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      Mike Pompeo says he will not run for president in 2024 election

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      Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said on Friday that he will not run for president in the 2024 election.The devoted ally and defender of Donald Trump opted out of a contest that would have put him into competition with his former commander in chief.After saying he was weighing a run in January, the former Trump administration official and CIA director released a statement on the decision. “To those of you who this announcement disappoints, my apologies,” he said, calling it a personal choice.“And to those of you this thrills, know that I’m 59 years old. There remain many more opportunities for which the timing might be more fitting as presidential leadership becomes even more necessary.”Pompeo, who also spoke about his decision on Fox News on Friday, would have been the second former Trump cabinet member to enter the race to challenge the former president for the 2024 GOP nomination, joining former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who announced her campaign in February. Former vice-president Mike Pence is also considering entering the race and has stepped up his travel and activity in early voting primary and caucus states.Where Haley and Pence have openly expressed differences with Trump, Pompeo has had no public split with the former president and hasn’t been rebuked by him, as many of his would-be rivals have. Pompeo recently referred to Trump as a “great boss”.The former congressman graduated at the top of his class from the US Military Academy in 1986 before spending five years on active duty, deployed for a time as a cavalry officer commanding tank movements along the border between Nato-backed western Europe and Soviet-occupied eastern Europe.The retired Army captain is a Harvard-educated lawyer who practiced law in Washington and founded two Wichita businesses – an aerospace firm and later a petroleum equipment manufacturer – before entering politics.Pompeo – a witty and sometimes gruff politician – easily won four consecutive terms in the US House representing southern Kansas. He sat on the House intelligence committee as well as the select committee investigating the deadly 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya.The 2018 withdrawal from the Iran deal and imposition of crippling sanctions have prompted death threats against Pompeo, who remains under 24-hour security protection provided by the state department.“I can’t tell you how heartwarming and humbling it has been when strangers have told me they pray that I run to defend our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage, our families and our country as the most exceptional in the history of civilization,” Pompeo’s statement said. More

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      ‘They created this’: are Republicans willing to lose elections to retain their abortion stance?

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      Democrats have taken multiple actions in response to what they say is a “draconian” and “dangerous” decision by a federal judge in Texas threatening access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the US.Several Democratic governors have begun to stockpile doses of the drugs used in medication abortions. Nearly every Democrat in Congress signed onto an amicus brief urging an appeals court to stay the decision, while some called on the Biden administration to simply “ignore” the ruling, should it be allowed to stand. A group of House Democrats introduced a bill that would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) final approval over drugs used in medication abortion.Their fury over the ruling has been met with relative silence from Republicans.Only a handful of congressional Republicans offered immediate comment on judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision last week to revoke the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. Just a fraction of Republicans on Capitol Hill signed onto an amicus brief urging an appeals court to uphold the ruling. And among the party’s national field of Republican presidential nominees, just one – the former vice president, Mike Pence – unabashedly praised the decision.The starkly different reactions underscores just how dramatically the politics of abortion have shifted since last June, when conservatives achieved their once-unimaginable goal of overturning Roe v Wade.For decades, Republicans relied on abortion to rally their conservative base, calling for the reversal of Roe v Wade and vowing to outlaw the procedure if given the chance. But since the supreme court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, abortion has emerged as a potent issue for Democrats, galvanizing voters furious over the thicket of state bans and restrictions ushered in by the decision.Republicans have struggled to respond, lacking a unified policy on abortion in the nearly 10 months since the landmark decision.“Dobbs really did get Republicans, especially elected Republicans, running scared,” said Jon Schweppe, policy director at the conservative American Principles Project.Polling has consistently found a clear majority of Americans believe abortion should remain legal in all or most cases, though partisan divisions have deepened over the years. A new survey released by the Pew Research Center this week showed that by a margin of more than 2 to 1, Americans believe medication abortion, which is at the center of the current legal battle, should be legal in their state.