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      Texas house again fails to meet quorum as governor threatens to add more Republican seats to gerrymandered map – live

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      The Texas legislature failed to meet quorum for a third time today, after only 95 of the 100 representatives needed were present. Dozens of Democratic lawmakers defied Governor Greg Abbott’s demands to return, and remain out of state in protest over a new GOP-drawn congressional map.Speaker Dustin Burrows attempted to reconvene the house today and meet quorum after it failed earlier this week.The Texas Democratic party chairman has responded to the lawsuit filed by Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, seeking to remove 13 Democratic lawmakers from office, saying in a statement:
      Texas Democrats are exercising a long-standing, constitutionally protected right of the minority party to block extreme agendas – in this case, gerrymandering to keep Trump in power. These lawmakers have taken significant risks and sacrifices to stop Trump’s agenda, and despite all the threats they face, they remain undeterred, just like the rest of us. If Ken Paxton wants a fight, we will give him one.”
      Paxton has sought to enforce arrest warrants against the Democratic lawmakers who left Texas to stop Republicans from gerrymandering the congressional map in a manner that would add five more GOP seats.Some more background on what happened at the Texas house today:Billy Long, who is stepping down as the Internal Revenue Service commissioner only two months after he was appointed, has said he will be serving as ambassador to Iceland.The New York Times reported earlier today that Trump had Long removed, and that Long had clashed with Scott Bessent, treasury secretary, who will now serve as acting commissioner.Long is a former congressman from Missouri and close ally to the president who previously pushed false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.The IRS has been run by six different people this year so far.Vladimir Putin has presented the Trump administration with a proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine if Kyiv makes major territorial concessions, according to a new Wall Street Journal report that cites European and Ukrainian officials.The proposal would require Ukraine that hand over the Donbas in the east of the country, which has led European officials to express serious reservations, the Journal reported.“European and Ukrainian officials, who were briefed by President Trump and Witkoff in a series of calls this week, said they worry Putin is simply using the offer as a ploy to avoid punishing new US sanctions and tariffs while continuing the war,” the Journal reported.The report was published as Trump, in a briefing with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, suggested there would “be some swapping of territories” to end the Ukraine invasion. The president spent a significant portion of the event discussing Russia, suggesting he would have more to announce soon and that he and Putin would be meeting “very shortly”.Trump has said he will soon have an update on Russia and would be meeting with Putin “very shortly”. Today was the original deadline he had set to end the Ukraine invasion or bring new sanctions. At the event with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the president made vague remarks about next steps, saying:
      President Putin I believe wants to see peace, and Zelenskyy wants to see peace. Now, President Zelenskyy has to get … everything he needs, because he’s going to have to get ready to sign something, and I think he is working hard to get that done.
      Asked if Zelenskyy would have to give up territory, the president responded: “You’re looking at territory that’s been fought over for three and a half years. A lot of Russians have died. A lot of Ukrainians have died. So we’re looking at that, but we’re actually looking to get some back and some swapping. It’s complicated.”Trump has said he would also soon announce details on the location of a meeting.The US president and the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan have officially signed the peace agreement, establishing a so-called “Trump route for international peace and prosperity”.The corridor for transit and trade will connect mainland Azerbaijan with the autonomous Nakhchivan region, and the AP reported that the Trump administration said it was the Armenians who suggested naming it after the US president.Both leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan heaped praise on Trump and suggested he should receive a Nobel peace prize, which Trump has expressed interest in winning.In the state dining room, Donald Trump is flanked by the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, to his right, and the Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, on his left.Trump says that both nations agree to “stop all fighting forever”. But a key part of the agreement is that it establishes what will be now known as “the Trump route for international peace and prosperity”. This is a key transit corridor that will have US development rights.Trump adds that he thinks Aliyev and Pashinyan are “going to have a great relationship”.

      The Texas House failed to meet quorum for a third time today, after only 95 of the 100 representatives needed were present. Dozens of Democratic lawmakers continue to defy Governor Greg Abbott’s demands to return, and remain out of state in protest over a new GOP-drawn congressional map. The Democrats’ next stop on their tour to deny quorum is California. They’ll hold a press conference at 5pm ET today with Governor Gavin Newsom in Sacramento.

      Abbott has spent the last 24 hours ratcheting up and repeating threats against the absent Democrats. He vowed to “call special session, after special session, after special session with the same agenda items on there”, in an interview with NBC News.

      Meanwhile, the Trump administration wasted no time today. A few standout items are below.

      First, the DoJ has issued two grand jury subpoenas to the New York attorney general, Letitia James, also a longtime Trump adversary, according to various reports. One of the subpoenas is tied to a civil fraud case her office brought against Trump, and the other is reportedly tied to the attorney general’s investigation into NRA.

      The Trump administration is also demanding that UCLA pay the federal government $1bn over multiple instalments to settle claims of antisemitism. That’s according to a report from CNN. If the proposal is agreed to, it would mark the biggest settlement the government has received from a higher education institution.

      And then, according to new reporting by the New York Times, the president has secretly signed a directive to the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels that the Trump administration considers terrorist organizations. In response Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said her government had been informed of a coming order but that it had nothing to do with the US military operating on Mexican soil.

