Category: US

Nashville council members on Tuesday night voted down a draft agreement to host the 2024 Republican National Convention, effectively taking Tennessee’s capital city out of the running in its battle with Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to host the GOP’s next presidential nominating convention.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee and Republicans in the state legislature heavily lobbied for Nashville to host the convention, but the city’s Democratic dominated Metro Council voted down the draft agreement. According to numerous local reports, only 10 council members voted in favour, with 22 against and three abstentions.

Milwaukee approved its draft resolution in June, and two weeks ago the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) Site Selection Committee — which oversees the 2024 convention planning — recommended Milwaukee over Nashville.

The committee will make its formal presentation on Thursday to the full RNC membership in a closed session, as the national party committee holds its summer meeting in Chicago. The full RNC membership on Friday will vote in a public session on the Site Selection committee’s recommendation for Milwaukee to host the convention.

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In this July 21, 2016, file photo, confetti and balloons fall during celebrations after then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s acceptance speech on the final day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Tuesday night’s vote appears to be the final nail in the coffin for Nashville’s chances of hosting the convention. But a source familiar with the RNC’s convention selection process told Fox News following Nashville council vote that “nothing has changed, and the final vote will still be on Friday.”

The two national parties often hold their conventions in competitive general election states. While Tennessee is a reliably red state in presidential contests, Wisconsin’s a key battleground.

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Earlier this year Salt Lake City, Utah and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania were dropped from contention to host the 2024 GOP convention.

Democratic National Committee officials are continuing to visit the cities hoping to host the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominating convention. The DNC may announce their choice when they hold their annual summer meeting in early September.

It was thought that Schmitt might secure Donald Trump’s prized endorsement, but the former president instead made the unusual choice Monday of announcing he was endorsing “ERIC” — without specifying a last name. Both Schmitt and Greitens, who had the support of Donald Trump Jr. and his fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle jumped at the opportunity to claim Trump’s endorsement was intended for them.

There were 21 candidates in total vying for the Republican nomination. In the final days of the race, Hartzler and Schmitt zeroed in on each other, with Hartzler using her background as a rural farmer to attack her leading opponent as a lawyer from St. Louis. Schmitt used her speeches in the final days to cast Hartzler as a Washington insider.

All three leading contenders in the final leg of the race made sure to distance themselves from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Hartzler, Schmitt and Greitens each said they wouldn’t support McConnell as Senate leader if Republicans take back Congress, a nod to Trump’s attacks and calls for new leadership.

Democrats also had a crowded field this year of 11 candidates, but now that Schmitt locked up the nomination, the race isn’t expected to be all that competitive in the deeply red state come November. Schmitt will face off with one of two Democrats: Lucas Kunce, a veteran, or Trudy Busch Valentine, a former nurse and member of the Busch brewing family. Independent John Wood, who is backed by a super PAC financed by former GOP Sen. John Danforth also turned in petition signatures to make the fall ballot.

Often speaking directly to InfoWars host Alex Jones, the mother of a 6-year-old killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School testified Tuesday that the right-wing conspiracy theorist’s lies that the attack was a hoax have left her in fear for her life and compounded her grief.

“Having a 6-year-old son shot in front of his classroom is unbearable and you don’t think you’re going to survive and then to have someone on top of that perpetuate a lie that it was a hoax, that it was a false flag,” Scarlett Lewis said during her testimony. “I don’t think you understand the fear you perpetuate, not just to the victim’s family but to our family, our friends and any survivor from that school.”

Jesse Lewis, along with 19 of his first-grade classmates and six educators, was killed after a gunman entered their Newtown, Connecticut, school on December 14, 2012.

Lewis and Jesse’s father, Neil Heslin, are among several Sandy Hook families who have filed lawsuits against Jones arguing that his statements that the attack was a hoax have led to years of abuse from his followers. The parents, both of whom testified Tuesday, have asked that Jones pay $150 million for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

“The ripple effect is enormous because of the platform that you have. And the fear that comes from that stops the healing and the mourning process, ”Lewis said to Jones during her testimony from her.

Lewis testified that she received death threats and that her family and friends have also been harassed by Jones’ followers.

Lewis described an incident where an individual drove into her driveway in Connecticut began one Christmas morning and taking pictures of her and her home. She said she has not felt safe and has had to keep a gun at her home de ella for the sake of her surviving son de ella.

“I’m a single mother and responsible for the safety of both of my boys and I was not able to keep one safe so I’m going to keep my surviving son safe,” Lewis said in an emotional testimony.