‘Let the states work this out’A post-Dobbs backlash fueled a string of victories for abortions rights, including in more conservative states, and powered Democratic victories in last year’s November midterm elections. And this month, just days before the Texas ruling on mifepristone, abortion rights were a dominant force in a liberal judge’s landslide victory in a key race for a Wisconsin supreme court seat.“It’s no surprise that GOP candidates are scared to tie themselves to a decision that is wildly out of step with what voters want,” Mini Timmaraju, the president of Naral Pro-Choice American told reporters this week. “They can’t be eager to repeat last week’s double-digit walloping of extremist judicial candidate, Dan Kelly, in Wisconsin.”In that race, Kelly’s opponent, judge Janet Protasiewicz, had effectively promised voters that if she won, flipping the ideological balance of the court from conservative to liberal, the new majority would overturn Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban.“People understood the stakes and they were ready to vote for Judge Protasiewicz,” said Timmaraju, whose group was active in the contest.Now, with the 2024 presidential election looming, an increasingly vocal group of Republicans are urging moderation on abortion, warning that the uncompromising positions of their party’s culturally conservative base risk alienating crucial swing voters.“This is an issue that Republicans have been largely on the wrong side of,” congresswoman Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, said in a recent appearance on CNN.Mace, who considers herself “pro-life”, said her party had “not shown compassion towards women” since the fall of Roe. She has urged flexibility, pushing Republicans to expand access to contraception and include exceptions for abortions in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk or the fetus is no longer viable.Since June, Republican-led legislatures have charged ahead with new restrictions. More than a dozen states ban abortion, with several other Republican-led state legislatures considering new restrictions this session.On Thursday, the Florida legislature voted to prohibit abortions after six weeks – before many women realize they are pregnant – delivering a major policy victory for the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. Hours later, DeSantis, who is widely expected to run for president in 2024, quietly signed the ban into law with little fanfare, underscoring just how complicated the issue has become for Republicans.In Nebraska, the state legislature is in the process of debating a six-week ban. But even in the reliably conservative state, some Republican lawmakers are floating an alternative that would expand the window to 12 weeks, a sign that a ban any earlier in pregnancy could stoke public outcry.One option floated as a politically palatable “compromise” is a proposal by South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham that would implement a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.But the legislation divided Republicans and ultimately only attracted a handful of co-sponsors when he introduced it last year ahead of the midterms. Several Republicans, including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, argued that limits on abortion should be set by the states.Asked whether he supported Graham’s proposal, Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina who this week formed an exploratory committee for a 2024 presidential run, said was “100% pro-life” but declined to answer the question directly. He clarified later that he would back a federal ban at 20 weeks of pregnancy.Nikki Haley, Donald Trump’s former UN ambassador who is running for the nomination, urged Republicans to seek consensus on the issue, asserting that she was “pro-life” but did not “judge anyone who is pro-choice”.“Let’s let the states work this out,” Haley said, according to the Des Moines Register. “If Congress decides to do it – but don’t get in that game of them saying ‘how many weeks, how many’ – no. Let’s first figure out what we agree on.”DeSantis has sought to position himself as a reliable ally of the anti-abortion movement, hoping his support of a six-week ban will appeal to social conservatives searching for an alternative to Trump in the early-voting states Iowa and South Carolina.Earlier this year, Trump, whose conservative supreme court appointees enabled Roe to be struck down, angered abortion opponents when he warned that abortion is a political liability for Republicans and blamed extremism on the issue for their lackluster performance in the 2022 midterms.‘Ostrich strategy’In the escalating legal battle over access to medication abortion, supreme court justice Samuel Alito on Friday temporarily halted a federal appeals court ruling that would have reimposed restrictions on mifepristone. The stay will expire on Wednesday while the court deliberate next steps.Reproductive rights advocates say the ongoing threat to medication abortion nationwide makes clear that Republicans never actually believed abortion was an issue best handled by the states, as Alito wrote in his 2022 decision overturning the federal right to abortion.“They are seeking a nationwide ban – but they are not going to stop there,” Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, told reporters this week. “We are already seeing attacks on birth control.”As a starting point, Schweppe believes social conservatives must be willing to compromise on a federal ban, possibly accepting legislation that falls well short of their long-held goal to end all abortions. He urged Republicans to adopt positions that are broadly popular with wide swaths of voters, including allowances for pregnancies that result from rape or incest, or when the health or life of the mother is at risk.