Powell to leave office within 8 months: Trump
Speaking at a White House press conference following a meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Trump remarked that he doesn't think Powell has done a good job, but he'll be leaving soon.
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Al Arabiya
30 minutes ago
- Al Arabiya
Biden aide denounces GOP probe as baseless and denies any cover-up
WASHINGTON—A longtime close aide to President Joe Biden on Wednesday denounced Republican investigations into the former president as baseless in testimony to lawmakers and defended Biden as capable of carrying out his presidential duties at all times. Steve Ricchetti, a senior advisor to Biden during his presidency, wrote in his opening statement to the House Oversight Committee that he was willing to answer lawmakers' questions about Biden's mental state while in office despite Republicans' effort to intimidate officials who served in the previous administration. 'I believe it is important to forcefully rebut this false narrative about the Biden presidency and our role in it,' Ricchetti said. 'There was no nefarious conspiracy of any kind among the president's senior staff and there was certainly no conspiracy to hide the president's mental condition from the American people,' wrote Ricchetti, who has served as an aide to Biden since 2012. He said Biden was fully capable of carrying out his duties throughout his term. Ricchetti's testimony comes after weeks of appearances from former Biden aides as House Republicans seek to build their investigation, which is central to their oversight agenda as they seek to turn the spotlight back to the last administration. Some former staffers, including Biden's physician Kevin O'Connor and Anthony Bernal, a top aide to former first lady Jill Biden, invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and declined to answer questions from the committee. Others, including former White House chief of staff Ron Klain and Neera Tanden, former director of the Domestic Policy Council, have answered the committee's questions at length. The committee will hear from seven more senior Biden staffers in the coming weeks. The Trump White House has launched its own inquiry into Biden. In June, Trump issued an executive order that argued there were clear indications that Biden lacked the capacity to exercise his presidential authority and ordered an investigation into whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden's mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the president. Ricchetti argued the Republican-led inquiries were an obvious attempt to deflect from the chaos of this administration's first six months. He contrasted it with what he said were Biden's accomplishment on issues like infrastructure, inflation, climate policy, and the coronavirus response. 'I firmly believe that at all times during my four years in the White House President Biden was fulfilling his constitutional duties. Did he stumble? Occasionally. Make mistakes? Get up on the wrong side of the bed? He did–we all did. But I always believed–every day–that he had the capability, character and judgment to be president of the United States,' Ricchetti said. At the heart of the Republican probe is a legal dispute over the Biden White House's use of the autopen, a device used in all presidential administrations to issue the president's signature for laws and executive orders. Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration allege without evidence that Biden was not in a cogent state of mind for much of his presidency and that many policies enacted during his time in office may consequently be illegal. Biden has called Trump and House Republicans liars for the claim and said he made every single one of the decisions in office that involved an autopen. Biden's aides are now echoing that sentiment directly to the committee. Republicans are still eager to highlight Biden's various gaffes as a political cudgel against Democrats. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have largely dismissed House Republicans' probe as a distraction from the Trump administration's agenda. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat who sits on the House Oversight Committee, said Republicans in the probe look like losers after she exited the deposition for Anthony Bernal, the former chief of staff to Jill Biden.
Al Arabiya
an hour ago
- Al Arabiya
American eagle's 'good jeans' ads with sydney sweeney spark a debate on race and beauty standards
US fashion retailer American Eagle Outfitters aimed for a big impact with its new ad campaign starring actor Sydney Sweeney. The campaign included clever and provocative language, intending to push boundaries, according to the company's chief marketing officer. The question now is whether the public reaction to the denim campaign is what American Eagle intended. Titled 'Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,' the campaign sparked debate about race, Western beauty standards, and the backlash against woke American politics and culture. Much of the negative reception focused on videos that used the word 'genes' instead of 'jeans' when discussing the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actor known for the HBO series 'Euphoria' and 'White Lotus.' Some critics interpreted the wordplay as a nod, intentional or unintentional, to eugenics, a discredited theory that humanity could be improved through selective breeding. Marcus Collins, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, suggested the criticism could have been avoided by including models of various races making the 'genes' pun. Collins said, 'You can either say this was ignorance, or this was laziness, or say that this is intentional.' Other commenters on social media accused detractors of overanalyzing the campaign's message. Megyn Kelly, former Fox News host, wrote on X, 'I love how the leftist meltdown over the Sydney Sweeney ad has only resulted in a beautiful white blonde girl with blue eyes getting 1000x the exposure for her good genes.' American Eagle did not respond to requests for comment. The ad campaign comes as the retailer grapples with sluggish consumer spending and higher costs from tariffs. In late May, American Eagle reported that total sales were down 5 percent for its February-April quarter compared to the previous year. A day after Sweeney was announced as the company's latest celebrity collaborator, American Eagle's stock closed up more than 4 percent. The company's shares were trading nearly 2 percent on Wednesday. Like many trendy clothing brands, American Eagle needs to differentiate itself with a famous face or by saying something edgy, according to Alan Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce. Adamson compared the Sweeney campaign to Calvin Klein jeans ads from 1980 featuring a 15-year-old Brooke Shields. Chief Marketing Officer Craig Brommers told Retail Brew that 'Sydney is the biggest get in the history of American Eagle,' and the company planned a fitting promotion. The campaign features videos of Sweeney wearing slouchy jeans in various settings. Her image will appear on 3-D billboards in Times Square and elsewhere, on Snapchat, and in an AI-enabled try-on feature. American Eagle also plans to launch a limited-edition Sydney jean to raise awareness of domestic violence and donate the sales proceeds to the nonprofit Crisis Text Line. In a news