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    Maryland senator meets Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador amid battle over US return

    The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen met in El Salvador with Kilmar Ábrego García, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.Van Hollen posted a photo of the meeting on X, saying he also called Ábrego García’s wife “to pass along his message of love”.The lawmaker did not provide an update on the status of Ábrego García, whose attorneys are fighting to force the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the US.It was not clear how the meeting was arranged, where they met or what will happen to Abrego Garcia. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, posted images of the meeting minutes before Van Hollen shared his post, saying: “Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”Bukele continued mockingly: “Kilmar Ábrego García, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ and ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” The tweet ended with emojis of the US and El Salvador flags, with a handshake emoji between them.The meeting came in the hours after Van Hollen said he was denied entry into an high-security El Salvador prison while he was trying to check on Ábrego García’s wellbeing and attempting to push for his release.The Democratic senator said at a news conference in San Salvador that his car was stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint about 3km from the Terrorism Confinement Center, or Cecot, even as they let other cars go on.“They stopped us because they are under orders not to allow us to proceed,” Van Hollen said.Donald Trump and Bukele said this week that they have no basis to send Ábrego García back, even as the Trump administration has called his deportation a mistake and the US supreme court has called on the administration to facilitate his return.Trump officials have said that Ábrego García, a Salvadorian citizen who was living in Maryland, has ties to the MS-13 gang, but his attorneys say the government has provided no evidence of that and Ábrego García has never been charged with any crime related to such activity.Van Hollen’s trip has become a partisan flashpoint in the US as Democrats have seized on Ábrego García’s deportation as what they say is a cruel consequence of Trump’s disregard for the courts. Republicans have criticized Democrats for defending him and argued that his deportation is part of a larger effort to reduce crime.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt held a news conference on Wednesday with the mother of a Maryland woman who was killed by a fugitive from El Salvador in 2023.Van Hollen told reporters on Wednesday that he met with Vice-President Félix Ulloa, who said his government could not return Ábrego García to the United States.“So today, I tried again to make contact with Mr Ábrego García by driving to the Cecot prison,” Van Hollen said on Thursday.Van Hollen said Ábrego García has not had any contact with his family or his lawyers. “There has been no ability to find out anything about his health and wellbeing,” Van Hollen said. He said Ábrego García should be able to have contact with his lawyers under international law.“We won’t give up until Kilmar has his due process rights respected,” Van Hollen said. He said there would be “many more” lawmakers coming to El Salvador.New Jersey senator Cory Booker is also considering a trip to El Salvador, as are some House Democrats.While Van Hollen was denied entry, several House Republicans have visited the notorious gang prison in support of the Trump administration’s efforts. Riley Moore, a West Virginia Republican, posted on Tuesday evening that he’d visited the prison where Ábrego García is being held. He did not mention Ábrego García but said the facility “houses the country’s most brutal criminals.”“I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland,” Moore wrote on social media.Missouri Republican Jason Smith, chair of the House ways and means Committee, also visited the prison. He posted on X that “thanks to President Trump” the facility “now includes illegal immigrants who broke into our country and committed violent acts against Americans”.The fight over Ábrego García has also played out in contentious court filings, with repeated refusals from the government to tell a judge what it plans to do, if anything, to repatriate him.Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the US more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants – whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes – and placed them inside the country’s maximum-security gang prison just outside San Salvador. That prison is part of Bukele’s broader effort to crack down on the country’s powerful street gangs, which has put 84,000 people behind bars and made Bukele popular at home.Human rights groups have accused Bukele’s government of subjecting those jailed to “systematic use of torture and other mistreatment”. Officials there deny wrongdoing. More

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    Democratic senator heads to El Salvador to try to visit Kilmar Ábrego García

    Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland will travel to El Salvador on Wednesday and attempt to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, a constituent whose deportation and incarceration in the Central American country, he warns, has tipped the United States into a constitutional crisis.In an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday, Van Hollen said he hopes to learn of Ábrego García’s condition and convey it to his family, who also live in the state he represents.The state department has confirmed that Ábrego García is held in El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), and despite the US supreme court last week saying the Trump administration must “facilitate” his return to the United States, the president refuses to do so.“We were in the gray zone before this. But if the Trump administration continues to thumb its nose at the federal courts in this case we’re in, we’re clearly in constitutional crisis territory,” Van Hollen said.In a hearing on Tuesday, federal judge Paula Xinis criticzed justice department officials for not complying with the supreme court’s order, saying “to date, nothing has been done”. She gave the government two weeks to produce details of their efforts to return Ábrego García to US soil.It’s unknown how far Van Hollen, who has represented Maryland since 2017, will get in El Salvador. While its government has welcomed homeland security secretary Kristi Noem to Cecot, Van Hollen said it has not responded to his request to visit the prison, where rights group have warned of abuses and and squalid conditions.“We’ve made those requests of the government of El Salvador, and I hope they will agree to meet to discuss Mr Ábrego García’s situation, and let me see him so I can report back to his family in Maryland on his wellbeing,” the senator said.“This is a Maryland man. His family’s in Maryland, and he’s been caught up in this absolutely outrageous situation where the Trump administration admitted in court that he was erroneously abducted from the United States and placed in this notorious prison in El Salvador in violation of all his due process rights.”Van Hollen this week sent a letter to El Salvador’s ambassador to the United States requesting to meet with Bukele when he was in Washington, but received no response, prompting the senator to plan travel to the country. Last week, Democratic House representative Adriano Espaillat, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, also asked Bukele to meet with Ábrego García at Cecot.During his appearance alongside Trump in the Oval Office, Bukele rejected releasing Ábrego García from custody, saying: “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it.”Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers arrested and deported Ábrego García last month, even though an immigration judge had in 2019 granted him “withholding of removal to El Salvador”, a protected status for people who feared for their safety if returned to their home country. The Trump administration has accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang, which Ábrego García’s attorneys have denied, noting that the allegation is based on a single informant who said he belonged to a chapter in New York, despite him never living there.The arrest comes as Trump presses on with plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, which have seen him clash with judges nationwide. The supreme court last week upheld his administration’s use of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected Venezuelan gang members, but ruled they were also entitled to due process to challenge their removals.Van Hollen said that the case of Ábrego García marks a turning point for the Trump administration because the president is refusing to follow an order from the nation’s highest court – something Democrats have long warned he will do.“What they have not overtly done previously is outright defy a court order,” Van Hollen said. “They’ve slow-walked court orders, they’ve tried to parse their words based on technicalities, they’ve not outright defied a court order. In my view, this now clearly crosses that line.” More

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    Senator Chuck Grassley grilled at Iowa town hall over ‘shameful’ Trump policies

    The Republican senator Chuck Grassley struggled to control a town hall meeting on Tuesday as constituents erupted in anger over border security policies and the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation practices.The 91-year-old Republican lawmaker from Iowa is the latest elected official to get grilled by a packed room of constituents. Attendees in the Republican state were concerned about the treatment of asylum seekers stemming from the president’s approach to immigration enforcement.“I believe very strongly in my Christian faith. I preach on Sundays,” said one attendee, “Turning away people who have come here for asylum is one of the most shameful things we are doing right here.”The attendee pressed Grassley on whether he would take action to ensure the United States better follows international law and upholds “the ideals of our country to be a place of hope for others”.Grassley responded that he would “welcome refugees, I would welcome people seeking asylum”. On Tuesday morning, Trump had posted on Truth Social that border crossings hit an all-time low in March.Tensions escalated further when another constituent accused Trump of ignoring the supreme court order regarding Kilmar Armando Ábrego García. Ábrego’s deportation to El Salvador despite supreme court intervention has become a rallying point for immigration advocates, who cite it as evidence of the administration’s willingness to flout judicial authority.In the White House press conference on Tuesday, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called Ábrego a “human trafficker and gang member”.