The U.S. Justice Department Wednesday underlined its efforts to protect voters’ access to the ballot box as early voting continues in advance of Election Day. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — With less than a week before the polls close on Nov. 5, the U.S. Justice Department Wednesday reiterated its efforts to protect voters’ access to the ballot box through its civil rights, national security and criminal divisions.

“Protecting the right to vote, prosecuting election crimes, and securing our elections are all essential to maintaining the confidence of all Americans in our democratic system of government,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

The Justice Department said that any complaints relating to violence, threats of violence or intimidation at a polling place should be first reported to local authorities by calling 911 and then the agency for further action.

In Washington state and Oregon, two ballot boxes were set on fire. In North Carolina, yellow signs in Spanish have popped up outside voting locations warning people that voting by noncitizens is illegal, something that voting rights groups have called voter intimidation.

There are heightened concerns from election officials and pro-democracy groups about attempts to disrupt the election process and the potential for violence once results are known.

A presidential victor is unlikely to be announced on election night or even the following day, which election officials have warned could easily sow distrust in the official results.

In Maricopa County, Arizona, the nation’s fourth most populous county, local and federal law enforcement officials said they are prepared for violence. Maricopa County was at the forefront of election fraud conspiracy theories in 2020.

Civil rights violations

The DOJ Civil Rights Division “is responsible for ensuring compliance with the civil provisions of federal statutes that protect the right to vote and with the criminal provisions of federal statutes prohibiting discriminatory interference with that right,” according to the agency.

Any civil rights violations should be reported to the agency at 800-253-3931 or online.

That division enforces the laws of the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Acts.

Under those laws it’s prohibited to intimidate voters, as well as have election practices that are either discriminatory or discriminate on the basis of ?“race, color, or language minority status.”

The Justice Department said that throughout the election, its attorneys “will be ready to receive complaints of potential violations of any of the statutes the Civil Rights Division enforces.”

Election-related crimes

The Criminal Division of the Justice Department enforces federal laws relating to election crimes such as voter fraud, destruction of ballots, vote-buying, submitting fraudulent ballots, altering votes and wrongdoing by election officials and employees.

That also includes any threats of violence against election workers and voter intimidation outside of reasons relating to discrimination. ? ?

The Justice Department said any election-related complaints should be directed to the local U.S. Attorney’s Office or the local FBI field office.

The National Security Division in the Justice Department will handle any cases involving foreign influence.

In September, the Justice Department unsealed charges of the Russian government’s efforts to spread propaganda and try to influence voters, including the 2024 presidential election.

“As in past elections, the National Security Division will work closely with counterparts at the FBI and our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to protect our nation’s elections from any national security threats,” the Justice Department said.

ice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks at a rally on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, with the White House as her backdrop, gave what she called her closing argument Tuesday evening, pressing voters to support her bid over that of “unstable” Republican candidate Donald Trump.

The 30-minute speech on the Ellipse was the same location where Trump, then president, held a rally nearly four years ago before his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. Harris highlighted Democrats’ core argument that another term for the former president would present a threat to the country’s future.

“This election is more than just a choice between two parties and two different candidates,” Harris said. “It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American, or ruled by chaos and division.”

Harris evoked the conception of the United States, how it was “born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant.” She said since then, Americans across generations have fought to protect those freedoms and expand them, from those who marched in the civil rights movement to the troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy.

“They didn’t do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant,” she said. “We are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators.”

Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said in a statement that Trump’s “closing argument to the American people is simple: Kamala broke it; he will fix it.”

In the crowd of tens of thousands of rallygoers was LaShaun Martin, 52, of Prince George’s County, Maryland, who said she is voting for Harris because the vice president is “incredibly positive.”

“She has been for all people, Republicans and Democrats,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what walk of life you come from. She really wants to represent you, and whatever it is you need to be able to be a prosperous person.”

One week until Election Day

Harris’ speech took place just one week before voting ends on Nov. 5, following a history-making campaign that began when President Joe Biden withdrew from the race following a disastrous debate this summer.?

Biden’s endorsement of Harris and widespread support from Democrats throughout the country forced the GOP to overhaul its approach to the campaign, as Democrats shifted their focus from the policies that Biden wanted to champion to those important to Harris.

In her remarks, Harris rebuked Trump and his supporters for their disparaging comments about immigrants living in the country illegally, a main element of his campaign.

“Politicians have got to stop treating immigration as an issue to scare up votes in an election,” Harris said. “And instead treat it as the serious challenge that it is, that we must finally come together to solve.”

Harris pledged to work with Congress on immigration policy as well as a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers and for the more than 500,000 children brought into the country without authorization. They are known as Dreamers, enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Harris touched on several of her top policy issues, including housing affordability, abortion access nationwide, a ban on price gouging at grocery stores and expansion of the child tax credit.

Reaching out to the undecided

Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler previewed the speech earlier Tuesday, telling reporters the vice president would speak directly to undecided voters’ “sense of frustration, their sense of exhaustion with the way that our politics have played out under the Trump era — and offer them directly a vision that something is different, that something different is possible.”

Trump on Sunday appeared at a six-hour campaign event at Madison Square Garden in New York City that brought bipartisan condemnation for a comedian who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.”

Ahead of Harris’ Tuesday speech, Trump gave remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, accusing her of trying to divide the country and seeking to distance himself from the racist and vulgar remarks made by the comedian and other speakers during the rally.

Trump did not take questions, but told ABC News earlier in the day he did not hear the comedian’s remarks.

“I don’t know him,” Trump said. “Someone put him up there.”

With the presidential race essentially tied, Harris and Trump have both focused their final campaign push on the crucial swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Harris promised the crowd during her speech that if elected she will protect institutions and the democratic ideals that are the bedrock of American law. She also slammed Trump’s comments referring to Democrats as the “enemy from within.’”

“The fact that someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within,” Harris said. “They are family, neighbors, classmates, coworkers, they are fellow Americans, and as Americans, we rise and fall together.”

Time to ‘turn the page’

Harris said the country must move beyond the ever-widening polarization that she described as a distinct feature of Trump’s grip on American politics.

“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other,” Harris said. “That’s who he is.”

In her pitch to undecided voters, Harris offered an opportunity to leave the Trump era behind.

“It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division,” she said. “It is time for a new generation of leadership in America and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States.”

That leadership, she said, would seek to build on bipartisan work.

“I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to make your life better. I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress,” she said. “I pledge to listen to experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make and to people who disagree with me. Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy.”

During her speech, protesters advocated for an arms embargo on U.S. military weapons sent to Israel amid the war with Hamas. Several senators have also called for an arms embargo.

“Stop arming Israel. Arms embargo now,” one protester said before being escorted out.

The death toll of more than 43,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to health authorities there, has fractured Muslims, Arab Americans and anti-war Democrats within the party. It spurred the Uncommitted National Movement that sent 30 delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer.

After Harris’ speech, nearly 100 pro-Palestinian protesters surrounded an exit of the campaign rally.

Harris supporters gather

The campaign’s finale in Washington, D.C., was expected to draw more than 50,000 supporters, according to the local NBC affiliate. The Harris campaign estimated 75,000 spectators showed up.

It featured speeches from supporters such as a mother who was able to access affordable insulin for her son because of the Affordable Care Act; a farming couple from Pennsylvania who were previously Trump voters; and Craig Sicknick, the brother of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died following the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.??

“(Trump) incited the crowd to riot while my brother and his fellow officers put their lives at risk,” Craig Sicknick said. “Now, Mr. Trump is promising to pardon the convicted criminals who attacked our Capitol, killing my brother and injuring over 140 other officers. This is simply wrong.”

The Justice Department has charged more than 1,500 defendants in the Jan. 6 attack.

Craig Sicknick endorsed Harris, who he called a “real leader.”

The family farmers, Bob and Kristina Lange from Malvern, Pennsylvania, said they are lifelong Republicans, but will be voting for Harris this election.

“It’s very clear that Donald Trump doesn’t care about helping hard-working people like us,” Bob Lange said. “He’s too focused on seeking revenge and retribution to care about what we need. We deserve better.”

The couple have been featured in multiple digital ads targeting rural voters in Pennsylvania.

History and excitement

Attendees from as far as Illinois to local residents made the trek to the Ellipse for the speech.

Tiffany Norwood, 56, of Washington, D.C., said she attended the rally with her 87-year-old mother, Mary Ann Norwood, for “the history of it, the excitement.”

“I feel we need something different in the United States, and she is it,” said Tiffany Norwood, who identified herself as an entrepreneur. “Her plan for the economy, for the future, for women, for everyone. I love the fact that it’s a big umbrella that includes the melting pot of the United States.”

Some attendees weren’t old enough to vote, such as 13-year-old Grace Ledford of Champaign, Illinois.

The teenager said her first political rally felt “like a big party.”

“Kamala would be a great president because she is, for one, a woman, and she is African American,” she said. “A lot of men presidents don’t know how hard it is to be a woman, especially Trump.”

Daniel Nyquist, 79, of Rockville, Maryland, stood in the crowd wearing a hat with the words “Make America Less Hateful.”

“It’s the alternative of Trump’s theme,” Nyquist said, pointing to his hat. “He’s a big promoter of hate, and this is to counter that.”

Voters make selections at their voting booths inside an early voting site on Oct. 17, 2024 in Hendersonville, North Carolina. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — As an exceedingly bitter, tight and dark campaign for the presidency moves into its last moments, apprehensive election officials and experts warn Election Day is only the first step.

The closing of the polls and end of mail-in voting kick off a nearly three-month process before the next president of the United States is sworn in on Inauguration Day in January. New guardrails were enacted by Congress in 2022 to more fully protect the presidential transition, following the Jan. 6, 2021 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters and a failed scheme to install fake electors.

But even before that shift to a new chief executive begins, a presidential victor is unlikely to be announced election night or even the following day.

It’s a result that will possibly take days to determine, given tight margins expected in seven swing states. Officials needed four days to count all the votes to determine President Joe Biden the victor of the 2020 presidential election.

In states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the law does not allow that process to begin for millions of mail-in ballots until Election Day. Other states allow pre-processing of ballots.

Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s former Republican secretary of state, said ballot authentication could be on different timelines across the country after voting ends on Election Day.

“We have 50 states, plus D.C., that pretty much all do it differently,” Grayson, who served as president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, told reporters Friday on a call of bipartisan former state election officials who are working to explain the process to the public.

It could mean “in a very close election that we don’t know on election night who the president is or who controls the House or the Senate, but we should feel confident over the next couple of days, as we work through that, that we’re going to get there,” he said.

Lawsuits and potential recounts?

Those delays, which former President Donald Trump seized on to spread the baseless lie that the election was stolen from him, are expected again in November, especially as all eyes will be on the battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Additionally, there already are hundreds of pre-election lawsuits, mainly filed by Republicans, ranging from election integrity challenges to accusations of noncitizens allowed to vote in federal elections — something that rarely happens and is already illegal. The legal challenges could further spark delays.

“We will not have a winner on election night most likely and so we need to be able to prepare the public for this,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and CEO of the democracy watchdog group Common Cause, during a Tuesday briefing.

She added that her organization will focus on combating misinformation and disinformation on election night and beyond.

“There is the potential that somebody could claim the win before … all of the votes have been counted,” she said.

In the early morning hours after Election Day in 2020, before results from key states were determined, Trump falsely claimed he won in an address at the White House.??

On top of that, experts say this year could see election denial erupting in countless courtrooms and meeting rooms in localities and the states, as well as across social media, if doubts are sown about the results.

Recounts could also delay an official election result, and the laws vary from state to state.

For example, in Pennsylvania, if a candidate demands a recount, three voters from each of the over 9,000 precincts have to petition for a recount.

“We’ve never seen that happen actually in Pennsylvania,” Kathy Boockvar, the commonwealth’s former Democratic secretary of state, said on Friday’s call with reporters.

An automatic statewide recount is triggered in Pennsylvania if there’s a difference of a half percent of all votes cast for the winner and loser. The final recount results, by law, are due to the secretary of state by Nov. 26, and results would be announced on Nov. 27, Boockvar said.

