US Politics

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a rule that allows immigration authorities to deny asylum to migrants who arrive at the US-Mexico border without first applying online or seeking protection in a country they passed through.But the judge delayed his ruling from taking effect immediately to give the Joe Biden White House time to appeal.The order from judge Jon Tigar of California’s northern federal district takes away a key enforcement tool set in place by the Biden administration as coronavirus-based restrictions on asylum expired in May. The new rule imposes severe limitations on migrants seeking asylum but includes room for exceptions and does not apply to children traveling alone.In an order that will not take effect for two weeks, Tigar wrote “the rule … cannot remain in place”, in part because it improperly presumes people who enter the country between legal border crossings are ineligible for asylum.The justice department said it would seek to prevent the judge’s ruling from taking effect and maintained the rule was lawful.Immigrant rights groups that sued over the the rule applauded the judge’s decision.“The promise of America is to serve as a beacon of freedom and hope, and the administration can and should do better to fulfill this promise, rather than perpetuate cruel and ineffective policies that betray it,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Katrina Eiland, who argued the case, said in a statement.The administration had argued that protection systems in other countries that migrants travel through have improved. But Tigar said it was not feasible for some migrants to seek protection in a transit country and noted the violence that many face in Mexico in particular.He also wrote that the rule was illegal because it presumes that people are ineligible for asylum if they enter the country between legal border crossings. But, Tigar wrote, Congress expressly said that should not affect whether someone is eligible for asylum.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden’s staff has said the asylum rule is a key part of its strategy to balance strict border enforcement while ensuring several avenues for migrants to pursue valid asylum claims. According to Customs and Border Protection, total encounters along the southern border have gone down recently. More

From 3h agoFlorida Governor Ron DeSantis is sharply reducing the size of his presidential campaign staff, cutting a third of his campaign staff, according to campaign aides.The cuts will amount to a total of 38 jobs across an array of departments, Politico reported, citing sources. They will include the roughly 10 event planning positions that were announced several weeks ago, as well as the recent departures of two senior DeSantis campaign advisers, Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain.Today began with Democrats reacting with fury to comments from Kevin McCarthy that seemed to support impeaching Joe Biden, though he later clarified any such effort won’t happen this week. The remarks underscore the seriousness with which Republicans are taking their investigations against the president and his family, as well as the degree of influence the party’s right wing wields in the House. At the White House, Biden and Kamala Harris held a public ceremony to designate new national monuments in honor of Emmett Till, but made a point of condemning book bans and changes to Florida’s school curriculum that make light of slavery, respectively.Here’s what else happened today:
Ron DeSantis slashed his campaign staff by a third, the latest sign that his presidential campaign is not going as well as he hoped.
Strike averted: the Teamster and UPS have tentatively agreed to a new contract ahead of what would have been one of the biggest single-employer work stoppages in US history.
Biden’s immigration policies lost in court.
House Republicans will consider on Thursday whether to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress, arguing he has not complied with a subpoena.
A Democratic congressman from Texas is on a thirst and hunger strike after the state’s Republican governor signed legislation blocking regulations that gave construction workers water breaks amid intensifying heat.
A federal judge has ruled against a recently enacted Biden administration policy intended to discourage people from claiming asylum at the US southern border.The policy is among a slew of new rules Joe Biden announced earlier this year to crack down on irregular migration, after pandemic-era regulations turning away many asylum seekers expired. Immigrants right groups have criticized the restrictions, saying they’re similar to the hardline policies championed by Donald Trump.Here’s more on the judge’s ruling, from the Associated Press:
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a rule that allows immigration authorities to deny asylum to migrants who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border without first applying online or seeking protection in a country they passed through. But the judge delayed his ruling from taking effect immediately to give President Joe Biden’s administration time to appeal.
The order from U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of the Northern District of California takes away a key enforcement tool set in place by the Biden administration as coronavirus-based restrictions on asylum expired in May. The new rule imposes severe limitations on migrants seeking asylum but includes room for exceptions and does not apply to children traveling alone.
“The Rule — which has been in effect for two months — cannot remain in place,” Tigar wrote in an order that will not take effect for two weeks.
The Justice Department said it would seek to prevent the judge’s ruling from taking effect and that it’s confident the rule is lawful.
