The Republican Party’s only black senator Tim Scott has launched his bid to become its candidate for the 2024 presidential election.
Mr Scott filed his candidacy for the GOP nomination on Friday but kicked off his campaign officially with a speech to supporters in his hometown of North Charleston, South Carolina on Monday.
The 57-year-old South Carolina senator is the highest profile Republican to officially take on Donald Trump for the 2024 nomination so far.
“Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every rung of the ladder that helped me climb,” Scott said. “And that is why I am announcing today that I am running for president of the United States of America.”
Image: Tim Scott campaign workers in North Charleston on Monday
Only black politician to ever serve in both houses
Mr Scott’s political career has seen him make history on various counts.
Not only is he the sole black Republican in the US Senate, he is also the first black person ever to serve in both chambers of Congress.
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Only 11 black people have ever served in the US Senate. Currently the other two are Democrats Cory Booker (New Jersey) and Raphael Warnock (Georgia).
He started off as a Democrat, however, when volunteering on the congressional campaign trail for Mark Sanford in South Carolina’s 1st district in 1994.
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Inspired to run for a seat on Charleston’s County Council, he approached the local party, but was told to “get in line”, he revealed in an interview with Politico.
Instead he ran for the Republicans and in 1995 became the first black Republican to hold any political office in South Carolina since 1902.
He worked in insurance and as a financial adviser before entering politics full-time.
In 2009 he was elected to the South Carolina statehouse, two years before getting a seat in the House of Representatives in 2011.
The following year when South Carolina’s senator Jim DeMint retired, the then state governor Nikki Haley appointed him as his replacement.
Ms Haley is now Mr Scott’s rival for the 2024 nomination.
Image: Tim Scott is the first black senator to serve in both chambers of Congress
Campaign ‘never about race’
Mr Scott is presenting himself as an antidote to the traditional rhetoric around race in the US.
He refused an invitation to join the Congressional Black Caucus in 2010, saying: “My campaign was never about race.”
Instead he chose the Women’s Caucus because he is the “product of a powerful single mother”.
In a speech in 2021, he said that while he has “experienced the pain of discrimination… America is not a racist country”.
At a Black History Month event in February, he said: “I’m not here to suggest that things could not get better and I’m going to work every single day to make sure that all Americans play on a level playing field.
“But today is not 1865 … We have made tremendous progress, and it’s time that we as a people celebrate the progress we are making.”
In his recent Politico interview he said he experienced “more racism” at times from his black friends – for not “meeting the expectation of the groupthink” at school.
He also revealed he has been stopped by police officers guarding the Capitol who didn’t know who he was.
Taking on Trump
Mr Scott has joined Ms Haley, the woman who helped him get into the Senate, and Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas’ former governor, in the race to rival Joe Biden for the next election.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is likely to announce his candidacy in the coming days.
The South Carolina senator has avoided being overly critical of his main rival Donald Trump.
But after Trump’s comments on the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville – that there were “very fine people on both sides” – he said the the -president had “compromised his moral authority to lead”.
Trump is ahead in the polls, but Mr Scott is popular with donors, including billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and voters in South Carolina.
Donald Trump has said he will cancel all executive orders that he claims were signed with an autopen by his predecessor Joe Biden.
The US president alleged Mr Biden was “not involved” in signing the orders and claimed “the radical left lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the presidency away from him”. He did not provide any evidence for his claims.
An autopen is a device which reproduces a person’s signature, allowing them to repeatedly sign documents without having to do so by hand each time.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, he said: “Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect.
“The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States.”
He added: “I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally.
“Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury.”
Mr Trump has repeatedly claimed Mr Biden was not mentally capable by the end of his term and his staff made decisions on his behalf, using an autopen to sign them off without his knowledge.
Mr Trump has not provided any evidence for his claims, while Mr Biden and his former aides have denied they made decisions on his behalf.
In June, Mr Biden said: “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency.
“I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
Mr Trump has also used an autopen, but claimed he only used it “for very unimportant papers”.
Image: Pic: Reuters
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0:31
Trump trolls Biden with new ‘presidential portrait’
Earlier this year, Mr Trump replaced a portrait of Mr Biden in the Oval Office with a picture of an autopen signing the former president’s name.
The suspect in the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington DC is facing a first-degree murder charge.
