoing independent U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, and two Republican-held U.S. House seats in Phoenix and Tucson area districts that both went for Biden in 2020. In the state Legislature, Democrats hope to take over the state Senate for the first time since 1992 and the state House for the first time since 1966, the last time the party controlled the governorship and both chambers simultaneously. Voters will also decide high-profile statewide ballot measures on abortion, immigration and two competing ballot measures that would either require or eliminate the use of partisan primaries in state elections. Under the state constitution, if two contradictory ballot measures both pass, the one with the most votes in favor would become law, although the matter would likely first head to court. Here’s a look at what to expect in the 2024 election in Arizona: Nov. 5. 9 p.m. ET. Arizona does not release votes until all precincts have reported or one hour after all polls are closed, whichever is first, usually 10 p.m. ET. 11 awarded to statewide winner. President: Harris (D) vs. Trump (R) vs. Chase Oliver (Libertarian) vs. Jill Stein (Green). U.S. Senate: Ruben Gallego (D) vs. Kari Lake (R) and one other. 1st Congressional District: Amish Shah (D) vs. David Schweikert (R). 6th Congressional District: Kirsten Engel (D) vs. Juan Ciscomani (R) and one other. Ballot measures: Proposition 133 (require partisan primaries), Proposition 139 (right to abortion), Proposition 140 (eliminate partisan primaries), Proposition 314 (criminal penalties for illegal immigration). State Senate, state House, Corporation Commissioner. In Arizona, ballots cast and processed before Election Day are the first to be reported after polls close. These ballots have tended to favor Democrats, ever since the issue of early and mail voting became highly politicized during the 2020 election. In the 2022 U.S. Senate election, Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly began the night with a nearly 20 point lead over Republican Blake Masters, but that narrowed to about a 5 point win by the time the results were certified. Mail ballots that are delivered on Election Day take much longer to tabulate because election workers do not begin processing or verifying them until after polls close. In Maricopa County, which has the state’s largest population, about 20% of the nearly 1.6 million votes cast in 2022 were mail ballots dropped off on Election Day. Maricopa County is by far the most influential of the state’s 15 counties in statewide elections. It is home to Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe and Mesa and contributed nearly 62% of the vote in the 2020 presidential race. Pima County was a distant second with about 15% of the vote. In statewide elections going back a dozen years, Democrats have always carried four counties in both winning and losing campaigns: Apache, Coconino, Pima and Santa Cruz. In each of those races, the candidate who carried Maricopa won statewide. Maricopa is also one of only 10 counties across the seven battleground states that flipped from Trump to Biden. The Associated Press doesn’t make projections and will declare a winner only when it has determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race hasn’t been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, like candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear it hasn’t declared a winner and explain why. In Arizona, recounts are automatic if the vote margin is 0.5% of the total vote or less. The AP may declare a winner in a race that’s eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome. 2020: Biden (D) 49.4%, Trump (R) 49.1%, AP race call: Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, 2:51 a.m. ET. Registered voters: 4,109,270 (as of July 30, 2024). About 29% Democrats, about 35% Republicans, about 36% other. Voter turnout in 2020 presidential election: 71% of registered voters. Votes cast before Election Day 2020: about 89% of the total vote. Votes cast before Election Day 2022: about 82% of the total vote. Votes cast before Election Day 2024: See AP Advance Vote tracker. First votes reported, Nov. 3, 2020: 10:02 p.m. ET. By midnight ET: about 72% of total votes cast were reported. ___ Associated Press writers Hannah Fingerhut, Larry Fenn and Maya Sweedler contributed to this report. ___ Read more about how U.S. elections work at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content. ___ This story has been corrected to show Arizona has 11 electoral votes, not 16. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
- More Republicans are voting early than in recent years, helping break records before Election Dayon October 22, 2024 at 4:18 pm
With former President Donald Trump’s encouragement, Republicans are voting early again, flocking to the polls for in-person voting ahead of Election Day and helping break records for ballots cast before November in key states like Georgia and North Carolina. The GOP hopes this will fix a mechanical problem that some in the party blame for costing it the 2020 presidential and key 2022 elections. Campaigns usually want their voters to cast ballots ahead of Election Day so they can focus their resources on getting more marginal supporters to the polls at the last minute. Republicans excelled at that before Trump turned against mail voting in 2020, spinning wild conspiracies about the centuries-old process and convincing his supporters to wait until Election Day to cast their ballots. But the party is again pushing its voters to cast their ballots early, and the former president is largely encouraging the change, with a conspiratorial pitch. “I need you to vote and I need you to go to the polls before Election Day because they will try on Election Day to keep you home,” Trump told voters in North Carolina on Monday. Republicans seem to be responding. In North Carolina, where in 2022 Democrats had an edge of more than 30 percentage points of the vote at this point in 2022, they are only ahead by 1 percentage point this year. In Nevada, where Democrats for decades relied on a robust early vote to counter the GOP on Election Day, about 1,000 more Republicans have actually cast early ballots this year than Democrats. It’s unclear what this means for the election, however. The early vote data only reveals whether voters are registered with a party, not who they are voting for. The early electorate can change from day