House Republican lawmaker Darrell Issa predicts an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden could be opened as soon as September.He also predicts that some Democrats would support the effort, casting it as a “bipartisan inquiry to get to the truth”. Here’s a clip of his interview, on Fox News:The Republican-controlled House judiciary committee will on Thursday consider whether to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress:Led by Jim Jordan, a staunch Donald Trump ally, Republicans on the committee allege that Zuckerberg, whose company owns Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms, has not fully responded to a February subpoena demanding information about its communications with the Biden administration. The GOP has alleged that the White House is working with social media firms to censor conservatives, and earlier this month a federal judge ordered some Biden administration officials to stop communicating with the companies, though that order has since been put on pause by an appeals panel.“Meta and its Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg have willfully refused to comply in full with a congressional subpoena directed to Mr. Zuckerberg stemming from an investigation conducted by the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government into the Executive Branch’s coordination with social media companies and other third parties to censor free speech on digital platforms,” according to a report from Jordan.“This censorship by proxy is a serious threat to fundamental American civil liberties.”Joe Biden has released a statement congratulating UPS and the Teamsters union for reaching a tentative agreement to prevent a strike from starting next month, which would have been one of the biggest organized labor walkouts from a single employer in US history.Biden has long sought to keep unions on his side, and in his statement, he called the deal “a testament to the power of employers and employees coming together to work out their differences at the bargaining table in a manner that helps businesses succeed while helping workers secure pay and benefits they can raise a family on and retire with dignity and respect.”You can read the full statement here.Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, House speaker Kevin McCarthy said an impeachment inquiry could be used to force the Biden administration to hand over information it has resisted providing to the Republicans:Since taking control of the House earlier this year, Republicans have stepped up investigations of Joe Biden and his family, particularly his son Hunter Biden, accusing them of corruption, while alleging the White House is stonewalling their investigation. The Biden administration has responded by saying the GOP is demanding information about ongoing investigations and confidential sources, two matters it does not discuss publicly.If McCarthy moves forward with impeachment, it won’t happen this week, Punchbowl News reports, nor will the House consider GOP-backed resolutions to expunge Donald Trump’s twin impeachments:In a statement, DeSantis campaign manager Generra Peck said:
Following a top-to-bottom review of our organization, we have taken additional, aggressive steps to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden.
Gov. DeSantis is going to lead the Great American Comeback and we’re ready to hit the ground running as we head into an important month of the campaign.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is sharply reducing the size of his presidential campaign staff, cutting a third of his campaign staff, according to campaign aides.The cuts will amount to a total of 38 jobs across an array of departments, Politico reported, citing sources. They will include the roughly 10 event planning positions that were announced several weeks ago, as well as the recent departures of two senior DeSantis campaign advisers, Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain.Donald Trump’s appeal has sunk among Republicans, a new poll has found.Pew research found that 63% of Americans of all political affiliations have an unfavorable opinion of Trump – an increase from 60% last year.At 66%, the majority of those who identify as Republicans or Republican-leaning still view the former president in a favorable light, but that is nine percentage points lower than last July’s 75%.Last July, about a quarter of those on the right viewed him as very or mostly unfavorably, but that figure has risen to 32%.Unsurprisingly, Democrats’ opinion of Trump is also low, though consistent with recent years. Ninety-one percent of Democrats polled viewed Trump unfavorably. Of that, 78% viewed him as very unfavorable.A mere 8% of Democrats view him favorably.By contrast, Biden’s popularity among the general popularity slipped about 4% since last year. Positive opinions of Vice-President Kamala Harris were worse, dropping from 43% to 36% since last year.Trump still remains the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, ahead of the far-right Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, according to FiveThirtyEight.Read the full story here.Joe Biden’s German shepherd dog, Commander, bit or attacked Secret Service officers at least 10 times between October 2022 and January, according to records from the department of homeland security obtained by a conservative watchdog group.The emails released today by Judicial Watch, which it said were obtained following a Freedom of Information Act request lawsuit, show nearly 200 pages of Secret Service records. The group said it filed the request after receiving a tip about Commander’s behavior.On 3 November 2022, a Secret Service official emailed colleagues to say that Commander had bitten a uniformed officer twice – on the upper right arm and thigh – and that the officer had to use a steel cart to protect himself from another attack. Staff from the White House medical unit treated the officer and decided to have him taken to a hospital, the emails say.Commander has been “exhibiting extremely aggressive behavior”, a uniform division officer wrote in an email. It continues:
Today, while posted, he came charging at me. The First Lady couldn’t regain control of [Commander] and he continued to circle me.