“We have to be honest about where the fault lines lie,” he said. “Exceptions are what drives voter sentiment. That’s what Democrats are attacking us on.”Many leading abortion opponents blame recent losses on Republicans’ embrace of a so-called “ostrich strategy” – avoiding the topic or trying to change the subject – not their opposition to abortion.“Republicans have cowered in fear as the consultants and campaign advisors tell them not to talk about abortion,” Penny Young Nance, the chief executive and president of evangelical Christian group, Concerned Women for America. In the Wisconsin supreme court race, she said the conservative’s defeat was an example of what happens when Republicans are badly outspent and fail to “boldly” defend their position on an issue that has been a defining policy of American conservatism.“The winning strategy is to tell the truth about the left’s extremist position on the issue that is out of [sync] with the views of the American people,” Nance said in an email.As Republicans search for a path forward, Democrats, confident public opinion is on their side, are already preparing to make abortion a central theme of the coming election cycles.“Even though some in the GOP are trying to stay quiet about the Texas ruling, back home they’re still passing and signing abortion bans,” Timmaraju said.“They created this reality,” she added. “They cannot run away from it.” More

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      Popularity is optional as Republicans find ways to impose minority rule

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      “We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy.” These were the words of Justin Jones, a Black Democrat, to Tennessee Republicans after he and a colleague, Justin Pearson, were expelled for leading a gun protest on the state house of representatives floor.A week later, Jones and Pearson were reinstated amid applause, whoops and cheers at the state capitol in Nashville. But few believe that the assault on democracy is at an end. What happened in Tennessee is seen as indicative of a Donald Trump-led Republican party ready to push its extremist agenda by any means necessary.Opinion poll after opinion poll shows that Republicans are increasingly out of touch with mainstream sentiment on hot button issues such as abortion rights and gun safety. Accordingly, the party has suffered disappointment in elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022. Yet instead of rethinking its positions, critics say, it is turning to rightwing judges and state legislators to enforce minority rule.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “The ballot box didn’t work – the voice of the people said, we’re not going to tolerate these kind of threats by Republicans. But Republicans are using other tools and shredding the fabric of American democracy. It’s a kind of minority authoritarianism.”Despite extraordinary pressures, democracy has proved resilient in recent years. It survived an insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Joe Biden was sworn in as the duly elected president and declared in his inaugural address: “Democracy has prevailed.” And election deniers were routed in last year’s midterms.But while Democrats control the White House and Senate, Republicans have proved expert at finding workarounds, using cogs in the machine that have typically received less attention from activists, journalists and voters. One of them is the judiciary.The supreme court, which includes three justices appointed during Trump’s single term, last year overturned the Roe v Wade ruling that had enshrined the right to abortion for nearly half a century, despite opinion polls showing a majority wanted to protect it.Lower courts have also flexed their muscles. Matthew Kacsmaryk, a judge nominated by Trump in Amarillo, Texas, has ruled against the Joe Biden administration on issues including immigration and LGBTQ+ protections. Earlier this month he blocked the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, the most common abortion method in America.A legal battle ensued with the justice department pledging to take its appeal all the way to the supreme court. The political backlash was also swift.Mini Timmaraju, the president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said: “One extremist judge appointed by a twice impeached, now-indicted former president, Donald Trump, was attempting to effectively ban medication abortion nationwide. The decision is a prime example of minority rule at its worst. These extremists will not stop until they control our reproductive health decisions.”Polling by Ipsos shows that two-thirds of Americans believe medication abortion should remain legal, including 84% of Democrats, 67% of independents and 49% of Republicans. Timmaraju added: “It’s obvious that anti-choice extremists and lawmakers are out of step with Americans. It’s really worth remembering how far out of step they are.”If judges fall short of the Republican wishlist, state governors have shown willingness to intervene. In Texas, Greg Abbott has said he will pardon an Uber driver convicted of murder in the July 2020 shooting of a man at a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Austin, the state capital.The case hinged on whether the shooting was in self-defence. A jury found that