With the White House behind her, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered an impassioned closing speech to the American people. In an incredibly accelerated election cycle in which Harris had only three months to define herself to voters beyond the Biden administration, she used the speech to spotlight the stark contrast between her values ​​and vision for the country and that of Donald Trump. Even her chosen venue, the Ellipse (site of Donald Trump’s infamous event Speech of January 6 in 2021, where he exhorted his followers to “fight like hell” and preceded an rebel) looked as if it would symbolize the various type of government he offers.

Here are our top 5 takeaways.

Harris says Donald Trump is fascinated about himself

Harris wasted no time in laying out the stakes of the election, saying: “This election is more than just a choice between two parties and two different candidates. “It’s a choice whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or one ruled by chaos and division.” She went on to characterize Donald Trump as deeply selfish and focused on revenge against his perceived enemies. “Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him, people he calls, quote, America’s ‘enemy from within.’ This is not a presidential candidate who thinks about how to improve his life. “He is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grief and craving unchecked power.” Unlike Trump, who has an “enemies list,” Harris described herself as someone who has a “bucket list” of things she desires to do for the country.

It’s time to change sides to Division

Unity was one other theme of Harris’ speech. While the country “has become absorbed in too much division, chaos and mutual distrust,” she said, “it doesn’t have to be this way.” Harris encouraged Americans to assume a united country with her on the helm: “We have to stop pointing fingers and start clenching our hands. It is time to turn the page on drama and conflict, fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America, and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next President of the United States.” If elected, Harris also promised to be a president for all people, even those that disagree with her: “Here’s what I promise you: I will always listen to you, even if you don’t vote for me. I will always tell you the truth, even if it’s hard to hear. I will work every day to build consensus and reach compromise to get things done, and if you give me the chance to fight on your behalf, nothing in the world will stand in my way.”

Harris says a middle-class upbringing inspires presidential priorities

Harris portrayed herself as someone who cared concerning the average American and could connect with them due to her middle-class upbringing. “There’s something about people being treated unfairly or overlooked that, honestly, just blows my mind. I don’t like it. This is what my mother instilled in me: a drive to hold accountable those who use their wealth or power to take advantage of other people, a drive to protect hardworking Americans who are not always seen or heard and who deserve a voice.” At several points in her speech, she recalled memories of her mother and how that will impact her priorities as president. For example, when developing her economic plan, she recalled: “I’ll always remember how our mother saved and how excited she was when she could finally afford to purchase our first house. I remember how excited she was and I do know that owning a home is just not only a guarantee of economic security. It’s about taking pride in your labor, and as president, I’ll fight to assist first-time home buyers make down payments, defeat firms which might be raising rents and constructing thousands and thousands of recent homes. Because of her experience caring for her mother while battling cancer, she knows how expensive it will probably be, so Harris also proposed extending Medicare home health care coverage to seniors to ease the burden on families.

Harris vows to take motion on abortion and immigration

Since becoming the Democratic presidential candidate, Harris has repeatedly advocated for reproductive rights, and in her speech she once more asserted that a woman – not the federal government – has the fitting to make her own decisions about her body. In contrast to what she said was Trump’s plan to ban abortion nationwide, she promised that “as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it when Congress passes legislation to restore reproductive freedom nationwide.” On the heels degrading remarks Last week, Trump spoke out about immigrants during his controversial rally at Madison Square Garden, Harris said: “Politicians must stop treating immigration as an issue to intimidate votes and instead treat it as a serious challenge that we must finally unite to address.” to unravel the issue.” In addition to promising to sign a previously rejected bipartisan immigration bill, she also recognized the worth of immigrants. She promised comprehensive immigration reform: “We must recognize that we are a nation of immigrants, and I will work with Congress to pass immigration reform that includes a workable path to citizenship for hard-working immigrants like farmworkers and Dreamers.”

In a hallmark of the campaign, Harris ended on an optimistic note

Reflecting on her extraordinary journey that led to this moment, Harris said: “I grew up as a child of the civil rights movement. My parents took me in a stroller to marches where crowds of people of all races, creeds, and walks of life gathered to fight for the ideals of freedom and opportunity. I lived the promise of America. I saw how hard our mother worked to give her daughters the same opportunities this country gave her.” She continued: “These United States of America, we will not be a vessel for the plans of would-be dictators… Let us fight for this beautiful country that we love and in seven days we will likely be in power. Each of you has the facility to show the page and begin writing the following chapter of probably the most extraordinary story ever told. While this speech was intended to be her closing argument, it won’t be the last time voters will see her on the campaign trail. On Wednesday, Harris is scheduled to go to three cities in battleground states: Raleigh, North Carolina; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Madison, Wisconsin.