The note adds:
I believe it’s only a matter of time before an agent/officer is attacked or bit.
Commander is the second dog of Biden’s to behave aggressively, including biting Secret Service officers and White House staff, AP reported. The first, a German shepherd named Major, was sent to live with friends in Delaware after those incidents.Former Texas congressman and long-shot Republican presidential candidate, Will Hurd, once again criticized his rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, for showing a “lack of leadership” over the state’s new curriculum that contends some Black people benefited from being enslaved.“It’s a bit shocking to me,” Hurd said in an interview with CNN.
There is no there was no upside to slavery. Slavery was not a jobs programme.
Hurd was referring to the DeSantis’s response to vice-president Kamala Harris, who has called Florida’s new Black history education standards “propaganda”. The Florida governor said he wasn’t involved in drafting the document but defended the standards.DeSantis “showed a lack of leadership by acting like it was somebody else’s fault and not something that was done on his watch,” Hurd said on Tuesday.To imply there was an upside to slavery “is unacceptable”, he added.Today began with Democrats reacting with fury to comments from Kevin McCarthy that seemed to support impeaching Joe Biden. While it’s unclear if the House speaker will follow through on his threats, the remarks underscore the seriousness with which Republicans are taking their investigations against the president and his family, as well as the degree of influence the party’s right wing wields in the House. At the White House, Biden and Kamala Harris held a public ceremony to designate new national monuments in honor of Emmett Till, but made a point of condemning book bans and changes to Florida’s school curriculum that make light of slavery, respectively.Here’s what else has happened today:
Ron DeSantis was involved in a car accident while on the campaign trail in Tennessee, but was not injured.
Strike averted: the Teamster and UPS have tentatively agreed to a new contract ahead of what would have been one of the biggest single-employer work stoppages in US history.
A Democratic congressman from Texas is on a thirst and hunger strike after the state’s Republican governor signed legislation blocking regulations that gave construction workers water breaks amid intensifying heat.
As he signed a proclamation at the White House that creates new national monuments to honor Emmett Till, a Black teenager whose 1955 murder in Mississippi was a turning point in the civil rights movement, Joe Biden spoke out against conservative activists’ campaigns to ban books.“At a time when there are those who seek to ban books, bury history, we’re making it clear, crystal, crystal clear,” Biden said. “We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know. We have to learn what we should know. We should know about our country. We should know everything, the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation.”Writers’ organization Pen America reports that book bans in public schools rose 28% in the first half of the 2022-2023 academic year, and are most common in Republican-led states. Its April report added that “of the 1,477 books banned this school year, 30% are about race, racism or include characters of color”.In a ceremony to designate new national monuments related to the murder of Emmett Till, Kamala Harris made a veiled attack on a new curriculum in Florida backed by Republican governor Ron DeSantis that contends some Black people benefited from enslavement.“Today, there are those in our nation who would prefer to erase or even rewrite the ugly parts of our past, those who attempt to teach that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” said Harris, the first woman and first African America in the position of vice-president.“Those who insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, who try to divide our nation with unnecessary debates. Let us not be seduced into believing that, somehow. we will be better if we forget.”Last week, Harris visited Florida and forcefully condemned the state board of education’s new standards for Black history, which will see students learn that some slaves received “personal benefit” from skills they learned in their forced servitude.What would have been the largest single-employer labor strike in US history appears to have been averted, after UPS and the Teamsters union reached a tentative deal on a new contract.Here’s the Guardian’s Michael Sainato with the latest on the agreement:
The Teamsters union announced today that leadership has reached a tentative agreement with UPS, averting a strike that was set to begin on 1 August involving 340,000 workers.
The national bargaining committee unanimously endorsed the five-year tentative agreement.
Highlights of the agreement include wage increases of $2.75 per hour for full-time and part-time workers this year and $7.50 more per hour over the length of the contract, and part-timers will see wage increases immediately of at least $21 an hour. The wage gains are double the gains from the previous five-year contract that was in effect from 2018, and a 48% increase for part-timers over the life of the contract. Full-timers will see their average top rate increase to $49 per hour.
The agreement also ends a two-tiered classification for drivers, provides part-timers with longevity raises, adds Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday off, and ends forced overtime on off days.