“The president doesn’t care,” one attendee at Grassley’s town hall shouted. “He’s got an order from the supreme court and he’s just said: ‘No, screw it.’”Multiple attendees reminded Grassley, who has held his Senate seat since 1981, of his constitutional oath of office, with one asking whether the senator was acting upon that oath. The crowd grew increasingly frustrated as Grassley attempted to explain his position.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m trying to recapture the constitutional authority of article 1, section 8,” Grassley responded, referencing a bipartisan bill he introduced aimed at addressing what he called “mistakes that Democratic Congress has made in 1963”.Grassley’s confrontational town hall comes as many Republican lawmakers have largely abandoned the practice of holding in-person constituent meetings during their congressional recess. The retreat from public forums follows other heated exchanges where Republican lawmakers faced sometimes abrasive criticism over issues like proposed budget cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and what they see as the erosion of constitutional checks and balances.While Grassley continues his 45th annual 99-county tour of Iowa, only a handful of Republicans, including the representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Byron Donalds, have publicly announced plans for similar events. More

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    Democrats’ problem isn’t just messaging – it’s the electoral math | David Daley

    It’s much worse than the usual disarray. Even after hopeful election results last week, Democrats are shut out of power in Washington, bewildered over the 2024 election, and staggered by Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s blitz to rapidly assert power over the media, universities and the courts, while dismantling huge swaths of the federal government.Exiled to the political wilderness, Democrats have blamed their messaging and messengers. They have sought different ways to talk about trans rights, abortion, immigration and populist economics. They have sought their own network of social media influencers and podcasters so that they can talk to young or occasional voters.None of this will make the difference. Democrats could spend as much time as they like fine-tuning the perfect pitch on trans women and high school sports. They could develop an army of faux-Joe Rogan podcasts for future candidates to make their case. They could even win the occasional upset special election. And they will still remain powerless.That’s because while Democrats might have a messaging and messenger problem, they have a much larger issue: math. And it’s a cruel math, where just coming close to a majority doesn’t count.A captured supreme court, gerrymandered legislatures, a radically malapportioned Senate, and the electoral college mean that the basic math that paves any road toward 270 electoral votes, 218 members of the House, 51 senators and five members of the supreme court is tilted dramatically against Democrats. All of it is likely to get much worse before it gets any better. Before the midterms, Republicans seem determined to pass new voting restrictions that will place new barriers before tens of millions, make registration and voting itself decidedly more difficult, and call into question the very possibility of free and fair elections. Until Democrats fully recognize that the structural barriers before them could doom them to opposition status even if they reassemble a majority coalition, they are not grappling with the cold reality of this moment. Politics and public opinion could move in their direction. The structural math might only get worse.The House mapStart with the US House, the heart of the party’s midterm dreams. Republicans hold seven seats more than Democrats, and history suggests that the opposition party often gains that many seats in a midterm off anti-incumbent frustration alone. Listening to Democrats, you get the sense that they feel it’s almost a given they will take back the House. The conventional wisdom suggests the national House map is balanced. Neither is the case. Better balanced, perhaps, from the last decade, but Republicans still benefit from a gerrymandered advantage of 16 seats, according to the non-partisan Brennan Center.Getting close to a majority, as Democrats did in the current House, is one thing. Getting over the top is harder than it looks. On a map that is nearly maximally gerrymandered to eliminate competitive seats – only 37 of 435 races were within five points in 2024 – flippable seats are rare and difficult to target. Democrats won, and must defend, 22 of those – which leaves just 15 competitive seats to provide the necessary yield. Only four of those districts are in states carried by Kamala Harris in 2024.Beyond that, one