Perry, who is white, shot and killed Garrett Foster, a 28-year-old white man, who was carrying an AK-47, according to the Austin American-Statesman newspaper. Abbott tweeted that he will pardon Daniel Perry, 37, an army sergeant, as soon as a request from the parole board “hits my desk”.Earlier this year Abbott also led a state takeover of Houston’s public school district, the eighth biggest in the country with nearly 200,000 students, infuriating Democrats who condemned the move as politically motivated.In Florida another Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has centralised power as he assails gun safety and voting rights, the teaching of gender and race in schools and major corporations such as Disney. On Thursday he signed a bill to ban most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.In this he is backed by a supermajority in the Florida state legislature. State governments, which receive less and less scrutiny as local newspapers go extinct, are another key weapon in the Republican arsenal. In deep red states they have imposed near or total bans on abortion, loosened gun restrictions, curbed LGBTQ+ and voting rights and endorsed Trump’s false claims of election fraud.RaceMinority rule is, more than anything, about race. Whereas white Christians made up 54% of the population when Barack Obama was first running for president in 2008, they now make up only 44%.Activists point to Republican-dominated state governments pushing legislation that would allow them to control Black-led cities and push hardline policies on crime. Examples include expanding the jurisdiction of state police in Jackson, Mississippi, and removing local control of the St Louis police department in Missouri. Republicans in the US Congress itself overturned police reform in Washington DC.Makia Green, a lead strategist for the Movement for Black Lives, said: “A lot of it is not only taking away the people we sent to speak for us – to make sure that our voices are heard and that we are part of the process – but also to overwhelm Black voters, to instil apathy in Black voters so that it feels like, ‘I went out, I voted, I did what I had to do, and they took the power away from me, so why should I show up next year?’”Green, co-founder of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a Black community organisation in the Washington area, added: “Our democracy has holes in it, especially with the record number of attacks on voting rights and civic education. Republican and rightwing extremists have been making it harder and harder for our people to vote and so people are questioning, do I still live in a democracy?”Then there was Tennessee where, on 6 April, Republicans sparked national outrage by kicking out Jones and Pearson, two young Black Democrats, as punishment for breaking rules of decorum a week earlier by leading a protest inside the house chamber. The demonstration was prompted by a March school shooting in Nashville in which three children, three adults and the attacker were killed.Just as on abortion, Republicans are demonstrably at odds with public opinion on gun safety. A poll last year by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows 71% of Americans say gun laws should be stricter, including about half of Republicans, the vast majority of Democrats and a majority of those in gun-owning households.Meagan Hatcher-Mays, director of democracy policy at the progressive movement Indivisible, said: “It’s never the situation that the GOP moderates their position on something. It’s always a reflexive pivot to attacking and undermining democracy and that’s exactly what they did in this situation.”But Hatcher-Mays added: “If there’s any silver lining to the way that the GOP behaves it’s that they can’t hide forever from the bad and unpopular things that they do.”Republicans have long been struggling against demographic headwinds and political trends. They have lost the national popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. They suffered another reminder of abortion’s potency when a Democratic-backed Milwaukee judge won a recent Wisconsin supreme court race with the fate of the state’s abortion ban on the line.Republicans remain competitive in the US Senate – the body that approves nominated judges – because small, predominantly white states get two seats each, carrying as much weight as vast, racially diverse ones. In 2018 David Leonhardt of the New York Times calculated that the Senate gives the average Black American only 75% as much representation as the average white American, and the average Hispanic American only 55% as much.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, noted that the government was founded with checks and balances to ensure that minority viewpoints could be heard. “But it was not the intent of the framers and founders to have those minority views imposed on the majority and certainly not to have those in the minority attack the rule of law to try to unravel majority rule, which is what’s happening right now. It doesn’t get more anti-democratic than expelling members from a legislative body for expressing themselves in a constitutionally protected way.“Republicans are inflicting injury and harm on democracy. It’s a continuation of what they started to do with the big lie [that the 2020 election was stolen] … which paved the way for an insurrectionist attempt. We’re seeing other extreme iterations of that play out in individual states. When you have a minority of people exercising power over the majority, that’s authoritarianism.”Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino More

