Tag Archives: President

U.S. protesters march against Trump presidency for fifth day

Protests on Las Vegas Strip

By Alexander Besant

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Demonstrators in major U.S. cities took to the streets on Sunday for a fifth straight day to protest President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign manager said President Barack Obama and Democrat Hillary Clinton should do more to support a peaceful transition.

Following several nights of unrest, crowds of people marched in parks in New York City, San Francisco and Oakland, California, according to social media.

A few thousand joined a march at the south end of Manhattan’s Central Park, beginning at a Trump property on Columbus Circle and walking toward the real estate mogul’s skyscraper headquarters less than a mile (1.6 km) away.

They chanted: “Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcomed here,” and held signs such as “White silence = violence” and “Don’t mourn, organize.”

One protester said demonstrators were reclaiming what the American flag he was holding stood for.

“The flag means freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal protection under the law and other values like diversity, respecting differences, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press,” said Daniel Hayman, 31, of Seattle, who was in New York for work. “We’re trying to reclaim the flag and push forward those values.”

Thousands in several cities have demonstrated since the results from Tuesday’s election showed Trump, a Republican, lost the popular tally but secured enough votes in the 538-member Electoral College to win the presidency, surprising the world.

Largely peaceful demonstrators in urban areas have said Trump threatens their civil and human rights. They have decried Trump’s often inflammatory campaign rhetoric about illegal immigrants, Muslims and women, as well as allegations, which he denies, that the former reality TV star sexually abused women.

Dozens have been arrested, including 71 in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday night, according to police, and a handful of police injured.

‘LET’S MAKE WAVES’

In San Francisco on Sunday, about 1,000 people marched through Golden Gate Park toward a beach where they chanted: “Let’s make waves.” They held signs such as “I resist racism” and “Down with the Trumps.”

Across the bay in Oakland, thousands of protesters joined a festival-like atmosphere, holding peace signs and blowing soap bubbles in the sunshine. Many had brought their children, aiming to hold hands around the 3.4-mile (5.5-km) circumference of Lake Merritt in a popular urban park.

Civil rights groups have monitored violence against U.S. minorities since Trump’s win, citing reports of attacks on women in Islamic head scarves, of racist graffiti and of bullying of immigrant children. They have called on Trump to denounce the attacks.

Trump said he was ‘so saddened’ to hear of instances of violence by some of his supporters against minorities, according to a transcript released on Sunday of an interview with the CBS program ’60 Minutes.’

‘THIS MAN IS OUR PRESIDENT’

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, said on Fox News on Sunday that she was sure many of the protesters were paid professionals, although she offered no proof.

Suggesting a double standard, Conway said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that if Clinton had won the election and Trump supporters had protested, “people would be freaking out that his supporters were not accepting election results.”

“It’s time really for President Obama and Secretary Clinton to say to these protesters: ‘This man is our president,'” she said.

Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN on Sunday that protests were protected by the First Amendment as long as they were peaceful.

Neither Obama nor Clinton has called for an end to the protests. Obama told Trump at the White House on Thursday that he was going to help Trump succeed, “because if you succeed, then the country succeeds.”

Clinton told supporters at a New York hotel on Wednesday: “Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”

Trump on Sunday attacked the New York Times for coverage he said was “very poor and highly inaccurate.”

“The @nytimes sent a letter to their subscribers apologizing for their BAD coverage of me. I wonder if it will change – doubt it?” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The newspaper published a letter in Sunday’s editions from publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Dean Baquet, not apologizing, but thanking readers for their loyalty and asking how news outlets underestimated Trump’s support.

The Times plans to “hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly” during the Trump presidency, they wrote.

(Additional reporting by Alana Wise in Washington, Beck Diefenbach in San Francisco and Noah Berger in Oakland, Calif.; Writing by David Ingram; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney)

Protesters take to streets for a second day to decry Trump election

Protesters of Trump as President

By Gina Cherelus and Ian Simpson

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Police put up security fences around U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s new Washington hotel on Thursday and a line of concrete blocks shielded New York’s Trump Tower as students around the country staged a second day of protests over his election.