might start by identifying vulnerable GOP members from districts that also backed Harris. There are only three of those: Nebraska’s second, New York’s 17th and Pennsylvania’s first. These have been Democratic targets for some time. The incumbents remain safe and Democrats would have a lot of voters to persuade; those aren’t among the 15 competitive districts. Nebraska’s Don Bacon and New York’s Mike Lawler won by seven percentage points. In Pennsylvania, Brian Fitzpatrick won by nearly twice that, 13 points.Democrats meanwhile must defend 13 districts carried by Trump where incumbents have, thus far, managed to outrun national trends of partisan polarization. What that means is that in many ways, Democrats are overextended on the current map; they’ll need a strong year simply to defend what they already hold.But the operative phrase is “current map”. That’s not the same as “2026 map”. The other challenge comes from redistricting and from the US supreme court. In Ohio, where Democrats have narrowly held two Trump-leaning districts, the GOP will be able to redraw the congressional map ahead of the 2026 elections. Two of the competitive seats carried by Democrats in 2024 are in the Buckeye state. The GOP will probably gerrymander those seats so that they are uncompetitive for even an incumbent Democrat, pushing a 10-seat to five-seat GOP edge in the state to a 12-3 advantage. More redistricting dominos could fall. A potential decision by the US supreme court in a racial gerrymandering case from Louisiana could lead to Black-majority seats there as well as in Alabama and Georgia being wiped off the map. Suddenly Democrats don’t face just a seven-seat gap; they need to find their way to several more on a difficult map.The Senate mapThe Senate map looks even harder. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority. Democrats need to gain four seats to win the chamber – if, that is, they successfully defend one seat in Georgia, as well as open seats in purple New Hampshire, Michigan and Minnesota, where Democratic incumbents have announced retirements. Democrats will once again target the Maine senator Susan Collins. Beyond that, it’s a tough road: they will need to hold the four purple seats, defeat a popular survivor in Maine, and then take three more from this unforgiving, unlikely list where the best bets are North Carolina, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Iowa or South Carolina.Ouch. The longer-term Senate trends don’t look much more favorable given how nationally polarized these races have become. In 2024, there were 24 solid red states that Trump won by double digits. There were 19 blue ones. Republicans now hold all 48 Senate seats in the red states. Democrats (or independents who caucus with them) hold 37 of the 38 from blue states. Democrats would need to defeat Collins and then win 13 of the 14 from seven swing states – which means maintaining two in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan, and finding a way to win in North Carolina. Otherwise, they need inroads into states where Democrats have had almost no statewide success for more than a decade.Political realities can change. But the road to 51 seats requires challenging the current math and maps in quite dramatic ways. Texas, Florida, Ohio, Iowa and South Carolina is change that is difficult to believe in.Population changesPopulation shifts don’t favor Democrats, either. By 2035, experts suggest, 70% of the nation will live in the 15 largest states, with just 30 senators. Right now, two-thirds of Americans live in the largest 15 states, according to census data. They are represented by 30 senators – 21 Democrats and nine Republicans. The other third of us? These smaller 35 states aren’t only whiter than the nation at large, they tilt decisively to the Republican party, represented by 46 Republicans and 24 Democrats.Those population shifts will affect the House as well when it is reapportioned after the 2030 census. Early Census Bureau estimates suggest that California will lose four seats, New York two, and Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin one apiece. Maybe Democrats will find a way to gerrymander Illinois so completely that a red seat is lost. But on balance, this will almost certainly cost Democrats several current blue seats. Those seats would each shift to states where Republicans have locked in huge advantages via controlling the redistricting process, and where they have long drawn lines that outpace demographic trends: four each to Texas and Florida, and one for Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina and Utah.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenThe presidency and supreme courtElectoral college power will shift as well. The projected 2030 reapportionment would have cost Joe Biden in 12 electors in 2020; in 2024 it would have been a loss of 10 for Harris. That shifts the fight for the White House. This decade, a Democrat could win the White House simply by carrying the reliably blue states, as well as the once-mighty “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and the Omaha, Nebraska, elector. But subtract those 12 electors and that’s not close to enough. Beginning in 2032, if these projections hold, Democrats would have to win the blue states, the “blue wall”, plus either North Carolina or Georgia, or both Arizona and Nevada.One place where conservative power won’t shift any time soon: the supreme court. The Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last nine presidential elections, yet they are in a terrible position. The 6-3 Republican supermajority should prove enduring for decades. If Trump replaces Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito with younger justices, the advantage could last even longer. In order to break this hold, Democrats will not only need to control the White House when openings arise, but also the Senate. Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland was stonewalled by a Republican Senate in 2016; the chamber has only become more aggressively ideological – let alone tougher for Democrats to win – in the decade since. It is easy to imagine a Republican Senate simply refusing to consider any Democratic president’s nominee.So what do Democrats do?None of this is intended to be oppressively bleak. It is to paint a realistic picture of what Democrats face and to explain where they must win to pry back any levers of federal power and sustain it.Of course, nothing is static. Plenty of events over the next two and four years, from a recession to further national security embarrassments, could scramble American politics. Democrats have already flipped some 2025 state legislative races few expected them to win. Still, winning November races when turnout and polarization are at the highest is much more difficult – and picking up double digits in the US House with limited targets is a demanding task. Last week’s results in Florida, where Republicans easily held the congressional seat that belonged to the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, despite Democratic energy, breathless coverage in the national press, and a massive fundraising advantage, should be a brutal reality check. And that’s assuming free and fair elections, and before factoring in the extreme, voter-suppressing Save Act making its way through Congress that would make it more difficult for tens of millions of Americans to vote.It’s tougher still to see the road to a Senate majority near term. Hoping for polarization to ebb, or the Maga grasp on the GOP to ease, is coming to a gun fight with good vibes and crossed fingers.Messaging and messengers are not unimportant. They’re crucial. Especially if Democrats hope to change a brand that is toxic in many states where they must find a path to victory if they want any hope of reaching 270, 218 or 51. But math remains the far bigger challenge – and even perfect messaging crashes against structural and geographic realities. Too many Democrats, and the party’s polling/consulting complex, want to bleed the ActBlue accounts of supporters on lost causes like the Florida special election.The focus for Democrats must be on something different: defending free and fair elections, and building a coalition right now behind reforming redistricting, the courts, statehood for Washington DC and Puerto Rico, and imagining the Senate reapportionment that Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned 30 years ago we would soon desperately need.That’s what needs to be communicated: structural reforms represent everyone’s only hope to create a level playing field, meaningful elections and an accountable democracy for all.The good news is that these reforms are already popular with Americans: 70% back supreme court term limits and ethics codes. Gerrymandering is loathed in red, blue and purple states. It’s time to make the same serious case for reapportioning the Senate, adding states, a more proportional House, ranked choice voting, and additional judicial reforms. The National Popular Vote interstate compact keeps getting closer to revamping presidential elections so that every vote is equal. “A more perfect union” fundamentally means that American democracy must evolve with the times.Call it the Contract to Reform America, or Project 2029, or “make American politics fair again”. Get all the influencers and future podcasters onboard. Until Democrats fix the math and reform the system, the few will control the many for decades to come.Messaging that basic unfair reality is something even these Democrats should be able to do. If they can’t, we are in the kind of authoritarian fix that no election will be able to undo.

    David Daley is the author of Antidemocratic: Inside the Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections as well as Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count More

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    ‘Hands Off’ protests take off across US and Europe to oppose Trump agenda – live

    Also speaking at in Washington DC was Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March.Carmona said:
    We are exercising the People’s Veto on Musk, Trump, Zuck–all these broligarchs–who want a country ruled by bullies to benefit billionaires. And they don’t care what–or who–they have to bulldoze to make it happen.
    But here’s the thing: We are the majority. Workers. Students. Parents. Teachers. Activists. We are the backbone of this country. Not the elites. They’re scared that a movement this large can threaten their power.
    But despite all the nonsense they’ve put us through, we’re still here and our numbers are growing.