to day as more and more people vote early. And what seem like demographic trends in early vote can suddenly disappear once Election Day votes are factored in. It is still very early in the voting process — the last of the seven swing states, Wisconsin, kicked off its early voting Tuesday morning. Parties can run up leads in the early vote and then see them vanish on Election Day because all their supporters have already cast ballots and the other side has not. “The Democrats are still, as far as I can tell, banking more early votes. It’s just less of a disadvantage for Republicans,” said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida who carefully tracks the early vote. But, McDonald cautioned, “we don’t know if this is a shifting of furniture yet or an added strength for Republicans.” One thing is clear — the return to bipartisan early voting has helped bust records. North Carolina and Georgia both reported record turnout on the first day of in-person early voting, and it’s spilled over into states that aren’t competitive at the presidential level, like South Carolina, which reported its own record when it opened early voting Monday. Republicans seem to still have an aversion to mail balloting. They’ve improved their share of the mail vote in several states but still lag behind Democrats, particularly in Pennsylvania, where there is no in-person early option and Republicans have sent in more than 300,000 fewer mail ballots than Democrats. But the GOP is making up ground by voting early in-person in most competitive states. Still, years of sowing conspiracies about early and mail voting have taken a toll on the conservative electorate. At Elon Musk’s first solo event in support of Trump last week, he encouraged the crowd to vote early, an entreaty that some in the audience responded to by shouting back, “Why?” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
- Richard N. Winfield, First Amendment lawyer and former AP counsel, dies at 91on October 22, 2024 at 4:18 pm
NEW YORK (AP) — Richard N. Winfield, a leading U.S. First Amendment lawyer who represented The Associated Press for three decades and championed freedom of expression for journalists around the world, died on Tuesday. He was 91. Winfield died in his sleep at Bellevue Hospital in New York, said his daughter, Nicole Winfield, who is AP’s Rome-based Italy and Vatican correspondent. He had suffered head trauma after a fall on Oct. 7. Winfield served as general counsel for AP for three decades while a partner at the New York law firm of Roger & Wells, which became Clifford Chance US LLP. During that time, he worked closely with American publishers and editors, defending AP as well as other media clients in hundreds of press freedom cases. “When we would ask Dick, as our lawyer, to review a sensitive piece of copy, his first words were often some form of ‘What a great story!’” said Louis D. Boccardi, president and chief executive officer of the AP from 1985-2003. “And then we would go through the story, not to weaken it but to strengthen it against whatever reaction it might bring. He understood the newsroom and appreciated the dedication and the care that had gone into the work.” After he retired from the firm, Winfield became a founding director of the International Senior Lawyers Project, a non-governmental organization that mobilizes pro bono legal support to advance the rule of law and accountable, inclusive economic development around the world. Winfield’s volunteer activities to promote freedom of expression took him to over 20 countries. He led media reform programs in several former Soviet bloc nations, trained lawyers and judges from Albania to Zimbabwe about freedom of expression and served as a court observer in overseas media defamation cases. “Dick Winfield was a true pillar of the First Amendment, and the impact of his work protecting journalists has been felt around the world,” said Karen Kaiser, senior vice president and general counsel at AP. “He was a trailblazer for the AP, setting the foundations for the legal protection for journalism across the country. And above all, he was a kind a gracious person and a great mentor to younger generations.” Winfield also taught media law classes at the Columbia and Fordham law schools, both in New York City. Born in Chicago on Jan. 20, 1933, Winfield grew up in Valley Stream, Long Island, the eldest son of Richard Paul Winfield and Mary Bertrand Monaghan Winfield. He graduated from Villanova University in 1955, and served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy from 1955-1959, teaching European and U.S. diplomatic history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He graduated from Georgetown University Law school in 1961, two years after marrying Deborah Mary Trainer of Philadelphia. He began his legal career as an associate at the New York City law firm of Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine and then became assistant counsel in Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s office in Albany, N.Y., from 1965-1967. Upon returning to New York City, Winfield began representing AP after the news cooperative’s counsel at Rogers & Wells, William P. Rogers, became secretary of state in the Nixon administration in 1969. At the senior lawyers project, he established and led the media law working group, which provides litigation support and strategic advice to defend journalists facing defamation charges, monitor trials, reform local media laws and increase accountability. Under Winfield’s guidance, ISLP intervened in numerous defamation and other free speech cases in national and international courts, including the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. By presenting international human rights law-based arguments, ISLP contributed to the acquittals of journalists and bloggers who were facing criminal prosecutions. In 2021, UNESCO featured ISLP’s work on behalf of a Palestinian human rights defender as a case study in its “Guide for Amicus Curiae Interventions in Freedom of Expression Cases.” According to the UNESCO citation, “The ISLP intervention came as part of a concerted civil society effort that campaigned for Issa Amro’s freedom. Providing in-depth legal arguments drawn from international human rights law, the intervention gave the campaign legitimacy and argued that the proceedings were politically motivated.” After observing the 2019 appeals trial in Casablanca, Morocco of 43 people