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      Utah emerges as a pivotal battleground amid race to redraw congressional maps

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      In the fast-escalating national arms race over redistricting, Utah has emerged as an unexpected and potentially pivotal battleground.The campaign began in Texas, where Donald Trump openly declared he was “entitled to” five additional Republican House seats. It quickly expanded to California, where Democratic lawmakers are asking voters to retaliate with new congressional maps drawn to “neutralize” Texas.At least half a dozen other states have been recruited into what has is now an unprecedented push to redraw their congressional boundaries in ways that could lock in political advantage ahead of next year’s midterms.The president has been candid about his aims: to safeguard Republicans’ fragile hold on the House. A loss of the speaker’s gavel would derail Trump’s legislative ambitions in the second half of his term – and open the door to a wave of investigations, from his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files to its mass detention and deportation policies.Deeply conservative Utah, by contrast, has been pulled into the redistricting fray not by the president but by a judge.This week, Judge Dianna Gibson tossed out Utah’s current congressional map and gave the Republican-led state legislature until 24 September to submit a new one.The existing boundaries fracture Salt Lake City – a splash of blue in a sea of red – across all four congressional districts, effectively diluting Democrats’ political influence. A redrawn map could consolidate more of Utah’s capital city into one district, giving Democrats a rare opening in one of the nation’s most reliably Republican states.“There’s no doubt that any map that complies with this ruling would be more competitive than the current map,” said David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at the non-partisan Cook Political Report. But he cautioned that lawmakers could still carve up Salt Lake City in ways that would maintain a Republican edge.On Friday, lawyers for the Utah legislature asked Gibson to pause her gerrymandering order to allow time for lawmakers to appeal the decision to the state supreme court, according to local news reports. The request comes a day after the state’s Republican legislative leaders said they would comply with the ruling, which they denounced as “misguided” and “unreasonable” given the 30-day deadline.“While we will continue to pursue every legal option available – including requesting a stay from the Utah Supreme Court if necessary – we will attempt to redistrict under these unprecedented constraints, consistent with our oath to represent the best interests of Utah,” the state house speaker, Mike Schultz, and senate president J Stuart Adams, said in a statement.The ruling in the Utah case stems from a yearslong legal battle over Proposition 4, a ballot initiative narrowly passed by voters in 2018 that aimed to ban partisan gerrymandering through the creation of an independent redistricting commission. Although the Republican-controlled legislature weakened the commission and enacted its own map, the state supreme court – made up of five justices all appointed by Republican governors – ruled last year that lawmakers had probably overstepped, paving the way for this week’s decision.Mark Gaber, an attorney representing the groups challenging Utah’s congressional maps, called the ruling a “vindication of a fair and neutral process”.“The voters passed this in 2018 to effectively ban partisan gerrymandering and now we’re seeing a push across the country to gerrymander,” he said. “It’s nice to see this standing out as a shining example of a process that can work.”Mid-decade redistricting on this scale is extraordinary. Typically states draw new congressional maps at the start of each decade following the census to account for population shifts.At stake is the balance of power in Congress, where the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections. House Democrats need to flip only a handful of seats to retake the majority, and early signs point in their favor: Trump’s approval ratings are low and falling, and since his return to the White House, Democrats have outperformed expectations in a series of low-turnout contests from Florida to Iowa.In a tit-for-tat redistricting fight, political analysts and experts say Republicans still hold the advantage: they control more state legislatures and have fewer constraints on gerrymandering.Yet the Texas plan, which was signed into law on Friday by the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, faces multiple lawsuits, including one alleging that the new districts are racially discriminatory. In California, Republicans have asked the state supreme court to block the proposed countermeasure from reaching the ballot. And even seats drawn to favor one party can become competitive depending on candidate quality, voter turnout and the national mood.In a closely fought election, even a single seat could tip the balance of power, making the prospect of a Democratic pickup in Utah all the more worrying for the president.On Wednesday night, Trump called the Utah decision “absolutely unconstitutional”.“How did such a wonderful Republican State like Utah, which I won in every Election, end up with so many Radical Left Judges?” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “All Citizens of Utah should be outraged at their activist Judiciary, which wants to take away our Congressional advantage, and will do everything possible to do so.”Gibson, the judge, was appointed to the district court in 2018 by the then governor Gary Herbert, a Republican.Trump continued, urging Republicans in Utah to “stay united” and ensure the state’s “four terrific Republican Congressmen stay right where they are!” (One of Utah’s four House members, Celeste Maloy, is a woman.)Trump’s outrage over the Utah ruling is a reminder, experts say, that courts – and voters – also have a say in shaping the political map.Kareem Crayton, the vice-president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington DC office and a leading expert on redistricting, said the Utah ruling “achieves something closer to redistricting with guardrails” – in stark contrast to what is unfolding elsewhere.The lurch toward maximalist gerrymandering underlines the need for national standards, long sought by advocates of less partisan maps, Crayton said, but for now the message from the White House is: “Do more of it.”“This system is broken,” he said. “It’s a broken one when the outcome of the people’s house – the one that’s actually supposed to be the most representative of the public – turns out to be the least representative because people are going back to the maps multiple times and, with no abandon, with respect to partisanship, drawing districts that choose their voters and not the other way around.” More

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      ‘He’s trying to rig the midterms’: Trump intervenes to protect his allies in Congress

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      They are more than a year away – a lifetime in today’s fast and furious political cycle. But one man is already paying attention, pulling the levers of power and trying to tip the scales of the 2026 midterm elections.Donald Trump has made clear that he is willing to bring the full weight of the White House to bear to prevent his Republican party losing control of the US Congress in the midterm elections next year, orchestrating a more direct and legally dubious intervention than any of his predecessors.The US president’s multipronged approach includes redrawing congressional district maps, seeking to purge voter rolls, taking aim at mail-in voting and voting machines, and ordering the justice department to investigate Democrats’ prime fundraising tool.“Nobody’s ever tried to do this,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington. “Most American presidents, Democratic or Republican, have basically played by the same rules and been careful of the constitution. But in his business career Trump never cared about whether he was doing something legal or not; he just went to court and same thing here.”Campaigning, not governing, has often been Trump’s comfort zone. He is constitutionally barred from running for president again but already has an eye on the November 2026 elections that will determine control of the House of Representatives and Senate.He senses that law and order, a populist cause long exploited by Republicans, could play to his advantage. Earlier this month Trump deployed the national guard to reduce crime in Washington DC and threatened similar federal interventions in other big cities. Fifty-three per cent of the public approve of how he is handling crime, according to an AP-NORC poll, higher than other issues.Trump told a cabinet meeting this week: “I think crime will be the big subject of the midterms and will be the big subject of the next election. I think it’s going to be a big, big subject for the midterms and I think the Republicans are going to do really well.”But this is no ordinary campaign. Trump said at the same marathon meeting: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.”Taking a familiar political manoeuvre to new extremes, he has pushed Republican state legislators in Texas to redraw their congressional map because he claims “we are entitled to five more seats”, and he is lobbying other red states, including Indiana and Missouri, to take similar steps to pad the margin even more.Other steps involve the direct use of official presidential power in ways that have no modern precedent. He ordered his justice department to investigate ActBlue, an online portal that raised hundreds of millions of dollars in small-dollar donations for Democratic candidates over two decades.The site has been so successful that Republicans launched a similar venture, called WinRed. But Trump did not order a federal investigation into WinRed.Trump’s appointees at the justice department have also demanded voting data from at least 19 states in an apparent attempt to look for ineligible voters. Earlier this year he signed an executive order seeking documented proof of citizenship to register to vote, among other changes, though much of it has been blocked by courts.Last week the president announced that lawyers were drafting an executive order to end mail-in balloting, a method used by nearly one in three Americans, and threatened to do away with voting machines. He claimed that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, told him mail-in voting was responsible for his 2020 election loss.There is nothing remarkable about a sitting president campaigning for his party in the midterms and trying to bolster incumbents by steering projects and support to their districts. But Trump’s actions constitute a unique attempt to interfere in a critical election before it is even held, raising alarms about the future of democracy.Allan Lichtman, a distinguished history professor at American University in Washington, said: “We’re seeing a new concerted assault on free and fair elections, harkening back to the discredited efforts of the white supremacists in the Jim Crow south. He’s trying to rig the midterms and then of course beyond that the next presidential election in his political favour.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump previously attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which culminated in an insurrection by his supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. On that occasion, he was constrained by elected Republicans such as his then vice-president, Mike Pence, and the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. This time he has locked down near-total loyalty from the party and assembled a cabinet that again this week offered an ostentatious display of fealty.His power grab will not go entirely unchallenged. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, signed legislation that will allow voters to decide in November on a redrawn congressional map designed to help Democrats win five more House seats next year, neutralising Republicans’ gerrymandering in Texas.But Democrats, activists and lawyers will have to find others ways to “fight fire with fire” when it comes to Trump’s more extreme meddling.Lichtman, author of a new book, Conservative at the Core, added: “Republicans have no principles; Democrats have no spine. Democrats need to grow a spine. They need to stop playing not to lose – that’s a sure way to lose. They need to respond to these outrages powerfully and aggressively by whatever means are possible or we’re going to lose our democracy.”Yet while Trump’s gambit is a flex of executive power, it could also be seen as an admission of potential weakness. The incumbent president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections. In 2018, Democrats won enough to take back the House, stymieing Trump’s agenda and leading to his impeachment.Only 37% of voters approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released on Wednesday, while 55% disapprove. House Republicans, who currently have just a three-seat margin, have faced a series of raucous town halls that bode ill for their fortunes.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “President Trump and the Republicans would not be trying to stack the deck if they didn’t think they were going to lose the hand. They are looking at poll numbers and they know midterms are bad to incumbent presidents over the last 60 years and it’s a very slim margin in the House.“In order for Trump to sustain the loyalty of the House – he’s already gotten everything he pretty much wants – he needs them to think he’s on their side so he’s going to go out and be very public about rigging the voting system to keep them in power.”But Schiller added: “Will that be enough to overcome general unhappiness at the moment that the voters seem to have with the economy, inflation, even Trump’s border policies? It’s not enough to keep the Republicans in line. You have to get independent voters to vote for you again and that’s at risk for the Republicans right now.” More

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      Bernie Sanders demands that RFK Jr step down as health secretary

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      Bernie Sanders has joined in on growing public calls for Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to resign, after recent chaos across US health agencies.In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Saturday, the Vermont senator accused Kennedy of “endangering the health of the American people now and into the future”, adding: “He must resign.”“Mr Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr Kennedy have done exactly the opposite,” Sanders wrote.Sanders pointed to the White House’s firing of Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as four other top CDC officials who resigned in protest this week after Monarez “refused to act as a rubber stamp” for Kennedy’s “dangerous policies”.“Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts,” Sanders wrote.“Against the overwhelming body of evidence within medicine and science, what are secretary Kennedy’s views? … He has absurdly claimed that ‘there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective’… Who supports secretary Kennedy’s views? Not credible scientists and doctors. One of his leading ‘experts’ that he cites to back up his bogus claims on autism and vaccines had his medical license revoked and his study retracted from the medical journal that published it.”Sanders went on to add: “The reality is that secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of [the Department of Health and Human Services] he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself.”Pointing to what he described as “our broken health care system”, Sanders said that Kennedy’s repeated attacks against science and vaccines will make it more difficult for Americans to obtain lifesaving vaccines.“Already, the Trump administration has effectively taken away Covid vaccines from many healthy younger adults and kids, unless they fight their way through our broken health care system. This means more doctor’s visits, more bureaucracy and more people paying higher out-of-pocket costs – if they can manage to get a vaccine at all,” he wrote.The senator warned that Kennedy’s next target may be the childhood immunization schedule, which involves a list of recommended vaccines for children to protect them from diseases including measles, chickenpox and polio.“The danger here is that diseases that have been virtually wiped out because of safe and effective vaccines will resurface and cause enormous harm,” Sanders said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn recent days, the Trump administration has faced rare bipartisan pushback following its firing of Monarez, which came amid steep budget cuts to the CDC’s work as well as growing concerns of political interference.Meanwhile, Kennedy has continued to make questionable medical and health claims – and has been lambasted in response by experts and lawmakers alike.Since he assumed leadership over the health department, Kennedy – a longtime anti-vaccine advocate – has fired health agency workers and entertained conspiracy theories. Last week, more than 750 current and former employees at US health agencies signed a letter in which they criticized Kennedy as an “existential threat to public health”.The health agency workers went on to accuse the health secretary of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information”.The letter comes after a deadly shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta earlier this month, when a 30-year-old gunman fired more than 180 rounds into the buildings, killing a police officer before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The shooter had been struggling with mental health issues and was influenced by misinformation that led him to believe the Covid-19 vaccine was making him sick, according to the gunman’s father. More

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      Republican senator Joni Ernst of Iowa will not run for re-election

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      The US Republican senator Joni Ernst of Iowa is not expected to seek re-election next year, according to multiple news reports, a move that could open a competitive seat in the high-stakes battle to control the chamber.CBS News was the first to report that Ernst had told confidantes that she intends to announce her decision not to seek re-election next week. Ernst’s office and campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Ernst, 55, became the first woman to represent Iowa in the US Senate when she was elected in 2014. Her decision follows an announcement by the Iowa governor, Republican Kim Reynolds, to not seek re-election. Earlier this week, a Democrat prevailed in a special election for a state senate seat in an Iowa district that voted heavily for Donald Trump in 2024. The victory raised Democrats’ hopes in a state that has drifted away from them over the past decade and where they haven’t won a statewide Senate race since 2008.Republicans currently control the US Senate by a 53-to-47 margin. Despite Trump’s low approval ratings, growing economic uncertainty and historical patterns that show the president’s party losing ground in the midterm elections, nonpartisan election analysts say Republicans are favored to keep control of the Senate.Ernst would be the second Republican senator to not seek re-election, after Thom Tillis, a two-term incumbent from North Carolina, announced his retirement a day after voting against Trump’s signature domestic policy bill. Of the 22 Republican seats up for election next year, only the North Carolina race is rated a toss-up, according to the Cook Political Report. It had ranked Ernst’s seat “likely” to remain in the Republican column.Earlier this summer, Ernst drew fierce backlash when she appeared to dismiss voter fears that Medicaid cuts in the Republican immigration and tax package would put lives at risk, telling a town hall audience: “We all are going to die.”Rather than backtrack or apologize, Ernst doubled down in a video. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth,” she said. “So I apologize, and I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.”Ernst had also faced sharp criticism from the president’s supporters when she expressed reservations with Pete Hegseth, then Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Defense who faced allegations of sexual assault – which he denied – and repeatedly expressed opposition to women in combat roles.Facing threats of a rightwing primary challenge, Ernst, a survivor of sexual assault who had become a champion of issues related to women in the military, caved to the pressure and ultimately voted to confirm Hegseth.Democrats celebrated Ernst’s prospective retirement. At least five Democratic candidates have announced they will run for the seat.“Joni Ernst is retiring because she knows that Iowans are furious at her and Washington Republicans for threatening our healthcare and spiking costs for families,” said Rita Hart, chair of the Iowa Democratic party. “Iowans continue to show that they are ready for change, and we will be working overtime to elect a Democrat to represent us in the Senate in 2026.” More

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      Democrat flips Iowa state senate seat and breaks Republican supermajority

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      A Democratic candidate has defeated an extremist Republican in a state senate election in Iowa, claiming that voters are “waking up” to realise Donald Trump’s party “sold the working class a bill of goods”.Catelin Drey flipped Iowa state senate district 1, beating Christopher Prosch in a special election held on Tuesday to fill the seat of the late senator Rocky De Witt.Prosch had aligned himself with Trump’s Maga movement, floating conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and climate crisis. He also compared abortion access to the Holocaust.But Drey, a 37-year-old marketing executive, won with 55% of the vote to Prosch’s 44%, representing a swing of more than 20 points from Trump’s performance last year in the district, which covers most of Sioux City.Describing herself as “thrilled” with the result, Drey said on Wednesday: “We delivered a message that resonates with voters. People right now are frustrated with the way things are going. Iowa’s economy is last in the country, we’re last for maternal healthcare providers per capita, and people are ready for a change.”Asked whether the outcome delivered a verdict on Trump’s Maga agenda, Drey said: “It speaks to the level of authenticity and transparency that’s necessary to win in this environment. People want to make a connection with their candidate and they want to believe that person is going to be looking out for their best interests.”The founder of the grassroots organisation Moms for Iowa added: “Folks are waking up to the fact that Republicans in Iowa and, frankly, across the country have sold the working class a bill of goods and they are ready for policies that actually work for them.”Despite Democrats’ struggles in Washington, this is the second Iowa state senate district they have flipped this year, after a January victory in a district Trump won by more than 20 percentage points.Democrats have consistently overperformed in special legislative elections across the country, including winning another Trump-friendly seat in the state senate in Pennsylvania in March.The trend potentially spells trouble for Trump before next year’s midterm elections for the US House of Representatives and Senate. An Economist/YouGov poll last week found that 40% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the presidency while 56% disapprove. Republicans have also faced rowdy town halls in their congressional districts.Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said: “As Trump and Republicans wreck the economy and erode democracy with power-grabbing schemes, Democrats’ special election wins should send a flashing warning to the GOP: voters are rejecting the failing Maga agenda and leaving Republican candidates in the dust.”Drey had raised $165,385 and spent $75,066 on the campaign as of 21 August, the Des Moines Register newspaper reported, while Prosch raised $20,020 and spent $18,425 as of the same date. Both candidates received substantial in-kind support from their state parties.The Democratic National Committee (DNC) also deployed 30,000 volunteers for “get out the vote” efforts and hosted text and phone banks in conjunction with the Iowa Democratic party for Drey’s campaign.Ken Martin, chair of the DNC, said: “Iowans are seeing Republicans for who they are: self-serving liars who will throw their constituents under the bus to rubber-stamp Donald Trump’s disastrous agenda – and they’re ready for change.“They are putting Republicans on notice and making it crystal clear: any Republican pushing Trump’s unpopular, extreme agenda has no place governing on behalf of Iowa families.”Republicans poured scorn on the intervention by national Democrats as a sign of desperation.Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa Republican party, said: “National Democrats were so desperate for a win that they activated 30,000 volunteers and a flood of national money to win a state senate special election by a few hundred votes.“If the Democrats think things are suddenly so great again for them in Iowa, they will bring back the caucuses.”Drey’s victory breaks a Republican supermajority in the Iowa state senate for the first time since the 2022 election. The new chamber margin is 33 Republicans to 17 Democrats. This gives Democrats the ability to block governor Kim Reynolds’s picks for state agencies, boards and commissions.Matt McDermott, a Democratic pollster and strategist, on the X social media platform posted: “If you’re wondering why Republicans are rigging maps, this is what they’re afraid of.” More

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      The unlikely alliance pressing Trump to regulate Pfas on US farms: ‘This is a basic human right’

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      An unlikely alliance of farmers, bikers, truckers, a detective and scientists from across the political spectrum are working to pressure the Trump administration and Republican leadership to rein in the use of toxic sewage sludge as fertilizer on the nation’s farmland.Sludge often teems with Pfas, or “forever chemicals”, which present a health risk to farmers and the public, and have destroyed farms and contaminated water across the country. The issue has touched the groups’ lives in different ways, highlighting its broad risks to health.“We can all sit down and agree that we and our children shouldn’t be fed literal poison,” said Dana Ames, a Johnson county, Texas, detective who is investigating contamination from sludge on local farms.In Oklahoma, farmer Saundra Traywick lives in an area where she says toxic sewage sludge is spread as fertilizer. Her family and animals get sick, and the potent stench can be unbearable.Mike “Lucky” Pruitt, a biker who lives in a dairy- and oil-producing region in Texas, wonders whether Pfas from sludge contributed to the rare brain cancer that killed his six-year-old son; in Johnson county, Texas, Ames took the unprecedented step of opening a criminal investigation, which is ongoing, over sludge that polluted local farms and water.Billy Randal, a trucker, just learned about the sludge’s dangers, and fears that people hauling the substance are exposed to toxic waste. And in Massachusetts, Kyla Bennett, a former US Environmental Protection Agency scientist and cancer survivor, is part of a lawsuit that could lead to sludge being banned.The alliance has a real chance of success, those involved say, because it includes everyone from liberal scientists to people on the far right – they are willing to set aside political differences for the fight.“The American people are smart – once we figure out what’s occurring, we have a whole lot more in common than we don’t, and this is a basic human right,” said Ames, the Texas detective. “We all deserve safe and clean food and water.”The alliance is aiming to hold rallies thatit hopes will draw thousands of people in Austin, Texas, and Washington DC in the coming months. Those involved are aiming to get Trump’s attention and to pressure the Texas legislature to act.Getting Trump’s attentionSludge is a mix of human and industrial waste, and a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process that regulators allow to be used as fertilizer because it’s rich in nutrients that help plants grow. It also virtually always teems with Pfas and other dangerous chemicals, which contaminate water, crops and livestock, while also sickening farmers and contaminating the nation’s food supply.Maine became the first state to ban sludge, also called biosolids, after it found Pfas had contaminated crops or water on at least 73 farms where the substance had been spread. The state established a $70m fund to bail out affected farmers.Pfas are a class of about 15,000 compounds that are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down. The chemicals are linked to a range of serious health problems like cancer, liver disease, kidney issues, high cholesterol, birth defects and decreased immunity.View image in fullscreenIn the Biden administration’s final days, the EPA issued a draft risk assessment for Pfas in sludge that could in effect ban the substance, but Republicans in Congress slipped a rider into the current appropriations bill that would essentially kill the process by withdrawing key funding. The rider was inserted just a few weeks after the EPA met with a sludge industry trade group to hear its grievances about the assessment.Ames said the EPA “has gone rogue” and she suspects Trump is unaware of the situation. The president has publicly said he wants clean water and food, Ames said, and she suspects he will act if alerted.“As his voters and his base, we want his ear, and we want to make sure that the president knows what’s going on,” Ames said.In Massachusetts, Bennett, the scientist, who is now with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) non-profit, has been frustrated with the Biden and Trump administrations’ policies on sludge, and has sued the EPA under the Clean Water Act to force the agency to regulate the substance. Peer is assisting with letters for the action, though it is not directly involved with organizing the rallies.It’s not often that Peer works with folks on the right, but the “strange bedfellows” are a hopeful development, Bennett said.“This is an issue that should transcend politics because it affects human health and people are humans before they’re Republicans and Democrats,” Bennett said.‘We’ve got to make a change’In 2021, doctors diagnosed six-year-old Rylan Pruitt with a rare and aggressive brain cancer. After 30 rounds of radiation treatment and several months of chemotherapy, he died, leaving behind distraught parents looking for answers.There was no family history of cancer, and his father, Mike “Lucky” Pruitt, began to hear about the risks of Pfas. He turned his attention to the huge dairy and oil operations – both known sources of Pfas and other chemical pollution – in the rural community in which he lives.Only about 50 other people have developed the type of cancer that killed Rylan – and one of them was a young girl who lived about 11 miles (17km) away, Pruitt said. He said he put together the pieces, like family history, how the cancer was “stupidly and exceedingly rare”, and the research that has connected sludge and Pfas to rare pediatric cancers.“For me it’s: ‘This is why this is happening, and we’ve got to make a change,’” Pruitt said.View image in fullscreenHis 15,000-member motorcycle group, the Rylan Strong Network, pressures lawmakers on issues around pediatric cancer and health insurance. He contacted every Texas legislator asking them to support a bill that would require measuring Pfas in sludge. So far, very few have responded, and previous versions of the legislation were killed.“It’s all about who has the biggest checkbook,” Pruitt said.In Oklahoma, Traywick’s non-profit, Save Oklahoma Farms and Ranches, has had similar results in pressuring lawmakers. Her kids’ immune disorders, the flies that gnaw her donkeys’ legs raw and the unmeasured effects of suspected Pfas on land and water – none of it has so far convinced state legislators to act.But, she said, she is more optimistic as “a growing movement of people is waking up to the fact that this is not Democrats versus Republicans or left versus right – we all want our children to have a healthy future,” Traywick said.In New Jersey, Randal, founder of the national Truckers Movement for Justice, just learned about the sludge from Ames, and worries about what people hauling the waste are exposed to.The truckers, with thousands of members in the US and Mexico, recently worked with environmental groups to petition the US Department of Transportation to strengthen regulations around hauling fracking waste. The problem with sludge is similar, Randal said. Many drivers have to clean their trucks, there are few protections and they are not made aware of the Pfas and other risks in what they are hauling.“We have truck drivers handling this shit and they don’t have a clue about what they’re working around,” Randal said. “Industry laughs all the way to the bank and it’s time for it to stop.” He plans to mobilize truckers to join the rallies.In Johnson county, Texas, Goldman Sachs-owned Synagro, sold local farmers the tainted sludge that a lawsuit alleges polluted local waters and destroyed the land. The farms’ drinking water was found to be contaminated at levels more than 13,000 times higher than the federal health advisory for Pfos, one kind of Pfas compound, and affected meat was as much as 250,000 times above safe levels, the federal lawsuit against Synagro alleges. Synagro denies that the Pfas came from its sludge.Last year, Ames opened the first-ever criminal investigation into the situation, and Johnson county joined Peer’s Clean Water Act lawsuit. “We’re coming together and we’re saying: ‘No, this isn’t a third-world country, and there’s no reason why in America our food should be poisoned like this,’” Ames said. More

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      NAACP sues Texas over congressional redistricting, saying it strips Black voters of political power

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      Texas’s redrawn congressional maps have drawn a lawsuit from the NAACP, accusing the state of committing a racial gerrymander with its maps that strip Black voters of their political power.The lawsuit, joined by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, names Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, and secretary of state, Jane Nelson, as defendants. It asks a federal judge for a preliminary injunction preventing the use of the redrawn maps, arguing that the redistricting violates the US constitution by improperly reducing the power of voters of color. It also argues that the maps violate section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.“We now see just how far extremist leaders are willing to go to push African Americans back toward a time when we were denied full personhood and equal rights,” the president of the Texas NAACP, Gary Bledsoe, said in a statement. “We call on Texans of every background to recognize the dangers of this moment. Our democracy depends on ensuring that every person is counted fully, valued equally and represented fairly. We are prepared to fight this injustice at every level. Our future depends on it.”Texas Republicans passed a redrawn map on Saturday, with the expected result of an increase in Republican representation by five seats in the next Congress. Democratic state legislators are a minority in both chambers of the Texas legislature, leaving them with few options to block it. A group of state house representatives spent nearly a month away from the state to deny Republicans a quorum. That maneuver ended last week, after California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the state legislature began a process to counter the Republican gerrymander with a Democratic gerrymander of their own.“The state of Texas is only 40% white, but white voters control over 73% of the state’s congressional seats,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP. “It’s quite obvious that Texas’s effort to redistrict mid-decade, before next year’s midterm elections, is racially motivated. The state’s intent here is to reduce the members of Congress who represent Black communities, and that, in and of itself, is unconstitutional.”Democrats in Texas promised lawsuits out of the gate.The League of United Latin American Citizens – a group of 13 Texas voters – filed suit within hours of the redistricting bill’s passage. The map “eviscerates minorities’ opportunity to elect their candidates of choice in four key areas of the state”, the filing states.Other challenges are likely to follow. Republicans, however, believe that they are operating on favorable legal ground, hoping to overturn key sections of the Voting Rights Act as the lawsuits work their way through the courts.The US supreme court will hear a re-argument of Louisiana v Callais in the term to come. In that case, the court will be asked to upend the core tenet of the Voting Rights Act and hold that the use of racially identifying voter data to prevent voters of color from being able to select a candidate of their choice is actually an act of racial discrimination.Without that protection, Republican state lawmakers across the country can be expected to redraw maps for increased partisan advantage by cutting Black-majority districts into ribbons.Meanwhile, Donald Trump said the Department of Justice would sue California for its redistricting. Last week, the Democratic-led legislature placed a measure to redraw the state’s district lines on the 4 November ballot.In a sharp break against longstanding progressive efforts to turn redistricting over to neutral commissions, the NAACP said today that it “is urging California, New York and all other states to act immediately by redistricting and passing new, lawful and constitutional electoral maps” to counter expected efforts in Texas and other states to redraw maps for midterm advantage. More

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      Trump ‘manufactured crisis’ to justify plan to send national guard to Chicago, leading Democrat says

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      Donald Trump has “manufactured a crisis” to justify the notion of sending federalized national guard troops into Chicago next, over the heads of local leaders, a leading Democrat said on Sunday, as the White House advanced plans to militarize more US cities.Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader and a New York Democratic congressman, accused the US president of “playing games with the lives of Americans” with his unprecedented domestic deployment of the military, which has escalated to include the arming of troops currently patrolling Washington, DC – after sending troops into Los Angeles in June.The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, said any such plan from Trump was perpetrating “the most flagrant violation of our constitution in the 21st century”.Late on Friday, Pentagon officials confirmed to Fox News that up to 1,700 men and women of the national guard were poised to mobilize in 19 mostly Republican states to support Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown by assisting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) with “logistical support and clerical functions”.Jeffries said he supported a statement issued by the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, that Trump was “abusing his power” in talking about sending the national guard to Chicago, and distracting from the pain he said the president was causing American families.The national guard is normally under the authority of the individual states, deployed at the request of the state governor and only federalized – or deployed by the federal government – in a national emergency and at the request of a governor.Jeffries said in an interview with CNN on Sunday morning: “We should continue to support local law enforcement and not simply allow Donald Trump to play games with the lives of the American people as part of his effort to manufacture a crisis and create a distraction because he’s deeply unpopular.”He continued: “I strongly support the statement that was issued by Governor Pritzker making clear that there’s no basis, no authority for Donald Trump to potentially try to drop federal troops into the city of Chicago.”The White House has been working on plans to send national guard to Chicago, the third largest US city, dominated by Democratic voters in a Democratic state, to take a hard line on crime, homelessness and immigrants, the Washington Post reported.View image in fullscreenPritzker issued a statement on Saturday night that began: “The State of Illinois at this time has received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention.”Trump has argued that a military crackdown was necessary in the nation’s capital, and elsewhere, to quell what he said were out of control levels of crime, even though statistics show that serious and violent crime in Washington, and many other American cities, has actually plummeted.Talking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday the president insisted that “the people in Chicago are screaming for us to come” as he laid out his plan to send troops there, and that they would later “help with New York”.“When ready, we will start in Chicago … Chicago is a mess,” Trump said.Johnson, in an appearance on Sunday on MSNBC, said shootings had dropped by almost 40% in his city in the last year alone, and he and Pritzker said any plan by the White House to override local authority and deploy troops would be illegal.“The president has repeated this petulant presentation since he assumed office. What he is proposing at this point would be the most flagrant violation of our constitution in the 21st century,” Johnson said.California sued the federal government when it deployed national guard and US marines to parts of Los Angeles in June over protests against Ice raids, but a court refused to block the troops.Main target cities mentioned by Trump are not only majority Democratic in their voting but also run by Black mayors, including Washington, DC, Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Oakland.Rahm Emanuel, a Democratic former Illinois congressman, chief of staff to former president Barack Obama, and a former mayor of Chicago, also appeared on CNN on Sunday urging people to reflect that Trump, in two terms of office, had only ever deployed US troops in American cities, never overseas.Emanuel said if he was still mayor he would call on the president to act like a partner and, although crime was coming down, to “work with us on public safety” to combat carjackings, gun crime and gangs and not “come in and act like we can be an occupied city”.He added about Trump’s agenda: “He gave his speech in Iowa, he said ‘I hate’ Democrats, and this may be a reflection of that.” The speech was in July, when Trump excoriated Democrats in Congress who refused to vote for his One Big Beautiful Bill, the flagship legislation of the second Trump administration so far that focuses on tax cuts for the wealthy, massive boosts for the anti-immigration agenda and benefits cuts to programs such as Medicaid, which provides health insurance for poor Americans. 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