    What I know is true about Women’s Marchers, and what I suspect to be true about everyone here today is that we are not afraid of hard work. That’s who we are: regular people who stepped up when there was work to be done…We are enough, and I believe that we will win.
    The strength of a movement isn’t measured by our easy wins, but by the hard days when we showed up anyway. And that’s what we need to do. Work hard. Work together. That is true people power. That is how we win.”
    Speaking in Washington DC, the former commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Martin O’Malley, told demonstrators:
    You and I are different. We do not believe, as Elon Musk believes, that you only have value as a human being in our country if you contribute to his economic system that makes him wildly rich.
    No, you and I are different. Elon Musk thinks that the greatest waste and inefficiency are people that don’t contribute to his economy. Therefore, the elderly who can’t work, people with disabilities who can’t work, they’re the wasteful inefficiency. Elon Musk is going after you and I.
    Protesters across the US rallied against Donald Trump’s policies on SaturdayThe “Hands Off” demonstrations are part of what the event’s organisers expect to be the largest single day of protest against Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk since they launched a rapid-fire effort to overhaul the government and expand presidential authority.Here are some images coming from Hollywood, Florida, where demonstrators are protesting against Donald Trump’s administration:Hundreds of protesters – including Americans living abroad – have taken to the streets across major European cities in a show of defiance against Donald Trump’s administration.On Saturday, demonstrators rallied in Frankfurt, Germany, as part of the “Hands Off” protest organized by Democrats Abroad, Reuters reports.In Berlin, demonstrators stood in front of a Tesla showroom and the US embassy in protest against Trump and the Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Some held signs calling for “an end to the chaos” in the US.In Paris, demonstrators, largely American, gathered around Place de la République to protest the US president, with many waving banners that read “Resist tyrant”, “Rule of law”, “Feminists for freedom not fascism” and “Save Democracy”, Reuters reports.Crowds in London gathered in Trafalgar Square earlier on Saturday with banners that read “No to Maga hate” and “Dump Trump”.Protesters also gathered in Lisbon, Portugal, on Saturday with some holding signs that read “the Turd Reich”.In addition to large US cities, anti-Donald Trump protests are also taking place through the US’s smaller towns, including in red counties.Here are some photos coming through BlueSky from St. Augustine, a small town in Florida of 14,000 people in a red county:Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland and the party’s ranking member on the House justice committee, said today’s demonstration was part of a “creative and nimble” strategy to resist Donald Trump.Talking to the Guardian, he said mass protests needed to be combined with a “smart legislative strategy” to be effective.Studies of authoritarian regimes abroad had shown that a strategy of either mass protest or legislature resistance did work on their own, he said, in response to a question about the failure of demonstrations to unseat strongman leaders in countries like Hungary, Serbia and Turkey.Here are some images coming through the newswires from across the country as thousands take to the streets in demonstrations against Donald Trump’s administration:About 600 people registered for the event, billed as a “Hands Off” rally, at the Ventura Government Center on Victoria Avenue in California.Ventura, with a population of 109,000, is a laidback beach and agricultural community with a vibrant cultural scene, about 65 miles north of Los Angeles.Leslie Sage, mother of two, drove up from nearby Thousand Oaks and said: “I’m a white woman and I want everyone to know white women don’t support Trump.” Sage’s sign read: “Russian Asset, American Idiot.”She came with her friend Stephanie Gonzalez. “As a double lung transplant recipient, I’m outraged that access to medical care and funding for research is at risk. This president is deranged.”People showed up from Ventura but also Ojai, Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Camarillo and Simi Valley.Harlow Rose Rega, an eight-year old from Ventura, came with her grandmother Sandy Friedman. Harlow made her own sign: “Save my future.”Friedman is worried about her social security. “I worked my whole life and so did my husband. Now I’m afraid Trump will take it away,” she said. Signs indicated protesters are worried about a range of issues – racism, national parks, health care, environment, veteran benefits, grocery costs and more. Some people said AI helped with