convicted in connection with 2016-2017 mass demonstrations, Winfield described a manifestly unjust process in a 2020 speech before a European Parliament conference on human rights violations in Morocco. In it, Winfield noted that the confessions of the defendants, including a prominent Moroccan journalist, were reportedly extracted under torture, defense lawyers were repeatedly silenced by the presiding judges whose behavior he said was “devoid of any semblance of impartiality.” “The hearings we observed presented a textbook case of the high-visibility show trial featuring familiar ingredients,” he told the committee. When he retired from ISLP in 2023, the organization renamed its media law working group “The Winfield Freedom of Expression Initiative.” He also served as chairman of the World Press Freedom Committee, co-chairman of Fund for Peace; chairman of the Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York and chairman of the board of consultors for the Villanova School of Law. He was awarded the First Amendment Award of the Deadline Club in 2002 and the Global Pro Bono Visionary Award from ISLP in 2015. Winfield made his mantra the words of Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who in a 1937 Supreme Court decision wrote that freedom of expression “is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.” Winfield borrowed that concept for the title of the 2012 book he edited, “Exporting the Matrix: The Campaign to Reform Media Laws Abroad.” The book gathered articles about freedom of expression cases, many borne from the Arab Spring uprisings, written by the lawyers, judges, academics and advocates involved. The book had as its cover a photograph of the giant Isamu Noguchi bas-relief plaque “News” which graces the main entrance of what was for decades the Associated Press headquarters at 50 Rockefeller Plaza. Winfield is survived by his wife, Deborah and three children, Richard Neill Winfield Jr., Pamela Winfield and Nicole Winfield; their spouses, seven grandchildren and Winfield’s sister, Denise Mack. Private funeral services are planned. In lieu of flowers, gifts can be sent to Cranaleith Spiritual Center in Philadelphia or the International Senior Lawyers Project in New York. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
- Taxpayers will get bigger standard deductions in 2025, but with smaller boosts than recent yearson October 22, 2024 at 4:18 pm
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. taxpayers will again see higher standard deductions for 2025, allowing them to shield more of their money from taxation on future returns. The Internal Revenue Service detailed the increases in its annual inflation adjustments announced Tuesday. For single taxpayers and married individuals filing separately in tax year 2025, the standard deduction is rising to $15,000 — up $400 from 2024. For couples who file jointly, that standard deduction will be $30,000 for 2025, an $800 jump from the year prior. And heads of households will get a $22,500 standard deduction, up $600 from 2024. Income thresholds for all seven federal tax bracket levels were also revised upward. The top tax rate, which remains 37%, will cover incomes greater than $626,350 for single taxpayers in tax year 2025, for example — compared to $609,350 in 2024. The IRS makes such adjustments for each tax year to account for inflation, which has recently been on a downward trend. Last month, inflation in the U.S. dropped to its lowest point in more than three years, marking some encouraging economic news — but Americans are still feeling some key price pressures. “Core” prices, a gauge of underlying inflation, remained elevated in September, driven up by rising costs for medical care, clothing, auto insurance and airline fares. While taxpayers will again see higher standard deductions for 2025, the increases announced Tuesday are less than those seen in recent years. In tax adjustments announced last year, for example, the IRS raised single filers’ standard deduction by $750 between the 2023 and 2024 tax years — and by $1,500 and $1,100 for married couples and heads of households, respectively. Earlier this month, the Social Security Administration announced a 2.5% cost-of-living increase for benefits recipients starting in January. That translates to an average jump of more than $50 on monthly checks for millions of people. Similar to the latest tax deduction figures, the coming COLA adjustment is lower than that seen in the recent past. Social Security recipients received a 3.2% increase in their benefits in 2024, after a historically large 8.7% benefit increase in 2023, then brought on by record 40-year-high inflation. Next year’s smaller increase reflects moderating inflation. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
- KEYWORD NOTICE – Former Abercrombie CEO Michael Jeffries arrested in sex-trafficking case, WSJ reportson October 22, 2024 at 4:05 pm
(Reuters) – Michael Jeffries, former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, was arrested by federal agents investigating allegations that he ran a sex-trafficking operation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. He was arrested on Tuesday in Florida as part of an investigation being led by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, the report said. Abercrombie & Fitch declined to comment to Reuters queries, while Jeffries was not immediately reachable. Last year, a group of once-aspiring Abercrombie & Fitch male models sued the retailer and the former CEO alleging that the company had benefited from a sex-trafficking operation led by Jeffries. The proposed class action filed by former model David Bradberry in Manhattan federal court claims Jeffries forced models to take drugs and engage in sexual acts with him and others for the chance to be featured in Abercrombie’s provocative catalogs. The lawsuit had alleged that company officers knew about the conduct and Abercrombie paid settlements to people who accused Jeffries of sexual abuse or harassment. Jeffries, who was CEO from 1992 to 2014, was credited with turning around the retailer into a successful teen apparel maker known for its cologne-filled stores and ads featuring semi-nude models. He, however, resigned amid criticism that he had failed to keep pace with the tastes of teen shoppers. (Reporting by Ananya Mariam Rajesh in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
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