Month: December 2024

President Biden announced nearly $6 billion in funding military aid package for Ukraine on Monday that Biden’s administration is sending to Ukraine ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

President Joe Biden announced on Monday nearly $2.5 billion in security assistance for Ukraine, saying the assistance, which includes weapons, will go to giving Kyiv “the support it needs to prevail” against the larger and better-equipped Russian forces. Biden said in a statement: “At my direction, the United States will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war over the remainder of my time in office. Since Russia launched its further assault against Ukraine in February 2022, the United States has rallied the world to stand with the Ukrainian people, and it has been a top priority of mine to provide Ukraine with the support it needs to prevail. [The aid] builds on this effort and will provide Ukraine with both an immediate influx of capabilities to use to great effect on the battlefield and longer-term supplies of air defense, artillery, and other critical weapons systems.”

Biden said the assistance includes a $1.25 billion drawdown package for the Ukrainian military and a $1.22 billion Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative package (USAI) signed earlier this year, as part of a $95 billion foreign aid package that included nearly $61 billion in military and economic funding for Ukraine, $17 billion in military assistance for Israel, $9 billion for Gaza and other war-torn regions and $8.1 billion for Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific allies.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement that another $3.4 billion in “direct budget support” are the final disbursement appropriated under the bipartisan Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriation Act 2024: “our direct budget support continues to be conditioned on reforms related to strengthening law enforcement, improving transparency and efficiency of government institutions, and bolstering anti-corruption rules and procedures.”

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On Monday, a federal appeals court upheld the jury’s verdict that found President-elect Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s, and denied his request for a new trial. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a written opinion upholding the $5 million award that a Manhattan jury granted to Carroll for defamation and sexual abuse, stating that Trump’s legal team failed to show any errors in the ruling that would lead to a new trial.

In the 2023 trial, the jury found Trump liable of abusing Carroll in a dressing room at Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store, and defamed her with comments he made in October 2022. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million.  A separate jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million after finding Trump defamed her by denying the sexual abuse. Trump has also appealed that verdict, repeatedly denying the allegations since Carroll first made them and calling the judgments overly excessive.

Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan said (per NBC News): “[We] are gratified by today’s decision. We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments.”

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement: “The American People have re-elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate, and they demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed. We look forward to uniting our country in the new administration as President Trump makes America great again.”

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The storm system that has produced multiple tornadoes and hazardous conditions in the South has caused the death of at least four people through the weekend.

Two deaths were reported with several more injured as multiple tornadoes touches down in Natchez and Lowndes County, Mississippi, while one death was reported in Brazoria County, Texas. A fourth death was reported in Iredell County, North Carolina, after a tree fell on a vehicle, killing a man on Landis Highway on Sunday morning. Madison Polston, spokesperson for the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office, said there were “multiple touchdown points” in the county between Liverpool and Hillcrest Village and Alvin. She said that so far officials knew of around 10 damaged homes but were still working to determine the extent of the damage.

Saturday’s storms produced 36 preliminary tornadoes across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, with the National Weather Service’s severe storm tracker indicated the system was moving east through Alabama into Georgia shortly before 4 a.m. The agency issued severe thunderstorm warnings with the possibility of tornadoes in western Georgia and the northwestern tip of Florida directly above the Gulf of Mexico.

As of Sunday, the storm system pushed its way east, leaving over 20 million people from the eastern Gulf Coast to the Carolinas at risk of extreme weather. Tornado watches are in effect from North Carolina to north Florida, including in the cities of Jacksonville; Savannah, Georgia; and Charleston, South Carolina. Storms that form through Sunday afternoon will be capable of producing 70 mph wind gusts as well as small hai; severe risk will diminish by Sunday evening.

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Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, has died at the age of 100. Carter had been in hospice care at his home in Plains, Ga., since February 2023; his wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, passed away on Nov. 19 at age 96.

The former president’s death was confirmed in a brief statement from the Carter Center, which read: “our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia.”