Deontae Faison, a 35-year-old black father of two, was attempting to enjoy a picnic in an Oakland park with a friend when police confronted him about expired tags on the automobile they were driving.

The automobile belonged to his friend, a white woman, but East Bay Regional Parks Police Officer Jonathan Knea focused his attention on Faison, despite the fact that he never saw him drive it into the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline on April 5. lawsuit filed earlier this month.

Believing he was being unfairly targeted, Faison gave police an alias. But when the cops couldn’t find the name of their system, they threatened to bring a fingerprint technician to the scene to properly ID him and check him for arrest warrants.

Meanwhile, the white woman who owned the automobile was never questioned as as to if she owned it, her name was never checked to acquire a warrant, and he or she was never threatened with fingerprinting.

After 20 minutes of being detained and questioned, more cops arrived and Faison panicked, especially after Knea pulled out a gun and threatened to shoot him, so he ran towards a body of water, prompting Knea to chase him and taser him within the back .

Faison fell but was in a position to rise up and knee-deep within the water, but Knea continued to scald him, causing him to fall face first into the water, which the lawsuit says is a violation of department policy.

Officers then spent the following 40 minutes watching Faison struggle to remain afloat within the icy 50-degree water, doing nothing to avoid wasting him.

“He will not survive” – ​​in response to the lawsuit, the policeman’s voice might be heard on the camera placed within the man’s body.

After 40 minutes of attempting to stay afloat, Faison sank underwater, but his unconscious body surfaced and started floating near the other bank of the river mouth.

Only then did the police pull his body from the water and call an ambulance, the lawsuit states. While waiting for rescuers to reach, in addition they left his unconscious body on the shore for quarter-hour without attempting to resuscitate him using cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

They also didn’t inform paramedics that they’d repeatedly shocked him with a Taser, which, in response to the lawsuit, prevented paramedics from providing vital medical attention. Six months later, Faison stays in hospital in a coma.

According to the lawsuit, which names the East Bay Regional Park District and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office as defendants:

The lawsuit also states that Knea violated several department and state policies established by the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, which certifies law enforcement officers in California:

The lawsuit accuses police and deputies of violating Faison’s Fourth Amendment rights, in addition to battery, false imprisonment and negligence. Watch the video from the camera embedded below.

Alleged concealment

The lawsuit accuses the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office of concealing their wrongdoing by turning off body cameras and disposing of evidence, resembling Faison’s clothing with Tasers attached.

According to the lawsuit, in addition they didn’t take heed to the testimony of witnesses, including Faison’s friend, who also fled the scene. However, she only received a citation, which the criticism says is evidence of selective enforcement between blacks and whites:

Officers also claimed of their reports that they feared Faison may be armed, which put him in fear for his life, which the lawsuit claims is a lie.

The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office filed charges against Faison for resisting arrest and giving an officer a false name, despite the fact that Faison stays within the hospital in a coma and has no opportunity to defend himself against the costs.

“The level of disregard and callousness that the officers showed as they stood by and watched Deontae scream for help, flailing his arms in a desperate attempt to avoid drowning, is inexcusable,” civil rights attorney Jamir Davis of the J. Davis Law Firm said in a press release submitted by one of the attorneys representing the case.

Faison’s oldest son, also named Deontae, turned 18 over the summer and graduated from highschool, but his father was unable to attend the ceremony.

“It just derailed our whole life,” the younger Faison said through tears press conference. “I can’t go to the park. I can’t play basketball. … It’s very difficult for all of us.”

WASHINGTON (AP) – It presidential electionsfirst from January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitolwill be a stress test of the new systems and guardrails Congress has put in place to make sure America’s long tradition of peaceful transfers of presidential power.

As a Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris race to the finish line, pro-democracy supporters and elected officials are preparing for an uncertain period after Election Day as legal challenges are filed, bad actors spread disinformation and voters wait for Congress to certify the results.