The margin in Pennsylvania’s 2020 results for the presidential election was between 1.1% and 1.2%, not enough to trigger the automatic recount, Boockvar said.

Taking out the shrubs

State election officials have been preparing for the past year to train poll workers to not only run the voting booths but for possible violence — a precaution put in place after the 2020 election — and have beefed up security around polling locations.

On Friday, Trump posted on X that the election “will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”

A reporter asked Grayson about the possibility of aggression from poll watchers. The Republican National Committee announced in April a “historic move to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process,” establishing party-led trainings for poll watchers.

Poll watchers are not a new concept, and Grayson said clear “safeguards” are in place.

“If you’re intimidating, you’re gone. There’s clear laws in every state on that,” he said.

Celestine Jeffreys, the city clerk in Green Bay, Wisconsin, said during a Wednesday roundtable with election workers that the city has an Election Day protocol in place that includes everything from blocking off streets to City Hall to getting rid of shrubbery.

“We have actually removed bushes in front of City Hall” to ensure no one can be concealed behind them, she said.?In the second assassination attempt on Trump earlier this year, a gunman hid in bushes outside Trump’s private golf course.

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said during a Tuesday briefing she is focused on the physical safety of election officials.

During the event with the National Association of Secretaries of State, she said such safety is not only a priority during voting but when officials move to certify the state’s election results in December.

“We have all been spending a lot more time on physical security and making sure that our election officials at all levels are more physically secure this year,” Toulouse Oliver said. “And of course, you know when our electors meet in our states, you know, ensuring for the physical security of that process and those individuals as well.”

On Dec. 17, each state’s electors will meet to vote for the president and vice president. Congress will vote to certify the results on Jan. 6.

“We are thinking a lot more about this in 2024 than we did in 2020, but I think that each one of us… have a playbook in mind for how to handle any unanticipated eventualities in the certification process,” she said.

It’s a security precaution that the U.S. Secret Service is also taking.

For the first time, Congress’ certification of the Electoral College on Jan. 6 has been designated a National Special Security Event, something that is usually reserved for Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

The 2020 experience

In 2020, The Associated Press did not call the presidential election for Biden until 11:26 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 7 — roughly three-and-a-half days after polls closed. The AP, as well as other media organizations, project election winners after local officials make initial tabulations public.

Those tallies are then canvassed, audited and certified, according to each state’s legal timeline. Recounts may also extend the timeline before final certification.

The vote totals reported in Pennsylvania — a state that carried 20 Electoral College votes in 2020 — put Biden over the top for the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Trump refused to concede the race, and instead promised to take his fight to court.

For the next two months, Trump and his surrogates filed just over 60 lawsuits challenging the results in numerous states. Ultimately none of the judges found evidence of widespread voter fraud.

The next step was for Congress to count each state’s certified slate of electors, which by law, it must do on the Jan. 6 following a presidential election.

However, in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, Trump and his private lawyers worked to replace legitimate slates of electors with fake ones, according to hundreds of pages of records compiled by a special congressional investigation, and by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Trump pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to block ratification of the Electoral College’s vote at the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, because the vice president’s role in the certification of electoral votes was not exactly clear in the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

Pence ultimately refused.

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 following a “Stop the Steal” rally at The Ellipse park, south of the White House, where Trump told the crowd “We will never concede.”

The mob assaulted police officers, broke windows to climb inside and hurled violent threats aimed at elected officials, including the desire to “hang” Pence. More than 1,500 defendants have been charged by the Department of Justice.

Congress stopped its process of reviewing the state electors in the 2 p.m. Eastern hour as police ushered the lawmakers to safety. The joint session resumed at roughly 11:30 p.m., and Pence called the majority of electoral votes for Biden at nearly 4 a.m. on Jan. 7.

New law on presidential transition

To deter another Jan. 6 insurrection, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transitional Improvement Act of 2022 as part of a massive appropriations bill.

The Electoral Count Reform Act codifies into law that the vice president, who also serves as the president of the U.S. Senate, only ceremoniously reads aloud a roll call of the votes.

Most notably, the provision raises the threshold for lawmakers to make an objection to electors. Previously, only one U.S. House representative and one U.S. senator would need to make an objection to an elector or slate of electors.

But under the new law, it would take one-fifth of members to lodge an objection and under very specific standards — 87 House members and 20 senators.

The Electoral Count Reform Act also identifies that each state’s governor is the official responsible for submitting the state’s official document that identifies the state’s appointed electors, and says that Congress cannot accept that document from any official besides the governor, unless otherwise specified by the state’s law.

Trump and his allies tried to replace legitimate slates of electors in several states with fake electors who would cast ballots for Trump.

The Presidential Transitional Improvement Act provides candidates with funding and resources for transitional planning, even if a candidate has not conceded after the election.

There are already issues with the transition of power. The top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, sent a Wednesday letter to Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, urging them to sign documents to ensure a peaceful transition of power.

“With fewer than three weeks left until an election in which the American people will select a new President of the United States, I urge you to put the public’s interest in maintaining a properly functioning government above any personal financial or political interests you may perceive in boycotting the official transition law and process,” Raskin wrote.

Denial expected at all levels of government

Experts warn the effort to delay certification of the vote is largely being fought at the local and state levels, and that several groups are gearing up to sow doubt in the election outcome.

Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, said on a press call Wednesday that since 2020, “election denial has shifted away from the capital to county election commission meetings, courtrooms, cyber symposiums and countless conspiracies in preparation for a repeat this November.”

“This time, the baseless claim that undocumented immigrants are somehow swamping the polls has fueled the ‘big lie’ machine,” Burghart said.

Kim Wyman, the former Washington state secretary of state, said the noncitizen topic is not new.

“I’d like to level set and remind everyone that it’s been illegal at the federal level since 1996 and you know, when you think back on 2002 the?Help America Vote Act?basically required voters to provide ID when they register, which is usually a driver’s license or a Social Security number, and states are checking that data against the DMV database. And these protections are enormously successful,” said Wyman.

In two high-profile cases, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Republican-led efforts in Alabama and Virginia to purge voter rolls after alleging thousands of noncitizens were registered to vote. Both states were ordered to stop the programs and reinstate voters – though Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin promised Friday to appeal and even escalate to the Supreme Court.

In Georgia, the state’s Supreme Court delayed new rules until after this election that would have required three poll workers at every precinct to count ballots by hand once the polls closed — essentially delaying unofficial election results.

More than 165 electoral process lawsuits across 37 states have been filed by both parties since 2023 leading up to the 2024 presidential election, according to a survey by Bloomberg of pre-election cases. The journalists found that more than half the cases have been filed in swing states, and challenge almost every facet of the voting process, from absentee voting, to voter roll management, voter eligibility and vote certification.

Republican and conservative groups have filed roughly 55% of the lawsuits, mostly aimed at narrowing who can vote, and overall most of the cases were filed in August and September, according to the analysis.

Courts threw out dozens of lawsuits claiming voter fraud in 2020.

Mai Ratakonda, senior counsel at States United Democracy Center, said anti-democracy groups have used litigation “to legitimize their efforts to sow doubt in our election system.”

“We’ve unfortunately continued to see this trend of filing lawsuits to bolster and legitimize narratives that our elections are insecure and laying the groundwork to contest results later,” Ratakonda told reporters on a press call Wednesday hosted by the organization, whose stated mission is to protect nonpartisan election administration.

This report has been updated to reflect that former Washington state Secretary of State Kim Wyman made the comment that noncitizen voting has been illegal at the federal level since 1996.

Annar Parikh, a field manager with the civic engagement group North Carolina Asian Americans Together, knocks on a door of a residence in Wake County, North Carolina, on Sept. 28, 2024. No one answers, so she leaves voting information by the door. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

DURHAM, N.C. — As a weekend morning in late September dips into the afternoon, Annar Parikh finally gets an eligible voter to answer the door.

After Parikh gives a rundown of some of the local candidates in North Carolina’s election, she asks the woman if she plans to vote in the presidential election.

“It’s personal,” the woman says before closing the door.

The 26-year-old marks the house in a voter database for North Carolina Asian Americans Together, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on voter registration in the Asian American community.

“This is typical for our community,” Parikh, a field manager for NCAAT, says while peeling a clementine, recounting how difficult it can be sometimes to reach voters in the swing state.

There are more than 360,000 Asian Americans in North Carolina. Indian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the state, with a population of nearly 110,000.

The voters Parikh is trying to reach are prized by the presidential campaigns. In an election that is virtually a dead heat, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is working to tap into the two of the fastest-growing voting blocs in the United States — Asian Americans and Latinos, especially in the seven swing states.

Asian Americans have gotten relatively little attention in the presidential campaign and Harris herself has not greatly emphasized her South Asian background — her mother was an Indian immigrant and Harris if elected would be the first president of South Asian descent.

“My challenge is the challenge of making sure I can talk with and listen to as many voters as possible and earn their vote, and I will never assume that anyone in our country should elect a leader based on their gender or their race,” Harris said in a Monday night interview with NBC News, when asked if sexism is a factor in the race.

While Republican nominee Donald Trump has held events with Latino voters, one of his first big appeals to Asian American voters will be Thursday in a Turning Point PAC event with former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii in Nevada.

Targeting communities

Also Thursday, the Democratic National Committee launched a voting media campaign across the country to engage with Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities. The campaign will provide information about polling locations and multilingual advertisements in Florida, Texas and New York.

About 15 million Asian Americans are eligible to vote in this presidential election, a 15% increase in eligible voters from 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.?

An estimated 36.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year, a 12% increase in eligible voters from 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.?

The Harris campaign has launched targeted ads for Asian American voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that focus on her economic proposals.

The campaign also released an ad specific to the battleground state of Nevada featuring Asian American small business owners. Nevada is a swing state with one of the largest shares of the Asian American population in the country, at 11%. President Joe Biden won the state in 2020 with a little over 33,000 votes.

The Harris campaign has also launched a WhatsApp outreach effort in the Latino community and on Tuesday unveiled an “opportunity agenda for Latino men.”

Grassroot campaigns reflecting Asian American voting blocs have also emerged on behalf of Harris, such as South Asians for Harris, Chinese Americans for Harris, Korean Americans for Harris, Latinas for Harris and Latino Men for Harris.

Getting voters to the polls

On-the-ground efforts like voter registration and voter mobilization can be a huge effort in a tight presidential race.

“The cause of the low rate of voter registration is the same cause of the low level of information around voting, so we want to make sure we’re not just registering people, we’re also talking to them about how the process of voting works, where they can vote, how they can vote early,” said Jack Golub, the North Carolina community engagement program manager for the Hispanic Federation, a group that does civic engagement in the Latino community.

Nationally, the voting registration gap for Latinos — the difference between those eligible to vote who have registered and those who have not registered — is about 13.2 million, which is based on the most recent data from 2022 from UNIDOS, a Latino advocacy organization.?

The Trump campaign has largely focused on trying to make inroads with Latino voters through roundtable discussions with leaders as well as a town hall hosted by Univision for undecided Latino voters. Separately, Harris also took part in a Univision town hall with undecided Latino voters.

A Monday poll showed that Harris continues to outperform Trump among Latino voters in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

When it comes to Asian American voters and Trump, his rhetoric during his first term around the coronavirus and linking it to China could have fueled anti-Asian sentiment among Trump voters, a study shows.?

But Steven Cheung, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement to States Newsroom that the former president is an advocate for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and has “created an environment where diversity, equal opportunity, and prosperity were afforded to everybody.”

“Anyone who says otherwise is disgustingly using the AAPI community to play political games for their own benefit,” Cheung said. “The 2024 campaign is poised to build upon the strength and successes of Asian Americans during President Trump’s first term to propel him to a … second term victory.”

It comes down to policy

With Harris at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket after Biden’s withdrawal last summer, more Asian American voters are planning to support her compared to when Biden was in the race, according to a comprehensive survey by AAPIVote and AAPI Data.?

The late September survey also said 66% of Asian American voters said they plan on voting for Harris, compared to 28% of Asian American voters who said they would vote for Trump. About 6% were undecided.

Chintan Patel, the executive director of Indian American Impact, said that while he has noticed an enthusiasm for Harris leading the presidential ticket, it still comes down to policy, specifically the economy, for the South Asian community.