“Rank-and-file UPS Teamsters sacrificed everything to get this country through a pandemic and enabled UPS to reap record-setting profits. Teamster labor moves America. The union went into this fight committed to winning for our members. We demanded the best contract in the history of UPS, and we got it,” said the Teamsters general president, Sean M O’Brien in a press release announcing the agreement.
Meanwhile, the jail sentences keep coming in for people convicted of involvement in the violence on January 6. Here’s the Associated Press with the latest:An Arkansas truck driver who beat a police officer with a flagpole attached to an American flag during the US Capitol riot was sentenced Monday to more than four years in prison.Peter Francis Stager struck the Metropolitan police department officer with his flagpole at least three times as other rioters pulled the officer, head first, into the crowd outside the Capitol on 6 January 2021. The bruised officer was among more than 100 police officers injured during the riot.Stager also stood over and screamed profanities at another officer, who was seriously injured when several other rioters dragged him into the mob and beat him, according to federal prosecutors.After the beatings, Stager was captured on video saying, “Every single one of those Capitol law enforcement officers, death is the remedy. That is the only remedy they get.”US Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced Stager to four years and four months in prison, according to a spokesperson for the prosecutors’ office. More

On a day on which he emerged uninjured from an actual car crash in Tennessee, Ron DeSantis was reported to have made his most drastic attempt yet to turn round a presidential campaign seen as in danger of coming off the road itself, announcing a deep slashing of staff numbers.Politico said advisers to the Florida governor confirmed that more than a third of campaign staff were being cut, “a total of 38 jobs shed across an array of departments”, two senior advisers among them.DeSantis’s campaign manager, Generra Peck, said: “Following a top-to-bottom review of our organisation, we have taken additional, aggressive steps to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden.“Governor DeSantis is going to lead the Great American Comeback and we’re ready to hit the ground running as we head into an important month of the campaign.”With the first Republican debate a month away, DeSantis is still clearly the strongest challenger to Donald Trump.But the former president enjoys national and key-state polling leads of about 30 points, regardless of the 71 criminal charges against him and the prospect of more.No other candidate in the 13-strong field has made a significant move but DeSantis is widely held to be floundering, with donor sources maxed out and his policy proposals, often to the right even of Trump, falling flat with the public.Politico also reported new hires including a “top political adviser” to the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, a rising party figure who some Republican operatives have suggested could yet enter the primary.For Vanity Fair, the columnist Molly Jong-Fast gave voice to progressive glee over DeSantis’s struggles to connect with Republican voters.DeSantis, Jong-Fast wrote, “is a terrible politician with negative charisma, and the chances of him riding into the White House are looking less likely.“He is aggressively dull and wooden, making his interactions with voters border on painful to watch. His head bobs in a strange and unnatural way, and he wears high-heeled cowboy boots.”Referring to a previous high-profile Republican flop, the Wisconsin governor who wilted before Trump in 2016, Jong-Fast said DeSantis “makes Scott Walker look charming”.“Plus,” she added, “voters tend not to vote for people who seem like they’re screaming at them all the time. No amount of donor dollars can make DeSantis, a Maga marionette traipsing across Iowa and New Hampshire, seem like a real human boy.” More

A Republican-backed spending bill threatens to end national access to mail-order abortion pills and cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) that provides low-income families with food benefits.The legislation is part of a spate of appropriations bills that lawmakers will debate this month, and which Congress must reach a decision on by the end of September in order to pass a budget for the 2024 fiscal year and avoid a federal shutdown. It was already approved by a House appropriations subcommittee in May, while being condemned by Democrats and causing internal rifts among Republicans. Republicans have added several provisions to the bill that would have wide-ranging effects on reproductive rights, health policy and benefits.The food and agriculture spending bill is the latest front in the rightwing campaign against reproductive rights. In the year since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Republicans have passed bills in more than a dozen states that ban or severely restrict abortion access. Ending access to mail-order pills that induce abortions would complicate and limit efforts from abortion rights groups and physicians to provide care for people in states with abortion bans.Specifically, the bill would reverse a 2021 Food and Drug Administration policy that allowed people to get the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone – which can be used up to 10 weeks after conception – through the mail rather than via in-person visits to providers. The FDA had temporarily lifted restrictions on the drug during the Covid-19 pandemic, before later making those