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      Pentagon leaks suspect wins praise from far-right US politicians and media

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      Washington lawmakers have written off Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old air national guardsman accused of being behind the worst US intelligence leak in a decade, as an “alleged criminal” after his arrest yesterday, but that hasn’t stopped him from winning praise from the political right.“He revealed the crimes, therefore he’s the criminal. That’s how Washington works. Telling the truth is the only real sin,” declared the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson on Thursday evening in the opening monologue of his show, which is the most watched on cable television. “The news media are celebrating the capture of the kid who told Americans what’s actually happening in Ukraine. They are treating him like Osama bin Laden,” the late al-Qaida terrorist leader.Federal prosecutors allege Teixeira took secret documents from the Massachusetts air national guard base where he worked as a low-ranking cyber specialist and posted them online. They first appeared on one of the gaming messaging platform Discord’s servers in January before spreading to other social media sites and being reported on by news outlets earlier this month.Shortly after he was taken into custody in Massachusetts on Thursday, the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – who has persistently called for the Joe Biden White House and Washington in general to cut off support to Kyiv – rallied to his defense.“Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and anti-war. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more,” she tweeted in an apparent reference to one of the leaked documents that indicates 14 US special forces soldiers were present in Ukraine during the past two months.“Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen [sic]? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine, a non-Nato nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers?”Other documents have revealed details of how the United States gathers its information and how deeply its intelligence agencies have penetrated Russia’s military. Also among the leaked material is a pessimistic assessment of Ukraine’s prospects of recapturing territory from Russia this spring – a subject Carlson seized on.“Ukraine is in fact losing the war,” he said, citing other documents that indicate Washington’s concerns about Kyiv’s ability to defend its airspace.“The Biden administration is perfectly aware of this. They’re panicked about it, but they have lied about this fact to the public. Just two weeks ago, for example, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told the US Senate that Russian military power is ‘waning’. In other words, Russia is losing the war. That was a lie. He knew it was when he said it, but he repeated it in congressional testimony. That is a crime, but Lloyd Austin has not been arrested for committing that crime.”Congressional Republicans adopted a comparatively sober view of Teixeira’s arrest. He made his first court appearance on Friday in Boston and learned he was facing two charges under the Espionage Act.“Leaking classified information jeopardizes our national security, negatively impacts our relationship with our allies, and places the safety of US military and intelligence personnel at grave risk,” the House intelligence committee chair, Mike Turner, said in a statement. “While we seek to learn the extent of classified information released and how to mitigate the fallout, the House intelligence committee will examine why this happened, why it went unnoticed for weeks, and how to prevent future leaks.“Congratulations to law enforcement for locating and apprehending the alleged criminal.”Democrats generally kept their thoughts about Teixeira’s arrest to themselves. While visiting Ireland, Biden took an administrative tone in a brief statement issued on Friday afternoon: “I commend the rapid action taken by law enforcement to investigate and respond to the recent dissemination of classified US government documents. While we are still determining the validity of those documents, I have directed our military and intelligence community to take steps to further secure and limit distribution of sensitive information, and our national security team is closely coordinating with our partners and allies.”The best indication of where the aftershocks from Teixeira’s arrest could be felt next came from the Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy. His congressional allies have made investigating the Biden administration’s alleged misdeeds a priority, and in a tweet, he said the leaks would be their next focus.“The Biden administration has failed to secure classified information,” he tweeted. “Through our committees, Congress will get answers as to why they were asleep at the switch.” More

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      ‘He feels unstoppable’: DeSantis plans to export his chilling immigration policies to the nation

