Covering Donald Trump rallies has never been easy for journalists. Members of the press are often the target of jeering by unruly crowds that are egged on by the candidate himself.
But as the campaign falters and Trump spins tales of a media conspiracy, the scene appears to be getting even uglier.
In Ohio on Thursday, Trump claimed that allegations he groped several women were “lies, corruption and false accusations of the crooked Hillary campaign and the mainstream media,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Earlier in the day in Florida, he said the media was at “war,” with an agenda to elect Clinton “at any cost, at any price, no matter how many lives they destroy.”
.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Trump supports jeer reporters as they arrive at a campaign rally in Cincinnati on Thursday.
.
.
Click link below for article, videos, tweets, photos and slideshow:
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton abruptly left a memorial event in New York City on Sunday morning. The Clinton campaign later said that she felt overheated and went to recuperate at her daughter’s apartment.
“Secretary Clinton attended the September 11th Commemoration Ceremony for just an hour and thirty minutes this morning to pay her respects and greet some of the families of the fallen,” a statement from the campaign read. “During the ceremony, she felt overheated so departed to go to her daughter’s apartment, and is feeling much better.”
The incident took place at a crowded ceremony in downtown Manhattan, with temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s. According to reports, Clinton departed from the memorial without her accompanying press corps. The campaign initially declined to tell reporters where she was headed and speculation ensued that she had been whisked away in a health-related episode. Details of what actually transpired are scant.
.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
In what is a perceived legal blow for prosecutors, the jury was hung and the judge declared a mistrial in the trial of Baltimore police officer William Porter in the case of Freddie Gray’s death after sustaining injuries while in custody.
Porter was charged with manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office in the April 19th death of Gray, who died a week after his neck was broken during a ride in the back of a police van. Gray’s death and the subsequent unrest in Baltimore brought to the fore long simmering tensions in Baltimore and across the nation over socioeconomic disparity and the relationship between law enforcement and the minority communities they serve.
Prosecutors considered Porter’s case key to help strengthening the case against van driver Caesar Goodson, Jr. It was also seen as a signal of how the trials of the other five officers could go.
.
An undated image of Freddie Gray provided by the family’s attorney via WBAL
Every year, thousands of innocent people are sent to jail only because they can’t afford to post bail, putting them at risk of losing their jobs, custody of their children — even their lives.
On the morning of Nov. 20 last year, Tyrone Tomlin sat in the cage of one of the Brooklyn criminal courthouse’s interview rooms, a bare white cinder-block cell about the size of an office cubicle. Hardly visible through the heavy steel screen in front of him was Alison Stocking, the public defender who had just been assigned to his case. Tomlin, exhausted and frustrated, was trying to explain how he came to be arrested the afternoon before. It wasn’t entirely clear to Tomlin himself. Still in his work clothes, his boots encrusted with concrete dust, he recounted what had happened.
The previous afternoon, he was heading home from a construction job. Tomlin had served two short stints in prison on felony convictions for auto theft and selling drugs in the late ’80s and mid-’90s, but even now, grizzled with white stubble and looking older than his 53 years, he found it hard to land steady work and relied on temporary construction gigs to get by. Around the corner from his home in Crown Heights, the Brooklyn neighborhood where Tomlin has lived his entire life, he ran into some friends near the corner of Schenectady and Lincoln Avenues outside the FM Brothers Discount store, its stock of buckets, mops, backpacks and toilet paper overflowing onto the sidewalk. As he and his friends caught up, two plainclothes officers from the New York Police Department’s Brooklyn North narcotics squad, recognizable by the badges on their belts and their bulletproof vests, paused outside the store. At the time, Tomlin thought nothing of it. ‘‘I’m not doing anything wrong,’’ he remembers thinking. ‘‘We’re just talking.’’
.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
A new oligarchic era of American politics came into full view on Friday, as super PACs disclosed fundraising details showing billionaires bankrolling the 2016 presidential race to an unprecedented degree.
The unlimited-money super PACs account for one-third of all federal election funds raised in the first half of 2015 — up from 4 percent at this time in the last presidential election. Three-quarters of all super PAC money came from more than 500 wealthy donors, corporations and unions in contributions above $100,000. More than half the money in the presidential race so far — to super PACs and to campaigns — came from donors who have given at least $100,000.
For the first time in more than a century, the majority of funding for a presidential election is coming in six-figure or larger checks from corporations and the wealthiest Americans. The presidential campaigns, limited to a maximum of $5,400 from a single donor, raised a combined $128 million. Super PACs supporting those candidates pulled in $260 million, with $208 million from those giving $100,000 or more.
.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
As the nation reels from yet another high-profile gun violence tragedy — this time in a movie theater in Louisiana — photographer Joe Quint was, sadly, not surprised.
“We’ve come to accept [gun violence] as tragic and awful and a part of life, but no one expects to be sitting in a movie theater and watching a comedy and someone stands up and starts shooting,” Quint told The Huffington Post Friday. “That’s not normal.”
Despite the abnormality of the experience, Americans “haven’t had the collective shift in consciousness yet to rise up with a unified voice and say ‘enough’.”
.
1 photo from article Joe Quint
“A sound came out of me that I don’t ever want to hear again,” says Eric, as he remembers identifying the body of his daughter, who was killed in a mass shooting at Northern Illinois University.
The nuclear accord with Iran required a difficult series of compromises for world powers and Tehran.
For President Barack Obama, it meant climbing down from demands that Tehran halt almost all of its enrichment of potential bomb-making material and shutter an underground facility possibly impervious to an air attack. It also meant dropping pledges to secure “anytime, anywhere” inspections and Iran’s complete answering of questions related to past weapons work.
But Iran’s supreme leader was forced to retreat on some key issues, too. Relief from crippling economic sanctions won’t come on Day 1, as he long clamored for, and his country will have to open up military sites to international inspectors at some point if the Islamic Republic is going to fulfill its commitments. Iran also will have to adhere to multiyear restrictions on enrichment and nuclear research and development that Ayatollah Khamenei and other leaders once opposed.
.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
More than 50 years after South Carolina raised a Confederate flag at its Statehouse to protest the civil rights movement, the state is getting ready to remove the rebel banner.
A bill pulling down the flag from the Capitol’s front lawn and the flagpole it flies on passed the South Carolina House early Thursday morning. It should get to Gov. Nikki Haley’s desk before the end of the day.
The governor promised to sign it quickly, but didn’t say exactly when. That’s important, because the bill requires the flag be taken down within 24 hours of her pen hitting the paper and shipped to the Confederate Relic Room.
President Barack Obama this week will propose a plan to extend overtime pay to 5 million American workers who are currently excluded under federal law, according to sources.
.
The president will recommend updating overtime rules so that salaried workers who earn less than roughly $50,400 per year would be guaranteed time-and-a-half pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. Under the current rules implemented by former President George W. Bush, salaried workers must earn less than $23,660 per year in order to be automatically eligible for overtime pay.
The president announced his intention to make overtime reforms last year, but the details of the plan have been kept secret until this week. The president is expected to discuss the proposal later this week during a visit to Wisconsin. Details of the proposal were first reported by Bloomberg.
.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
This week’s slaughter of nine people in a South Carolina church left prospects that Congress will curb guns right where they’ve been for years — remote for now, according to lawmakers and activists on both sides of the issue.
Conceding that congressional action was unlikely soon, President Barack Obama said lawmakers will tighten federal firearms restrictions when they believe the public is demanding it.
“I am not resigned,” Obama told the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco on Friday. “I have faith we will eventually do the right thing.”
.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Down it comes
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
James' World 2 