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      US supreme court blocks Florida from enforcing anti-immigration law

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      The US supreme court maintained on Wednesday a judicial block on a Republican-crafted Florida law that makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants in the United States to enter the state.The justices denied a request by state officials to lift an order by the Florida-based US district judge Kathleen Williams that barred them from carrying out arrests and prosecutions under the law while a legal challenge plays out in lower courts. Williams ruled that Florida’s law conflicted with the federal government’s authority over immigration policy.The law, signed by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, in February and backed by the Trump administration, made it a felony for some undocumented migrants to enter Florida, while also imposing pre-trial jail time without bond.“This denial reaffirms a bedrock principle that dates back 150 years: States may not regulate immigration,” said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “It is past time for states to get the message.”After Williams blocked the law, Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Republican, and other state officials filed the emergency request on 17 June asking the supreme court to halt the judge’s order. Williams had found that the Florida law was probably unconstitutional for encroaching on the federal government’s exclusive authority over US immigration policy.The state’s request to the justices was backed by America First Legal, a conservative group co-founded by Stephen Miller, a senior aide to Donald Trump and a key architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policies.Florida’s immigration measure, called SB 4-C, was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law by DeSantis. It made Florida one of at least seven states to pass such laws in recent years, according to court filings.The American Civil Liberties Union in April sued in federal court to challenge the law, arguing that the state should not be able to “enforce its own state immigration system outside of federal supervision and control”. Williams agreed.The law imposed mandatory minimum sentences for undocumented adult immigrants who are convicted of entering Florida after arriving in the United States without following federal immigration law. Florida officials contend that the state measure complies with – rather than conflicts with – federal law.Sentences for violations begin at nine months’ imprisonment for first offenders and reach up to five years for certain undocumented immigrants in the country who have felony records and enter Florida after having been deported or ordered by a federal judge to be removed from the United States.The state law exempts undocumented immigrants in the country who were given certain authorization by the federal government to remain in the United States. Florida’s immigration crackdown makes no exceptions, however, for those seeking humanitarian protection or with pending applications for immigration relief, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued in federal court to challenge the law.The ACLU filed a class-action suit on behalf of two undocumented immigrants who reside in Florida, an immigration advocacy group called the Florida Immigrant Coalition and the non-profit group Farmworker Association of Florida, whose members include immigrants in the United States illegally who travel in and out of Florida seasonally to harvest crops. Some of the arguments in the lawsuit included claims that it violates the federal “commerce clause”, which bars states from blocking commerce between states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, in a statement issued after the challenge was filed said that Florida’s law “is not just unconstitutional – it’s cruel and dangerous”.Williams issued a preliminary injunction in April that barred Florida officials from enforcing the measure.The Atlanta-based 11th US circuit court of appeals in June upheld the judge’s ruling, prompting the Florida officials to make an emergency request to the supreme court.In a filing on 7 July, the state of Florida pointed to a brief filed by the Trump administration in the appeals case, in support of SB 4-C. “That decision is wrong and should be reversed,” administration lawyers wrote at the time.On the same day that Florida’s attorney general filed the state’s supreme court request, Williams found him in civil contempt of court for failing to follow her order to direct all state law enforcement officers not to enforce the immigration measure while it remained blocked by the judge. Williams said that Uthmeier only informed the state law enforcement agencies about her order and later instructed them to arrest people anyway. Williams ordered Uthmeier to provide an update to the court every two weeks on any enforcement of the law.Other states have tried to pass similar laws, including Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho and Iowa, which have attempted to make entering their jurisdictions, while undocumented, a state crime. More

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      Trump sues California over transgender athletes in girls’ school sports

