HOUSTON — Vice President Kamala Harris told Republicans to “bring it on” in what she described as a “fight for our most fundamental freedoms” as she spoke to the American Federation of Teachers on Thursday. It was her latest stop in her whirlwind debut as the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee after President Biden abruptly dropped his bid for a second term at the beginning of the week. Harris praised unions as the foundation of the middle class, and she criticized Republicans for their views on gun control and public education.
“They have the nerve to tell teachers to strap on a gun in the classroom while they refuse to pass common-sense gun safety laws,” she said. Harris added that “we want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books.” Advertisement The American Federation of Teachers was the first labor union to formally endorse Harris, and its president Randi Weingarten said she “has electrified this race.
” Harris intends to travel aggressively to spread her message and rally voters. The outreach occurs as the retooled Biden campaign, now under Harris’s control, figures out its strategy for generating turnout and maximizing her time in a 100-plus day sprint to the November election against Republican Donald Trump. Harris challenged Trump to a debate, saying the former president was “backpedaling” away from a previously scheduled debate with Biden on Sept.
10. “I’m ready. Let’s go,” she told reporters at Joint Base Andrews after returning from her trip to Texas.
Trump has said he’s willing to debate Harris more than once, but he has sought to shift the event from ABC News to Fox News following Biden’s endorsement of the vice president. Associated Press When Jennifer Wexton rose Thursday to speak on the House floor, something she has done countless times before, the congresswoman used a voice she thought was gone forever. After a rare neurological disorder robbed her of her ability to speak clearly, Wexton has been given her voice back with the help of a powerful artificial intelligence program, allowing the Virginia Democrat to make a clone of her speaking voice using old recordings of speeches and appearances she made as a congresswoman.
She used that program to deliver what is believed to be the first speech on the House floor ever given via a voice cloned by artificial intelligence. Advertisement “It was a special moment that I never imagined could happen. I cried happy tears when I first heard it,” Wexton said in the first interview she’s participated in since attaining her new voice.
Standing at a lectern on the floor, Wexton rose to commemorate Disability Pride Month, a time each July that aims to commemorate the Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark 1990s civil rights law aimed at protecting Americans with disabilities. But her speech was also a symbol of her strength in the face of a debilitating disease. “I used to be one of those people who hated the sound of my voice,” she remarked from the floor.
“When my ads came on TV, I would cringe and change the channel. But you truly don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone, because hearing the new AI of my old voice for the first time was music to my ears. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.
” Wexton’s voice now plays out of her iPad, propped up using a rainbow-colored floral case. During the interview at her dining room table in Leesburg, Va., the congresswoman typed out her thoughts, used a stylus to move the text around, hit play, and then the AI program put that text into Wexton’s voice.
It’s a lengthy process, so the AP provided Wexton with a few questions ahead of the interview to give the congresswoman time to type her answers. Wexton was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy in 2023, an aggressive neurological disorder that impacts many aspects of life, including speech. Sitting across from a credenza filled with photos marking the high points of her personal life — weddings, family trips, her children — the congresswoman called the diagnosis “cruel” for someone whose “entire professional life has been built around using my voice,” from Virginia prosecutor to state senator to member of Congress.
Advertisement “A politician who can’t do public speaking will be a former politician before too long. But this AI voice model has given me a new opportunity to have my voice heard and it reminds listeners that I am still me,” Wexton said. Associated Press NEW YORK — The Federal Communications Commission has advanced a proposal that would require political advertisers to disclose their use of artificial intelligence in broadcast television and radio ads, though it is unclear whether new regulations may be in place before the November presidential election.
The proposed rules announced Thursday could add a layer of transparency in political campaigning that would help inform voters about lifelike and misleading AI-generated media in ads. “There’s too much potential for AI to manipulate voices and images in political advertising to do nothing,” the agency’s chairwoman, Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel, said Thursday in a news release. “If a candidate or issue campaign used AI to create an ad, the public has a right to know.
” But the FCC’s action is part of a federal turf war over the regulation of AI in politics. The move has faced pushback from the chairman of the Federal Election Commission, who previously accused the FCC of stepping on his own agency’s authority and has warned of a possible legal challenge. Advertisement Political candidates and parties in the United States and around the world already have experimented with rapidly advancing generative AI tools, though some have voluntarily disclosed their use of the technology.
Others have weaponized the technology to mislead voters. Associated Press NEW YORK — Former president Donald Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate has led to a surge in sales for “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance’s best-selling memoir that came out in 2016. A spokesperson for HarperCollins said about 600,000 copies have been sold since Trump’s announcement on July 15.
The total includes physical books, audio books, and e-books. “We are printing hundreds of thousands of copies to fill the demand at our retail partners,” the publisher announced Thursday. Vance’s book already was a million seller before Trump chose him for the Republican ticket.
“Hillbilly Elegy,” which Ron Howard adapted into a feature film released in 2020, tells of Vance’s childhood in Ohio and his family’s roots in rural Kentucky. After Trump’s stunning victory in 2016, the book was widely cited as essential reading for Trump opponents trying to understand his appeal to working class whites, even as some critics faulted it at as a narrow and misleading portrait of Appalachia and of poverty in the United States. Associated Press WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California is threatening to sanction Hunter Biden’s lawyers, saying they made “false statements” in a court filing asking the judge to throw out the tax case against President Biden’s son.
US District Judge Mark Scarsi accused lawyers for the Democratic president’s son of “misrepresenting the history” of the case when they said in court papers filed last week that no charges were brought in the investigation until after Delaware US Attorney David Weiss was named special counsel in August 2023. Advertisement “These statements, however, are not true, and Mr. Biden’s counsel knows they are not true,” wrote Scarsi, who was appointed to the bench by then-President Donald Trump, a Republican.
Associated Press.