“Yes, the community is excited about the opportunity to elect a South Asian president, there’s no question, but we’re also looking for, what are her plans?” he said.

His organization focuses on electing Indian Americans and has backed Harris.

“One of the things that I think is really resonating with the community is her plans around the economy, creating an opportunity economy, particularly helping small businesses,” Patel said. “Small businesses have been such a vital, important part of mobility for South Asian Americans, particularly the immigrant story, the first generation story, that is how we have seen mobility.”

Harris often talks of her late mother’s roots. But that seems to have little sway in some parts of North Carolina’s South Asian community — a surprise to Eva Eapen, an 18-year-old canvasser for NCAAT.

Eapen, a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said she expected to see more excitement in the South Asian community when Harris picked up the torch for Democrats as the presidential nominee.

“I don’t know if it’s lack of engagement. I don’t know if it’s lack of information. I don’t know if it’s lack of mobilization, but they don’t really care,” she said. “Maybe it’s more policy over nationality as Hindi?”

Several South Asian voters who States Newsroom spoke with in North Carolina made similar remarks. The fact that the Democratic presidential nominee was South Asian didn’t guarantee their vote and they instead expressed concern over the cost of living and the economy.

Ikamjit Gill, 28, said the biggest issues getting him to the polls are inflation and the economy.

“It’s not a big thing for me,” Gill said of Harris’ background.

Gill said he’s a registered Democrat and voted for Biden in 2020, but this year he’s considering voting for Trump. He said he was laid off from his tech job under the Biden administration and got his first job under the Trump administration.

“I’ve been out of a job for a while,” he said. “I just want some change.”

Vishal Ohir, 47, of Wake County, North Carolina, said he was initially leaning toward voting for Trump, but was impressed by Harris during the presidential debate in September. He liked her detailed plans around housing and the economy.

Ohir said he’s still undecided but in the end, he wants a presidential candidate who can tackle the cost of living because “everything has gone up.”

Arvind Balaraman, 53, of Wake County, North Carolina, said he’s frustrated that wages have not kept up with the cost of living. He said he’s not particularly excited there’s a South Asian candidate running for president. He just wants his grocery bill lowered.

“Everything has doubled, tripled,” he said of prices. “You had two different parties in the last two terms and the prices are still going up.”

Balaraman said he’s undecided, but still plans to vote in the presidential election.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, which is a mega church in Stonecrest, Georgia, on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024 as part of a “souls to the polls” push. Harris presented the stakes of the presidential race in stark terms: “And now we face this question: what kind of country do we want to live in? A country of chaos, fear and hate or a country of freedom, compassion and justice?” (Photo by Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder)

WASHINGTON — A new poll released Monday by a civic engagement group found that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris continues to grow her support with Latinos in critical battleground states.

In a tight presidential race, both campaigns have tried to court the Latino vote — one of the fastest-growing voting blocs.

The poll for Voto Latino by the firm GQR surveyed 2,000 Latinos registered to vote in the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — although not Georgia — from Sept. 25 to Oct. 2.

Vice President Harris even outperformed President Joe Biden in several swing states compared to his 2020 presidential results, according to the poll.

In August, Harris had the support of about 60% of Latino voters compared to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s 29%, according to the poll. Both candidates increased their support of that voting bloc in October, with Harris at 64% and Trump at 31%.

The poll found that Harris’ growth has come from young Latino voters, ages 18 to 29.

In the swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the poll found that Harris outperforms with Latino voters compared to Biden’s estimated wins among Latinos in 2020. In Arizona, Biden had 61% of the Latino vote four years ago, and Harris now polls at about 66%, the survey said.

In Pennsylvania, Biden had 69% of the Latino vote compared to Harris now polling at 77%, and in North Carolina, Biden had 57% of the Latino vote compared to Harris’ support of 67%, the poll said.

In 2020, Biden won Arizona and Pennsylvania by slim margins but lost North Carolina to Trump.

Trump visits Asheville, Harris teams up with Liz Cheney

After Hurricane Helene’s destruction in late September, campaigning in western North Carolina resumed Monday.

Trump visited Asheville, North Carolina, Monday afternoon to survey the destruction left by the aftermath of the Category 4 hurricane. While there, he stressed the importance of early voting, which is already underway in the state.

“It’s vital that we not let this hurricane that has taken so much also take your voice,” Trump said. “You must get out and vote.”

Harris on Monday blitzed around the suburban areas of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming for “moderated conversations.”

Arnold Palmer, McDonald’s and Usher

With almost two weeks until Election Day on Nov. 5, both candidates have rolled out celebrities and political stunts in an effort to court every vote in an election that is essentially a dead heat.

That was apparent over the weekend.

In Pennsylvania, Trump ended his Saturday evening with a rally in Latrobe where for roughly 10 minutes he described the male anatomy of the late golfer Arnold Palmer.

“This is a guy that was all man,” Trump said of Palmer, “when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there they said, ‘oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’”

On Sunday Trump visited a closed McDonald’s, where for 20 minutes he donned an apron, worked the fryers and helped put together orders. He served a few pre-screened people who won the opportunity to partake in the campaign event via a lottery.

The visit to the Golden Arches came after Harris touted her work experience at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, while she was a college student. Trump has cast doubt, without evidence, on whether that actually happened.

On Monday afternoon, after Harris’ jet landed in Michigan, a reporter shouted a question at her as to whether she ever worked at McDonald’s.

“Did I? I did!” Harris said, smiling and putting her thumb up, according to the pool report.

Harris returned to Georgia on Saturday, where she energized her base to take advantage of early voting. More than 1.3 million people have voted in Georgia, according to the Secretary of State’s turnout datahub.

She held a campaign rally alongside R&B singer Usher and visited Sunday church services in the Atlanta area as part of a “souls to the polls” effort.

Another intense week on the way

This week, Trump will attend a roundtable with Latino leaders on Tuesday in Miami, Florida. An earlier planned event with the National Rifle Association in Savannah, Georgia, was canceled.

In the evening, Trump will then travel to Greensboro, North Carolina, for a rally. His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance will be campaigning in Arizona.

On Tuesday, Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will stump in Madison, Wisconsin, with former President Barack Obama to encourage early voting.

On Wednesday night, Harris will participate in a CNN town hall in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

Trump on Wednesday will hold a faith-related town hall in Zebulon, Georgia, in the late afternoon. In the evening, he’ll head to Duluth, Georgia, to appear as a special guest at the conservative Turning Point PAC and Turning Point Action Rally.

On Thursday, Vance will partake in a town hall in Detroit, Michigan, with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo.

Back in Georgia, Harris and Obama will headline a get-out-the-vote rally.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives for a rally at the Resch Expo Center on Oct. 17, 2024 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The event was one of three Harris had scheduled in the swing state that day. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — With 18 days until Election Day, the presidential candidates and their surrogates are hitting battleground states that have begun early voting, as well as sitting down for interviews with targeted audiences.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, will be in two swing states next week with two Democratic celebrities: former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama.

Harris and Barack Obama will head to Georgia, which has already begun early voting, on Thursday. She’ll then campaign in Michigan with Michelle Obama, as early voting starts Oct. 26.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, appeared Friday on a popular sports podcast by NFL commentator and host Rich Eisen, where Walz — a former high school football coach — provided an analysis of the upcoming Detroit Lions-Minnesota Vikings football game on Sunday.

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has his own surrogate in tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Musk, the Tesla CEO and owner of X, formerly Twitter, campaigned on behalf of Trump, attending rallies and holding a Thursday town hall in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. More town halls with Musk are planned in the coming days.

Musk, who is also an immigrant, complained about immigration during the town hall and said that he’s “pro-immigrant, I just want to be sure that people who come here are going to be assets to society.”

He has donated about $75 million to organizations supporting Trump’s reelection, according to recent campaign filings.

Al Smith dinner?

Trump late Thursday attended the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a ritzy white-tie event that raises millions for Catholic charities in New York. Organizers invite the presidential candidates to share a stage before Election Day for some light comedic roasting.

Harris did not appear at the charity occasion due to campaigning in the critical battleground state of Wisconsin, but sent in a video. The Trump campaign criticized her for not attending.

“Kamala — who isn’t funny, despises Catholics, and was too afraid of being roasted by President Trump — became the first presidential nominee since 1984 to skip the event,” the campaign said in a statement. The National Catholic Reporter reports the Harris campaign says it is committed to engagement with Catholic voters.

The only presidential candidate to purposely skip the dinner was Democratic nominee Walter Mondale and presidential candidates were not invited in 1996 and 2004. In 1992, the dinner was on the same night as the presidential debate between Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George H.W. Bush.

Pope Francis has criticized both candidates. “Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies,″ Francis said.

Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement that Trump’s performance at the dinner was “unstable.”

“He stumbled over his words and lashed out when the crowd wouldn’t laugh with him,” Moussa said. “The rare moments he was off script, he went on long incomprehensible rambles, reminding Americans how unstable he’s become.”

Trump in friendly environs

Trump has largely stuck to media appearances with conservative outlets and appeared on podcasts geared toward young men.

He went on a “PBD Podcast” that aired Thursday where with the host, Patrick Bet-David, Trump again questioned Harris’ race.

This is not the first time Trump has publicly commented on Harris’ race, as he did in Chicago during the National Association of Black Journalists in July. Harris is Black and Indian; her father is Jamaican, and her late mother was Indian.

“They have a woman who is Black, although you would say she’s Indian, but she is Black … a lot of people didn’t know,” Trump said on the podcast.

Trump has also backed out of several interviews with traditional media outlets like CBS’ “60 Minutes” and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Joe Kernen, co-host of the “Squawk Box” said Friday that Trump canceled a scheduled interview.

CNN offered to host a town hall with both candidates. Trump has not committed, but Harris will participate in the CNN town hall on Wednesday.

Trump objects to lessons on slavery

Trump appeared on “Fox & Friends” early Friday, where he called Harris a “Marxist” and pushed back against Harris’ criticism that he is “unstable.”

“I am the most stable human being,” Trump said.

On the show, viewers sent in questions. One asked how Trump would handle education policy. Trump said that he would support school choice and would get rid of the U.S. Department of Education.

He added that he would withhold federal funding from public schools that teach about slavery in U.S. history.

“If they wanna get cute, then you don’t send them the money,” Trump said, referring to public schools in states like California, which are Democratic strongholds.

One of the hosts, Brian Kilmeade, asked Trump how he plans to reach out to women in the final days of the election, as Harris is outperforming him with that voting bloc.

Trump said that he does “very well with women, and I think it’s all nonsense.”

Overall, women who are registered to vote support Harris by 52% compared to 43% for Trump, according to the Pew Research Center.?

“You have one issue, you have the issue of abortion,” Trump said. “Without abortion, the women love me. They like me anyway.”

Trump has often taken credit for ending Roe v. Wade, which granted the constitutional right to an abortion, by appointing three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What’s next

Both campaigns have a busy weekend.

Harris will head to Detroit, Michigan on Saturday for a campaign event and then to Atlanta, Georgia. In the Peach State she will be joined by R&B singer Usher for a campaign rally, where she will focus on the importance of early voting.

Walz will travel to Chicago on Saturday to attend a campaign reception. Walz will then head to Omaha, Nebraska, for another campaign reception and will later give remarks at a rally.

On Saturday night, Trump will energize his base at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He’ll also hold a town hall Sunday evening in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, is heading to Waukesha, Wisconsin on Sunday for a campaign event.

Guns are shown at Caso’s Gun-A-Rama in Jersey City, New Jersey, which has been open since 1967. (Photo by Aristide Economopoulos/NJ Monitor)

This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.

WASHINGTON — A mass shooting at a Georgia high school in September thrust the issue of gun violence to the forefront of the presidential race.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump agree that gun violence is a major problem, but they offer strikingly different views on how to address it.

Two 14-year-old students and two math teachers were killed at Apalachee High School.

While at a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, shortly after the Apalachee shooting, Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, renewed calls for an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and red flag laws.

Students should not have to be frightened of school shootings, she said. “They are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential, yet some part of their big, beautiful minds is worried about a shooter breaking through the door,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, expressed his condolences.

“Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA,” Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social. “These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”

Trump has survived two assassination attempts, one where he was injured in the ear, but has not changed his stance on guns.

After the first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said at the Republican National Convention that the party won’t back away from its support of Second Amendment rights.

During a Univision town hall with undecided Latino voters that aired Wednesday night, an audience member asked Trump how he would explain his gun policy to “parents of the victims of school shootings.”

“We have a Second Amendment and a right to bear arms,” Trump said. “I’m very strongly an advocate of that. I think that if you ever tried to get rid of it, you wouldn’t be able to do it. You wouldn’t be able to take away the guns, because people need that for security, they need it for entertainment and for sport, and other things. But they also, in many cases, need it for protection.”

A majority of Americans view gun violence as a problem — about 60% — and they expect it to only get worse over the next five years, according to a Pew Research Center study.

This year there have been 421 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun violence in the U.S.

For a third year in a row, in 2022 — the most recent year of finalized data — firearms were the leading cause of death for children and teens ages 1 to 17, according to a report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

Harris’ record

In the aftermath of two mass shootings in 2022, Congress passed the most comprehensive bipartisan gun safety legislation in decades.

In Uvalde, Texas, 19 children and two teachers were murdered, making it the second-deadliest mass shooting since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012. In Buffalo, a white supremacist targeted a Black neighborhood and killed 10 Black people in a grocery store.

The package that Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed into law provided $11 billion in mental health funds and $750 million for states to enact red flag laws. It also closed loopholes and established a White House Office for Gun Violence Prevention, among other provisions.

Red flag laws allow courts to temporarily remove a firearm from an individual who is a threat to themselves or others, among other provisions.

Biden tasked Harris with leading the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which helps local communities implement that 2022 bipartisan gun legislation and aids communities impacted by gun violence.

Trump’s record

During Trump’s first presidency, he had a mixed record on gun policy.

After a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Trump administration moved to ban bump stocks, which allow a semi-automatic rifle to quickly fire bullets.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court, to which Trump appointed three conservative justices, struck down the ban on bump stocks.?

Trump also threatened to veto legislation from Congress that would have enhanced background checks on guns.

Promise: a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines

Democrats have long called for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which are typically used in mass shootings.

The U.S. used to have a ban on assault weapons, but it expired in 2004 and Congress failed to renew the ban.

“I am in favor of the Second Amendment, and I believe we need to reinstate the assault weapons ban,” Harris said at the White House in late September.

Fulfilling this promise would come down to the makeup in Congress and overcoming the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to advance legislation.

Promise: a rollback of Biden regulations

During a forum with the National Rifle Association in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in February, Trump promised to roll back all gun-related regulations that the Biden administration has implemented.

“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated on my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,” Trump said.

Trump specifically said he would cancel the Biden administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy, which revokes federal licenses from gun dealers who violate firearm laws.

Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign senior adviser, said in a statement to States Newsroom that if Trump wins a second term, “he will terminate every single one of the Harris-Biden’s attacks on law-abiding gun owners his first week in office and stand up for our constitutionally enshrined right to bear arms.”

Promise: tax credits, no gun-free zones

During an NRA event in April 2023, Trump said that he was supportive of a tax credit for teachers who wanted to carry a firearm in schools.

Trump has also previously voiced his disapproval of schools being gun-free zones. Days after the Uvalde school shooting, Trump attended another NRA event in Houston, Texas, where he argued that a gun-free zone does not allow people to protect themselves.

“As the age-old saying goes, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Trump said. “The existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens.”

He argued that schools should have metal detectors, fencing and an armed police officer.

The Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, takes questions from Latino voters at a town hall hosted by Univision on Oct. 16, 2024. (Photo by Felipe Cuevas/TelevisaUnivision)

WASHINGTON — With less than three weeks to Election Day, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spent Wednesday evening zeroing in on undecided voters, in a race that polls have in a dead heat.

In Doral, Florida, Trump made his pitch to undecided Latino voters for an hour-long Univision town hall and Vice President Harris waded into? conservative waters in a 30-minute Fox News interview with news anchor Bret Baier.

Undecided Latino voters from across the country asked Trump 12 questions focused on the economy, immigration and reproductive rights, among other issues. Trump rarely answered the questions, often meandering off topic and joking that the hardest question he was asked was to list three virtues he admired of his opponent.

“She seems to have an ability to survive,” Trump said of Harris.

In an effort to reach moderate and undecided Republicans, Harris engaged in a somewhat testy interview with Baier that focused on the Biden administration’s immigration policies and Trump’s rhetoric.

The interview also provided Harris with a rare opportunity to distinguish herself from President Joe Biden, a question that she faltered with when asked earlier on the daytime show “The View.”

“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, and like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas,” she said. “I represent a new generation of leadership.”

Harris spars with Baier

The start of the interview with Baier brought a barrage of questions about migration at the southern border, and he often interrupted Harris during her answers. He pressed her on why the Biden administration rolled back Trump-era immigration policies.

Immigration has become a top issue for voters and one that Trump has centered in his reelection campaign.

Harris focused on how U.S. immigration needs to be fixed and how the White House brokered a border security deal with the U.S. Senate that was bipartisan until Trump instructed GOP lawmakers to walk back on the deal.

Harris said that Americans “want solutions and they want a president of the United States who’s not playing political games with the issue.”

She also tried to emphasize how she would unite the country, touting endorsements from Republicans.

The Harris campaign has aligned with Republicans who have rebuked Trump, such as launching Republicans for Harris and having former GOP U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming serve as a campaign surrogate to court moderate Republicans.

The Harris campaign has also often pointed to the dozens of Trump administration officials who no longer support the former president.

‘The enemy within’

Harris also blasted Trump’s recent remarks that referred to Democrats as “the enemy within.”

The most combative part of the interview came when Baier played a clip from a Fox News town hall that Trump held with women where the host Harris Faulkner asked him about those comments about “the enemy within.”

In the town hall, Trump said “it is the enemy from within, and they are very dangerous; they are Marxists and communists and fascists and they’re sick.”

But the clip Baier played showed a different response from Trump, and in which he was not making threats.

“I’m not threatening anyone,” Trump said in the clip that Baier played for Harris. “They’re the ones doing the threatening. They do phony investigations. I’ve been investigated more than Alphonse Capone was.”

Harris pointed out that the clip “was not what he has been saying about the enemy within.”

“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest,” Harris said.

“He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy and in a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”

Latino voters question Trump

Both campaigns have tried to attract Latino voters, the second-largest group of eligible voters.

Before the Univision town hall started, Trump said that he was making inroads with Latinos.

Latino voter preferences still largely resemble the 2020 presidential election, when Biden defeated Trump 61% to 36% in earning the Latino vote, according to the Pew Research Center.?

Harris currently has a smaller lead over Trump with Latinos, 57% to 39%, according to the Pew Research Center.

Harris already had a Univision town hall with the undecided voters, but Trump’s was postponed due to Hurricane Milton.

One of the audience members, Carlos Aguilera, who works as a public utilities manager in Florida, said he’s seen climate change affect his industry and asked Trump if he still thinks climate change is a hoax.

Trump didn’t answer the question, and said he’s not concerned about weather but instead about nuclear weapons. He said if Harris wins, the U.S. will end up in another world war.

Several voters asked Trump about his plan for bringing down inflation and for job creation.

Trump mainly blamed the Biden administration for inflation. He said he would drill for oil, in order to bring down the cost of living. Trump also said he would implement a mix of tax breaks and tariffs to bring companies to the U.S. to create jobs.

“Under this administration, we are going to bring companies in through a system of taxes — positive we call it — positive taxation,” Trump said. “We are going to bring companies in at a level that you’ve never seen in this country before.”

Mass deportations

Several voters asked Trump questions relating to immigration.

A former farmworker, Jorge Valazquez, from California, said that for many years he picked strawberries and cut broccoli in the fields. He said many of those workers are undocumented and he asked Trump what his plans for mass deportations of those workers would mean, especially for food prices.

Trump said he backs legal migration and those jobs would be available for Black and Hispanic workers. In addition to promising a mass deportation of millions of immigrants in the country without authorization, Trump has proposed ending several legal pathways for immigrants such as humanitarian parole and Temporary Protected Status.

“A lot of the jobs that you have, and that other people have, are being taken by these people that are coming in,” Trump said of immigrants. “And the African American population and the Hispanic population in particular are losing jobs now because millions of people are coming in.”

Another audience member, Guadalupe Ramirez from Illinois, asked Trump what his plan is to fix the U.S. immigration system. She asked why he did not support the bipartisan border security deal the Senate and White House struck.

Trump praised his previous immigration policies and then criticized cities with Democratic leadership like Chicago.

“The Democrats are weak,” Trump said. “Don’t forget, the Democrats run Chicago.”

Trump did not answer the question as to why he instructed congressional GOP lawmakers to walk away from the border deal.

The last question on immigration came from Jose Saralegui of Arizona, who said he’s a registered Republican but undecided. He asked about Trump’s comments about Springfield, Ohio, where not only Trump, but several GOP lawmakers have falsely claimed that legal Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets.

Saralegui said that he’s concerned that Trump has called for revoking those immigrants’ legal status — as many have TPS due to unstable conditions in Haiti — and asked Trump, “Do you really believe that these people are eating the people’s pets?”

Trump didn’t answer as to whether he believed that claim, but said he’s just “saying what was reported,” and that Haitians are “eating other things too, that they’re not supposed to be, but this is all I do, is report.”

These claims have been widely debunked. The Wall Street Journal found the Ohio woman who filed a police report for her missing cat and accused Haitian immigrants in the neighborhood of stealing people’s pets and eating them. The woman later found her cat, but the Trump campaign ran with the rumor even though it was found to be baseless.

“You have a town, a beautiful little town with no problems, all of a sudden they have 30 or 32,000 people dropped into the town, most of whom don’t speak the language, and what they’re doing is they’re looking all over for interpreters,” Trump said. “Well, I mean, I think you can’t just destroy our country.”

Saralegui, and many of the audience members who asked questions, had interpreters.

Reproductive rights

Trump was asked about reproductive rights by Yaritza Kuhn of North Carolina. Kuhn said that Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, wrote about her support of abortion and reproductive rights in her recent book. Kuhn asked Trump if he agreed with his wife.

Trump did not answer whether he agreed with his wife, but said, “I told Melania that she has to go with her heart.”

“I want her to do what she wants to do,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to oppose what I think.”

People demonstrate and call out words of encouragement to detainees held inside the Metropolitan Detention Center after marching to decry Trump administration immigration and refugee policies on June 30, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —Top advisers to the Kamala Harris presidential campaign held a Wednesday press conference including children who were separated from their parents under the highly criticized Trump administration immigration policy, as a warning of what a second term under the former president could bring for the Latino community.

The press conference in Doral, Florida, came ahead of a late Wednesday Univision town hall at which GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will talk with undecided Latino voters.

Four children at the press conference recounted stories of being separated from a parent by immigration officials during the Trump administration and the lasting trauma it caused. Their full names and ages were not provided by the campaign.

With 20 days until Nov. 5 and early voting underway in many states, both campaigns have tried to court Latino voters, as they are the second-largest group of eligible voters.

“The Latino vote will decide this election,” Democratic Texas U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, who serves as co-chair for the Harris campaign, said at the press conference.

Harris campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said that for the next 20 days, Democrats will continue to reach out to Latinos and stress “the threat that Donald Trump is to Latino communities everywhere.”

Harris looks for Latino support

The 2024 presidential election is essentially a dead heat between Harris and Trump. Latino voter preferences largely resemble the 2020 presidential election, when President Joe Biden defeated Trump 61% to 36% in earning the Latino vote, according to the Pew Research Center.?

Harris, the Democratic nominee, currently has a smaller lead over Trump with Latinos, 57% to 39%, according to the Pew Research Center.

Escobar warned what a second Trump administration could bring to the Latino community.

“I hear a lot of Latinos who say that they want to vote for Donald Trump, that they appreciate some of his policies,” she said.

Escobar said that Trump has not only promised to carry out mass deportations, but go after pathways to legal immigration. She argued that architects of some of the former president’s harshest immigration policies are top level advisers, like Stephen Miller, who has proposed eliminating legal immigration like humanitarian parole programs and Temporary Protected Status.