changes permanent. But the drug, which is widely used for abortion and can also be used for managing miscarriages, has been the center of legal challenges and rightwing attempts to prevent its use ever since.House Republicans’ messaging on the bill claims that their provision “reins in wasteful Washington spending” and “protects the lives of unborn children”. The bill would also decrease the Snap benefit program – formerly known as food stamps – by $32bn compared with 2023 levels, as well as prevent the health and human services department from putting limits on the maximum amount of nicotine in cigarettes.The approaching fight over spending bills has echoes of the standoff over debt ceiling negotiations earlier this year, when Democrats accused Republicans of holding the government hostage in an attempt to exact sweeping cuts to federal programs. Hardline Republicans similarly pushed to shift their party towards far-right policies during those negotiations as well.Democrats are eager to prevent a government shutdown such as the one in 2018 during the Trump administration that left about 800,000 government workers without pay and lasted longer than any previous closure in US history. But some have called for establishing red lines around what compromises they are willing to make, with a number of House Democrats such as the Massachusetts representative Jim McGovern pushing back against attempts to cut Snap funding and other conservative provisions in recent legislation. House Democrats previously tried to add two amendments to the food and agriculture spending bill that would have eliminated the anti-abortion provision, but both failed.Several Republicans have also spoken out against the food and agriculture bill, including the New York representative Marc Molinaro, who told Politico he will vote against the legislation if it comes to the floor. Molinaro, along with another New York Republican lawmaker, previously denounced a conservative Texas judge’s ruling that threatened to remove FDA approval of mifepristone.Molinaro’s opposition to the bill highlights a rift within the Republican party over just how far to push an anti-abortion agenda that has proven nationally unpopular and contributed to electoral losses in many states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAbortion policy has divided the GOP as hard-right Republicans, as well as powerful Christian conservative activist groups, have demanded far-reaching bans on abortion access. Others, such as the South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace, have warned that Republicans need to “read the room” on abortion or face defeat in elections.The Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, has meanwhile been left scrambling to manage the different factions of his party as votes on must-pass appropriations bills loom. In addition to limiting abortion access and benefits, far-right Republicans have sought to use spending bills to greatly reduce military aid to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll from earlier this year saw that support for abortion access was at an all-time high, and included a finding that about one-third of Republicans also broadly back the right to abortion access. More

A Colorado woman who claimed her state’s support for same-sex marriage barred her from designing wedding websites, fueling a case that last month delivered a major US supreme court blow to LGBTQ+ rights, appears to have designed at least one wedding website before it was scrubbed from her archive.The discovery, by the New Republic, followed reporting by that outlet and the Guardian which showed the request for a site for a same-sex wedding that lay at the heart of the 303 Creative v Elenis supreme court case appeared to have been a fabrication.Represented by the rightwing Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the web designer behind 303 Creative, Lorie Smith, argued that her right to free speech, regarding her opposition to same-sex marriage, was “chilled” by a Colorado anti-discrimination law.Claiming Smith was unable to design any wedding websites at all, for fear of falling foul of the state law, her attorneys told the supreme court: “For six years, she has been unable to speak in the marketplace.”The six conservative justices who dominate the court ruled for Smith, delighting rightwingers and faith groups but appalling LGBTQ+ groups and other advocates of equal treatment under the law.Questions over the supposed request for service have lingered. On Monday, the New Republic added to such disquiet.The progressive magazine said that by using the Wayback Machine, a service from the Internet Archive, a researcher found what appeared to be an image of a wedding website designed by Smith around 2015.The image, in a folder of “Recent Website Projects”, showed a couple walking on a beach, under a couple’s names and section headings including “You’re invited”, “Schedule”, “Accommodations” and “Travel Guide & FAQs”.The name of the woman in the couple on the site matched the name on another image, for “Healthy4LifeColorado.com”. Other images were for a church, a site about French bulldogs and a campaign site for a Republican state politician. The last image matched a site currently live.The apparent wedding site was found by Kate Redburn, a fellow at Columbia Law School in New York.They told the New Republic: “I couldn’t believe it. The idea that she hadn’t made any wedding websites for anyone was so baked into the narrative around this case.”The magazine said “a Colorado woman whose name matched the name of the bride” did not respond to requests for comment.Through the ADF, Smith “acknowledged she had made the website as a gift for a family member and had subsequently removed it from her online portfolio before the lawsuit was filed”.On Twitter, the ADF accused the New Republic of “manufacturing its fifth desperate attack” on Smith.