Carter, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was a member of a Georgia farming family and served as a state senator and governor before defeating incumbent Gerald Ford in a close 1976 presidential election. He served one term, from January 1977 to January 1981, before losing his bid for re-election in 1980 in a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan, gaining just 49 electoral votes to Reagan’s 489.

Carte wonton to redefine his life after the White House as a global humanitarian. Carter returned to Georgia and win 1982 founded The Carter Center, an Atlanta-based nongovernmental organization dedicated to peace and human rights. Carter’s work through The Carter Center was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Carter became the nation’s longest-lived president on March 22, 2019, surpassing George H.W. Bush’s lifespan. Bush died in November 2018, having lived 94 years and 171 days. Carter celebrated his 99th birthday on Oct. 1.

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Marianne Williamson, a self-help author and former two-time Democratic presidential candidate, announced Thursday that she is running to become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee. DNC members will elect the party’s new chair and other officers at its winter meeting Feb. 1. There will also be a series of four forums to allow those running for DNC chair to speak with party members and lay out their vision for the Democratic Party.

Williamson, 72, said in a video announcing her candidacy: “I am announcing I’m running for DNC chair, because I feel that I can bring a level of expertise to the process of lifting up this possibility of victory over the next two and four years in a way that will not occur if we are only looking traditional means of politicking in order to make that happen.”  She added that she’s been talking to Democratic voters about what they’d like to see from their party: “I’ve traveled extensively throughout this country, and I’ve seen how much pain there is out there. I’ve been up close and personal with people who didn’t have health care, who couldn’t survive on just one job, who were so depressed about so many of the conditions in their lives that were, in fact, at least indirectly due to bad public policy, and too many of them didn’t feel like the Democratic Party had their back.”

Williamson is first female candidate to enter the race to succeed outgoing DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, joining  a wide field of candidates who previously announced their bids for chair, including: former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, New York state Sen. James Skoufis and former Maryland Senate candidate Robert Houton.

Williamson said in her video: “We need to know what it was that made people feel that their wallets were more important than their pain. We need to understand what it is that has made people emotionally and psychologically disconnect from a sense that the Democratic Party was part of a great legacy in American history ..I want to help people connect with the political issues that are going on in their lives in a very real and personal way. And I want to help people understand that by connecting to the Democratic Party, they can truly make a difference.”

Additionally, in an open letter to DNC members, Williamson laid out her plan for the party and urged Democrats to sign a petition to allow her to participate in candidate forums that will be held in January:  “As chairwoman, I will work to reinvent the party from the inside out. For if we want a new president in four years, and a new Congress in two, then we must immediately get about the task of creating a new party.”

Williamson said under her leadership, the Democratic Party will be one that “listens more, and makes people feel that their thoughts and feelings are as important as their wallets, and advocates unequivocally for the working people of the United States … We won’t just fight; we will inspire. We will create a surge of patriotic fervor, and a connectedness of the American heart to the great historical legacy of this country. Our ultimate success will be creating in people’s minds a sense that in order to further that legacy, your smartest move is to vote for Democrats.”

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Authorities are investigating a shooting on Christmas Day in what they believe was a family dispute at a restaurant in Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, that left three people injured by gunfire and another person stabbed.

Phoenix police spokesperson Mayra Reeson said at a news conference that the the evening shooting happened at around 9:45 p.m. at an airport restaurant that is outside the security checkpoints in Terminal 4. An adult female and two adult males were shot, leaving the female with injuries police describe as life-threatening. The two men were in stable condition and expected to survive, with the man hospitalized with at least one stab wound listed in stable condition.

Sgt. Reeson told reporters that the group of people all knew each other and had a physical fight that led to one of them pulling a gun: “I do believe that this was a family dispute that escalated.”  After the gunfire, a man and a girl were detained in an airport parking garage nearby. The gunfire led to the temporary closure of a security checkpoint at the terminal, the closure of some restaurants and a pause in service at the terminal’s PHX Sky Train station; police said they were still investigating why the group was at the airport, and whether they were traveling or were there for some other reason.

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