Miller has also proposed a program to strip naturalized citizens of their U.S. citizenship — an initiative that Miller said would be “turbocharged” under a second Trump administration.

“For Latinos who think that when Donald Trump insults immigrants, or when he talks about mass deportation that you’re thinking he’s talking about somebody else, oh no, no, he’s talking about you,” Escobar, who represents the border town of El Paso, said.

Escobar said there would be no guardrails for a second Trump administration and programs like family separation could be implemented. The separation occurred at the border as asylum-seeking parents were put into criminal detention and sometimes deported.

“These kids who have lived through horrific trauma, through the pain of being separated from their parents, what you heard from them moments ago will be far worse if Trump gets a second term,” she said. “In Donald Trump’s first term, he had people around him who actually tried to stop him. In a second term, not only will those guardrails not exist, but those people who were there to stop him in the first place are long gone.”

Trump has declined to say whether he would resume family separations if given a second term, also known as the zero-tolerance policy.

“Well, when you have that policy, people don’t come. If a family hears that they’re going to be separated, they love their family. They don’t come. So I know it sounds harsh,” Trump said during a CNN town hall in May 2023.?

Escobar said that she is hoping that at Wednesday night’s town hall, Trump will be pressed on whether he would reimplement his family separation policy.

The Biden administration established a task force to reunite the 3,881 children who were separated from their families from 2017 to 2021.

The Department of Homeland Security has reunited about 74% of those families, but there are still 998 children who have not been reunited.

Aerial view of the Bridge of the Americas Land Port of Entry. One of four crossings in El Paso, the Bridge of the Americas is located on the international border separating El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico and connects with the Mexican port of “Cordova” in Juarez, Chihuahua. (Photo by Jerry Glaser/U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.

WASHINGTON — Immigration remains at the forefront of the 2024 presidential election, with both candidates taking a tougher stance than in the past on the flow of migrants into the United States.

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has made immigration a core campaign issue, as he did in his two previous bids for the White House, and has expanded his attacks this time around to include false claims about migrants with legal status in specific locations like Springfield, Ohio.

He’s often demonized immigrants in speeches and at rallies, and has vowed to enact the mass deportation of millions of people living in the United States without authorization.

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, like the Biden administration, has shifted to the right on immigration, embracing limits to asylum and advocating for added border security, as migrant encounters hit a record high at the end of 2023. With those new policies in place, migrant encounters have sharply fallen this year.

Vice President Harris in her remarks on immigration has mainly stuck to her promise to sign into law a bipartisan border security deal that three senators struck earlier this year. That legislation, if enacted, would have been the most drastic change in U.S. immigration law in decades.

The deal never made it out of the Senate. Once Trump expressed his displeasure with the bill, House Republicans pulled their support, and the GOP in the upper chamber followed suit.

Harris has not detailed her positions on immigration beyond her support of the border security bill.

Regardless of who wins the White House, the incoming administration will be tasked with the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects a little over half a million undocumented people brought into the United States as children without authorization. A Texas legal challenge threatens the legality of the program, and the case could make its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Additionally, work visas, massive backlogs in U.S. immigration courts and renewing those individuals in Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, will fall to the next administration. Neither candidate has laid out how they would handle those issues.

The Trump campaign did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

The Harris campaign pointed to the vice president’s remarks from an Arizona campaign rally where she acknowledged the U.S. has a broken immigration system and put her support behind border security and legal pathways to citizenship.

Harris also took a September trip to the southern border.?

Promise: border security deal

Harris has made the bipartisan border deal a centerpiece of her campaign. She’s often promised to sign it into law and has used the proposal to criticize Trump.

“We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border,” Harris said during the Democratic National Convention in August.

The bill negotiated by senators would need to reach the 60-vote threshold to advance through the chamber. But after Trump came out against it and it was brought to the floor, the Republican who handled negotiations with Democrats and the White House, Oklahoma’s James Lankford, voted against his own bill.

Additionally, House Democrats in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and immigration groups were not supportive of the bill.

“I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law,” Harris said at the DNC.

The measure raises the bar for asylum, and would require asylum seekers to provide greater proof of their fear of persecution.

The bill would have also provided $20 billion for the hiring of more than 4,000 asylum officers, legal counsel for unaccompanied minors and the purchase of drug screening technology at ports of entry. It would also have provided $8 billion for detention facilities to add 50,000 detention beds.

The plan did include some legal pathways to citizenship for Afghans who aided the U.S. and fled in 2021 after the U.S. withdrew from the country. It also provided up to 10,000 special visas for family members of those Afghan allies.

It also would have added 250,000 green-card employee and family-based visas over the next five years.

Promise: mass deportations

“Send them back,” is chanted at Trump’s rallies, where he often promises to carry out mass deportations.

There are roughly 11 million people in the U.S. without legal authorization.

“We’re going to have the largest deportation,” Trump said at a June campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin. “We have no choice.”

Under Trump’s vision, mass deportation would be a broad, multipronged effort that includes invoking an 18th-century law; reshuffling law enforcement at federal agencies; transferring funds within programs in the Department of Homeland Security; and forcing greater enforcement of immigration laws.

Promise: an end to birthright citizenship

In a May 2023 campaign video, Trump said if he wins the White House, one of his first moves would be to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship, which means anyone born in the U.S., regardless of their parents’ status, is an American citizen.

This is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and would likely face legal challenges.

“As part of my plan to secure the border, on Day One of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship,” Trump said.

Promise: deportation of pro-Palestinian students on visas

Across the country, students on college campuses during the past year have set up encampments and protests calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and an end to the Israel-Hamas war.

In the initial attack on Oct. 7, 2023, more than 1,200 people were killed in Israel and hundreds taken hostage. As the war has continued, researchers estimate that as many as 186,000 Palestinians have been killed, directly and indirectly.

At a private dinner in May, Trump told donors that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country,” according to the Washington Post.

“You know, there are a lot of foreign students,” Trump said. “As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.”

Trump also made that vow during a campaign rally in October 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“We’ll terminate the visas of all of Hamas’ sympathizers, and we’ll get them off our college campuses, out of our cities and get them the hell out of our country, if that’s OK with you,” he said.

The Republican party made it part of its party platform in July.?

Promise: an end to parole programs

With immigration reform stalled in Congress, one way the Biden administration has handled mass migration is the use of humanitarian parole programs. Those humanitarian parole programs have been used for Ukrainians fleeing the war with Russia, Afghans fleeing after the U.S. withdrawal and for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans.

More than 1 million people have been paroled into the U.S. under the executive authority extended by the Biden administration.

Trump said in a November 2023 campaign video? he would end this policy on his first day in office.

“I will stop the outrageous abuse of parole authority,” Trump said.

Promise: green cards for foreign students

In a June podcast interview, Trump said that he was supportive of giving green cards to foreign students if they graduate from a U.S. college.

“What I will do is, if you graduate from a college, I think you should get, automatically as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” Trump said. “That includes junior colleges, too.”

This would be done through rulemaking from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

On the podcast, Trump also said he would extend H-1B visas for tech workers. Those visas allow employers to hire foreign workers for specialized occupations, usually for a high skill role.

Promise: more screenings of immigrants

On social media, the Trump campaign said it would put in place an “ideological screening” for all immigrants and bar those who have sympathies toward Hamas.

Promise: Trump-era immigration policies?

Trump has stated in various campaign speeches that he plans to reinstate his immigration policies from his first term.

That would include the continuation of building a wall along the southern border; reissuing a travel ban on individuals from predominantly Muslim countries; suspending travel of refugees; reinstating a public health policy that barred migrants from claiming asylum amid the coronavirus pandemic; and reinstating the remain in Mexico policy that required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting their cases.

Protesters in front of the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol urged Congress to pass the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, in December 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — After concluding oral arguments Thursday, a panel of federal judges will determine the fate of a program that has shielded from deportation more than half a million immigrants lacking permanent legal status who came into the United States as children.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a 12-year program that was meant to be temporary during the Obama administration while Congress passed a pathway to citizenship, has been caught in a years-long battle after the Trump administration moved to end the program.

Greisa Martinez Rosas, the executive director for the youth immigration organization United We Dream, said in a statement that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit should reject the “baseless lawsuit” brought by Texas and other states.

“DACA recipients have withstood over a decade of attacks by violent, anti-immigrant officials and have kept DACA alive through their courage and resilience,” Rosas said. “I urge President (Joe) Biden and every elected official to treat this moment with the urgency it requires and to take bold and swift action to protect all immigrants once and for all. ”

A panel of three judges on the appeals court heard oral arguments on behalf of the program from the Justice Department, the state of New Jersey and an immigration rights group, all advocating the legality of the Biden administration’s 2021 final rule to codify the program.

Last year the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas declared it unlawful and allowed current DACA recipients to continue renewing their status, but barred new applicants.

The Justice Department and the others asked the appeals court judges to consider three things. They are challenging whether the state of Texas has standing to show it was harmed by DACA; whether the regulation is lawful within presidential authority; and whether the trial court had the authority to place a nationwide injunction on the program.

The judges are Jerry Edwin Smith, appointed by former President Ronald Reagan; Edith Brown Clement, appointed by former President George W. Bush; and Stephen A. Higginson, appointed by former President Barack Obama.

The 5th Circuit in New Orleans covers Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, and typically delivers conservative rulings.

Joseph N. Mazzara, arguing on behalf of the state of Texas, said that DACA harmed the state because there is a “pocketbook cost to Texas with regard to education and medical care.”

He said that the end of DACA would likely lead recipients to self-deport and “return to their country of origin,” which he argued would alleviate Texas’ financial costs.

It could take weeks or months for a ruling, which is likely to head to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the fate of DACA may be left to the incoming administration.

In a statement on Thursday’s oral arguments, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, slammed the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, for “targeting young people who grew up pledging allegiance to America.”

“Regardless of the outcome of this case, we should be very clear about what is at stake in this election,” she said. “Donald Trump tried to end DACA once, and if given the chance, he will not rest until he is successful.”

The Supreme Court in 2020 overturned the Trump administration’s decision to end the program, but on the grounds that the White House didn’t follow the proper procedure. The high court did not make a decision whether the program itself was unlawful or not.

States’ standing

Brian Boynton argued on behalf of the Biden administration.

He argued that the eight states that sued the Biden administration along with Texas have no standing because they did not demonstrate any harm caused by DACA.

Those other states challenging DACA include Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas and Mississippi.

“Any person in the state of Texas, citizen or noncitizen, is entitled to precisely the same types of services, emergency health care services and public K through 12 education,” he said. “It’s not a situation where only someone with DACA is entitled to the services.”

Boynton asked the panel to uphold U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s policy of keeping DACA in place for current recipients – about 535,000 people – if the court decides to strike the program down while DACA continues to undergo the appeals process.

Hanen ruled in 2021 that DACA was unlawful, determining that the Obama administration exceeded its presidential authority in creating the program. He allowed current DACA recipients to remain in the program, but barred the federal government from accepting new applicants.

It’s estimated that there are 95,000 applicants that are blocked due to that order, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.?

The Biden administration then went through the formal rulemaking, which Hanen reviewed and again deemed unlawful, prompting the appeal before the three judges.

Boynton argued against a nationwide injunction on DACA recipients being able to apply for the program.

“With respect to the propriety of nationwide injunctions, it’s very clear that an injunction should be narrowly crafted to provide a remedy only to the party that is injured, and here that would be Texas,” he said.

Nina Perales, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, argued that Texas in its legal arguments is including spending costs for students in K-12 schools who cannot be DACA recipients because those recipients are over 18 and have aged out of the program.

Perales addressed the health care argument from Texas and said Texas did not show the incurred health costs of just DACA recipients.

“Texas points to health care spending on the entire undocumented immigrant population, as Texas estimates it,” she said. “Not DACA recipients.”

“It’s been widely understood that DACA recipients overall provide a net benefit to their state,” she added.

This story has been updated with comments from Vice President Kamala Harris.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday considered a federal firearm regulation aimed at reining in ghost guns, untraceable, unregulated weapons made from kits. In this photo, a ghost gun is displayed before the start of an event about gun violence in the Rose Garden of the White House April 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court justices Tuesday grappled with whether the Biden administration exceeded its authority when it set regulations for kits that can be assembled into untraceable firearms, and a majority of justices seemed somewhat skeptical the rule was an overreach.