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      A popular political souvenir in Florida currently is a range of merchandise touting the services of a nonexistent travel company named DeSantis Airlines.T-shirts, drinks glasses and car decals alike bear the motto “Bringing the border to you”, a mocking commemoration of the time last year when Ron DeSantis, the state’s Republican governor, baited a load of mostly Venezuelan asylum seekers on to two chartered planes in Texas with false promises of jobs and housing in Boston, then promptly dumped them in Martha’s Vineyard.The stunt, paid for by Florida taxpayers, was branded cruel and heartless by analysts, political opponents and immigration advocates, and lauded by DeSantis’s supporters as another successful “owning” of liberals.But beyond the politically charged rhetoric, the episode was further proof that immigration, and the demonizing of immigrants, are top priorities for DeSantis while he prepares his likely run at the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.That might seem a curiosity, given that his state is so reliant on immigrant labor, and that almost 3 million workers, comprising more than a quarter of Florida’s entire workforce, were born overseas, according to the American Immigration Council. They fill jobs vital to Florida’s key dollar-generating industries including agriculture, construction, tourism and transportation.Yet to observers of DeSantis’s “anti-woke” world, where liberalism is the enemy, and hard-right ideology eclipses all else, it comes as little surprise.“It’s a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook, a play to elevate his national profile by using this issue to mobilize the base and get his soundbites on Fox News,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigrant advocacy organization America’s Voice.“He is using immigration as a tool to create anger, a very motivating emotion, and elevate his national profile. It’s about amplifying the narratives of chaos, of fear and, really, hate, which is damaging not just to the politics of our country, but also to the policy advancement of the issue.”Advocates in Florida are angered by the governor’s progressively hardline stance in a catalog of legislative measures that might not have drawn the same headline publicity as the Massachusetts flights, yet signal the priorities and policies he would probably pursue from the White House.DeSantis has a long history of picking fights with the Biden administration over the southern border and pursuing legal challenges to federal immigration policies.Closer to home, he and his willing Republican-dominated legislature passed a law in 2019 banning perceived sanctuary cities he believed were shielding migrants from national immigration laws. That case is still tied up in the appeals court after a federal judge ruled parts of it unconstitutional.Last year, DeSantis signed a bill mandating law enforcement to fully implement federal policies and blocking local authorities from contracting with companies that have transported undocumented aliens.But in the weeks since his landslide re-election in November, Florida’s governor has really cut loose on immigration, expanding his migrant removal program, then unveiling measures billed as his response to “Biden’s border crisis” that many consider his most extreme package yet.One part, removing in-state university tuition rates for undocumented students, put him at odds with his own party’s lieutenant governor, Jeanette Nuñez, who sponsored the 2014 bill introducing the tuition discounts, and his Republican predecessor Rick Scott who signed it. While Scott has said he would do so again, the ever-loyal Nuñez has reversed her position.Florida’s business leaders are also concerned by a new requirement to use the internet-based E-Verify employment checking system to deny jobs to those who are undocumented, while those without papers would be denied ID cards and driver’s licenses.Another alarming strand, flagged this week by the New York Times, would require hospitals to establish and report to the state a patient’s immigration status.Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, is worried by the proposed felony criminalization and lengthy prison sentences for anyone who “harbors or transports” an undocumented alien knowingly. She said it could affect parents whose child invites an undocumented classmate to their birthday party, or a carer who took an undocumented senior to a medical appointment.“It’s government overreach. He’s using a facade of protection for government overreach and fascism, controlling every part of everybody’s life,” she said.The effect of DeSantis’s immigration crackdown has been chilling. Rubén Ortiz, a pastor in DeLand whose congregation is almost exclusively from South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean, says they are “terrified”.“I’m getting calls saying: ‘Pastor, can you find someone to take care of our kids if we are deported?’ Others are looking to return to their own country,” he said.“They can call us if they have any incident with the police, a traffic stop or whatever, and now they say: ‘Will the future be worse?’ It’s not only going to school with the kids, it’s if we get sick, and it’s mandatory for hospitals to verify legal status.“People are basically living in the shadows. These people are just looking for a better life, a better place to live. They already had a horrible journey to the US, they’re established and flourishing right now. This is repeating their nightmare and affecting their ability to dream.”The economic impact of DeSantis’s policies is also a concern for Cárdenas, of America’s Voice.“Immigrants contribute like $600m in taxes at the state and local level, 36% of businesses are immigrant owned, so once the business community starts thinking about the implications of what DeSantis is proposing, it’s going to be eye-opening,” she said.