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      The Trump administration has sued California over its policies allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ school sports, alleging that their participation violates federal anti-discrimination laws.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, claims that California’s policies violate Title IX, which affords legal protection against sex discrimination.Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, in a statement took aim at Gavin Newsom, California’s governor and a Trump antagonist seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028. Newsom in a March podcast interview with the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk called transgender participation in girls’ sports “deeply unfair”.“Not only is it ’deeply unfair,’ it is also illegal under federal law,” Bondi said in a statement. “This Department of Justice will continue its fight to protect equal opportunities for women and girls in sports.”A spokesperson for Newsom did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump, a Republican, has signed a series of executive orders restricting transgender rights, including a February directive to strip federal funding for any school that allows transgender women or girls to compete in female sports.The suit comes weeks after the education department announced it had found California allegedly violated the law by permitting trans girls to compete on girls’ sports teams, and proposed that the state strip trans athletes of their records and awards and bar trans women from competing in women’s sports.California has allowed trans girls to compete in girls’ sports for more than a decade – a policy that attracted little outcry until Republicans and anti-LGBTQ+ groups seized on the issue in recent years.The justice department under Trump has already filed a similar lawsuit against Maine and has made challenging transgender rights a major civil rights priority. The lawsuit alleges that state policies “ignore undeniable biological differences between boys and girls” and diminish the integrity of girls’ sports. Advocates for LGBTQ+ rights have said transgender athletes comprise a small minority of all school athletes and bans on their participation further stigmatize a vulnerable population.California’s policies drew national attention earlier this year when a transgender girl competing in the state track and field championship won the high jump and triple jump and finished second in the long jump, an episode cited in the justice department’s complaint. Ahead of that competition, the governing board for California high school sports had announced it would change the rules to allow more girls to take part.The athlete who won, 16-year-old AB Hernandez, was subjected to harassment from anti-LGBTQ+ activists and targeted by the president himself who said that her participation was “demeaning” to women and girls and said he was “ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow” her to participate.In an interview with the Guardian, Hernandez said that despite the criticism, she had the support of her classmates. “They see how hard I train,” she said. One of her competitors told the San Francisco Chronicle: “Sharing the podium was nothing but an honor.”The Trump administration lawsuit cites five alleged instances of transgender athletes taking part in girls’ school sporting events in a state with nearly 6 million public school students, according to state data.It seeks a court order barring any school under the California Interscholastic Federation from allowing transgender athletes to take part in girls’ sports competitions and to establish a process to compensate female athletes it alleges have been harmed by the state’s policy.Newsom has repeatedly clashed with Trump, most recently over the president’s decision to deploy national guard troops to Los Angeles, California’s largest city, to quell anti-deportation protests that erupted after the Trump administration carried out workplace raids in the city.The feud has prompted several legal battles between the Trump administration and the largest US state. The justice department under Trump has already launched an investigation into hiring practices at the University of California system and has sued Los Angeles over policies restricting the city’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.Newsom sued the Trump administration over the national guard deployment. More

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      Zelenskyy to replace Ukraine’s envoy to US in diplomatic shuffle