In Garland v. VanDerStok, the nine justices are tasked with determining whether a rule issued by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in 2022 overstepped in expanding the definition of “firearms” to include “ghost guns” under a federal firearms law.

Ghost guns are firearms without serial numbers and can be easily bought online and quickly assembled in parts, usually through a kit. Law enforcement officials use serial numbers to track guns that are used in crimes.

Arguing on behalf of the Biden administration, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices that there has been an “explosion in crimes” with untraceable guns across the U.S.

She added that the federal government has for years required gun manufacturers and sellers to mark firearms with a serial number.

“The industry has followed those conditions without difficulty for more than half a century, and those basic requirements are crucial to solving gun crimes and keeping guns out of the hands of minors, felons and domestic abusers,” Prelogar said.

She said with the kits to make untraceable homemade guns in as little as 15 minutes, those manufacturers “have tried to circumvent those requirements.”

Prelogar said untraceable guns “are attractive to people who can’t lawfully purchase them or who plan to use them in crime.”

Because the ATF saw a spike in crimes committed with those firearms, Prelogar said it promulgated the 2022 rule. The Biden administration said since 2016, it’s seen a tenfold increase in ghost guns.

What the rule does

The regulation does not ban ghost guns, but requires manufacturers of those firearm kits or parts to add a serial number to the products, as well as conduct background checks on potential buyers. The regulation also clarified those kits are considered covered by the 1968 Gun Control Act under the definition of a “firearm.”

The Biden administration is advocating for the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court’s decision that favored gun rights groups and owners that argued the agency exceeded its authority.

Pete Patterson on Tuesday represented those gun rights groups, such as the Firearms Policy Coalition and clients, and argued the ATF expanded the definition of a firearm to “include items that may readily be converted to a frame or receiver.”

A frame or receiver is the primary structure of a firearm that holds the other components that cause the gun to fire.

“Congress decided to regulate only a single part of a firearm, the frame or receiver, and Congress did not alter the common understanding of a frame or receiver,” he said. “ATF has now exceeded its authority by operating outside of the bounds set by Congress.”

The case has already been before the high court on an emergency basis in 2023. The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and two conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Amy Coney Barrett, allowed the regulation to remain in place while going through legal challenges.

The case is similar to the Supreme Court decision that struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks from the ATF, but that was on the grounds of a Second Amendment argument.

Omelets and turkey chili kits

Justice Samuel Alito questioned Prelogar whether the kits were defined as weapons.

“Here’s a blank pad and here’s a pen,” he said. “Is this a grocery list?”

She said it wasn’t because “there are a lot of things you could use those products for to create something other than a grocery list.”

Alito asked her if he had eggs, chopped up ham, peppers and onions, “is that a Western omelet?”

“No, because, again, those items have well known other uses to become something other than an omelet,” Prelogar said. “The key difference here is that these weapon parts kits are designed and intended to be used as instruments of combat, and they have no other conceivable use.”

Barrett asked if her answer would change if “you ordered it from HelloFresh and you got a kit and it was like turkey chili, but all of the ingredients are in the kit?”

Prelogar said it would.

“We are not suggesting that scattered components that might have some entirely separate and distinct function could be aggregated and called a weapon, in the absence of this kind of evidence that that is their intended purpose and function,” she said.

“But if you bought, you know, from Trader Joe’s, some omelet-making kit that had all of the ingredients to make the omelet, and maybe included whatever you would need to start the fire in order to cook the omelet, and had all of that objective indication that that’s what’s being marketed and sold, we would recognize that for what it is,” Prelogar continued.

Roberts asked Patterson what the purpose would be of selling a receiver without a hole in it, meaning the gun is not complete.

Patterson argued that the kits are mainly for gun hobbyists, who would have to drill their own holes to put the product together.

“Some individuals enjoy, like working on their car every weekend, some individuals want to construct their own firearms,” Patterson said.

Roberts seemed skeptical.

“I mean drilling a hole or two, I would think doesn’t give the same sort of reward that you get from working on your car on the weekends,” Roberts said.

Patterson argued that putting together a homemade gun was somewhat difficult, especially if an individual had no experience.

“Even once you have a complete frame, it’s not a trivial matter to put that together,” he said. “There are small parts that have to be put in precise locations.”

No hobbyists

In her rebuttal, Prelogar pushed back on the notion that hobbyists were using those kits, arguing that “if there is a market for these kits, for hobbyists, they can be sold to hobbyists, you just have to comply with the requirements of the Gun Control Act.”

“What the evidence shows is that these guns were being purchased and used in crime. There was a 1,000% increase between 2017 and 2021 in the number of these guns that were recovered as part of criminal investigations,” she said. “The reason why you want a ghost gun is specifically because it’s unserialized and can’t be traced.”

Vice President Kamala Harris took part in an interview with the “Call Her Daddy” podcast that was released Sunday. In this photo, the “Call Her Daddy” host, creator and executive producer, Alex Cooper, participates in The Art of The Interview session at Spotify Beach on June 20, 2023 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Antony Jones/Getty Images for Spotify)

WASHINGTON — In an interview released Sunday on a widely heard podcast geared toward young women, Vice President Kamala Harris stressed the importance of reproductive rights, a central topic in her bid for the White House.

The “Call Her Daddy” host, Alex Cooper, specifically centered the 40-minute interview around issues affecting women such as domestic violence and access to abortion.

Meanwhile, the GOP nominee, former President Donald Trump, joined the Hugh Hewitt radio show Monday, a conservative talk show that has about 7.5 million weekly listeners.

The interview with Trump was mostly about the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. In the attack, 1,200 people — including 46 U.S. citizens — were killed in Israel and hundreds were taken hostage.

On “Call Her Daddy,” Cooper noted before the interview that she does not have politicians on her show because it is not focused on politics, but “at the end of the day, I couldn’t see a world in which one of the main conversations in this election is women, and I’m not a part of it.”

“The conversation I know I am qualified to have is the one surrounding women’s bodies and how we are treated and valued in this country,” Cooper said.

She added that her team reached out to Trump and invited him on the show. “If he also wants to have a meaningful, in-depth conversation about women’s rights in this country, then he is welcome on ‘Call Her Daddy’ any time,” she said.

The podcast is the second-most listened-to on Spotify, with an average of 5 million weekly listeners. The demographics are about 90% women, with a large chunk of them Gen Z and Millennials? — an important voting bloc for Harris to reach with less than a month until the election concludes Nov. 5.

The podcast is part of Harris’ media marathon this week. Late Monday, she will appear on “60 Minutes” for an interview. On Tuesday she is scheduled to be in New York to appear on the daytime show “The View,” “The Howard Stern Show” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Victims of sexual assault

Harris on the podcast touched on several stories she tells on the campaign trail, such as how a high school friend ended up staying with her and her family because the friend was being sexually assaulted at home.

“I decided at a young age I wanted to do the work of protecting vulnerable people,” Harris said.

She added that it’s important to destigmatize survivors of sexual assault.

“The more that we let anything exist in the shadows, the more likely it is that people are suffering and suffering silently,” Harris said. “The more we talk about it, the more we will address it and deal with it, the more we will be equipped to deal with it, be it in terms of schools, in terms of the society at large, right, and to not stigmatize it.”

Cooper asked Harris how the U.S. can be safer for women.

Harris talked about domestic violence and the bind that women can be in if they have children and are financially reliant on an abuser.

“Most women will endure whatever personal, physical pain they must in order to make sure their kids have a roof over their head or food,” she said. “One of the ways that we know we can uplift the ability of women to have choices is uplift the ability of women to have economic health and well-being.”

Cooper asked Harris about the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago and the recent story of Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who died after not being able to receive an abortion following complications from taking an abortion pill.

Harris said states that pass abortion bans will argue there are exceptions “if the life of the mother is at risk,” but that it’s not a realistic policy in practice.

“You know what that means in practical terms, she’s almost dead before you decide to give her care. So we’re going to have public health policy that says a doctor, a medical professional, waits until you’re at death’s door before they give you care,” Harris said. “Where is the humanity?”

Trump criticizes protesters?

Besides the appearance with Hugh Hewitt, Trump is also scheduled late Monday to speak with Jewish leaders in Miami.

During the interview with Hewitt, Trump slammed the pro-Palestinian protests across college campuses and argued that those institutions should do more to quell the student protests.

“You have other Jewish students that are afraid,” Trump said. “Yeah, that’s true, and they should be afraid. I never thought I would see this in my life with the campus riots and what they’re saying and what they’re doing. And they have to put them down quickly.”

Hewitt asked Trump, because of his background as a real estate developer, if he could turn Gaza, which has been devastated by the war, into something like Monaco. The Principality of Monaco is an independent, affluent microstate along the coast of France that attracts wealthy tourists.

“It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything,” Trump said, noting the Mediterranean Sea bordering the Gaza Strip. “You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place — the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate.”

The war has drawn massive protests in the United States, and more than 40,000 people in Gaza have been killed, but researchers estimate the death toll is as high as 186,000.

Hewitt asked Trump about Harris’ housing policy that, if approved by Congress, would give first-time homebuyers up to $25,000 for a down payment. Both candidates have made housing a top issue.

Trump said he opposed the plan and instead advocated for the private sector to handle housing. He then veered off topic into immigration and without evidence accused migrants at the southern border of being murderers.

“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” he said. “You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

Trump has often invoked white supremacist language when talking about immigrants, accusing them of “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. He’s also made a core campaign promise of enacting mass deportations of millions of immigrants in the country who are in the country without authorization.

Hurricane interrupts campaign

Some campaign events have been postponed due to Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm barreling toward Florida. It comes after the devastating Hurricane Helene that caused severe damage in western North Carolina and other states in the Southeast.

A Tuesday roundtable with Trump and Latino leaders was postponed, as well as a town hall in Miami, Florida with Univison for undecided Hispanic voters. The Univision town hall with Harris is scheduled for Thursday in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, on Tuesday is scheduled to give remarks in Detroit, Michigan.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is heading to Reno, Nevada, Tuesday for a campaign reception.

Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota, joined by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaks at the Capitol on Sept. 29, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans shortly after Election Day will face a major decision for their chamber as well as the national party when they pick a new leader.

Once the dust from the election clears and the balance of power in the Senate is decided, senators will gather behind closed doors to choose who will lead their conference. Come January, that person will step into one of the more important and influential roles in the U.S. government, as well as becoming a prominent figure for messaging and fundraising for the GOP.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, Florida Sen. Rick Scott and South Dakota Sen. John Thune have all publicly announced they’re seeking the post. Thune is currently the minority whip, the No. 2 leader in the Senate GOP, and Cornyn held the whip job before him.

The lawmaker who secures the support of his colleagues will replace Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who since 2007 has led his party through three presidencies, numerous votes on natural disaster aid packages, the COVID-19 pandemic, two impeachments and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

McConnell, who served as majority leader when Republicans controlled the Senate, has been at the center of dozens of pivotal negotiations and ensured his position was a boon for his home state of Kentucky.

The Republican who takes his place will have to navigate choppy political seas in the years ahead as the GOP continues to hold onto the Reagan-era policies many still value, while adjusting to the brand of conservatism that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump champions.

States Newsroom interviewed Republican senators to find out what characteristics they believe the next GOP leader needs to have to earn their vote, and about the challenges that person will face in the years ahead.

While only one senator would volunteer an opinion on a favorite candidate, many said they are interested in a leader who will emphasize moving legislation through the chamber, listen closely to members and forge strong ties with what they hope is a Trump administration.

In search of a workhorse?

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said he’s looking for a “competent” Republican leader who will listen to members and work behind the scenes.

“I don’t want to see leaders on television commercials, I don’t want to see them featured in Senate races, I don’t want them as the deciding factor days before an election,” Hawley said. “I want somebody who is going to be a workhorse and who’s going to work with members to achieve our priorities and then get stuff accomplished.”

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said the next GOP leader should hold the line on conservative priorities while also being able to negotiate bipartisan deals during what is expected to be a divided government. Democrats narrowly control the Senate, but Republicans are projected to possibly take the majority in the election.

“I would like somebody who can be strong in the face of opposition, present a strong argument, not afraid to take it to the other side when needed, but then also somebody that could get in the room and negotiate right when it gets tough,” she said.

Capito acknowledged the outcome of the presidential election could have an impact on who becomes the next Republican leader.

“(It) just depends on who wins,” she said.

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said his choice will “be the most important vote that I take.”

“You vote for the president, that’s important, but mine is one vote out of 150 million votes, or whatever it is. But this vote will be one out of, hopefully 53, so I think it has a lot of weight,” Marshall said. “And I think it’s really important that we elect a majority leader that shares the same priorities as, hopefully, President Trump.”

Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty said the overarching criteria for the next GOP leader is their “ability to get along well with President Trump and the incoming administration.”

“The first 100 days are going to count, and we need to have very close alignment to make certain we’re successful,” Hagerty said.

There is no guarantee that voters will elect Trump as the next president during this year’s presidential election. The next Senate GOP leader could end up working with an administration led by the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

That would require whomever Republican senators elect to walk a tightrope on Cabinet secretary confirmation votes, judicial nominees, must-pass legislation and potentially a Supreme Court nominee.

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said he’s vetting the candidates based on which one would be the most savvy, strategic, patient and inclusive.

That person, Kennedy said, must also be “willing to test his assumptions against the arguments of his critics and willing to ask God for money if necessary.” McConnell has been known as a prodigious fundraiser for Republicans.

Chairmanship clout

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said she’ll vote for the candidate willing to devote significantly more floor time to debating and voting on bipartisan legislation.

“I think that’s a real problem,” Collins said. “I’d like us to go back to the days where power was vested in the committee chairs. And if they and their ranking members are able to produce a bill, that it gets scheduled for floor consideration.”

Collins, a moderate in a Senate conference packed with more conservative members, said she wants the next Senate Republican leader to recognize “that we’re a big tent party and that we need to be inclusive in our approach.”

North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, the top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, said he wants a GOP leader to follow “regular order on appropriations.”

“We get them through committee with bipartisan votes, but they’re not getting to the floor,” Hoeven said of the dozen annual government funding bills. “We need to get them to the floor, there needs to be an amendment process, and we need to act on the bills and get back to voting on bills and that’s called regular order. And I think that’s the biggest key for our next leader is to be able to do that.”

Alabama Sen. Katie Britt has begun talking with the candidates and is evaluating their plans for the Senate floor schedule, especially for bringing the annual government funding bills up for debate and amendment.

“I want to know how we’re going to get the appropriations process back working; like, how we’re actually going to move the ball down the field on that,” Britt said. “I want to know how we’re going to actually embolden the committees and the committee process.”

Britt, ranking member on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, expressed frustration with how much floor time goes toward confirming judicial nominees, something that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, and McConnell have both championed.

Senate floor procedures are much more time-consuming than the rules that govern debate in the House. Legislation can take weeks to move through the filibuster process, which requires 60 votes for bills to advance, and for leaders to negotiate which amendments will receive floor votes.

The Senate, unlike the House, is also responsible for vetting and confirming executive branch nominees, like Cabinet secretaries, as well as judicial nominees. With a new president in place, 2025 will mean many confirmation votes.

“When we have a leader that really knows how to lead, they’ll put appropriations bills on the floor, they’ll figure out how to embolden members,” Britt said, adding that “a weak leader consolidates all the power, and that’s, unfortunately, what I think we have right now when it comes to Chuck Schumer.”

‘Getting stuff done’

Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said whomever he votes for needs to “be successful at getting stuff done, finished, completed.”

“We have to be able to get our committees working and get legislation up, negotiated and moved,” Lankford said.

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst said whoever takes over as the next GOP leader must be able to communicate well with senators.

That person “needs to be someone that has strategy, and knows how to work the floor, certainly. And then, also fundraising is a portion of that, too.”

Arkansas Sen. John Boozman said his vote will go to the person he believes can best build consensus and listen to members, though he hasn’t yet decided which of the three contenders he’ll support.

“I’m a true undecided,” Boozman said. “I think the reality is most members just want to get the election over. They don’t want to deal with this until then.”

Boozman said the results of the battle for control of the Senate in the November elections could influence which candidate he and his colleagues pick to lead them during the next Congress.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that the next GOP leader should be in tune with Republican voters and the issues important to them.

“It’s someone who I think has an affinity and is in touch with where our voters are,” Rubio said.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley declined to list off any characteristics he believes the next leader needs, saying he doesn’t want any of the three to figure out his choice.

“I wouldn’t want to tell you that, because this is what I told all three people that came to my office — I said, ‘I’m not going to tell either one of you. You’re all friends of mine. You ain’t going to know who I vote for,’” Grassley said. “And if I answered your question, they’re going to start figuring out who I’m going to vote for.”

Grassley said the next leader’s first major challenge will be negotiating a tax bill during 2025 that addresses expiring elements from the 2017 Republican tax law.

Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran said character matters in determining who he’ll vote for, but said he hadn’t created a score sheet just yet.

“I’ll have an idea of who I’m voting for before the November election,” Moran said. “Those characteristics that I think are important would be important regardless of what the makeup of the House, Senate and the White House is.”

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson threw his support behind Scott for GOP leader, saying he prefers someone who previously served as a governor and worked in the private sector. He was the only senator interviewed by States Newsroom to reveal his vote, which will be conducted via secret ballot.

He said that Scott “is willing to tackle tough issues.”

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said that Republicans have “a lot of good choices” among the three men and that he wants someone who can carry the GOP message.

Vice President Kamala Harris headed to Augusta, Georgia, on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024 to view the damage from Hurricane Helene. In this photo, the streets are flooded near Peachtree Creek after the storm brought in heavy rains overnight on Sept. 27, 2024 in Atlanta. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — After the vice presidential debate, voters in one flash poll published Wednesday declared a draw in the meeting between Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Republican Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance.

Tuesday’s debate is the last scheduled in-person meeting between the presidential campaigns. Both Midwestern candidates were cordial and the debate was devoid of any major clashes. The two men even came to a general agreement on some policy issues, like providing families with support for child care and curbing the threat of gun violence.

Voters were split 50-50 on which candidate performed better, according to a flash poll by POLITICO/Focaldata of likely voters that was conducted after the CBS-sponsored event in New York City.

The mostly friendly exchange had some breakout moments, such as Walz pressing Vance on whether former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, which Vance didn’t answer.

“I’m pretty shocked by this,” Walz said during the debate. “He lost the election. This is not a debate.”

The next major televised interview with a presidential candidate will be Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, on the CBS news program “60 Minutes.”

“For over half a century, 60 Minutes has invited the Democratic and Republican tickets to appear on our broadcast as Americans head to the polls,” the show posted on social media. “This year, both the Harris and Trump campaigns agreed to sit down with 60 Minutes.”

However, after initially accepting, Trump “has decided not to participate,” the post continued.

The interview will air Monday night at 8 Eastern, but only with Harris.

“Our original invitation to former President Donald Trump to be interviewed on 60 Minutes stands,” according to the post.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote on social media that while there were initial discussions for an interview, “nothing was ever scheduled or locked in.”

He also took issue with live fact-checking.

Harris travels to Georgia

Harris on Wednesday headed to Augusta, Georgia, alongside Sen. Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, to survey the damage from Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm that hit Southeastern states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. At least 600 people are unaccounted for.

Harris gave an update late Wednesday about ongoing federal efforts in the recovery.

“I’ve been reading and hearing about the work you’ve been doing over the last few days, and I think it really does represent some of the best of what we each know can be done, especially when we coordinate around local, state, federal resources to meet the needs of people who must be seen, who must be heard,” she said during her visit to the Augusta Emergency Operations Center, according to White House pool reports.

Harris is also planning to make a trip to North Carolina in the coming days. The hurricane severely hit western North Carolina.

President Joe Biden was scheduled to visit North Carolina Wednesday and survey the damage in Asheville via a helicopter to avoid disturbing recovery efforts on the ground.

Trump on Monday visited a damaged furniture store in Valdosta, Georgia, where he delivered remarks.

“We’re here today to stand in complete solidarity with the people of Georgia, with all of those suffering in the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Helene,” Trump said.

Longshoremen’s strike

Harris issued a statement Wednesday in support of a strike of unionized dockworkers, part of the International Longshoremen’s Association, which has 85,000 members.

“This strike is about fairness,” she said. “Foreign-owned shipping companies have made record profits and executive compensation has grown. The Longshoremen, who play a vital role transporting essential goods across America, deserve a fair share of these record profits.”

They are striking for higher wages, more health care benefits and a ban on automation of port operations.

The Trump campaign also issued a statement, and said if Trump were president, the strike would have never happened.

“This is only happening because of the inflation brought on by Kamala Harris’ two votes for massive, out-of-control spending, and her decision to cut off energy exploration,” he said. “Americans who thrived under President Trump can’t even get by because of Kamala Harris – this strike is a direct result of her actions.”

Back to the battlegrounds

With less than five weeks to Nov. 5, new polling by the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter Swing State Project Survey shows that Harris is either narrowly leading or tied with Trump in nearly all seven battleground states, except for Georgia.

Harris has a lead within the margin of error in Arizona and Wisconsin, by 2 points; Michigan by 3 points; and in Nevada and Pennsylvania by 1 point. Trump is ahead in Georgia 49% to 47% and the candidates are tied at 49% in North Carolina.

Trump will deliver remarks at a campaign rally in Saginaw, Michigan, on Thursday afternoon.

Harris on Thursday will travel to Wisconsin for a campaign event in Fox Valley before heading to Detroit, Michigan.

On Friday, Vance will head to Lindale, Georgia, to give a speech and Trump will travel to Fayetteville, North Carolina, for a town hall.

Harris will be in Detroit for various campaign events Friday before returning to Washington, D.C.

Both presidential candidates have said they have general plans to tackle the housing crisis. (Photo by Getty Images)

This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.

WASHINGTON — As the cost and supply of housing remain top issues for voters, both presidential candidates have put forth plans to tackle the crisis, in hopes of courting voters ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

The coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020 exacerbated problems in the housing market, with supply chain disruptions, record-low interest rates and? increased demand contributing to a rise in housing prices, according to a study by the Journal of Housing Economics.?

While housing is typically handled on the local level, the housing supply is tight and rents continue to skyrocket, putting increased pressure on the federal government to help. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump agree that it’s an issue that needs to be solved, but their solutions diverge.

The Harris and Trump campaigns did not respond to States Newsroom’s requests for details on the general housing proposals the nominees have discussed.

Promise: millions of new homes

Harris’ plan calls for the construction of 3 million homes in four years.

The United States has a shortage of about 3.8 million homes for sale and rent, according to 2021 estimates from Freddie Mac that are still relied upon.

Additionally, homelessness has hit a record-high of 653,100 people since January of last year, and a “record-high 22.4 million renter households spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities,” up from 2 million households since 2019, according to a study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

“This is obviously a multi-prong approach, because the factors contributing to high rents and housing affordability are many, and my plan is to attempt to address many of them at once, so we can actually have the net effect of bringing down the cost and making homeownership, renting more affordable,” Harris said during a September interview with Wisconsin Public Radio.?

Promise: single-family zoning

Trump has long opposed building multi-family housing and has instead thrown his support behind single-family zoning, which would exclude other types of housing. Such land-use regulation is conducted by local government bodies, not the federal government, though the federal government could influence it.

“There will be no low-income housing developments built in areas that are right next to your house,” Trump said during an August rally in Montana. “I’m gonna keep criminals out of your neighborhood.”

Promise: getting Congress to agree

Election forecasters have predicted that Democrats will regain control of the U.S. House, but Republicans are poised to win the Senate, meaning any housing proposals will have to be overwhelmingly bipartisan.

“How much money is going to really be available without substantial increases in revenue to be able to do all these things that both Trump and Harris are proposing?” Ted Tozer, a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center, said in an interview with States Newsroom. “All the money comes from Congress.”

Many of Harris’ policies rely on cooperation from Congress, as historically the federal government has limited tools to address housing shortages.