A day after thousands of people took to the streets in at least 10 U.S. cities from Boston to Berkeley, California, chanting “not my president” and “no Trump,” fresh protests were held in Texas to San Francisco.

A Trump campaign representative did not respond to requests for comment on the protests but Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and a high-profile Trump supporter, called the demonstrators “a bunch of spoiled cry-babies.”

“If you’re looking at the real left-wing loonies on the campus, it’s the professors not the students,” Giuliani said on Fox News on Thursday. “Calm down, things are not as bad as you think.”

The protesters blasted Trump for campaign rhetoric critical of immigrants, Muslims and allegations of sexual abuse of women. More than 20 people were arrested for blocking or attempting to block highways in Los Angeles and Richmond, Virginia, early Thursday morning.

White House spokesman Joshua Earnest said Obama supported the demonstrators’ right to express themselves peacefully.

“We’ve got a carefully, constitutionally protected right to free speech,” Earnest told reporters. “The president believes that that is a right that should be protected. It is a right that should be exercised without violence.”

In San Francisco, more than 1,000 students walked out of classes on Thursday morning and marched through the city’s financial district carrying rainbow flags representing the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, Mexican flags and signs decrying the president-elect.

Several hundred students at Texas State University in San Marcos took to the campus to protest Trump’s election, with many students saying they fear he will infringe the civil rights of minorities and the LGBT community.

“NOT MY PRESIDENT”

In New York’s Washington Square park, several hundred people gathered to protest Trump’s election. Three miles (5 km) to the north at the gilt Trump Tower, where Trump lives, 29-year-old Alex Conway stood holding a sign that read “not my president.”

“This sign is not to say he isn’t the president of the United States, but for two days I can use my emotion to be against this outcome and to express that he’s not mine,” said Conway, who works in the film industry. “The only thing I can hope for is that in four years I’m proved wrong.”

In Washington, a jogger shouted an expletive about Trump as he passed the Trump International Hotel on Thursday, just blocks from the White House, where the former reality TV star had his first meeting with President Barack Obama to discuss transition plans.

More anti-Trump demonstrations are planned heading into the weekend, according to organizers’ online posts. One urged protesters to rally in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.

Supporters of Trump, who surprised many in the political and media establishment with Tuesday’s win, urged calm and recommended that Americans wait to see how he performed as president.

The United States has seen waves of large-scale, sometimes violent protests in the past few years. Cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to Berkeley have been rocked by demonstrations following high-profile police killings of unarmed black men and teens. Those followed a wave of large-scale protest encampments, starting with the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York in 2011.

Trump said in his victory speech, which was delivered in a far calmer manner than he displayed in many campaign appearances, that he would be president for all Americans. Some of his most controversial campaign proposals, including the call to ban Muslims from entering the United States, had been removed from his campaign website by Thursday.

A spate of isolated attacks on women and members of minority groups by people wearing Trump hats or saying his name were reported by police and U.S. media.

A hijab-wearing female student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette was assaulted on Wednesday morning by a man wearing a white “Trump” hat, who knocked her to the ground and took her head scarf and wallet, university police said in a statement.

Reports also showed other cases in which Trump opponents lashed out violently against people carrying signs indicating they supported him.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Ian Simpson in Washington, Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Bill Trott)

Sudan’s Christian-Persecuting President On The Run

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has made persecution of Christians a major part of his Islamic dominated government, is on the run after the International Criminal Court declared him a war criminal.

The President returned to Sudan from South Africa, defying a court order to stay in that nation while the government of South Africa considered the ICC’s request for al-Bashir’s arrest.  He had been attending an African Union summit in Pretoria at the time of the warrant being issued for his arrest.

The South African government eventually issued the order for arrest about two hours after al-Bashir flew out of the country.

“We still remain quietly optimistic and determined to see justice done in this case,” deputy prosecutor James Stewart told the BBC.

U.N. head Ban Ki-moon reminded nations that have signed the ICC’s statues they’re obligated to arrest those who are sought by the court.