their signage but refused to create anti-Trump slogans specifically so they worked around that.In Ventura, a chant of “Donald Trump has got to go. Hey hey ho ho!” started amid lots of cheers and honking cars.A mix of English and Spanish songs is also blasting from the mobile sound system. People are in good spirits and friendly with peacful though loud protests and no evidence of Trump support.Several hundred vociferous anti-Trump demonstrators converged on a traffic circle in Florida’s Fort Lauderdale suburb of Hollywood Saturday morning to vent their rejection of the 47th president’s policies and myriad executive orders.Chanting “hey hey, ho ho, Trump and Musk have got to go,” the predominantly white protestors jeered motorists in Tesla Cybertrucks and hoisted a variety of colorful placards that left little doubt where they stand on the topic of Donald Trump.“Prosecute and jail the Turd Reich,” read one. Some reserved special ire for the world’s richest person: “I did not elect Elon Musk.” Others emphasized the protestors’ anxieties about the future of democracy in the U.S.“Hands off democracy,” declared one placard. “Stop being Putin’s puppet,” enjoined another.“This is an assault on our democracy, on our economy, on our civil rights,” said Jennifer Heit, a 64-year-old editor and resident of Plantation who toted a poster that read, “USA: No to King or Oligarchy.”“Everything is looking so bad that I feel we have to do all we can while we can, and just having all this noise is unsettling to everyone,” Heit said.Heit attended a protest outside a Tesla dealership in Fort Lauderdale last week, and the Trump administration’s frontal assault on the rule of law and the judiciary has outraged her.“We’re supposed to be a nation of laws and due process,” she said, “and I am especially concerned about the people who are being deported without any due process.” More

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    Ted Cruz warns of midterm ‘bloodbath’ if Trump tariffs cause a recession

    Ted Cruz, the US senator from Texas, has warned that his fellow Republicans risk a “bloodbath” in the 2026 midterm elections if Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs cause a recession.Cruz also warned that the president’s tariffs, if they stay in place for long and are met by global retaliation on American goods, could trigger a full-blown trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.“A hundred years ago, the US economy didn’t have the leverage to have the kind of impact we do now. But I worry, there are voices within the administration that want to see these tariffs continue for ever and ever,” he added.The Texan’s comments, made on his Verdict podcast on Friday, were a further sign that the imposition of global “reciprocal” duties on imported goods is causing unease among Republicans.The Republican US senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa introduced bipartisan legislation on Thursday to grant Congress more power over placing tariffs on US trading nations. The bill, co-sponsored by the Democratic senator Maria Cantwell, would “reaffirm” the role of Congress in setting and approving trade policy.The Republican senators Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, Jerry Moran and Thom Tillis have since signed on as co-sponsors. Though the legislation is considered largely symbolic, it telegraphs anxiety over the $5.4tn loss of stock market capitalization over two days and signs of an electoral backlash to Trump administration policies in the form of a defeat at the ballot box by a Wisconsin supreme court race candidate backed by Trump’s billionaire business adviser Elon Musk.In two Florida congressional races, the Republican winners also underperformed.On his podcast, Cruz warned that tariffs and trade retaliation over the long term could push the US into “a recession, particularly a bad recession – 2026 in all likelihood politically would be a bloodbath”.“You would face a Democrat House, and you might even face a Democrat Senate,” Cruz said.“If we’re in the middle of a recession and people are hurting badly, they punish the party in power,” Cruz warned, adding he did not share the White House’s position that the tariffs would usher in “a booming economy”.But if “every other country on Earth” hits the US with retaliatory tariffs and Trump’s so-called reciprocal levies remain in place, “that is a terrible outcome” that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.Cruz, nonetheless, held out an olive branch to the administration.“Look, I want this to succeed … but my definition of succeed may be different than the White House’s,” he said, adding that his definition of success “is dramatically lower tariffs abroad and result in dramatically lowering tariffs here”.“That’s success for the American workers, American businesses, American growth, American prosperity,” he continued. “That’s a great outcome.” More