White House evades responsibility for strike on Iranian girls’ school
Karoline Leavitt batted down a question from a reporter about the US involvement in a strike on an Iranian girls’ elementary school, which killed 175 people.
The press secretary did not accept US responsibility for the attack, and noted that the Pentagon is investigating the strike (as Pete Hegseth said earlier).
“I would just tell you very strongly, the United States of America does not target civilians, unlike the rogue Iranian regime,” Leavitt said. “I would caution you from pointing the finger at the United States of America when it comes to targeting civilians, because that’s not something that these armed forces do.”
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Daines, who has served in the Senate since 2014, formally withdrew from the race at 4:57 pm local time, five minutes after his ally, US attorney Kurt Alme entered the Republican primary, the NBC affiliate in Montana KTVH reported.
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At 5pm, the window for candidates to register for the election with the Montana secretary of state’s office closed.
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“After wrestling with this decision for months, I have decided I will not seek re-election. It is time for a new leaders like Tim Sheehy to spearhead the fight for Montana in the United States Senate”, Daines said in a video statement posted online.
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Earlier on Wednesday, Montana’s other Republican senator, Tim Sheehy, helped drag an anti-war protester out of a Senate hearing as he denounced the US-Israeli war on Iran.
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Daines quickly endorsed Alme’s 5-minute-old campaign.
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“I’ve known Kurt Alme for years,” Daines told KTVH. “He was appointed U.S. Attorney by President Trump in his first term and then reappointed when President Trump was reelected because he did such a good job cracking down on crime.”
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Minutes later, Donald Trump also backed Alme in a social media post. “Kurt is exceptional, and I will be giving him, based on Steve’s strongest recommendation, my Complete and Total Endorsement,” Trump wrote. “Governor Greg Gianforte and Senator Tim Sheehy have also Endorsed Kurt.”
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Tony Gonzales, a Republican congressman from Texas who faces a House ethics investigation into a reported affair with a former aide who died by suicide, admitted on Wednesday that he did have the affair.
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“I made a mistaken, and I had a lapse in judgment, and there was a lack of faith,” Gonzales told the rightwing radio host Joe Pagliarulo, in an apparent admission that he had been unfaithful to his wife.
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“I’ve reconciled with my wife, Angel,” he continued. “I’ve asked God to forgive me, which he has, and my faith is as strong as ever.”
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The congressman had previously denied misconduct.
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The House ethics committee announced a formal investigation into the Texas Republican on Wednesday, the day after he was forced into a runoff in the Republican primary in his district.
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A retired US marine was dragged out of a Senate hearing in Washington on Wednesday by the Capitol police and a Republican senator, Tim Sheehy, as he protested the US-Israeli attack on Iran by shouting: “No one wants to fight for Israel!”
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The protester, who was dressed in a marine uniform and had been seated in the audience at the rear of the hearing room, was identified by the activist group Codepink as Brian McGinnis, a former US marine who fought in Iraq and is the Green Party candidate for Senate in North Carolina.
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Codepink posted video of McGinnis being carried out of the armed services subcommittee hearing he disrupted as the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps was about to speak on the readiness of the force.
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The Codepink video also shows that as McGinnis wrestled with the police, he called out to the marine general in the front of the room, saying: “Commandant, please stand up, as a marine, stand up for America!”
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McGinnis began his protest by standing up from his seat at the back of the room and saying: “Israel is the reason for this war; America does not want to fight this war for Israel,” according to video posted on Instagram by another military veteran turned peace activist, Josephine Guilbeau, and a livestream of the hearing on the armed services committee’s website.
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After two police officers started to drag McGinnis away, he shouted: “America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel! Your inability to name that shows your ineptness as leaders.”
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“This is wrong, and nobody wants to fight for Israel” the protester continued to shout as he resisted being dragged away and toppled to the ground with the officers.
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At that point, a third police officer and Sheehy, a former Navy Seal from Montana who served in Afghanistan and was elected to the Senate last year despite questions over his war record, joined in the effort to drag the protester out.
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Sheehy later derided McGinnis as “an unhinged protestor” and said that his own role in bundling him away was just an attempt to “deescalate the situation”.
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In an Instagram video posted before the hearing, McGinnis told his followers he was there to demand accountability for what he called “this betrayal” by elected officials who had promised there would be no war. “Free Palestine. Free America.” he said at the end of the video.
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Codepink also shared video recorded on Wednesday of it cofounder, Medea Benjamin, pressing another Republican senator, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, to explain why the US is at war with Iran.
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Cramer first made the false claim that the international nuclear deal struck with Iran during the Obama administration, which barred Iran from making a nuclear weapon, “allowed Iran to have a nuclear weapon”.
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The senator then told the activist that the US had to support its military ally Israel because “we have a biblical responsibility to them, as well as an allied responsibility to Israel”.
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A short time ago, Donald Trump concluded the public portion of an event with big tech executives in Washington, by signing a proclamation calling on AI firms to protect Americans against higher electricity bills tied to datacenter power demand through a non-binding pledge.
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The pledge was signed in the ornate, high-ceilinged Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower executive office building.
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