Jones, who has portrayed the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights, also took the stand Tuesday and told Lewis and Heslin that he “never intentionally tried to hurt you.”

Later in his testimony, however, he said that his views about Sandy Hook came from signs he saw that it was a “synthetic” event, manipulated by outside forces.

He also blamed the “corporate media” several times during his testimony, saying that they lie and misrepresent truths, leading him to question everything reported.

Heslin, Jesse’s father, told jurors that the pain of losing his son was compounded by Jones’ assertion that he never existed.

“It’s very important for me to have this trial and the testimony today to hold Alex Jones accountable,” he said.” Statements by both Infowars and Alex Jones have repeatedly tarnished Jesse.”

The crux of the trial is a 2017 episode of “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly,” on which Heslin appeared and challenged Jones’s denial of the shooting. Heslin says in the episode: “I held my son with a bullet hole through his head.”

Jones and another Infowars host, Owen Shroyer, later implied that Heslin had lied.

“I can’t even describe the last nine and half years of living hell that I and others have had to endure because of the negligence and recklessness of Alex Jones.”

Judges in Texas and Connecticut have already issued default judgments against Jones, which found him liable for defamation for pushing the Sandy Hook hoax claim. Jones’ trial did not proceed because he failed to respond to court orders and turn over documents.

This trial began last week and is being held in Austin, where Jones’ Infowars website and its parent company are based.

“My goal is to hold Alex Jones accountable and to be able to walk out of this courthouse very soon with this all behind me and move on with my life.”

Jones was absent from court during Heslin’s testimony, while he went live on his show and mocked Heslin calling him “slow” and “on the spectrum.” He said the father was “being manipulated by some very bad people.”

Attorneys for Lewis and Heslin had a recording of Jones’s Tuesday morning comments admitted as evidence and played for the jury.

Jones will continue his testimony on Wednesday. Outside the ears of the jury, Jones was admonished by Judge Maya Guerra Gamble for violating orders specifying that he was not allowed to talk about his finances and for offering answers that strayed too far from the questions asked.

“When you come back to testify tomorrow, one more time, no asides,” the judge said. “Answer only the question asked of you.”

YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have all removed InfoWars and Jones from their platforms.

Facebook pages belonging to Jones or InfoWars had a combined total of more than 2.5 million followers, and Jones’ YouTube account had 2.4 million subscribers when the accounts were removed in 2018.

Jones had around 900,000 followers on Twitter and InfoWars had about 430,000 when those were removed, also in 2018.

If Mr. Greitens had won, Democrats had planned to attack him on those charges as well as allegations from his former wife that he had physically abused her and one of their young sons as his political career was collapsing.

“I’m hoping and praying that it is God’s will that Eric Greitens does not get the nomination, but if Eric Greitens wins the nomination, we will lose a Senate seat to the Democrats,” Rene Artman, the chairwoman of the St. Louis County Republican Central Committee, said days before the election. She had pleaded with Missouri Republican officials to more forcefully oppose Mr. Greitens.

On the Democratic side, Trudy Busch Valentine, a nurse and heiress of the Anheuser Busch fortune, narrowly defeated Lucas Kunce, a military veteran who had run a populist campaign with the backing of national progressive groups. Mr. Kunce was seen as a strong candidate, but many establishment Democrats were happy to see a late surge by Ms. Valentine, who can self-fund her campaign against Mr. Schmitt in the fall.

Mr. Schmitt benefited from a highly fractured field of Republicans, 21 in all. It included Representative Billy Long, who claimed to be the true voice of Mr. Trump, and Mark McCloskey, a personal injury lawyer who made headlines when he and his wife brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in front of the couple’s St. Louis home .

Ms. Hartzler was backed by Missouri’s junior senator, Josh Hawley, who as attorney general had pursued the investigations that helped destroy Mr. Greitens’s governorship. Mr. Hawley sided with Ms. Hartzler at a time when a female candidate appeared to be best positioned to blunt Mr. Greitens’s rise.

Ms. Hartzler, however, was snubbed by Mr. Trump, who told his supporters on his social media site, “I don’t think she has what it takes to take on the Radical Left Democrats.” Mr. Trump called Mr. Greitens “tough” and “smart” in an interview on the pro-Trump network One America News, and his de el son de el Donald Trump Jr. shot automatic rifles with Mr. Greitens at a shooting range and said on camera that they were “striking fear in the hearts of liberals everywhere.”

Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is engaged to the younger Donald Trump, was Mr. Greitens’s national campaign chairwoman. But neither she nor her fiancé could convince the former president that Mr. Greitens could win. The former president called Mr. Schmitt Tuesday night to congratulate him.