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      Volodymyr Zelenskyy is replacing Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, who has been heavily criticised by leading Republicans, as part a diplomatic reshuffle designed to strengthen ties with the Trump administration.Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, confirmed on Wednesday that Oksana Markarova will be recalled from Washington after four years in the job. He described her as “extremely effective, charismatic and one of our most successful ambassadors”.He indicated that several top ambassadors to G7 and G20 countries would also be moved, telling Ukrainian radio “Every diplomat has a rotation cycle”.The diplomatic shake-up comes at a critical moment in the war. Russian troops have been attacking across the 600-mile frontline and in recent weeks the speed of their gains has increased, with the Kremlin spokesperson declaring: “We are advancing.”Russian combat units are for the first time close to crossing into Dnipropetrovsk oblast.Late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday, Russia carried out its biggest aerial attack since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It involved a record 728 Shahed-type drones, as well as 13 cruise and ballistic missiles. Most were shot down.The US House of Representatives speaker, Mike Johnson, is among the Republican figures who have criticised Markarova, accusing her of supporting the Democratic party and its candidate Kamala Harris in the run-up to last November’s presidential election.View image in fullscreenIn February she was pictured with her head in her hand during Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s disastrous meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office.There were calls for her dismissal after Zelenskyy visited a shell factory in Pennsylvania last September. Markarova organised the visit and did not invite a single Republican, Johnson said at the time.Ukrainian officials deny any bias but acknowledge the ambassador previously had good relations with the Biden administration and was close to Victoria Nuland, the then undersecretary of state for political affairs.Zelenskyy and Trump discussed Markarova’s departure during a phone call last Friday which Ukraine’s president hailed as their most constructive to date.On Tuesday, Trump expressed growing frustration with Vladimir Putin and announced US weapons deliveries to Kyiv would be restarted. His announcement followed a week-long pause, apparently ordered by Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defense.The shipment includes Patriot interceptor missiles and other precision munitions. It is unclear how many will be transferred. The US news website Axios reported 10 missiles would be delivered – a tiny amount at a time when Moscow has dramatically escalated its bombardment of Ukrainian cities.The overnight raid was directed at the northwestern city of Lutsk. At least six civilians were killed and 39 injured in several other regions of the country, including Kharkiv and Donetsk in the north-east and east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.A one-year-old boy, Dmytro, died in the village of Pravdyne in Kherson oblast when the Russians hit his house with drones, the local administration reported. The boy had been staying with his great-grandmother.One possible successor to Markarova in Washington is said to be Ihor Zhovkva, the deputy head of the office of Ukraine’s president. Zhovka’s immediate boss is Andriy Yermak, who is widely seen as the most influential person in Ukrainian politics after Zelenskyy.Other names include the finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, and Olha Stefanishyna, who is deputy prime minister for Europe and Euro-Atlantic integration, as well as minister of justice.There is growing optimism in Kyiv that Trump’s pivot earlier this year towards Russia has been halted, if not quite reversed. One former Ukrainian official credited Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser and a veteran negotiator, with the transformation.Powell has played an important role in repairing Zelenskyy’s fraught relations with Washington after the Oval Office bust-up.He advised Ukraine’s government to avoid confronting the US president and to take his words as truth. The approach – described as “strategic patience” – was beginning to pay off, the official suggested.Zelenskyy has agreed to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, repeatedly praised Trump’s leadership, and signed a deal giving American investors access to Ukraine’s valuable natural resources.On Wednesday he met Pope Leo in Rome before a two-day international conference, organised to help Ukraine’s postwar recovery. Zelenskyy said they had discussed the return of Ukrainian children and civilians who had been abducted by Russia and the Vatican’s offer to facilitate peace negotiations.Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is due to attend the conference. In a recent call with Trump, Merz reportedly offered to buy Patriot anti-defence batteries from the US and to send them to Ukraine.Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, is also due in Rome and is likely to hold talks on weapons deliveries with Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defence minister. More

