US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that “unity” would be the theme of his first State of the Union address under a divided government and that he respects Stacey Abrams, who will give the Democratic response.
“I hope she does a good job. I respect her,” Trump said of Abrams.
Trump is to give his speech on Tuesday before a joint session of the US Congress at a sensitive time in talks over keeping the government open and funding for border security he is demanding as part of any deal.
After Trump speaks: Abrams, heavily courted by Democrats to run for a Georgia Senate seat after narrowly losing a bid to be governor.
The 45-year-old Democrat is to take her push for voting rights to the airwaves in her home state tomorrow during the Super Bowl in in Atlanta, Georgia.
Abrams’ political group, Fair Fight, has bought airtime on Georgia affiliates broadcasting the game so the Atlanta Democrat can push for changes to election regulations.
Abrams has said her speech rebuttal would come “at a moment when our nation needs to hear from leaders who can unite for a common purpose.”
Members of Congress are inviting federal workers worried about another shutdown after Feb. 15.
Victorina Morales, who worked for one of Trump’s clubs in New Jersey for years even though she was born in Guatemala and lived in the US illegally, is to attend.
Morales, who is to be a guest of New Jersey Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman, said in an interview that she feels respectful toward the president, but she does have a message for him after years of hearing Trump describe immigrants as a scourge who take jobs from Americans.
“Forget about the wall, stop separating families and focus on immigration reform,” she said in a Spanish-language interview.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema