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.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.