North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is claiming a groundswell of African American support in response to his comments denigrating Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings and the congressman’s majority-black Baltimore district, despite polling showing consistently negative numbers.

Speaking to reporters as he left the White House on Tuesday, Trump claimed the building had been flooded with thousands of letters, emails and phone calls after his criticism of Baltimore thanking him for “getting involved” and exposing corruption.

31 July 2019; MEMO: Half of the American voters think President Donald Trump is a racist, according to a new poll Tuesday reports Anadolu Agency.

Fifty-one percent of Americans said Trump is a racist, while 45% said he is not, the poll by Quinnipiac University revealed.

“While half of the voters think President Donald Trump is racist, religion shows an even bigger divide,” said Mary Snow, polling analyst for the survey.

BALTIMORE (AP) — Davon Jones doesn’t have to look far to see the irony in President Donald Trump’s tweets that Baltimore is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” His apartment owned by the president’s son-in-law has been invaded by mice since he moved in a year ago.

“I don’t know how they come in,” Jones says. “Every time I catch them, they come right back.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — A hard-won, warts-and-all budget pact between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump is facing a key vote in the GOP-held Senate, with many conservatives torn between supporting the president and risking their political brand with an unpopular vote to add $2 trillion or more to the government’s credit card.

DETROIT (AP) — The signature domestic proposal by the leading progressive candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination came under withering attack from moderates in a debate that laid bare the struggle between a call for revolutionary policies and a desperate desire to defeat President Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden broadened his advantage ahead of the second debate of the Democratic primary, a poll showed on Monday.

Biden is now favored by 34 percent of polled Democrats and independent voters nationwide, leading the next three forerunners by a large margin, according to the Quinnipiac University Poll.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, gathering 15 percent, was placed second. California Senator Kamala Harris won 12 percent, closely followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

UNITED NATIONS, July 29 (Xinhua) -- A UN envoy said Monday that the detention centers for migrants in Libya should be shuttered amid insecurity resulted from the fighting around the capital Tripoli.

Ghassan Salame, UN secretary-general's special representative for Libya, told the Security Council that over 5,000 refugees and migrant people are being held at detention centers run by a government agency, of which 3800 are exposed to the ongoing fighting.

"What is required is that they be shuttered," he stressed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Democrats appear to be moving from “no way” to “maybe” on President Donald Trump’s rewrite of a trade pact with Canada and Mexico.

House Democrats have met four times with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, most recently on Friday, and both sides say they are making progress toward a deal that would clear the way for Congress to approve Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA.

By RUSSELL CONTRERAS

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — When President Donald Trump drew widespread condemnation for describing a majority-black congressional district as a “rat and rodent infested mess” and for tweets targeting four Democratic congresswomen of color, it was not the first time a U.S. president attracted such attention.

BALTIMORE (AP) — As Latoya Peoples painted a mural with high school-age students Monday in Baltimore, she was determined not to let President Donald Trump’s recent tweets about the city “sink in too much.”