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      US agriculture secretary says Medicaid recipients can replace deported farm workers

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      The US agriculture secretary has suggested that increased automation and forcing Medicaid recipients to work could replace the migrant farm workers being swept up in Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, despite years of evidence and policy failures that those kinds of measures are not substitutes for the immigrant labor force underpinning American agriculture.Speaking at a news conference with Republican governors on Tuesday, Brooke Rollins said the administration would rely on “automation, also some reform within the current governing structure”, and pointed to “34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program” as potential workers.“There’s been a lot of noise in the last few days and a lot of questions about where the president stands and his vision for farm labor,” Rollins said. “There are plenty of workers in America”.Trump signed legislation on Friday creating the first federally mandated work requirements for Medicaid recipients, set to take effect by the end of 2026. Medicaid is a healthcare safety net program that currently covers pregnant women, mothers, young children and the disabled, with 40 states having expanded coverage to working poor families earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level.However, agricultural experts and economists have repeatedly warned that neither automation nor welfare reforms can realistically replace the migrant workforce that dominates American farming.According to USDA data, 42% of US farm workers are undocumented immigrants, and just under 70% are foreign-born.And a March report from the Urban Institute found that most Medicaid recipients are either already working, exempt or face some sort of instability.Previous state-level immigration crackdowns are also evidence of the challenges facing Rollins’s proposed solution. Georgia’s 2011 immigration law resulted in a shortage of more than 5,200 farm workers and projected losses of hundreds of millions of dollars at the time, according to a University of Georgia study. Alabama farmers reported similar struggles, with locals telling the Associated Press in 2011 that American workers lasted about a day at their new farm jobs.While agricultural automation is advancing fast, it still appears to remain years away from replacing manual labor in fruit and vegetable harvesting.Rollins acknowledged the administration must be “strategic” in implementing deportations “so as not to compromise our food supply”, but held that Trump’s promise of a “100% American workforce stands.”Trump himself appeared to soften his stance last week, telling Fox News he was considering exemptions for undocumented farm workers.“What we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge,” he said. More

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      Ice is about to become the biggest police force in the US | Judith Levine

