All eyes are on the NFL today ― but not just for what happens after the kickoffs.
NFL players throughout the country are expected to demonstrate before today’s games in defiance of President Trump’s harsh criticism of athletes who kneel during the national anthem. In a Friday speech in Alabama, he called such players “sons of bitches,” and then doubled down on his criticism in a series of follow-up posts on Twitter.
The first such protest occurred Sunday morning in London, and even included the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Shahid Khan. He linked arms with his players — several of whom were kneeling during the anthem — despite having donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee.
Trump’s comments have already sparked a large social media response from a variety of professional athletes and celebrities, including singer Stevie Wonder, who took a knee during a performance Saturday night.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
The National Hurricane Center has upgraded Hurricane Harvey to a stronger-than-expected Category 4 storm.
Residents on the Texas coast who have not yet evacuated should find a safe place and shelter there.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has asked President Donald Trump for a presidential disaster declaration ahead of Harvey’s landfall Friday night.
As Hurricane Harvey trundled toward Texas on Friday it strengthened into a Category 4 storm, exceeding previous projections shortly before making landfall.
The National Hurricane Center upgraded the slow-moving, waterlogged storm to a Category 4 hurricane late Friday afternoon as its maximum sustained winds grew to 130 mph. The bulk of the storm is expected to make landfall Friday night.
The National Weather Service warned Category 4 storms can result in “catastrophic damage” to even well-built frame homes, while dwellings like mobile homes will almost certainly be destroyed. Given the intensity of the winds ― Category 4 tops out at 156 mph ― large trees will also likely be snapped or uprooted.
The last Category 4 storm in the U.S. was Hurricane Charley, which caused $13 billion in damages when it made landfall in Florida in 2004.
President Donald Trump on Friday pardoned a notorious former Arizona sheriff who willfully violated a federal judge’s order by unlawfully detaining individuals his officers claimed might be in the country illegally.
Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had previously proclaimed himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” was convicted of criminal contempt last month for violating a 2011 order that barred Arpaio and his office from detaining individuals solely based on suspicions about their legal status. Arpaio, 85, was scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 5.
“Throughout his time as Sheriff, Arpaio continued his life’s work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration,” the White House said in a statement late Friday. “Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now eighty-five years old, and after more than fifty years of admirable service to our Nation, he is a worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon.”
It took more than 48 hours, but President Donald Trump finally denounced the white supremacist groups whose rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past weekend sparked deadly violence.
But his Monday proclamation that “racism is evil” means little coming from a man who largely has not backed away from the racism upon which he built both his campaign and his real estate business.
Not only did Trump’s condemnation pale in comparison to those from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, celebrities and even the maker of the tiki torches used at the rally, but it also came after he blamed “many sides” for the violent protest.
Throughout his campaign and after his election, HuffPost kept running lists of examples of Trump’s racism dating as far back as the 1970s. We’ll continue to document those incidents here as they happen.
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In the 1980s, Donald Trump was much younger, but just as racist as he is now.
Steve Bannon, a senior adviser to the president who was largely credited with shaping the strategy that got Donald Trump to the White House, is out from his role as the president’s chief strategist. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Bannon and Chief of Staff John Kelly agreed Friday would be his last day.
“We are grateful for his service and wish him the best,” Sanders said in a statement.
The details of Bannon’s departure remain unclear. The New York Times reported Trump had decided to remove Bannon, but also that a source close to Bannon said the adviser had submitted his resignation on Aug. 7 to be effective Aug. 14. MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle also tweeted Bannon is “out.”
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Images: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Susan Bro sat in her darkened home on Sunday, tearing up as she smiled.
She was thinking fondly of her daughter, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia, the day before, when a man drove his car into protesters against the “Unite the Right” rally, a gathering of white supremacist groups.
Heather, a paralegal who lived in Charlottesville, was determined to stand up to injustice, her mother told HuffPost. There was no question that she would protest throngs of neo-Nazis and other extremists who had descended on her town.
“She always had a very strong sense of right and wrong. She always, even as a child, was very caught up in what she believed to be fair,” Bro said. “Somehow I almost feel that this is what she was born to be, is a focal point for change. I’m proud that what she was doing was peaceful. She wasn’t there fighting with people.”
Lawyers for Donald Trump, spurred by the president’s own inquiries, are exploring his power to grant pardons — to aides, family and himself — as a means of undermining special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, The Washington Post reports.
The Post, citing an unnamed source familiar with the queries, said the president himself had asked advisers about the constitutional power, although another source noted that Trump sought only to further his understanding of the privilege.
Trump’s lawyers are also looking into Mueller’s potential conflicts of interests, perhaps as a way of removing him from the Justice Department’s investigation, according to a Post article that cited several of Trump’s legal advisers.
Republicans are trying to find a way to defund Planned Parenthood as part of an overall effort to limit abortion in America. But doing so had the opposite effect in Texas, according to a new study based on research from Texas A&M University.
The study, conducted by economics professor Analisa Packham (now at Miami University), shows that in the first three years after Texas Republicans slashed the family planning budget in 2011 and shut down more than 80 women’s health clinics, the abortion rate among teenagers in the state rose 3 percent over what it would have been had the clinics remained open. After cutting Planned Parenthood out of the state’s subsidized women’s health program, then-Gov. Rick Perry (R) said his “goal” was to “ensure abortions are as rare as possible under existing law.” But the move actually interfered with an overall downward trend in abortions in Texas.
“This certainly isn’t the way to have fewer abortions,” said Dr. Diane Horvath-Cosper, an OB-GYN in Maryland and an advocate with Physicians for Reproductive Health. “The abortion rates nationally have decreased and are at a historic low. So for Texans to see an increase in adolescent abortions is really telling ― it seemed to have followed the national trend until these clinics were defunded.”
The big change in the new Senate Republican health care proposal is, as expected, an amendment that has the potential to undermine current protections for pre-existing conditions.
Yes, that’s despite the promises Republican leaders have made, over and over, to treat those protections as sacrosanct.
The amendment, based on a proposal that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been promoting and tweaking for weeks, would undermine the rules on what and who insurers cover in order to make insurance cheaper. These rules, which include prohibitions on charging higher premiums to people with severe medical problems, are a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act.
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
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Images: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
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James' World 2 