      Finally, for now at least, the Trump administration was handed a win when it comes to its ongoing showdown with the judiciary over the president’s immigration agenda. A federal appeals court overturned Judge James Boasberg’s ruling that found probable cause to hold Trump administration officials in contempt of court over their handling of the deportations of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants under the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act.
      The New York Times is reporting that Donald Trump is replacing the IRS commissioner, Billy Long, only two months after her was confirmed.Long is a former congressman from Missouri and a notable Trump ally – who pushed false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. According to the Times, Long is being primed for an ambassador nomination. It is unclear who lead the agency next, according to the Times.Long is the sixth person to run the IRS this year alone, there have been four acting commissioners since Danny Werfel’s resignation in January, following Trump’s inauguration.A senior administration official tells the Times that treasury secretary Scott Bessent will be named acting commissioner.We’ll be bringing you the latest as Donald Trump prepares to welcome the Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, followed by the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev. They’re expected to sign a peace deal, which would be a landmark development in decades of tension and fighting. Pashinyan is due to arrive soon.The meeting will be certainly be an opportunity for the president to highlight his “peacemaker-in-chief” bona fides, but peace is more elusive in one of the hallmark international conflicts of Trump’s second term.Today is Trump’s original deadline for Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine, or face fresh sanctions. So far there’s been no update, but Trump has said he is ready to meet with Vladimir Putin despite the Russian leader’s refusal to sit-down with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The exact time and location remain undefined, but the UAE has been floated, given Putin’s refusal to talk in Kyiv.The Trump administration is demanding that the University of California, Los Angeles, pay the federal government $1bn over multiple installments to settle claims of antisemitism, according to a report from CNN.The settlement would also require UCLA to pay $172m to a fund for Jewish students and other individuals affected by alleged violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, per CNN. Title VII prohibits employment discrimination on the basis race, color, religion, sex and national origin.CNN notes that if the proposal is agreed to, it would mark the biggest settlement the government has received from a higher education institution. CNN has not yet received comment from the University of California system.According to CNN’s reporting, “the proposed agreement prohibits overnight demonstrations and calls on the school to revise its policies and procedures on protests. It also requires UCLA to discontinue race and ethnicity-based scholarships and provide the resolution monitor with admissions data.”Burrows is now speaking and says that he and attorney general Ken Paxton have tried to make the civil arrest warrants they have filed against Democratic lawmakers “enforceable beyond state lines”.Also, notably, Burrows is enacting a new policy that states that any member breaking quorum will no longer have their paycheck or per diem deposited electronically. While the Capitol is not withholding pay – as that violates the state’s constitution – they are now stipulating that their paychecks must now be picked up in person.Burrows said the statehouse will withhold a percentage of absent Democrats’ monthly expenses, and any administrative work that requires the House’s approval will need to be done in person.The Texas legislature failed to meet quorum for a third time today, after only 95 of the 100 representatives needed were present. Dozens of Democratic lawmakers defied Governor Greg Abbott’s demands to return, and remain out of state in protest over a new GOP-drawn congressional map.Speaker Dustin Burrows attempted to reconvene the house today and meet quorum after it failed earlier this week.In an interview with Ruthless Podcast, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, threatened to add “six, or seven or eight” new seats to the GOP-drawn congressional map that Democrats are already protesting by breaking quorum.The current proposal is a gerrymandered map that could secure Republicans five seats in Texas ahead of the 2026 midterms.When asked about how he sees this redistricting battle ending, Abbott was resolute: “One way or the other, they [Democrats] are coming back, and it’s going to end with these maps being passed.” More

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      Texas attorney general seeks to remove 13 absent Democrats from office

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      The Republican attorney general of Texas on Friday asked the state supreme court to vacate the seats of 13 Democratic legislators who have left for blue states, hours after their absence once again delayed a vote on a redrawn congressional map sought by Donald Trump.Republican leaders in Texas had set a Friday deadline for Democrats to return to the state capitol in Austin or face punishment, including arrest and possible removal from office. Dozens of Democrats left the state over the weekend to prevent a Republican redistricting effort, requested by the president, to redraw the Texas maps mid-cycle to secure a Republican House majority in the 2026 midterms.“These cowards deliberately sabotaged the constitutional process and violated the oath they swore to uphold,” the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, a far-right ally of the president, said in a statement that hinted he could target more lawmakers in future litigation. Paxton’s lawsuit is the latest escalation in a fast-evolving standoff between blue and red state leaders.It comes after the Texas house speaker, Dustin Burrows, moved to enforce arrest warrants in other states and as Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, warned in an interview with NBC News that he was prepared to “arrest Democrats who may be in Texas, may be elsewhere”.During the short house session on Friday, Burrows said state authorities were working to make civil arrest warrants against the Democrats enforceable outside Texas. He also announced that the legislature was withholding the Democrats’ direct deposit payments, requiring absent members to pick them up in person at the capitol in Austin.“Each one of you knows that eventually you will come back,” Burrows said, addressing the absent Democrats from the chamber floor. “But with each passing day, the political cost of your absence is rising, and it will be paid in full.”Also on Friday, Paxton announced that he was suing the Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke for “unlawful fundraising activity” on behalf of the quorum-breaking state lawmakers. On X, O’Rourke said that his political group, Powered by People, had responded by suing Paxton in state court.Democrats have remained defiant, saying they would remain out of state for “as long as it takes” to stop Trump’s redistricting effort. But Abbott has said that they would have to stay away for years to be successful. The current special legislative session, called by the Texas governor, lasts until 19 August, but Abbott has vowed to call “special session after special session after special session”.“But I’ll tell you this also, Democrats act like they’re not going to come back as long as this is an issue,” Abbott said in the NBC News interview. “That means they’re not going to come back until like 2027 or 2028, because I’m going to call special session after special session after special session with the same agenda items on there.”In a separate interview, he said he might push for more than five seats.“What I’m thinking now is that if they don’t start showing up, I may start expanding,” he said. “We may make it six or seven or eight new seats we’re going to be adding on the Republican side.”Tensions have escalated dramatically since the Democrats left Texas and sought refuge in Democratic states. The Republican-led state house has approved civil arrest warrants for the absent lawmakers, and Abbott took the extraordinary step of filing a lawsuit with the state supreme court that seeks to remove Gene Wu, the house Democratic leader, from office.The court has asked Wu to respond by Friday to Abbott’s emergency petition to remove him from his Houston-area seat.On Thursday John Cornyn, the Texas senator, said the FBI had agreed to assist in locating the Democrats, but the FBI declined to comment and it is unclear what authority federal law enforcement would have, as they are not charged with federal crimes.“For those who have fled to Illinois or California, be reminded that the FBI’s assistance has reportedly been enlisted and their powers are not confined to a single state’s boundaries,” Burrows said on Friday.One Democratic member of the Texas state house, Claudia Ordaz, said in a statement that state troopers had showed up at a relative’s home looking for her, even though she had stated publicly that she was dealing with a “personal health matter”. In the statement Ordaz said she was sharing from a hospital waiting room, the lawmaker denounced the officers’ visit as an “deliberate abuse of power and an intimidation tactic” while also criticizing those she said had “falsely accused” her of being present in the chamber to help Republicans make a quorum.Earlier on Friday, the St Charles police department confirmed that the Illinois hotel where some of the quorum-breaking Democrats are believed to be staying had experienced a second bomb threat. It comes days after an initial bomb threat at the Q Center Hotel, in suburban Chicago.Several Texas Democrats were in Sacramento on Friday to meet with the California governor, Gavin Newsom, who has threatened to respond in kind with a new congressional map that would offset the seats Republicans stand to gain in Texas if the president’s push is successful. More