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      On Thursday, congressional Republicans passed Trump’s 1,000-page budget, and the president signed it on Saturday. The rich will get obscenely richer. The poor will be hungrier and sicker, work more precarious, and the planet unrelentingly hotter. The symmetry is elegant: cuts to healthcare and food programs average about $120bn each year over the next decade, while the tax cuts will save households earning more than $500,000 about $120bn a year.Trump got what he wanted. But enriching himself and his wealthy friends at the expense of everyone else has long been his life purpose. It was not until he became president, with the Heritage Foundation’s wonks, the deportation czar Stephen Miller, and six loyal supreme courtiers behind him, that he could reshape the US in his own amoral, racist, violence-intoxicated image. In fact, the latter goal may be dearer to him than the former.The night before the Senate vote, JD Vance summed up the administration’s priorities: “Everything else,” including the Congressional Budget Office’s deficit estimates and “the minutiae of the Medicaid policy”, he posted, “is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions”.The vice-president’s indifference to the lives of millions of Americans – particularly to the class of Americans from which this self-described “hillbilly” hails – enflamed the Democrats and the left. But his comment also woke everyone up to another major set of appropriations in the budget. As Leah Greenberg, co-chair of the progressive activist group Indivisible, put it on Twitter/X: “They are just coming right out and saying they want an exponential increase in $$$ so they can build their own personal Gestapo.”The press had been focused on the wealth gap the budget turns into the San Andreas fault. It had been dutifully mentioning increases in funding for the military – to an unprecedented $1.3tn – and “border security”.Set aside for a moment that phrase’s implication, that the US is being invaded – which it isn’t – and it is still not apt. The jurisdiction of the federal police force that this budget will finance promises to stretch far beyond immigration; its ambitions will outstrip even the deportation of every one of the nearly 48 million immigrants in the country, including the three-quarters of them who are citizens, green-card holders or have temporary visas.The colossal buildup of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) will create the largest domestic police force in the US; its resources will be greater than those of every federal surveillance and carceral agency combined; it will employ more agents than the FBI. Ice will be bigger than the military of many countries. When it runs out of brown and Black people to deport, Ice – perhaps under another name – will be left with the authority and capability to surveil, seize and disappear anyone the administration considers undesirable. It is hard to imagine any president dismantling it.Ice will receive $45bn for immigrant detention, to be spent over four years – more than the Obama, Biden and first Trump administrations combined. The agency says it is planning on a total of 100,000 beds. But grants to the states loosely slated for “enforcement” total $16.5bn. If they use the money to build and lease more detention camps, the American Immigration Council estimates, capacity could reach 125,000, just under the population of the federal prisons.Dipping into a pot totaling $170bn, the Department of Homeland Security intends to hire 10,000 new Ice agents, bringing the total to 30,000, as well as 8,500 border patrol agents. For comparison, the FBI has about 23,700 employees, including 10,000 special agents.Like Ice’s budget, DHS’s is fat with redundancies: $12bn to DHS for border security and immigration; $12bn to Customs and Border Protection for hiring, vehicles and technology; $6.2bn for more technology. And then there’s over $45bn to complete the jewel in the king’s crown: Trump’s “beautiful” border wall. That’s on top of approximately $10bn spent during his first term for a project he promised would cost less than $12bn – and be bankrolled by Mexico.To balance the expenses of the hunt, the government will raise revenue from its prey. The cruelty written into the fees seems almost an afterthought. According to the New York Times’s breakdown, for a grant of temporary legal residence, for instance, a refugee pays $500 or $1,000, depending on whether they are fleeing armed conflict or humanitarian crisis. There’s a new $250 fee to apply for a visa for a child who’s been abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent.Immigrants must fork over as much as $1,500 for status adjustments ordered by a judge. And if they are arrested after a judge’s removal order for missing a hearing, they will be charged $5,000. The budget does not specify whether you pay for a downward adjustment to your status or what it costs to be snatched when you do show up at court, which is now regular Ice procedure.Observed as from a Google satellite, the outlines of a wide-ranging, increasingly coherent police state come into focus. The boundaries between federal and local, military operations and civilian law enforcement are smudged. During the anti-Ice protests in Los Angeles, Trump federalized the national guard to put down an uprising that didn’t exist, and an appeals court let him. The marines, restricted by the Posse Comitatus Act from civilian law enforcement, detained a US citizen anyway. To circumvent the prohibition against deploying the military to enforce immigration law, the president declared an “invasion” at the southern border, and the Pentagon took more territory under its control. Last week it added 140 miles of land to the marine air station in Arizona and has announced plans for 250 miles more, in Texas, under the air force’s aegis. Heather Cox Richardson reports that national guard troops have been deployed by Governor Ron DeSantis to “Alligator Alcatraz”, the new immigrant lockup in the Florida Everglades. Two hundred marines have been sent to Florida to back up Ice, and Ice agents will be stationed at marine bases in California, Virginia and Hawaii. The military budget earmarks $1bn for “border security”.A budget is the numerical representation of its makers’ values. So the upward redistribution of wealth that this budget exacerbates and the police state it invests trillions of dollars in are of a piece. What connects them is not just the profit to be made building, leasing and managing the infrastructure. When people lack food, medicine and housing, when public spaces deteriorate and families have little hope of security, much less mobility, rage and crime rise. And when that happens, the police – whether Ice or the marines, local cops or private security officers – will be mobilized to put down dissent and protect the oligarchs’ property from a desperate populace.

      Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism More

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      Undocumented builders face unchecked exploitation amid Trump raids: ‘It’s more work, less pay’

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      As the Trump administration ramps up its crackdown on immigration, undocumented workers in the construction industry claim raids and arrests have emboldened some contractors to cut pay and increase hours.Rogelio, a tile setter, works for various contractors in the the Tucson, Arizona, region. He is undocumented, and did not provide his full name.When Donald Trump returned to office in January, Rogelio said his employers cut their rates by 30% to 40%. Other laborers told him they had endured similar treatment.“They decreased the pay by piece because they know most of the tile setters don’t have social security numbers, so they take advantage of that. We are in their hands,” Rogelio told the Guardian. “It’s more work, less pay. We have no choice right now.“We’re struggling with bills. We’re struggling with food. We’re struggling with everything because we don’t get enough money to pay whatever we need to pay.”Many of the undocumented immigrants Rogelio knows are only leaving home to work, Rogelio said. “We have a lot of fear,” he told the Guardian. “We look for news in the morning to see if we’re able to go to work or not.”With approximately 2.9 million US construction workers – about 34% of the workforce – foreign-born, construction sector lobbyists have publicly urged the Trump administration to soften their hardline stance on immigration. “While the need for safe and secure borders is paramount, mass deportation is not the answer,” Buddy Hughes, chairperson of the National Association of Home Builders, said in a statement.Advocates for workers rights say some operators in the sector are using Trump’s crackdown to abuse undocumented workers.“Especially in construction, there’re a lot of subcontractors that take advantage of this situation by not paying them the fair wage or not even paying them at all,” said Laura Becerra, movement politics director of the non-profit Workers Defense Project based in Texas.Undocumented workers are unlikely to lodge an official complaint, she added. “Since people don’t want to say anything because they don’t want to be put on the radar, and they’re also getting retaliated against if they do say something.”The administration is pushing ahead with public raids on undocumented immigrant workers. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency is arresting an increasing number of immigrants without any criminal history, according to a Guardian analysis of federal government data.“It’s an attack,” Becerra said. “It’s taking a toll on families, families that need to make ends meet, that are already suffering from low wages and doing work no one wants to do.”In Tucson, undocumented workers are avoiding freeways, according to Rogelio. “Freeways are one of the worst places to drive right now because of all the police and border patrol and they look for mostly hispanic people to stop,” he said. “We are living day by day and not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow.”In some areas “there are spots where you can work with no problem,” he said. “But others, there are racist people living there and they don’t want us. They want our work, they want cheap labor, but they don’t want us.“We came here because we want to work and provide for our families. The only reason I’m here, personally, I have two kids who are American citizens. I’m not asking for any benefits from the government.”Reports from across the US suggest undocumented workers are facing unprecedented pressure.Savannah Palmira, director of organizing for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades district council 5, which covers workers in states around the Pacific north-west, said the threat of raids is making it harder for workers to organize.A roofing company in Washington was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) earlier this year after workers filed safety complaints, Palmira claimed, with the fear of retaliation stemming from that case spreading to other job sites, and leaving workers reluctant to speak out and file complaints against abusive work practices.“What contractors are doing is taking an opportunity to not be held accountable for their bad practices,” said Palmira. “The more and more people are starting to talk about workers getting taken advantage of, Ice is getting called on them. They’re taking a tool away from us to be able to put bad contractors on notice.”In Washington, another undocumented construction worker – who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation – said many of his coworkers were “thinking about going back to their countries” due to the reality of life in the US.“The last company I worked for took advantage of people in every situation,” he said, from dissuading injured workers from getting medical attention to denying overtime and breaks.“They say, you are undocumented, so they will pay you $10 an hour because you have no work permit,” he added. “And if not, they will tell Ice.”“In Washington state, immigrants make up 25% of the trades workforce in construction. With a consistent labor shortage and demand for housing constantly growing, residential construction needs all the skilled workers available,” a spokesperson for the Building Industry Association of Washington said in an email. “We’ve provided our members with guidance on how to legally employ immigrants, including verifying the identity and US employment authorization of all employees. We also generally support improving US Immigration policy to allow responsible and law-abiding undocumented worker a pathway to achieving citizenship.”Arizona Builders Alliance did not respond to multiple requests for comment.On a national level the construction industry has repeatedly warned of the negative impacts of immigration raids on what they claim has already been a severe labor shortage in US construction.Asked about contractors allegedly using the ramp up in immigration enforcement to cut pay and increase workloads, the National Association of Home Builders issued a statement from Hughes, its chairperson, which did not directly address the claims.“With the construction industry facing a deficit of more than 200,000 workers, policymakers must consider that any disruption to the labor force would raise housing costs, limit supply and worsen the nation’s housing affordability crisis,” Hughes said. “To address this pressing national issue, NAHB is urging Congress to support meaningful investments in our nation’s education system to encourage students to pursue careers in the skilled trades.“Policymakers should also support sensible immigration policies that preserve and expand existing temporary work visa programs while also creating new market-based visa programs that will accurately match demand with available labor.” More