It follows the death of one of the soldiers, 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom.
The other soldier, Andrew Wolfe, 24, was taken to hospital in critical condition after the incident on Wednesday afternoon. On Friday, West Virginia’s governor said Wolfe remained in a “very critical condition”.
Image: Andrew Wolfe and Sarah Beckstrom. Pic: Reuters
US attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office said the suspect, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, now faces charges including one count of first-degree murder, three counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence and two counts of assault with intent to kill while armed.
Pirro said there are “many charges to come” beyond the upgraded murder charge and that Lakanwal had driven across the country to launch an “ambush-style” attack with a revolver.
She said her heart went out to the family of Beckstrom, who volunteered to serve and “ended up being shot ambush-style on the cold streets of Washington DC by an individual who will now be charged with murder in the first degree”.
President Donald Trump called Beckstrom, part of the West Virginia guard, a “highly respected” and “magnificent person”.
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Investigators are continuing to execute warrants in the state of Washington, where the suspect lived, and other parts of the country, Pirro said.
However, she declined to discuss the suspect’s motive, saying officials have been working around the clock on that question.
Officials said Lakanwal entered the US in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration programme that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands of Afghans after the US’s chaotic withdrawal from the country.
Kristina Widman, who claims to be Lakanwal’s former landlord, said he had been living in Bellingham, close to Seattle, with his wife and five children.
The #AfghanEvac charity said Lakanwal applied for asylum during the Biden administration, but his asylum was approved under the Trump administration.
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2:44
Trump has called for every Afghan national who entered the US under Biden to be investigated following the shooting of two National Guard troops.
On Wednesday night, Trump called for the reinvestigation of all Afghan refugees who had entered under the Biden administration.
The director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow, said in a statement that the agency would take additional steps to screen people from 19 “high-risk” countries “to the maximum degree possible”.
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The President has since said he wants to “permanently pause migration” from poorer nations and is promising to seek to expel millions of immigrants from the US by revoking their legal status.
Organisations that work with refugees are worried that those who fled dangerous situations to start again in America will face a backlash after the shooting.
The US will review green cards issued to the citizens of 19 countries after two members of the National Guard were shot by a suspected Afghan gunman in Washington DC.
Joseph Edlow, director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), revealed the order from President Trump.
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He wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “At the direction of @POTUS, I have directed a full scale, rigorous re-examination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.”
Asked which countries would be affected, USCIS pointed to a presidential proclamation from June listing 19 countries.
The proclamation sought to “fully restrict” arrivals from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
It also “partially” restricted arrivals from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
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Image: Rahmanullah Lakanwal.
Pic: Reuters
Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, has been named as the suspected gunman in this week’s shooting and has been detained.
He worked as part of a CIA-backed unit in Afghanistan, and reportedly came to the States under a programme meant to help Afghans who’d risked their lives assisting US troops in Afghanistan.
He’s thought to have driven thousands of miles to the capital from his home in Washington state, where he lives with his wife and five children.
Attorney general Pam Bondi called him “a lone gunman” who “opened fire without provocation, ambush style”.
Image: Gunfire in Washington DC sees two National Guard members shot
President Trump described him as a “savage monster”.
He was granted asylum in April this year, according to NBC News.
One of his victims, 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom, died of her wounds, while the other, Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains in a critical condition.
Image: The two National Guard members who were shot in Washington D.C. as 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom and 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe. Pic: Reuters
Pic: Reuters
Lakanwal reportedly came to the US under Operation Allies Welcome, a programme enacted by former President Joe Biden after he pulled American forces out of Afghanistan in 2021.
Edlow explictly targeted the previous president as he announced the new green card regime.
He wrote on X: “The protection of this country and of the American people remains paramount, and the American people will not bear the cost of the prior administration’s reckless resettlement policies.”
Speaking after the attack, President Trump was even more caustic.
He said: “The suspect in custody is a foreigner, who entered our country from Afghanistan, a hellhole on Earth.
“He was flown in by the Biden administration in September 2021 on those infamous flights that everybody was talking about.
“His status was extended under legislation signed by President Biden – a disastrous president, the worst in the history of our country.”
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He continued: “This attack underscores the greatest national security threat facing our nation.
“The last administration let in 20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners from all over the world, from places that you don’t even want to know about.
“No country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival.”