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      Democrats respond to FBI agreement to locate Texas lawmakers: ‘We will not be intimidated’ – live updates

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      Democrats have responded to the news earlier that the FBI has agreed to assist local law enforcement to track down Democratic lawmakers who left the state to break quorum in protest of the state’s GOP-drawn congressional map.It comes after Republican Senator John Cornyn’s statement earlier, praising FBI director Kash Patel for his support.Hakeem Jeffries lambasted the move in a post on X.“The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries,” the House minority leader wrote. “We will not be intimidated.”Meanwhile, Illinois governor JB Pritzker underscored on a podcast on Wednesday that Texas lawmakers hadn’t broken any laws. He also said that any arrests by FBI agents would be “unwelcome” in his state.“They’re grandstanding, there’s literally no federal law applicable to this situation,” he added.The US Air Force said it would deny all transgender service members who have served between 15 and 18 years the option to retire early and would instead separate them without retirement benefits, the AP reports.One Air Force sergeant said he was “betrayed and devastated” by the move.The move means that transgender service members will now be faced with the choice of either taking a lump-sum separation payment offered to junior troops or be removed from the service.An Air Force spokesperson told the AP that “although service members with 15 to 18 years of honorable service were permitted to apply for an exception to policy, none of the exceptions to policy were approved.”About a dozen service members had been “prematurely notified” that they would be able to retire before that decision was reversed, according to the spokesperson who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal Air Force policy.A memo issued Monday announcing the new policy said that the choice to deny retirement benefits was made “after careful consideration of the individual applications.”Earlier, we reported that two senior FBI officials involved in a number of FBI investigations related to the president were fired. Now, senior politics reporter Chris Stein brings us more details:The Trump administration is forcing out a senior FBI official who resisted demands made earlier this year for the names of agents who investigated the January 6 insurrection, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.Brian Driscoll briefly served as acting FBI director in the first weeks of Donald Trump’s new term, and his final day at the bureau is Friday, the people told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to discuss the move. Further ousters were possible.The FBI declined to comment to the Guardian.The New York Times further reported that the FBI was forcing out Walter Giardina, a special agent who worked on cases involving Trump as well as Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser to the president who was convicted of contempt of Congress.The ousters were the latest under the FBI director, Kash Patel, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, who had repeatedly alleged that the bureau had become politicized under Joe Biden. Numerous senior officials, including top agents in charge of big-city field offices, have been pushed out of their jobs, and some agents have been subjected to polygraph exams, moves that former officials say have roiled the workforce and contributed to angst.Here’s the full story:Donald Trump’s administration turned to the US supreme court in an effort to defend its aggressive immigration raids after a federal judge in Los Angeles blocked agents from profiling individuals based on race or language in pursuit of deportation targets.The justice department asked the supreme court in an emergency filing to lift the judge’s order temporarily barring agents from stopping or detaining people without “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country illegally, by relying solely on their race or ethnicity, or if they speak Spanish or English with an accent.The move comes after a federal judge last month ordered the Trump administration to halt indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in seven California counties, including Los Angeles.Donald Trump said Thursday that he would meet with Vladimir Putin even if the Russian president won’t meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Trump, when asked by a reporter whether Putin would need to meet with the Ukrainian president to secure a meeting with the US, said: “No, he doesn’t. No.”His comments followed Putin’s remarks earlier in the day that he hoped to meet with Trump next week, possibly in the United Arab Emirates. But the White House was still working through the details of any potential meetings, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.Donald Trump announced he will nominate the Council of Economic Advisers chair Stephen Miran to serve as a Federal Reserve governor.Miran would fill the position opened by Fed governor Adriana Kugler’s surprise resignation last week, as she returns to her tenured professorship at Georgetown University.The term expires on 31 January 2026 and is subject to approval by the Senate.Trump said the White House continues to search for someone to serve in the 14-year Fed Board seat that opens 1 February.Miran has advocated for a far-reaching overhaul of Fed governance that would include shortening board member terms, putting them under the clear control of the president and ending the “revolving door” between the executive branch and the Fed.Trump has unsuccessfully pushed the Fed to cut rates. Miran, if confirmed by the Senate, would have one of 12 votes on monetary policy at the Fed, which voted 9-2 last month to keep rates steady.Donald Trump and Stephen Moore, a fellow at the rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation, held an event at the White House on Thursday to show reporters “new numbers” that allege the Bureau of Labor Statistics overstated job creation during the first two years of the Biden administration.“I don’t think it’s an error,” Trump said during today’s event. “I think they did it purposely.”Moore said the data comes from “unpublished Census Bureau data”, and will supposedly be released sometime in the next six months.Moore is Trump’s former economic advisor and co-wrote the book Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy”, which praised the president’s economic plans. In 2019, Trump nominated Moore for a seat on the Federal Reserve board, but he withdrew amid scrutiny for his history of sexist comments and other scandals.Colleges and universities will be forced to disclose more student admissions data to prove that they are not implementing affirmative action policies, according to a directive sent by the White House on Thursday.The move comes as the Trump administration seeks to crack down on the use of race in the higher education application process. Ivy League universities, like Brown University, have reached settlements that require them to release information about applicants’ race.Colleges have been barred from considering race in admissions since 2023, when the supreme court overturned decades of precedent that allowed limited use of race as a factor. Trump’s directive would increase oversight of schools’ admissions processes.“Although the Supreme Court of the United States has definitively held that consideration of race in higher education admissions violates students’ civil rights,” the directive reads, “the persistent lack of available data – paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies – continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in practice.”The directive was confirmed earlier today by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

      The president’s higher tariffs hit major US trading partners today. Trump and members of his cabinet declared it an economic victory, with commerce secretary Howard Lutnick estimating that the tariffs will lead to “$50bn a month” in revenue for the USand treasury secretary Scott Bessent saying a “manufacturing renaissance” was on the horizon in an interview with MSNBC. Countries feeling the hit, however, are now scrambling to respond.