“One of the remarkable things about this election is that so much of the potential threat and so much of the attack on the electoral system is focused on the post-election period,” said Wendy Weiser, vice chairman for democracy at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice.

After the Jan. 6 attack, Congress moved to strengthen the process and stop a repeat of the unprecedented period when Trump, joined by some GOP allies in Congress, refused to concede defeat to the president Joe Biden. Trump spent months pushing through dozens of failed legal cases before sending his supporters to the Capitol, where they disrupted the vote count with a bloody riot. He is standing in front of A federal indictment for a program that included lists of faux electors from states falsely claiming he had won.

While new Vote Counting Reform Act approved by Congress clarified post-election processes — to resolve legal issues more quickly and to emphasise that the vice chairman has no power to alter the end result of the Jan. 6 election — the new law is on no account set in stone.

Much depends upon the people involved, from winning and losing presidents to elected congressional leaders and voters across America who put their trust in a democratic system that has existed for greater than 200 years.

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Voters are concerned about post-election conflicts

AND poll conducted by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that American voters are approaching the election with deep anxiety about what may come next.

Dick Gephardt, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, currently serves on the board of the nonpartisan organization Keep our Republic, which provides civic education about the process in the presidential battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“We are only concerned about one thing: Can Americans still have reasonable confidence in the elections, and can we achieve a coherent, peaceful transition of power in all offices, including the presidency?” Gephardt said at a briefing earlier this month.

“I think January 6, 2021 was really a wake-up call for all of us,” he said.

It’s not only the onslaught of legal challenges that Democratic groups are concerned about, as each Republicans and Democrats have already filed dozens of cases before Election Day. They say the sheer variety of cases could raise questions election result and cause disinformation, each at home and abroad, as happened in 2020 when Trump’s legal team advanced distant theories that turned out to be wildly inaccurate.

Trump is looking for to reclaim the White House, already setting the stage for challenges in an election he desires to be “too big to be rigged.” The Republican National Committee has made legal strategy a cornerstone of its activities Election Integrity Program.

Trump is supported by Republicans on Capitol Hill, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnsonwhich adopted similar language, saying it could only accept the results if the elections were free and fair.

“We will have a peaceful transition of power,” Johnson, who led one in every of Trump’s 2020 legal challenges, said on CBS. “I believe President Trump will win and this will be handled.”

House Republicans’ specific line of attack was to suggest that non-citizens would vote illegally, despite the fact that it’s offense to accomplish that, and state and federal reviews have shown this to be the case extremelyrare. To reinforce his concerns, Johnson pointed to previous House races, including one in Iowa in 2020 that he won by six votes.

Republican Joseph Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, said Johnson was “saying the quiet part out loud,” signaling how Republicans could challenge the result.

This “disturbs me,” he said.

What happens between the election and the inauguration?

At the Brennan Center, they ran war game-like scenarios about what might occur after the election, while state election officials they’re facing a rebirth conspiracy theories and disinformation about voting.

The process features a series of deadlines between Election Day on November 5 and Inauguration Day on January 20, once routine steps which might be now necessary milestones that could be achieved – or missed.

States are required to certify their electors by December 11 upfront of the Electoral College meeting, which falls on December 17 this 12 months.

The new Congress meets on January 3 to elect the Speaker of the House and swear in lawmakers. Then on January 6, Congress meets in a joint session to approve the counting of votes from the states – a typically ceremonial session presided over by the vice chairman.

To strengthen the process in the wake of the January 6 attack, the Ballot Counting Reform Act made several changes intended to strengthen the process and ensure disputes are resolved by the time Congress meets. Legal questions over the results are expected to be resolved more quickly, under an accelerated timetable for judicial review, all the approach to the Supreme Court if needed. If the district refuses to issue the certificate their results, like some did in the 2022 midterm elections, the governor has greater authority to certify the state’s results.

As of Jan. 6, the law now requires 20% of the House and Senate to call on the state’s voters to force a vote to reject them, reasonably than a threshold of 1 member from each chamber.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who co-sponsored the new law with Republican Sen. Susan Collins, D-May., said she had done “the best she could” to guard the process.

“You know people have the right, if they have a problem with the election, to go to court and be heard,” Lofgren said. The thing is, once it’s over, it’s over.”