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      Miami city officials cancelled an election. Outraged voters call it a power grab

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      Candidates for local office in Miami have been prepping mailers, gathering volunteers, raising money and hitting the street for the last year, with voters expecting to see a robust campaign to replace the city’s term-limited, scandal-chased mayor.Last week, Miami’s city commission told those voters they’ll have to wait an extra year. In a 3-2 vote, the commission changed the city’s election bylaws to push the municipal races back to 2026.Commissioners said they made the change in the name of cost savings and increased voter engagement when higher-profile races for Congress or the presidency may be on the ballot. But they gave themselves an extra year in office without asking voters for permission first. And in a moment when the underpinnings of democracy appear to be cracking in America, a cavalier attitude toward an election seems ominous to some Miami residents.“What worries people about this is, we don’t want to give the guy in the White House any ideas,” said John Jackson, a Miami resident and former political operative. There’s no real mechanism to try something like this at the federal level, he said, “but it still kind of makes people a little worried. I don’t know anyone on any side of the aisle – Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal – who just thinks that this was a good thing”.Florida attorney general James Uthmeier sent Miami’s mayor a warning letter on 26 June, telling the city that the proposal to change election dates without asking permission from voters first violates the city and county’s charter and the state constitution.Miami is home “to thousands of patriotic Cuban Americans who know better than most about regimes that cavalierly delay elections and prolong their terms in power”, Uthmeier wrote. “The City of Miami owes to its citizens what the law requires.”City leaders could have avoided this problem by placing the question on the ballot and accepting a shorter term if voters chose to hold future elections on even-numbered years, said Michael Hepburn, a Miami mayoral candidate.“The city of Miami is actually still scheduled to have a election this year for other ballot referendums,” Hepburn said. “So what they’re doing is actually just stupid, because you literally still gonna have people come out this year on November 4 and vote for, like, three other questions on the ballot.”By structuring the change this way, however, it permits the city commissioner, Joe Carollo, and the Miami mayor, Francis Suarez – both term-limited – to remain in office for an additional year.Hepburn said he thinks Juarez wants to use the extra year to his advantage. “He’s started thinking about how he could stay in office and use his current office to parlay that into his next office. He may be running for governor next year. He may be running for US Congress. Who knows? But he’ll be able to do it from the office of mayor, which just helps him.”Hepburn and other candidates have either filed lawsuits or are awaiting the actions of the attorney general in response to the ordinance change.“The decision by city leaders to arbitrarily extend their terms by a full year without voter approval is exactly why so many are up in arms by the chaos and dysfunction of our city government,” said Eileen Higgins, a Miami-Dade county commissioner running to become the city’s next mayor.Instead of extending current elected terms, Higgins said she would support shortening a new mayor’s term by one year and moving the election to 2028 to achieve optimal voter participation. “That’s why I believe moving forward with the planned elections this November should have been the only decision. More troubling, a run-off in December 2026 will only cost taxpayers more money and result in lower turnout than this year’s planned election.”The mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.“I support and encourage participation in the electoral process,” said city of Miami commissioner Christine King. “Voting is the single most important act one can do for their country and in this instance our community. In the city of Miami, voter turnout is historically low for odd numbered year elections. My vote in support of moving our elections to even numbered years was a vote for democracy.”The argument for on-cycle elections makes sense to students of civic participation. Suarez defeated his challenger 21,479 to 3,166 in the 2021 off-year election. In a Miami referendum about residency requirements for the Miami mayor in 2024, with Donald Trump facing Kamala Harris as the marquee matchup at the top of the ballot, 127,460 people cast a vote, more than five times as many voters.“The upshot is that on-cycle elections … are generally viewed as a win for democracy,” said Matthew Nelsen, an assistant political science professor at the University of Miami. “On-cycle elections ensure that the media attention and campaigning that comes along with a national midterm or presidential election will also trickle down into local races.”Commissioner Damian Pardo, the author of the election change, argued that holding municipal elections on off years is a form of voter suppression. “The reason behind this is to boost voter participation,” he told local media. “When we realized we actually had potentially three votes to get this done, we moved forward. When we can take reform, we take it.”Nonetheless, the commission chose not to let voters make this change.“Ideally, the voters would have had the ability to vote on this,” Pardo said. “However, given the situation in this context, where we had the opportunity to pass it … in order to give the voters what they want, you might actually undermine them by putting it to a vote, because by the time that time lapses, you may no longer have those three votes.”Two of the three commissioners who voted for the change – Pardo and King – are Democrats.“If they can move it, why not the president?” said Marion Brown, a candidate challenging King in the election that the commission postponed. “Let the president move it, let the governor move it, let everyone in the election do the same thing.”The third commissioner, Ralph Rosado, is a Republican, as is the mayor. Municipal elections are technically nonpartisan in Miami.“Our county mayor is Democratic. Miami’s mayor is Republican. But none of that really matters, because politics is just weird here,” Jackson said. “To me, it was just entrenched politicians who said ‘well, gonna save money and we’re gonna raise turnout’. But the reality is, they’re term-limited, and now they get an extra term.”Politics in Miami tends to protect a group of four or five politically-powerful families at the expense of the public interest, said Marisol Zenteno, president of the League of Women Voters of Miami-Dade.“People are very irritated. They don’t trust in the system. They feel that it’s the same people manipulating it and that it’s pretty much the same people winning all the time,” she said. “Voters are just disillusioned.” More