“The president of the assembly expresses his deep concern about the negative consequences for the court in case of non-execution of the warrants by states parties and, in this regard, urges them to respect their obligations to cooperate with the court,” said in a statement H.E. Mr. Sidiki Kaba, president of the Assembly of States to the Rome Statute of the ICC.

The charges are in connection with the genocide in Darfur and al-Bashir’s actions in setting up a strict Sharia law system in his country that included the killing of non-Muslims.  While he will be able to move freely within Sudan, he will not be able to leave the country for fear of arrest.

Huckabee Officially Announces Run For President

Mike Huckabee made it official Tuesday.

Huckabee made his announcement in front of a crowd in Hope, Arkansas, where he was raised.  He said that he wanted to take America “from hope to higher ground.”

Huckabee was unashamed of his Christian upbringing and love for the Lord in his announcement.

“We prayed at the start of each day [in school], and we prayed again before lunch,” Huckabee recalled. “And I learned that this exceptional country could only be explained by the providence of almighty God.”

Huckabee said that Americans have generally lost their way morally and that government leaders have made judges their God rather than the Lord.

“We’ve lost our way morally,” he said. “We’ve witnessed the slaughter of over 55 million babies in the name of choice, and we are now threatening our religious liberty by criminalizing Christianity and demanding that we abandon biblical principals of natural marriage.”

“Many of our politicians have surrendered to the false god of judicial supremacy, which would allow black-robed and unelected judges the power to make law as well as enforce it,” Huckabee continued, “upending the equality of our three branches of government as well as the separation of powers so central to the Constitution.”

Huckabee said that the Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being.

“My friends, the Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being and they cannot overturn the laws of nature or of nature’s God,” Huckabee proclaimed, receiving applause.

Drone Aircraft Crashes On White House Lawn

A drone aircraft crashed onto the White House lawn overnight while the President was out of the country.

Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary told reporters the device was a quadcopter about two week in diameter.  The unmanned aircraft was flying at a low altitude before crashing on the southeast side of the executive mansion around 3:08 a.m. Monday.

“There is a device that has been recovered by the Secret Service at the White House,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said when asked if a drone was found. “The early indications are that it does not pose any sort of ongoing threat to anybody at the White House.”

While the President and First Lady were in India, the President’s children were inside the White House because they had to stay behind to attend school.

The White House was darkened and the grounds placed on lockdown for around two hours while the Secret Service conducted their investigation.  The Secret Service would not say if there were cameras on the device that were transmitting to a remote location.

The incident is the latest in a round of security breaches at the White House over the past year.  Former director Julia Pierson was forced to resign last year after a Texas man with a knife was able to get inside the White House.

Jakarta Gets First Christian Governor In 50 Years

Muslims throughout Indonesia are furious over the swearing in of Jakarta’s first Christian governor in nearly 50 years.

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama had been acting governor since Joko Widodo stepped aside to become the country’s President.

Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population and has been experiencing a wave of religious intolerance from Muslim hard liners angered that other religions have been given freedom to worship.  The new president has vowed to protect religious minorities.

“I don’t need to be approved by everyone,” Purnama told reporters. “The ones that deny me aren’t Jakartans. They come from Bekasi, Depok, Bogor, which are not in my territory.”

Purnama is also the first ethnic Chinese governor of Jakarta.  He is known as a transparent, no-nonsense leader who focuses on elimination of corruption in government.

President George W. Bush Shares Importance of Bible Reading

Every day for eight years, the President of the United States spent time reading, studying and meditating on the Word of God.

That’s the message that President George W. Bush told a group of 200 civic and business leaders in Dallas on Sunday.

“I read the Bible every day during my presidency,” said Bush.  “The easiest time to be faithful is during a time of crisis. The hardest time for faith is when all is well. Faith informed my principles and decisions, but not my tactics. It would give me strength, but I didn’t use my faith to make decisions. Freedom is a faith informed principle.”

The President spoke with Hobby Lobby president Steve Green at an event to raise funds for the Museum of the Bible that is scheduled to open in Washington, D.C. in 2017.

President Bush praised the museum.

“The museum is a great idea. It’s very important that the Museum of the Bible invites and makes people of all faiths feel comfortable. It will be an important part of our capital,” he said.