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Why? To impugn Lorie and delegitimise the landmark supreme court ruling in 303 Creative that protects every American’s free speech rights.”Saying Smith had “nothing to hide”, the ADF said she designed the wedding site as a gift for her sister in 2014, around the time she “started exploring whether she could create custom wedding websites as part of her business consistent with her faith”.The New Republic said the ADF “did not answer our questions about what knowledge its lawyers had of the website on Smith’s site”.Jennifer Pizer, chief legal officer at Lambda Legal, who worked on the 303 Creative case, described why questions about its provenance and conduct remained important, in light of the ruling handed down last month.“I think the public reaction we’re seeing is probably a mix of surprise, shock and anger that this case seems to have been contrived, and probably also that such an important court ruling might well have been based on facts that were not entirely true,” Pizer told the New Republic.“People seem to be expressing understandable distress at the idea that this impactful case was won by people who might have misled the court – it’s alarming for multiple reasons.”The ADF, Pizer said, “has been gunning for this result – and not just this result, but has been gunning to win licenses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and ways to undermine civil rights laws more broadly for many years.” More

Donald Trump’s appeal has sunk among Republicans, a new poll has found.The former president, who faces criminal indictments in two cases and possibly a third, announced earlier this year that he is once again running for president in the 2024 election.Pew research found that 63% of Americans of all political affiliations have an unfavorable opinion of Trump – an increase from 60% last year.At 66%, the majority of those who identify as Republicans or Republican-leaning still view the former president in a favorable light, but that is 9 percentage points lower than last July’s 75%.Last July, about a quarter of those on the right viewed him as very or mostly unfavorably, but that figure has risen to 32%.Unsurprisingly, Democrats’ opinion of Trump is also low, though consistent with recent years. Ninety-one percent of Democrats polled viewed Trump unfavorably. Of that, 78% viewed him as very unfavorable.A mere 8% of Democrats view him favorably.By contrast, Biden’s popularity among the general popularity slipped about 4% since last year. Positive opinions of Vice-President Kamala Harris were worse, dropping from 43% to 36% since last year.Trump still remains the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, ahead of the far-right Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, according to FiveThirtyEight.It is unclear how Trump’s legal troubles will affect his campaign, if at all. This year, he was indicted on 37 counts for mishandling classified documents at Mar-A-Lago in Florida and on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in New York. Trial dates in both cases have been set for during the 2024 primary season.He could also face the music for his role in inciting the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol in Washington DC in 2021.The poll does not address why Trump fell in the eyes of his own party, but many within the GOP have not shied away from sharing their distaste for him as their 2024 candidate.Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told the Hill in May that she was “certainly” looking for an alternative to Trump and DeSantis.“If that is the face of the Republican party, if that’s the contest, Republicans are doomed,” she said.
This article was amended on 25 July 2023 to correct a typo concerning 91% of Democrats polled. More

Ron DeSantis, the rightwing governor of Florida and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, was involved in a car crash on the campaign trail on Tuesday.In a statement to media, DeSantis’s press secretary, Bryan Griffin, said: “This morning, the governor was in a car accident while traveling to an event in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He and his team are uninjured.“We appreciate the prayers and well wishes of the nation for his continued protection while on the campaign trail.”DeSantis, 44, remains in second place in primary polling, albeit about 30 points behind Donald Trump, the multiply indicted former president, in most polling averages and in polls in early voting states.A month out from the first Republican debate, the governor has been reported to be seeking to reboot his campaign.On Tuesday, according to News Channel 9, a Chattanooga ABC affiliate station, the crash happened when “traffic slowed and four motorcade cars hit each other”.The outlet also said one DeSantis staff member “had minor injuries” but “went on to the campaign stop [to] be treated there”.DeSantis was in Tennessee for fundraising and other events. A spokesman told Florida media the governor would continue with his schedule. More

