Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison dismissed calls from some Democrats for Biden to step aside after his poor debate performance last month.
During an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Willie Geist asked Harrison whether he has any doubts that Biden should be the Democratic nominee for president.
“No doubt whatsoever,” Harrison said, noting that 14 million voters backed Biden for the presidential nominee in the primary elections — an argument the president also has made in defending his vow to stay in the race.
“It’s time to lock your knees and stiffen your spines and get on board to support this president,” Harrison exhorted the president’s doubters.
Harrison argued that Democratic public figures have spent more time talking about Biden instead of Trump and Project 2025, a blueprint of proposed policies by the conservative Heritage Foundation for a potential second Trump administration that the former president has sought to distance himself from, adding they need to do a “course correction.”
“We got to focus on the greatest threat to American democracy that we have ever seen, and that is in Donald Trump, a man who ripped away women’s right to control their own bodies for the first time in 50 years, the daughters who are growing up now have less rights than their mothers and their grandmothers,” he said, referring to Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court who in 2022 overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion.
“We cannot allow that to continue to happen, and the focus has to be on beating Donald Trump, and Joe Biden has done it before, and he can do it again,” Harrison added.
OTTAWA – Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet and MPs from several other parties were on Parliament Hill Thursday to call for the Senate to pass a Bloc bill on supply management.
The private member’s bill seeks to protect Canada’s supply management system during international trade negotiations.
The dairy, egg and poultry sectors are all supply managed, a system that regulates production levels, wholesale prices and trade.
Flanked by a large group of people representing supply-managed sectors, Blanchet commended the cross-party support at a time when he said federal institutions are at their most divided.
The Bloc has given the Liberals until Oct. 29 to pass two of its bills — the supply management bill and one that would boost old age security — or it will begin talks with other opposition parties to bring down the minority government.
The Liberals have already signalled they don’t plan to support the Bloc pension legislation, but Liberal ministers have spoken in support of supply management.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2024.
OTTAWA – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he’s in favour of mandatory, involuntary drug and psychiatric treatment for kids and prisoners who are found to be incapable of making decisions for themselves.
He said earlier this summer he was open to the idea, but needed to study the issue more closely.
His new position on the issue comes after the parents of a 13-year-old girl from B.C. testified at a parliamentary committee about her mental health struggles before her overdose death in an encampment of homeless people in Abbotsford, B.C.
They said their daughter was discharged from care despite their repeated attempts to keep her in treatment.
Poilievre says he’s still researching how mandatory treatment would work in the case of adults.
Compulsory mental health and addictions care is being contemplated or expanded in several provinces as communities struggle to cope with a countrywide overdose crisis.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2024.
