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The president has been focused on the race since the death of Lindsey Graham in July. Ms. Graham, the late senator's sister, is competing against Representative Ralph Norman in a runoff on Aug. 25.
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One of the biggest upsets from Democratic primary elections this month was Donavan McKinney's defeat of two-term Congressmember Shri Thanedar in the House primary to represent parts of Detroit and Wayne County in Michigan's 13th District. McKinney, a democratic socialist state lawmaker, won on a platform to get corporate money out of politics, support Medicare for All and end military aid to Israel, among other issues. Like many other insurgent Democrats running for office, he has also proposed strict limits on artificial intelligence data centers. He took no corporate PAC money, and his campaign was supported by the Justice Democrats, Working Families Party, Democratic Socialists of America and major labor unions.
"We built the biggest and baddest coalition in the country," says McKinney of his win. "People have come together and realized that our district deserves better."
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We speak with Tennessee lawmaker Justin J. Pearson, who just won the Democratic primary to represent part of Memphis in the state's 9th Congressional District. Pearson's campaign focused in part on opposing large artificial intelligence data centers, particularly Elon Musk's Colossus 1 and Colossus 2, which are in the Memphis area.
"People don't want toxic data centers polluting the air that they breathe," says Pearson. "It's not a fight of right versus left; it's a fight of those who are at the top and the rest of us."
Pearson is a longtime environmental justice organizer and advocate who first gained national prominence three years ago, when he was expelled from Tennessee's House of Representatives for protesting Republicans' inaction on gun violence. He is now running in a congressional district that was recently gerrymandered to dilute Black voting power in the state following a Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act. His opponent in November is Republican state Senator Brent Taylor, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump.
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Militaries across the world are in an "AI arms race," says Heidy Khlaaf, a chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, which just released a joint report with Airwars titled "Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain."
"What it is is a series of different types of AI algorithms that are chained together, each with their own pitfalls, each with their own flaws," she says. "And these systems build off of each other and feed into one another to, unfortunately, end up resulting in civilian casualties."
This can lead to faulty targeting because "humans are prone to just accepting recommendations of AI algorithms without corroborating that evidence," adds Khlaaf.
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Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Republican Michele Tafoya are running for Senate, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) and state House Speaker Lisa Demuth are running for governor.
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Kansas state Senator Cindy Holscher won Tuesday's primary race to become the Democratic nominee in the state's gubernatorial race, facing Republican Ty Masterson in November. Holscher clinched the nomination over fellow state lawmaker Ethan Corson, who was backed by the outgoing Democratic Kansas Governor Laura Kelly. Holscher's victory is seen as another resounding defeat for establishment Democrats in Kansas and nationwide. The fight over data centers became a defining issue in the Kansas race.
"We see [data centers] suck up the resources in terms of water. We see energy usage causing utility bills to skyrocket. So, certainly not things that you want to have happen during an affordability crisis," Holscher tells Democracy Now!
Holscher also celebrates the defeat of a ballot measure to change how state Supreme Court justices are elected, which she calls a "backdoor attempt" to attack abortion rights, voting access and public education.
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President Trump said Thursday he may temporarily withdraw his nomination of Todd Blanche for attorney general after two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, said they would not vote to advance Blanche's nomination until they received written assurances that he would limit some of the terms in the controversial deal reached between the Department of Justice and President Trump to settle his personal lawsuit against the IRS.
Blanche, currently acting attorney general, is "refusing to make a clear commitment that American tax dollars aren't going to go to the rioters of January 6th," says Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna. "He's refusing to make a clear commitment that Trump's family could still be held liable for violating financial laws."
Khanna also speaks about his ongoing efforts to bring justice for survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse, about which he says Blanche "has been the biggest obstacle to justice," his recent trip to the occupied West Bank where he was detained by armed Israeli settlers and more.
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We speak with Democratic Congressmember Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, a longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy, in a wide-ranging conversation about Iran, Cuba, ending military funding for Israel and more. Last week, McGovern joined the entire Democratic caucus and four Republicans to pass a resolution calling on President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran.
"It's just like Iraq," says McGovern. "We're getting involved in a quagmire here, an endless war."
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Israeli settlers torched two mosques over the weekend in a new wave of violence targeting Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, Israeli military forces on Saturday detained over 70 Palestinians in raids across the occupied territory. This follows the killing of at least four Palestinians in the village of Tal on Friday, when Israeli settlers and soldiers opened fire on residents attempting to protect their homes; two Israelis were also killed.
Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti says the Israeli army and Israeli settlers "should not be seen as separate" as they carry out "a familiar pattern of collective punishment." She also stresses that anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank cannot be divorced from Israeli repression in Jerusalem and its genocide in Gaza.
"This is a colonial regime that is engaging in crimes against humanity," says Barghouti. "How those crimes look may differ, but in the end they serve the same purpose, and that is ethnically cleansing Palestinians in order to build this Greater Israel in the region."
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"By their actions, the message from this chamber is that they are so pro-life they will kill you," a state senator wrote.
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