The US Department of Justice has sued the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, over his refusal to remove a floating barrier placed on the Rio Grande to stop migrants entering the US from Mexico.The move is the latest in a growing political spat between Abbott and the Biden administration, heightened by Republican attempts to scaremonger over immigration as the 2024 presidential election looms.The lawsuit filed by the federal government asks a court in Texas to force the state to remove the roughly 1,000ft line of bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys the Biden administration says raises humanitarian and environmental concerns.The suit also says Texas unlawfully installed the barrier without permission, near the border city of Eagle Pass.The suit was filed on Monday, after Abbott refused to comply with instructions to remove the barrier.“Texas will fully utilise its constitutional authority to deal with the crisis you have caused,” Greg Abbott wrote to Joe Biden in a letter reported by CNN and other outlets.“Texas will see you in court, Mr President.”It was the latest confrontational move by a governor who for more than two years has escalated measures to stop migrants entering the US, pushing legal boundaries along the 1,200-mile border with Mexico.Blowback over the tactics is widening, including from within Texas and particularly in light of a state trooper’s account of razor wire leaving asylum seekers bloodied and officers denying migrants water in 100F (37.7C) heat and being told to push children into the river.Last week, the US justice department told Texas to remove the river barriers, citing federal laws against obstructing waterways and imposing a Monday deadline. On Monday, Abbott said that in refusing to comply, he was “assert[ing] Texas’s sovereign interest in protecting [its] borders” in his role as the “commander-in-chief of [the] state’s militia”.Repeating a common Republican talking point, the governor also wrote to Biden: “If you truly care about human life, you must begin enforcing federal immigration laws. By doing so, you can help me stop migrants from wagering their lives in the waters of the Rio Grande.”Saying migrants could attempt to use legitimate ports of entry, Abbott said: “While I share the humanitarian concerns noted in your lawyers’ letter, Mr President, your finger points in the wrong direction. Neither of us wants to see another death in the Rio Grande … Yet your open-border policies encourage migrants to risk their lives by crossing illegally through the water, instead of safely and legally at a port of entry. Nobody drowns on a bridge.”A White House spokesperson said Abbott’s behavior was “ making it hard for the men and women of border patrol to do their jobs of securing the border and putting both migrants and border agents in danger”.Biden’s border enforcement plan, the spokesperson added, had “led to the lowest levels of unlawful border crossings in over two years. Governor Abbott’s dangerous and unlawful actions are undermining that effective plan.“If Governor Abbott truly wanted to drive toward real solutions, he’d be asking his Republican colleagues in Congress why they voted against President Biden’s request to increase funding for the Department of Homeland Security and why they’re blocking the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures that would finally fix our broken immigration system.”The White House also said Republicans “have no plan and are just playing political games”.Criticism of Abbott is growing within his own state.Speaking to the Associated Press, David Donatti, an attorney for the Texas American Civil Liberties Union, said: “There are so many ways that what Texas is doing right now is just flagrantly illegal.”Aron Thorn, a Texas Civil Rights Project attorney, described “a very strong correlation” between Abbott’s border policy and “the Trump and post-Trump era in which most of the Trump administration’s immigration policy was aggressive and extreme and very violative of people’s rights and very focused on making the political point.“The design of this is the optics and the amount of things that they sacrifice for those optics now is quite extraordinary.”In Eagle Pass, Jessie Fuentes, a kayaker, has filed his own lawsuit over work done on the river. On Monday that suit, Epi’s Canoe & Kayak Team v State of Texas, was cited in the suit filed by the federal government.Citing measures including floating barriers and shipping containers and razor wire placed along riverbanks cleared of vegetation, Fuentes recently told the Eagle Pass city council: “The river is a federally protected river by so many federal agencies, and I just don’t know how it happened.”A member of the Eagles Pass council, Elias Diaz, told the AP: “I feel like the state government has kind of bypassed local government … and so I felt powerless at times.”Hugo Urbina, a farmer whose land abuts the river, said he supported efforts to reduce border crossings via the Rio Grande. But Urbina said Abbott and his administration “do whatever it is that they want … breaking the law and … making your citizens feel like they’re second-hand citizens”.The Texas land office has said it will permit “vegetation management” on the banks of the river as part of anti-migration efforts. The state military department has cleared out carrizo cane, which the land office has called an invasive plant. Environmental experts are concerned changes to the landscape will affect the flow of the river.Tom Vaughan, co-founder of the Rio Grande International Study Center, said: “As far as I know, if there’s flooding in the river, it’s much more severe in Piedras Negras” – on the Mexican side – “than it is in Eagle Pass because that’s the lower side of the river.“And so next time the river really gets up, it’s going to push a lot of water over on the Mexican side, it looks like to me.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More