      Republican senator John Cornyn of Texas said today that the FBI had approved his request for the agency to help locate and arrest Democratic state lawmakers, who left the state last week to break quorum in protest over a GOP-drawn congressional map. “We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Cornyn said in a statement.

      In response, undeterred Democrats have fired back. “The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote on X. “We will not be intimidated.”

      Meanwhile, on Truth Social, Donald Trump announced today that he’s ordered the commerce department to conduct a new census that would exclude undocumented immigrants from the official count. “People who are in our country illegally will not be counted,” the president said. It’s important to note that the US census has historically counted all residents regardless of citizenship or immigration status, as required by the 14th amendment’s “whole number of persons” provision.

      And in Florida, the administration’s immigration agenda hit a snag as a federal judge in Miami ordered a temporary halt to the construction of the detention centre being built in the Everglades, known as “Alligator Alcatraz”. While the injunction says the facility can continue to operate and hold detainees, any further construction must stop while environmental threats to the wetlands are assessed.
      More than 60 countries around the world are scrambling to respond to the latest wave of US tariffs announced by Donald Trump, which came into force on Thursday.The Brazilian government said it was planning a state aid plan for companies affected. The president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said the duties were “unacceptable blackmail”.Switzerland said it was seeking new talks with the US after a last-gasp mission to Washington by its president, Karin Keller-Sutter, failed to stop a 39% tariff blow that industry group Swissmem described as a “horror scenario”.In a statement after an emergency meeting with Keller-Sutter, the Swiss cabinet said the tariffs would “place a substantial strain on Switzerland’s export-oriented economy”.“For the affected sectors, companies and their employees, this is an extraordinarily difficult situation,” Keller-Sutter told reporters.Despite a last-minute reprieve from Trump for Lesotho with tariffs dropping from 50% to 15%, the impoverished African nation said it was already hurting.Textile industry players in the country – which produces jeans and other garments for US companies including Levi and Walmart – said the uncertainty around tariffs over the past few months had already devastated the sector, with orders cancelled and jobs cut.Read more here:A federal judge in Miami has ordered a temporary halt to the construction of the detention centre being built in the Florida everglades known as ‘Alligator Alcatraz’.The temporary injunction, which lasts for 14 days, states that the facility can continue to operate and hold detainees, but any further construction must stop while any environmental threats to the wetlands are assessed.The plaintiffs – which comprise environmental groups and Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe – argue that the detention center’s construction ultimately violates the National Environmental Policy Act.The federal judiciary said on Thursday that it would be taking “additional steps” to strengthen protections for sensitive case documents after “recent escalated cyber-attacks” on its case management system.Politico first reported the news of a hack that hit the federal courts’ filing system.“Enhancing the security of its systems is a top priority for the Judiciary,” the Federal Courts system wrote in a statement. They didn’t offer any immediate information about who was behind the cyber-attacks.My colleagues are reporting on the latest developments following Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks that he intends to take military control of all of Gaza, before eventually handing it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly.The Israeli prime minister’s statement comes after special envoy Steve Witkoff visited the region last week to assess the ongoing humanitarian crisis, increase the flow of US aid to Gaza.You can follow along here:Democrats have responded to the news earlier that the FBI has agreed to assist local law enforcement to track down Democratic lawmakers who left the state to break quorum in protest of the state’s GOP-drawn congressional map.It comes after Republican Senator John Cornyn’s statement earlier, praising FBI director Kash Patel for his support.Hakeem Jeffries lambasted the move in a post on X.“The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries,” the House minority leader wrote. “We will not be intimidated.”Meanwhile, Illinois governor JB Pritzker underscored on a podcast on Wednesday that Texas lawmakers hadn’t broken any laws. He also said that any arrests by FBI agents would be “unwelcome” in his state.“They’re grandstanding, there’s literally no federal law applicable to this situation,” he added. More

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      Fort Bliss army base on US southern border to take 1,000 Ice detainees

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      Fort Bliss is preparing to accept 1,000 immigrant detainees as the Trump administration moves to use military bases for its unprecedented mass deportation operation and immigration crackdown.The facility, named Camp East Montana, is set to begin operations on 17 August at the US army post near El Paso, Texas. Ice (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) said in a statement that the facility will initially house up to 1,000 detainees, with plans to expand to a capacity of 5,000 beds.If the center reaches full capacity, the El Paso Times reports that it would become the largest immigration detention facility in the US.An Ice spokesperson said the agency is using the facility to help “decompress Ice detention facilities in other regions” and will serve as a short-term processing center. The statement adds that deportations carried out via “Ice air operations” will also take place at the facility.According to Ice, the facility will house undocumented immigrants who “are in removal proceedings or who have final orders of removal”.The site is being constructed under a Department of Defense contract, Ice said, and is funded “as part of the essential whole-of-government approach to protecting public safety and preserving national security”.In July, administration officials announced that Acquisition Logistics LLC, a Virginia-based contractor, was awarded a $231.8m firm-fixed-price contract to “establish and operate” the “5,000 capacity, single adult, short-term detention facility”.Bloomberg reported that Acquisition Logistics has no prior experience operating detention facilities.View image in fullscreenIn the statement from Ice, the agency said that Ice personnel “will be responsible for the management and operational authority” at the facility, and that the establishment of the center is being “carried out with contracted support and according to Ice detention standards”.The agency described the facility as “soft-sided” and said that it will offer “everything a traditional Ice detention facility offers”, which Ice said includes access to legal representation, a law library and space for visitation, recreation and medical treatment, as well as “necessary accommodations for disabilities, diet and religious belief”.In a statement to the Guardian, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin also confirmed the use of Fort Bliss to house immigration detainees.“Ice is indeed pursuing all available options to expand bedspace capacity” McLaughlin said. “This process does include housing detainees at certain military bases, including Fort Bliss.”In March, the Guardian reported that Fort Bliss has been used under multiple administrations for immigration-related operations.Under this Trump administration, the base has reportedly already been used to fly deportees on military aircraft to Guantánamo Bay and Central and South America.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder Joe Biden, it was used as an emergency shelter to for thousands of unaccompanied migrant children. In 2021, Fort Bliss also reportedly played a key role in resettling Afghan refugees brought to the US after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. And in 2016, under the Obama administration, Fort Bliss housed several hundred unaccompanied migrant children.The new facility being established at Fort Bliss comes as the Trump administration has sought to use several US military bases around the country as immigration detention facilities.The expansion has faced some criticism from Democrats. Texas representative Veronica Escobar, whose district includes Fort Bliss, warned that using military facilities as immigration detention centers could hurt the effectiveness of US military forces.“It’s not good for our readiness, and it degrades our military,” she said.Last month, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced that both the Camp Atterbury base in Indiana and the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey could now house detained immigrants.Democrats from both states condemned the move, with New Jersey’s Democratic delegation warning that “using our country’s military to detain and hold undocumented immigrants jeopardizes military preparedness and paves the way for Ice immigration raids in every New Jersey community”.The planned opening of the new immigration detention facility near El Paso also comes as a new report released this week by the office of the US senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat representing Georgia, found and documented hundreds of alleged human rights abuses at immigration detention centers in the US since 20 January 2025.The report cites deaths in custody, physical and sexual abuse of detainees, mistreatment of pregnant women and children, overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions, exposure to extreme temperatures, denial of access to attorneys, child separation, and more.In a statement about the report’s allegations, a spokesperson for the DHS told NBC News that “any claim that there are subprime conditions at Ice detention centers are false”. 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      Texas Democrats who left state in protest can ‘stay out long enough to stop this deal’, Beto O’Rourke says – live updates

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      Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has emerged as a top funder covering the costs of Texas lawmakers’ exodus, told CNN earlier that he believes they can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.Donald Trump, Texas governor Greg Abbott, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton are, O’Rourke said, “trying to steal these five seats in Texas because without them Trump’s going to lose a majority in the House of Representatives”.
      Without that majority, there’s a check on his lawlessness, accountability for his crimes and corruption, and the possibility of free and fair elections going forward.
      The 56 Texas Democrats who left the state are, O’Rourke said, “all that stand between that future and where we are right now”.
      I think what they’re doing is the highest form of public service. They’re trying to stop the consolidation of authoritarian power in America.
      They are the champions for this democracy, for America, for the rule of law and for our constitution.
      Paxton has called their leaving a “dereliction of the duty as elected officials” and said he would pursue a court ruling to declare the seats of “any rogue lawmakers” vacant if they do not return to work at the statehouse by Friday.“This matters more than any other priority,” said O’Rourke. “We have to stop their power grab.” He added:
      The election of 2026 is going to be decided in the summer of 2025, so we have to fight now and every day going forward.
      During a White House event to announce new investments in manufacturing by Apple, Donald Trump said the United States will impose a tariff of about 100% on semiconductor chips imported into the country.Trump told reporters in the Oval office that the new tariff rate would apply to “all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States,” but would not apply to companies that had made a commitment to manufacture in the United States.“So 100% tariff on all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States”, Trump said. “But if you’ve made a commitment to build [in the US], or if you’re in the process of building, as many are, there is no tariff”, Trump said.The White House has released a statement to reporters in which the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, suggests that the idea of a direct meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, was proposed by the Russians during Putin’s meeting with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Wednesday.“As President Trump said earlier today on TRUTH Social, great progress was made during Special Envoy Witkoff’s meeting with President Putin”, Leavitt said. “The Russians expressed their desire to meet with President Trump, and the President is open to meeting with both President Putin and President Zelensky. President Trump wants this brutal war to end.”I asked Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat who represents San Antonio in the Texas state legislature what it was like away from the cameras as he and his colleagues live out of a hotel room in Illinois with no idea of how long they’ll be there.“It’s important to just have the right mental focus and to stick to routines”, he said. “We’re still, you know, we’re still parents, and we’re still spouses. And we’re still trying to run our business or explain to our boss why we’re not there. We try to live, you know, we try to live a normal life, and we will rely on each other”.Texas’ part-time lawmakers earn just $600 a month, so many have other jobs and have been forced to work remotely from outside the state, if they can.Martinez Fischer wanted to make sure people knew that he and his colleagues are still doing legislative work, even though they’re not in Austin. He mentioned that he filed two bills yesterday.He said this was his fourth quorum break. He said he was a “one bag guy” and had packed some leisure wear to wear with polos and his best suit he could stretch out a few days. “I’m wearing some clothes today that I haven’t worn yet. So, you know, that’s a small success for me”.“When we talk about the grand scheme of what we, what we’re doing here and why we’re here, I mean, there are people who have had it a whole lot worse than me”, he said.He also said this quorum break feels different than the one in 2021, when Democrats fled the state for several weeks to try and stop a bill with sweeping new voting restrictions from going into effect.“2021, we spent more time trying to convince the country that there was an issue, right? This time, you know, there is no tutorial necessary and everybody is laser focused on the issue before us”, he said. “We don’t have to debate somebody on the merits of this walkout. I mean, they know the implications”.I just got off the phone with Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat who represents San Antonio in the Texas state legislature, and is one of dozens in his party who fled the state to try and stop Republicans from passing new Congressional maps.I asked Martinez Fischer if he could lend any insight into how long Democrats would hold out before returning. He declined to say.“These quorum checks and the strategies and end games are kind of best left undiscussed”, he said. “It’s a very fluid, it’s a very fluid dynamic. The idea that we had on Sunday may be different next Sunday”.Martinez Fischer said he’s not really concerned about the $500 per day fines lawmakers are accruing under state legislature rules enacted in 2023. “Not concerned about it at all”, he said. “We’ve had rules set aside before, and courts don’t have to interpret the rules the way Republicans want them to be interpreted”.He said he also wasn’t fazed by threats from top Texas Republicans to ask courts to remove Democratic lawmakers from office. Abbott filed a long-shot legal bid to do so against Gene Wu, the chair of the Democratic caucus, on Tuesday evening.“I think he recognizes that he’s on the losing side of this narrative”, Martinez Fischer said. “I think that the theories by which the governor is trying to remove people from office has a much more structured procedure than just filing some papers with the supreme court. So I don’t think that that kind of stuff happens overnight”.

      Texas Democrats are still hunkering down in blue states across the country. It comes after they broke quorum for two consecutive days this week, in protest of a new GOP-drawn congressional map. It’s now evolved into a nationwide redistricting battle.

      Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke has emerged as a top funder, covering the costs of the lawmakers’ exodus through his political group ‘Powered by People’. In an interview with CNN earlier he said that state reps can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.

      Meanwhile, many of the Texas legislators who decamped to Illinois were forced to evacuate from their hotel today when they experienced a bomb threat. The area was secured as bomb squad units conducted their investigation. No device was found according to local police. Illinois governor JB Pritzker said he was aware of the threats, in a post on X. “Threats of violence will be investigated and those responsible will be held accountable,” he added.

      In a post on Truth Social, the president said that “great progress” was made at a “highly productive” three-hour meeting today between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian president Vladimir Putin. This comes just two days ahead of a deadline Trump set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war with Ukraine, or face fresh sanctions.

      The New York Times also reports that Donald Trump plans to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin as early as next week. Trump will then organise a follow-up for Putin, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and himself, sources tell the Times.

      Trump also followed through on his threats to increase tariffs on India. Earlier he issued an executive order today imposing an additional 25% on goods from India, saying the country directly or indirectly imported Russian oil. It brings the total levies against India to 50%.
      The president plans to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin as early as next week, according to reporting from the New York Times.Sources tell the Times that Trump plans to follow up with a meeting between himself, Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.The newspaper reports that Trump disclosed the details on a call with European leaders. Although, the meeting with Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy will not include any European counterparts, two people familiar with the plan tell the Times.This comes after a three-hour meeting today between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin, which Trump described as “highly productive” in a post on Truth Social.Facing images of violent white mobs defending racial segregation, the condemnation of the world and of its own citizens, Congress in 1965 passed the Voting Rights Act, a law meant to end the hypocrisy of a democratic country that denied Black people the power of their vote.Sixty years later, race remains at the center of American politics. Cases before the US supreme court, and a platoon of Texas legislators fleeing the state to prevent redistricting, demonstrate how the Voting Rights Act – and its erosion – remains on the frontline of the political battlefield.“Democracy is at stake,” said Todd Cox, associate director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Even as voting rights advocates use the act to win additional congressional representation in Alabama and press cases in Louisiana and North Carolina, a conservative supreme court makes gains precarious, he said.Read more about how the Voting Rights Act is confronting its biggest threats in the 60 years since its passage.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, in a post on X, that Donald Trump has been briefed on the shooting at Fort Stewart in Georgia, and the White House is monitoring the situation.Five soldiers were shot and wounded today on the military base in south-east Georgia, before the shooter was taken into custody.Parts of the base had been locked down earlier on Wednesday after a shooter was reported on the sprawling army post, a spokesperson said.In an analysis by Politico, Democratic lawmakers from Texas stand to amass almost $400,000 in penalties, for leaving the state in protest during the special session that ends on 19 August.Politico crunched the numbers and worked out the total based on the fewest lawmakers needed to break quorum, the anticipated length of their out-of-state trips, and the $500-per-day fee they’re being charged.“Should Democrats refuse to return for the length of the entire special legislative session, which will end on Aug. 19, they could rack up fines totaling at least $382,500,” Politico estimated.In a post on Truth Social, the president said that “great progress” was made at the meeting between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian president Vladimir Putin.“Afterwards, I updated some of our European Allies. Everyone agrees this War must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come,” Trump added.The meeting comes just two days before a deadline the president set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war with Ukraine, or face fresh sanctions.Texas state lawmakers – many of whom decamped to Illinois to break quorum over the new GOP-drawn congressional map – were forced to evacuate from their hotel earlier near Chicago today.The St Charles police department said they responded to a report of a potential bomb threat at the Q-Center hotel and convention complex. Four hundred people were immediately evacuated, and the area was secured as bomb squad units conducted their investigation. No device was found.On social media, Democratic state representative John Bucy III said that “this is what happens when Republican state leaders publicly call for us to be ‘hunted down’,” referring to the Texas attorney general’s earlier calls to bring absent lawmakers back to the state house.Illinois governor JB Pritzker said he was aware of the threats, in a post on X. “Threats of violence will be investigated and those responsible will be held accountable,” he added.JD Vance will reportedly host top administration officials at his residence tonight, where they will discuss a strategy to address the fallout of the government’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and come up with a “unified response”, CNN reports.Among the attendees will reportedly be, attorney Pam Bondi, her deputy Todd Blanche, FBI director Kash Patel and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.It comes as the administration weighs whether to release the contents of Blanche’s interviews, including over 10 hours of audio and a transcript, with Epstein accomplice and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Two officials told CNN that the materials could be made public as early as this week.One official told CNN that some of the conversation within the White House has focused on whether making the details from the interview public would bring the Epstein controversy back to the surface, at a time when many officials close to Trump believe the story has finally died down.Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has emerged as a top funder covering the costs of Texas lawmakers’ exodus, told CNN earlier that he believes they can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.Donald Trump, Texas governor Greg Abbott, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton are, O’Rourke said, “trying to steal these five seats in Texas because without them Trump’s going to lose a majority in the House of Representatives”.
      Without that majority, there’s a check on his lawlessness, accountability for his crimes and corruption, and the possibility of free and fair elections going forward.
      The 56 Texas Democrats who left the state are, O’Rourke said, “all that stand between that future and where we are right now”.
      I think what they’re doing is the highest form of public service. They’re trying to stop the consolidation of authoritarian power in America.
      They are the champions for this democracy, for America, for the rule of law and for our constitution.
      Paxton has called their leaving a “dereliction of the duty as elected officials” and said he would pursue a court ruling to declare the seats of “any rogue lawmakers” vacant if they do not return to work at the statehouse by Friday.“This matters more than any other priority,” said O’Rourke. “We have to stop their power grab.” He added:
      The election of 2026 is going to be decided in the summer of 2025, so we have to fight now and every day going forward.
      US envoy Steve Witkoff’s meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday went well, a White House official has told Reuters, adding that Washington still planned to proceed with secondary sanctions on Friday.
      The Russians are eager to continue engaging with the United States. The secondary sanctions are still expected to be implemented on Friday.
      My colleague Jakub Krupa is covering this in greater detail over on our Europe live blog:It follows a Reuters report that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump spoke on the phone earlier today, according to a source familiar with the matter.Hours earlier, US special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. There haven’t been any immediate indication from either side as to how the talks went.We’re seeing lines on Reuters quoting a White House official that secondary US sanctions on Russia are expected to be implemented on Friday, the deadline Trump gave Putin to reach a peace deal to end its war in Ukraine.Up until this point Trump had been unusually reticent to punish the Russian president, my colleague Patrick Wintour wrote in a piece published this morning, so “what Trump – who some had claimed was a Russian asset – does next to punish Putin could define his presidency.”I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.If state legislators in California move ahead with governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to hold a special election – and begin the process of redrawing the state’s congressional maps in response to Texas’s plans – they’ll have just five days to announce their decision.The California legislature returns from its recess on 18 August, and it will have to declare a special election by 22 August, according to KCRA News.“They’re doing a midterm rejection of objectivity and independence, an act that we could criticise from the sideline, or an act that we can respond to in kind – fight fire with fire,” Newsom said in a press conference last week, referring to Texas Republicans’ plans to pass a new congressional map.Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke with Donald Trump on the phone today, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.This comes after US special envoy Steve Witkoff wrapped up a three-hour meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin earlier today.My colleagues are tracking the latest here. More

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      Texas Democrats receive bomb threat in escalating standoff over redistricting

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      Texas Democrats who left the state say they experienced a bomb threat at their Illinois hotel on Wednesday morning amid an ongoing clash with Republicans over their effort to block a new congressional map from going into place.John Bucy III, a Democrat who represents Austin in the state legislature, confirmed the threat on X on Wednesday and said the lawmakers were evacuated. “This is what happens when Republican state leaders publicly call for us to be ‘hunted down’. Texas Democrats won’t be intimidated,” he said.“We are safe, we are secure, and we are undeterred,” three other members of the Texas house Democratic caucus, representatives Gene Wu, Ramón Romero and Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, said in a statement. They thanked Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, and law enforcement officials “for their quick action to ensure our safety”.The showdown between Texas Republicans and the Democrats who fled the state to block redistricting plans escalated late on Tuesday when Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, filed an emergency petition asking the state supreme court to remove Wu, the top Democrat in the state house of representatives, and declare his seat vacant.“Fearing one of eighteen items on the Special Session agenda, Democrat members of the Texas House claim an entitlement to abdicate their official duties by refusing to show up for work,” lawyers for Abbott’s office wrote in the filing, asking the court to rule on his request by Thursday. “These members have abandoned their official duties required by the Constitution.”In a statement on Tuesday evening, Wu said he would not be intimidated by Abbott’s request.“This office does not belong to Greg Abbott, and it does not belong to me. It belongs to the people of House District 137, who elected me. I took an oath to the constitution, not a politician’s agenda, and I will not be the one to break that oath,” he said in a statement. “Let me be unequivocal about my actions and my duty. When a governor conspires with a disgraced president to ram through a racist gerrymandered map, my constitutional duty is to not be a willing participant.”Texas Republicans already hold 25 of Texas’s 38 congressional seats, but Abbott agreed to redraw the state’s congressional districts at the request of Donald Trump to add more GOP-friendly districts. Republicans hold a narrow 219-212 advantage in the US House, and the Texas redraw is a brazen effort to try to shore up Republicans’ advantage before next year’s midterm elections, when Republicans are expected to lose seats.A new map unveiled last week would favor Republicans in 30 of 38 seats and weaken the influence of Hispanic voters throughout the state.Abbott’s effort is considered a long shot, legal experts told the Texas Tribune. In 2021, the Texas supreme court made clear that the state constitution both allows state lawmakers to break quorum and allows for mechanisms for lawmakers to bring them back.“I am aware of absolutely no authority that says breaking quorum is the same as the intent to abandon a seat,” Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, a constitutional law expert at the University of Missouri law school, told the Tribune. “That would require the courts extending the premise to the breaking point. It’s inconsistent with the very text of the Texas Constitution.”The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Republican, has said he also plans to take legal action to try to remove the lawmakers from office.On Tuesday, Senator John Cornyn asked the FBI to assist in returning the lawmakers to Texas. Trump said on Tuesday that the FBI may have to get involved. “The governor of Texas is demanding they come back,” Trump said. “You can’t just sit it out. You have to go back. You have to fight it out. That’s what elections are all about,” he said. The FBI has declined to comment.Under rules enacted by the legislature, lawmakers also face a $500 daily fine for each day they are not present in the capitol. Many of the costs so far, including a private charter to Illinois, meals and lodging have been picked up by Powered by People, a political group started by former Representative Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Tribune reported. Paxton announced on Wednesday he was investigating the group’s funding of the effort.Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democratic representative of San Antonio in the state legislature, said in an interview he was unfazed by the possibility of racking up fines.“Not concerned about it at all,” he said. “We’ve had rules set aside before, and courts don’t have to interpret the rules the way Republicans want them to be interpreted.”“The group is very committed and we recognize that this is much bigger, it’s much bigger than anybody’s individual congressional district, it’s much bigger than anybody’s individual city, and it’s even bigger than the state of Texas,” he added.Other states appear to be following Texas’s lead and considering mid-cycle redistricting. Ohio is already set to redraw its congressional map this year because of a unique state law, and is expected to add more GOP-friendly seats. Republicans in Missouri and Indiana are also reportedly considering redrawing maps to add GOP-friendly districts.Democratic governors have threatened to redraw the maps in their states too to offset Republican gains, though they do not have the power to draw as many seats as Republicans do. The biggest opportunity for Democrats is in California, which has 52 seats in Congress. Governor Gavin Newsom is reportedly moving ahead with a referendum this fall to ask to adopt a new map that would add Democratic seats and override an independent redistricting commission. More

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      The US supreme court paved the way for Texas’s gerrymandering mess | Steven Greenhouse