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      New York City’s congestion pricing has cut pollution and traffic – but Trump still wants to kill it

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      It has faced threats and lawsuits and even had its death proclaimed by Donald Trump as he startlingly depicted himself as a king in a social media post. But New York City’s congestion charge scheme for cars has now survived its first six months, producing perhaps the fastest ever environmental improvement from any policy in US history.New York vaulted into a global group of cities – such as London, Singapore and Stockholm – that charge cars for entering their traffic-clogged metropolitan hearts but also ushered in a measure that was unknown to Americans and initially unpopular with commuters, and was confronted by a new Trump administration determined to tear it down.But the six-month anniversary, on 5 July, of congestion pricing highlights a string of remarkable successes. Traffic congestion in Manhattan, site of the $9 charge zone, is substantially down, cars and buses are moving faster, air quality is improving as carbon emissions drop, a creaking public transportation system has new verve and there are fewer car accidents, injuries and opportunities for incandescent New Yorker honking and yelling.In an era of assaults upon climate policy and societal betterment in general across US and around the world, New York’s congestion busting has been a rare flicker of progress in 2025. “It’s been even more obviously beneficial than even the most fervent proponents had hoped, and there have been really tangible improvements that are really gratifying,” said Ben Furnas, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a New York-based pro-transit group. “It’s been incredible to see.”Congestion pricing in New York had a tortured birth – the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, initially delayed it and cut the charge for drivers from $15 to $9, citing cost-of-living concerns – but since its January introduction the system appears to be achieving its aims.Spanning the southern tip of downtown Manhattan northwards to 60th Street, the congestion charge zone has slashed traffic delays by a quarter, with around 2m fewer cars a month now entering streets previously gridlocked in traffic. Vehicles that were previously crawling at a pace slower than a horse and cart are now moving more smoothly, with traffic speeds rising by 15%.Carbon pollution, meanwhile, has dropped by about 2.5%, with air pollution such as soot that can bury deep in people’s lungs also down. Despite the faster traffic, fewer people are being directly hurt by car accidents, too. The experiment has been a reminder that cities aren’t intrinsically noisy even if cars are – Furnas said that one of his favorite stats is that noise complaints along Canal Street, a key artery in lower Manhattan, have reduced by 70%.“The quality-of-life improvement has been dramatic,” he said. “Reducing pollution is often seen to involve a lot of sacrifices, but this has been different. People can see the improvements to their lives. There was this cynical assumption that this was a bullshit charge and life will stay the same but that assumption has gone away now.”Scaling public unpopularity in this way isn’t new – London’s congestion charge met initial opposition in 2003 and then, more recently, an expansion of the city’s ultra-low emission zone (or Ulez) was bitterly contested. London’s air quality has improved markedly and support has since edged up, though, a forerunner of the New York experience, where more people now support the charge than oppose it – a reversal of what the polls showed prior to its imposition.A primary motivation for the congestion charge was to raise funds for the beleaguered Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which presides over one of the most extensive public transport systems in the world but has struggled with a spluttering subway that runs on antediluvian technology through often squalid stations. Fears of subway-based crime, regularly amplified by the Trump administration, have also bedeviled the MTA’s attempts to lure commuters back following Covid.Congestion pricing revenue, though, is on track to reach $500m this year, allowing upgrades to the subway, the purchase of several hundred new electric buses and improvements to regional rail. Hochul, with the zeal of new convert, said the scheme has been a “huge success” and pointed out that people are still flocking to Manhattan stores, restaurants and Broadway shows, with pedestrian activity up 8% in May compared with the same month last year. Subway visits have also increased by 7%.“We’ve also fended off five months of unlawful attempts from the federal government to unwind this successful program and will keep fighting – and winning – in the courts,” the governor said. “The cameras are staying on.”Trump has continued his quest to kill off congestion charging in his native city, however, prematurely declaring success in this endeavor in a memorable February post on X in which he was depicted in an oil painting wearing a crown, triumphantly standing in front of the Empire State Building. “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” the president wrote.Trump’s Department of Transportation has attempted to withdraw federal approval of the scheme but its deadlines to end congestion pricing have so far been thwarted by the courts and the department has, in frustration, replaced its own lawyers, accusing them of undermining its case.Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, has said the charge is unfair to drivers and is “classist” against the working poor (even though they overwhelmingly take buses or trains, rather than drive), and threatened to cut federal funding to New York transit.View image in fullscreen“If you can’t keep your subway safe, if people can’t go to the subway and not be afraid of being stabbed or thrown in front of tracks or burned, we are going to pull your money,” Duffy said in March.The administration confirmed it will forge ahead with its legal battle. “In the 11th hour of his failing administration, Joe Biden cowardly approved this absurd experiment that makes federally funded roads inaccessible to many taxpayers without giving them a toll-free alternative,” said a Department of Transportation spokesperson.“We can all agree that the New York City subway needs fixing, but drivers should not be expected to foot the bill.”But the series of courtroom defeats suffered by the Trump administration have strengthened the congestion charge’s future, according to Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at Columbia Law School. “The administration have suffered a series of resounding defeats, they haven’t got anywhere,” said Gerrard. “It’s clear that Donald Trump doesn’t like New York City and wants to do anything he can to increase the use of fossil fuels. I don’t know if Donald Trump has ever been on the subway.”Other opposition remains, too, although it has become more muted of late. A leading critique of congestion pricing was that it will simply pile up traffic at the boundaries of the charge zone, although a recent report found the opposite has occurred – traffic delays are down 10% in the Bronx and have even been reduced by 14% in the commuter belt of Bergen county, in New Jersey.“Conceptually it’s a good idea, but let’s get a fair deal for Jersey,” conceded Phil Murphy, governor of New Jersey, on a recent podcast with the comedian Hasan Minhaj. Murphy previously called the charge a “disaster” and is still involved in legal action to stop it, although he now says he will accept a “deal” whereby his state gets some of the revenue and the toll is lowered somewhat.Murphy acknowledged traffic is down but he questions if it will last. “The data from London suggests it won’t continue,” said the governor, pointing to how the UK capital is now the most congested city in Europe, with drivers spending an average of 101 hours sitting in traffic last year, despite its own toll.However, others think New York may be different, a long-term habit switch from driving thanks to its dense public transport links. If it survives its Trumpian attack, the scheme may even be replicated by cities elsewhere in the US. If highways and bridges can be tolled, as they often are in the US, why not the core of cities too?“It’s been such a success that I think others will look at this,” said Furnas. “Not everywhere has New York’s public transit, but we would be wise to apply these sort of benefits to other places, too.” More