release, the company noted Sweeney's 'girl next door charm' and 'main character energy.' In one video, Sweeney approaches an American Eagle billboard of herself with the tagline 'Sydney Sweeney has great genes,' then crosses out 'genes' and replaces it with 'jeans.' A teaser video showed Sweeney saying, 'Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue.' The video appeared on American Eagle's Facebook page but is not part of the official campaign. While remarking that someone has 'good genes' is sometimes a compliment, the phrase also has sinister connotations. Eugenics gained popularity in the early 20th century, and Nazi Germany embraced it to carry out Adolf Hitler's plan for an Aryan master race. Civil rights activists have noted signs of eugenics regaining a foothold through the far right's promotion of the 'great replacement theory,' a racist ideology alleging a conspiracy to diminish the influence of white people. Shalini Shankar, a cultural and linguistic anthropologist at Northwestern University, said she had problems with American Eagle's 'genes' versus 'jeans' campaign because it exacerbates a limited concept of beauty. 'American Eagle, I guess, wants to rebrand itself for a particular kind of white privileged American,' Shankar said. 'And that is the kind of aspirational image they want to circulate for people who want to wear their denim.' Many critics compared the American Eagle ad to a misstep by Pepsi in 2017. Pepsi released a TV ad that showed model Kendall Jenner offer a can of soda to a police officer while ostensibly stepping away from a photo shoot to join a crowd of protesters. Viewers mocked the spot for appearing to trivialize protests of police killings of Black people. Pepsi apologized and pulled the ad. The demonstrations following the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis pushed many US companies to make their advertising better reflect consumers of all races. Jazmin Burrell, founder of brand consulting agency Lizzie Della Creative Strategies, said she's noticed more ads and signs that prominently feature white models. 'I can see us going back to a world where diversity is not really the standard expectation in advertising,' Burrell said. American Eagle has been praised for diverse marketing in the past, including creating a denim hijab in 2017. Its Aerie lingerie brand was recognized for creating a wide range of sizes. A year ago, the company released a limited-edition denim collection with tennis player Coco Gauff. The retailer has an ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion program primarily geared toward employees. Two days before announcing the Sweeney campaign, American Eagle named the latest recipients of its scholarship award for employees who are driving anti-racism, equality, and social justice initiatives. Marketing experts offer mixed opinions on whether the attention surrounding 'good jeans' will be good for business. 'They were probably thinking that this is going to be their moment,' said Myles Worthington, the founder and CEO of marketing and creative agency WORTHI. 'But this is doing the opposite and deeply distorting their brand.' Melissa Murphy, a marketing professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, said she liked certain parts of the campaign but hoped it would be expanded to showcase people besides Sweeney for the sake of the brand. Other experts say the buzz is good, even if it's not uniformly positive. 'If you try to follow all the rules, you'll make lots of people happy, but you'll fail,' Adamson said. 'The rocket won't take off.'
Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
Democrats use obscure law to seek release of Epstein files
WASHINGTON: Democrats moved Wednesday to force Donald Trump to release files from the investigation into notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, invoking an obscure law to keep up the pressure on an issue that has roiled the US president's administration. The White House has been facing increasingly intense demands to be more transparent about the case of the disgraced financier, who died in federal prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. The president raised further questions about his past relationship with Epstein on Tuesday when he told reporters he fell out with his former friend after he 'stole' female employees from the spa at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The Justice Department angered Trump supporters earlier this month when it confirmed that Epstein had died by suicide and had no secret 'client list' — rebuffing conspiracy theories held by Trump's far-right supporters about supposedly high-level Democratic complicity. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democrats on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee wrote to the Justice Department asking for the materials under a section of federal law known as the 'rule of five.' 'The public has a right to know who enabled, knew of, or participated in one of the most heinous sex trafficking operations in history,' Schumer told reporters at the Capitol. 'Let me remind everyone of what's happened in recent months. Donald Trump campaigned on releasing the Epstein files. He broke that promise.' The measure — introduced a century ago but rarely used — requires government departments to provide relevant information if any five members of the Senate's chief watchdog panel request it. Epstein's accomplice Maxwell It is not clear if it could be enforced in court, but even if the effort fails it keeps the spotlight on an issue that has upended Trump's summer, dividing Republicans and leading to the early closure of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Trump has urged his supporters to drop demands for the Epstein files, but Democrats in Congress — with limited Republican support — have also been seeking a floor vote to force their release. House Oversight Committee Democrats, backed by some Republicans, approved a subpoena last week for the Justice Department to hand over the documents, although the demand has yet to be sent. Lawmakers have also been seeking testimony from Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for her role in his alleged crimes. Maxwell's lawyer has said she would speak to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee if granted immunity for her testimony. 'The Oversight Committee will respond to Ms Maxwell's attorney soon, but it will not consider granting congressional immunity for her testimony,' a spokesman for the panel said. Democrats have tried to attach votes on the Epstein files to unrelated bills multiple times, prompting Speaker Mike Johnson to send lawmakers home for the summer a day early last week, shutting down the efforts. Senate Democrats launched a separate effort to get the files released via a bill called the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but this cannot even be taken up until the House reconvenes in September. Meanwhile the Supreme Court's justices are expected to consider at a September 29 conference ahead of their October term whether to hear an appeal by Maxwell of her sex trafficking conviction. 'This crime by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell was not a victimless crime.... It was about exploiting women, in fact, girls — girls who were mercilessly and repeatedly subject to abuse and trafficking,' said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut.