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      With Texas Republicans rushing to fulfil Donald Trump’s wish to gerrymander to the max, many Americans are no doubt wondering why there isn’t some referee to stop this hyperpartisan race to the bottom that is poisoning our democracy. The supreme court should be the referee that puts a halt to this ugly, undemocratic mess, but in a shortsighted, 5-4 ruling in 2019, the court’s conservative majority essentially told state legislatures that anything goes when it comes to gerrymandering. Their message was: no matter how extreme the gerrymandering, we’ll look the other way.Writing the majority opinion in that case, Rucho v Common Cause, chief justice John Roberts declared that gerrymandering was a political matter that federal courts shouldn’t intervene in (unless it involves racial discrimination). Many legal experts said the conservative justices were defaulting on the court’s responsibility to prevent absurdly unfair, undemocratic elections, where the fix is in even before people vote. In a prescient dissent, justice Elena Kagan warned that the huge permission slip the court was giving to gerrymandering would encourage “a politics of polarization and dysfunction” and might “irreparably damage our system of government”.Trump and his team have been shrewd enough and shameless enough to seek to take maximum advantage of that ruling, and in doing so, they’re showing how right Kagan was. Trump and company are seriously damaging our system of government and our democracy by seeking to insulate Trump from the majority’s will, an expected Democratic-leaning vote in the 2026 congressional elections. Trump and team are also ratcheting up the “polarization and dysfunction” Kagan warned us about. Democratic lawmakers have fled Texas to prevent a GOP power grab, while Texas governor Greg Abbott has called for their arrest and removal from office.Gerrymandering further fuels polarization because November elections become largely irrelevant for choosing candidates. With gerrymandering, what counts are the party primaries, and there, the extremes, rather than moderate swing voters, determine who the winning candidate is. This in turn leads to increasingly polarized, dysfunctional legislative bodies, like the House of Representatives, where there’s plenty of performative, partisan showboating and very little legislation passed.In Rucho, the conservative majority declined to overturn a gerrymander in which the North Carolina GOP had rigged congressional districts so that Republicans would win 10 of the state’s 13 House seats even when the GOP won a bare majority of the statewide vote. (The case also involved some flagrant gerrymandering by Maryland’s Democrats.) It’s thanks to Roberts and the conservative justices’ indifference to gerrymandering that a person close to Trump could say that the administration’s attitude was “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time”.Seeking to maximize the chances of maintaining Republican control of the House, where the GOP has a mere three-seat majority, many Republicans also want GOP-led legislatures in Missouri, Florida, Ohio and Indiana to gerrymander to the max. In Texas alone, Trump hopes the GOP can pick up five House seats through redistricting. Even though Trump beat former vice-president Kamala Harris by 56% to 42% in Texas in 2024, the newly unveiled gerrymander aims to guarantee Republicans 30 out of Texas’s 38 House seats (a 79% to 21% ratio). Democrats accuse Trump and the Texas GOP of cheating, and it should be no surprise that they want to respond to fire with fire, with the Democratic governors of California, Illinois and New York saying that they, too, will push through gerrymanders.This unseemly electoral arms race results directly from the supreme court’s dodging of responsibility. In Rucho, chief justice Roberts shrugged at gerrymandering, saying that redistricting shenanigans were part and parcel of US history. Pointing to examples of gerrymandering from the 1780s and early 1800s, Roberts pooh-poohed this phenomenon, writing: “Partisan gerrymandering is nothing new. Nor is frustration with it.” He also voiced skepticism and snark about judges’ use of standards and election experts’ predictions to determine when partisan redistricting crosses the line into unconstitutional gerrymandering that violates the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause.In contrast to Roberts’ who-cares casualness, justice Kagan was an I’m-warning-you Cassandra. In a stinging dissent joined by justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, she correctly predicted that terrible things would result from Roberts’s decision. She wrote that his opinion showed “a saddening nonchalance about the threat that such [extreme] redistricting posts to self-governance”.Kagan didn’t mince her words about how Roberts’s decision threatened our democracy and undermined the ability of Americans to elect a government of their choosing. “For the first time ever,” she wrote, “this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities. And not just any constitutional violation. The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives. In so doing, the partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people.”In Rucho, Roberts wrote that the constitution neither expressly bans gerrymandering, nor points to a standard to determine when partisan redistricting is so unfair that it becomes unconstitutional. He suggested it would be a grievous, arbitrary wrong to select some legal or mathematical standard to determine when gerrymanders are illegal. Roberts wrote: “There are no legal standards discernible in the Constitution for making such judgments, let alone limited and precise standards that are clear, manageable, and politically neutral.”Today’s headlines make clear that Roberts and his Rucho decision have left us with a far more grievous wrong. It has encouraged ultra-partisan gerrymandering that is sabotaging our democracy and the majority will – in this case with an eye to preventing Democrats from winning back control of the House and serving as a check on Trump, the most authoritarian president in US history. If Texas Republicans prevail and enact their gerrymander, despite Democratic lawmakers’ exodus from the state, then the votes of millions of Texas Democrats will become meaningless, their votes in effect erased by the Trump/GOP gerrymander juggernaut. The same thing will happen to many Republican voters in states where Democrats gerrymander.Roberts was dismayingly myopic in failing to realize how his Rucho decision would someday lead to a push for maximum, hyperpartisan redistricting and how new electoral and computer models would make gerrymandering far more sophisticated – and sinister. Roberts was flatly wrong when he wrote that there can’t be “clear, manageable, and politically neutral” standards that define when redistricting crosses the line from mere partisanship to over-the-top, undemocratic, grossly unfair ultra-partisanship. One study put forward a smart standard that says gerrymandering crosses the line into illegality when a certain, high percentage of votes are wasted, deliberately rendered meaningless through partisan redistricting.What we’re seeing right now in Texas is one political party seeking to squeeze every last drop out of a filthy gerrymandering sponge – fair play and democracy be damned. Foreseeing ugly episodes like this, Kagan cited the vision of James Madison, the main author of the constitution, who once wrote that the “power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people”.The whole purpose of Trump’s gerrymandering power grab is to prevent the people from having power over him and his increasingly unpopular government. Unfortunately, Roberts gave Trump a green light for such a power grab.Like Trump, Roberts hates admitting mistakes, but it’s not too late for him to admit how shortsighted and harmful his Rucho ruling was. Nor is it too late for the chief justice to get the court to set some sane, healthy limits on gerrymandering to safeguard our democracy as well as Madison’s vision that the “power is in the people over the Government”.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More