“It’s really out of step with our economic needs, which is a top issue for every voter.”She pointed to the rejection of Trump-style immigration extremism in the midterms as a warning for DeSantis. “The majority of the electorate supports immigration and a progressive vision when it comes to policy. They’re Americans who recognize the important place immigrants play in our economy, they want us to have a compassionate system, and they really value our heritage as a nation of immigrants.“It’s such a disservice to the issues Americans care about when we have these kinds of leaders who are amplifying again not just hateful rhetoric that hurts immigrants, but also is not in the best interest of our nation.”Petit, meanwhile, is certain DeSantis will try to project his agenda on to the national stage, noting that he won re-election as governor by 19 points last year and that his Republican legislative supermajority in Florida has left him in effect untouchable.“He’s gotten to the point where there’s a part of his form of governance that is showing up because he has become too empowered. He feels unstoppable,” she said.“It’s what his governance could look like in 2024 for the United States, should he get elected, so people need to pay attention to what he’s doing.”DeSantis, who has previously sent Florida law enforcement officials to help patrol the US southern border with Mexico, continues to paint the immigration debate as a national crisis. He says the nearly 11,000 migrants repatriated from his state since last August are a consequence of the Biden administration “losing control” of the country’s borders.“As Biden’s border crisis continues unabated, my administration is working hard to protect our communities and businesses from the many threats posed by illegal immigration,” he said in a statement announcing his latest crackdown in February.Petit isn’t buying it, and sees DeSantis’s actions as a performance designed to capture Trump’s hardline base for his own presidential ambitions.“I think he realized that when Trump was president people wanted to see a strong presidency, and the fact Trump was a bully got everybody excited,” she said.“He wants to be a bully, except the danger is he’s much more subtle. He’s doing the same things in a much more subtle way and using immigrants as pawns to advance his popularity.” More

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      Republican lawmakers approve six-week abortion ban in Florida

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      The Republican-dominated Florida legislature on Thursday approved a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a proposal supported by the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, as he prepares for an expected presidential run.DeSantis, a Republican, is expected to sign the bill into law. Florida currently prohibits abortions after 15 weeks.A six-week ban would give DeSantis a key political victory among Republican primary voters as he prepares to launch a presidential candidacy built on his national brand as a conservative standard bearer.The policy would also have wider implications for abortion access throughout the south in the wake of the US supreme court’s decision last year overturning Roe v Wade and leaving decisions about abortion access to states. Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi have banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy, while Georgia forbids the procedure after cardiac activity can be detected, which is around six weeks.“We have the opportunity to lead the national debate about the importance of protecting life and giving every child the opportunity to be born and find his or her purpose,” said the Republican representative Jenna Persons-Mulicka, who carried the bill in the house.Democrats and abortion-rights groups have criticized Florida’s proposal as extreme because many women do not yet realize they are pregnant until after six weeks.The bill contains some exceptions, including to save the woman’s life. Abortions for pregnancies involving rape or incest would be allowed until 15 weeks of pregnancy, provided a woman has documentation such as a restraining order or police report. DeSantis has called the rape and incest provisions sensible.Drugs used in medication-induced abortions – which make up the majority of those provided nationally – could be dispensed only in person or by a physician under the Florida bill. Separately, nationwide access to the abortion pill mifepristone is being challenged in court.Florida’s six-week ban would take effect only if the state’s current 15-week ban is upheld in an ongoing legal challenge that is before the state supreme court, which is controlled by conservatives.“I can’t think of any bill that’s going to provide more protections to more people who are more vulnerable than this piece of legislation,” said the Republican representative Mike Beltran, who said the bill’s exceptions and six-week timeframe represented a compromise.Abortion bans are popular among some religious conservatives who are part of the GOP voting base, but the issue has motivated many others to vote for Democrats. Republicans in recent weeks and months have suffered defeats in elections centered on abortion access in states such as Kentucky, Michigan and Wisconsin.“Have we learned nothing?” the house Democratic minority leader Fentrice Driskell said of recent elections in other states. “Do we not listen to our constituents and to the people of Florida and what they are asking for?”DeSantis, who often places himself on the front lines of culture war issues, has said he backs the six-week ban but has appeared uncharacteristically tepid on the bill. He has often said: “We welcome pro-life legislation,” when asked about the policy. More