“On the Democratic side, there’s a hunger for more action, for more direct government intervention in the housing market than we’ve seen in a long time,” said Francis Torres, the associate director of housing and infrastructure at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Nearly all proposals that Harris has put forth would require Congress to pass legislation and appropriate funds. The first is S.2224, introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, which would amend U.S. tax code to bar private equity firms from buying homes in bulk by denying “interest and depreciation deductions for taxpayers owning 50 or more single family properties,” according to the bill.

The second bill, S. 3692, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chair of the Senate Finance Committee, would bar using algorithms to artificially inflate the cost of rents.

Both bills would need to reach the 60-vote threshold in order to advance in the Senate, whichever party is in control.

Promise: $25,000 down payment assistance

Harris has pledged to support first-time homebuyers, but Congress would need to appropriate funds for the $25,000 down payment assistance program she has proposed that would benefit an estimated 4 million first-time homebuyers over four years.

It’s a proposal that’s been met with skepticism.

“I’m really concerned that down payment assistance will actually put more pressure on home prices, because basically, you’re giving people additional cash to pay more for the house that they’re going to bid on,” Tozer said. “So by definition, they get in a bidding war, they’re going to spend more.”

Harris has also proposed a $40 billion innovation fund for local governments to build and create solutions for housing, which would also need congressional approval.

Promise: opening up federal lands

Both candidates support opening some federal lands for housing, which would mean selling the land for construction purposes with the commitment for a certain percentage of the units to be kept for affordable housing.

The federal government owns about 650 million acres of land, or roughly 30% of all land.

Neither candidate has gone into detail on this proposal.

“I think it’s a sign that at least the Harris campaign and the people in her orbit are thinking about addressing this housing affordability problem really through stronger government action than has happened in several decades,” Torres said.

Promise: expand tax credits

The biggest tool the federal government has used to address housing is through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, known as LIHTC. Harris has promised to expand this tax credit, but has not gone into detail about how much she wants it expanded.

This program awards tax credits to offset construction costs in exchange for a certain number of rent-restricted units for low-income households. But the restriction is temporary, lasting about 30 years.?

There is no similar program for housing meant to be owned.

“It’s an interesting moment, because then on the other side, on the Trump side, even though they diagnosed a lot of the similar problems, there’s not as much of a desire to leverage the strength of the federal government to ensure affordability,” Torres said.

Trump’s record on housing

The Trump campaign does not have a housing proposal, but various interviews, rallies and a review of Trump’s first four years in office provide a roadmap.

During Trump’s first administration, many of his HUD budget proposals were not approved by Congress.

In all four of his presidential budget requests, he laid out proposals that would increase rent by 40% for about 4 million low-income households using rental vouchers or for those who lived in public housing, according to an analysis by the left-leaning think tank the Brookings Institution.?

All four of Trump’s budgets also called for the elimination of housing programs such as the Community Development Block Grant, which directs funding to local and state governments to rehabilitate and build affordable housing. Trump’s budgets also would have slashed the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, which is a home energy assistance program for low-income families.

Additionally, Trump’s Opportunity Zones authorized through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which are tax incentives to businesses and real estate to invest in low-income communities, have had mixed results.

Promise: cut regulations and add tariffs

In an interview with Bloomberg, Trump said he wanted to focus on reducing regulations in the permitting process.

“Your permits, your permitting process. Your zoning, if — and I went through years of zoning. Zoning is like… it’s a killer,” he said. “But we’ll be doing that, and we’ll be bringing the price of housing down.”

During campaign rallies, Trump has often said he would impose a 10% tariff across the board on all goods entering the U.S. He’s also proposed 60% tariffs on China.

Trump said at a rally in Georgia that tariff is “one of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard.”

Tozer said adding trade policies, such as tariffs on construction materials like lumber, would drive up the cost of homes.

Promise: deport immigrants

Trump has argued that his plan for mass deportations will help free up the supply of housing. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump national press secretary, told the New York Times that deporting immigrants would lower the cost of housing because migration “is driving up housing costs.”

The former president has made a core campaign promise to deport millions of immigrants.

Tozer said housing and immigration are tied, because the ability to build houses comes down to workers, and roughly 30% of construction workers are immigrants.?

“By shutting down the border, you’re possibly shutting down your capacity to build these houses,” he said, adding that all those policies are intertwined.

Rhode Island House of Representatives Speaker Joseph Shekarchi testifies before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee on Sept. 25, 2024. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — The speaker of the Rhode Island House described how his state has tackled affordable housing and how it could be a model for local and state governments across the country in a Wednesday hearing before members of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee.

“My mantra has been: production, production and more production,” Rhode Island House of Representatives Speaker Joseph Shekarchi said.

Shekarchi and housing experts urged the senators to take a multipronged government approach to tackling the lack of affordable housing, such as reforming zoning, expanding land for building and streamlining permits.

“I really believe this is an all-hands-on-deck crisis,” Sen. Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said.

Murray said that in her state, there is a shortage of 172,000 homes. She asked one of the witnesses, Paul Williams, the executive director at the Center for Public Enterprise, how the federal government could help state and local governments tackle the issue. The Center for Public Enterprise is a think tank that aids public agencies in implementing programs in the energy and housing sector.

Williams said the federal government should encourage municipalities to look at local permitting and zoning processes to see if those delay new apartment construction projects or prevent them from happening.

He added that financing can also remain a challenge.

Tax credits

Another witness, Greta Harris, the president and CEO of the Better Housing Coalition, an organization based in Virginia that aims to produce affordable housing, said the federal government should consider expanding the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. That program provides local groups with a tax incentive to construct or rehabilitate low-income housing.

“The low-income housing tax credit program has been extremely effective in allowing us to produce more housing units and also preserve existing affordable housing units,” Harris said.

She added Congress should consider expanding federal housing vouchers, and that closing and down payment assistance in home purchases is crucial. Federal housing vouchers help provide housing for low-income families, those who are elderly, people with disabilities and veterans.

Most wealth building is through owning a home and acquiring equity in that home, she said.

“People can use that equity for retirement, to help their kids go to college, to start a business, and to be able to breathe a little bit,” Harris said.

How a state can be successful

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the chairman of the committee, asked Shekarchi to describe some successful impacts of the state’s approach to housing.

Shekarchi said that “we haven’t substituted state control for local control,” and have instead made the process to get building permits and address land disputes easier. He added that Rhode Island also created a role for a housing secretary, to address the issue.

“Overall, you’re seeing an increase in building permits,” he said.

Indiana GOP Sen. Mike Braun asked Harris if housing should be left to local government and private entrepreneurs, rather than Congress.

“Left to its own devices, the market is not equitable and it serves certain portions of our society and not all,” she said.

She said the government at all levels — local, state and federal — should participate in addressing the housing crisis.

GOP bashes Harris plans

The top Republican on the committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, blamed the Biden administration for the cost of housing

He also criticized a housing plan released by Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, that would provide $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time home buyers — a proposal that hinges on congressional approval.

“Economists from across the political spectrum have noted how such policies would backfire by pushing up housing prices even further,” Grassley said of Harris’ policy.

Ed Pinto, a senior fellow and co-director of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute Housing Center, said that there is a shortage of about 3.8 million homes. He argued that Harris’ plan to give down payment assistance “is almost certain to lead to higher home prices.”

“The millions of program recipients would become price setters for all buyers in the neighborhoods where the recipients buy,” Pinto said.

Vice President Kamala Harris departs Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport aboard Air Force 2, after speaking at a campaign rally inside West Allis Central High School on July 23, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said Tuesday during a radio interview that she supports changing a Senate procedure in order to codify the right to an abortion.

Vice President Harris said she is in favor of ending the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, known as the filibuster, to advance abortion rights legislation. But that task would hinge on Democrats agreeing to do so and holding on to majority control in the Senate, a difficult feat this November as Republicans appear potentially poised to take back the upper chamber.?

McConnell says GOP control of the U.S. Senate would protect the filibuster

“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” she said during an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio.

Harris in 2022 said she would cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of abortion rights in her role as vice president. She has often pledged to sign into law a codification of Roe v. Wade, the constitutional right to an abortion struck down by the conservative U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in August that Democrats would talk about rules changes to codify abortion rights, NBC reported.

Trump in Pennsylvania

At a Monday rally in Pennsylvania, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump referred to himself as a “protector” of women. Trump said women no longer needed to think about abortion and it is “now where it always had to be, with the states.”

“All they want to do is talk about abortion,” the former president said at the rally, referring to Democrats. “It really no longer pertains because we’ve done something on abortion that no one thought was possible.”

Trump has called for Senate Republicans to dismantle the filibuster, but GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other Republican leaders like No. 2 Sen. John Thune of South Dakota have vowed to keep the procedure in place.

Current Senate projections indicate Republicans are likely to gain control of the Senate. Republicans are also expected to pick up a seat in West Virginia, and only need to hold on to seats in Florida, Texas and Nebraska.

Democrats will need to secure wins in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Additionally, Senate Democrats would need to break a possible 50-50 tie through a Democratic presidency — if they want to remain the majority party and change the filibuster.

If Harris wins, and Democrats hold 50 seats in the Senate, then Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the vice presidential nominee, would be the tie-breaking vote.

During a Tuesday Senate press conference on abortion, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said she was supportive of Harris’ stance and that it would be a carve-out of the filibuster, rather than an elimination of it.

“What we are talking about is a simple procedure to allow, whenever rights are taken away from someone, that the U.S. Senate can, without being blocked by a filibuster, be able to restore those rights,” she said.

Harris, Trump and the economy

The Harris campaign hosted a Tuesday press call with business owner and? “Shark Tank” investor Mark Cuban, to advocate for Harris’ economic policies.

Polls have found that voters view Trump as better for the economy. Pew Research found that Trump’s key advantage is the economy, with 55% of voters viewing the former president as making good economic decisions, and 45% of voters viewing Harris as making good decisions about the economy.

“In a nutshell, the vice president and her team thinks through her policies,” Cuban said. “She doesn’t just off the top of her head say what she thinks the crowd wants to hear, like the Republican nominee.”

Battleground states still the favorite spot

The candidates will continue to campaign and travel, especially around battleground states this week.

Trump is scheduled Tuesday to visit Savannah, Georgia, where he will give an afternoon campaign speech about lowering taxes for business owners.

Walz is scheduled to head back to his home state of Minnesota Tuesday?for a campaign reception there.

Harris is heading to Pennsylvania Wednesday for a campaign rally and then she’ll travel to Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Sunday.

Trump is stopping in Mint Hill, North Carolina, on Wednesday to give remarks about the importance of making goods in the U.S. His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, will travel to Traverse City, Michigan, on Wednesday to rally supporters.

Vance on Thursday will give a campaign speech on the economy in Macon, Georgia, and then host a voter mobilization drive in Flowery Branch, Georgia.

On Friday, Trump is scheduled to rally supporters in Walker, Michigan and in the evening hold a town hall in Warren, Michigan.

?Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

Flowers, plush toys and wooden crosses are placed at a memorial dedicated to the victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on June 3, 2022. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed on May 24, 2022, after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire inside the school. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The devastating effects of school shootings continue well after shootings occur, according to survivors, experts and educators who spoke at a roundtable U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee Democrats held Monday.

Democrats scheduled the discussion after the recent school shooting in Georgia, where two students and two teachers were killed. Witnesses told the panel the psychological trauma of a school shooting lingers long beyond the events themselves.

“In the months and years after a mass shooting, young people injured or wounded in the attack experience continuing fear, pain, trauma and disorientation, and struggle to hang on to what is left of their lives,” the top Democrat on the committee, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, said.

The roundtable came just after the one-year anniversary of the White House establishing its Office of Gun Violence Prevention. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are scheduled to speak about gun violence at the White House Thursday.

There have been 404 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a group that studies gun violence in the U.S.

Several educators at the roundtable advocated for Congress to provide more funding for schools to address the long-lasting effects of a school shooting.

“There’s not a time period when the trauma is going to disappear,” Frank DeAngelis, who was the principal of Columbine High School during the 1999 mass shooting in Colorado, said.

DeAngelis is also a founding member of the National Association of Secondary School Principals Principal Recovery Network, which is a network to help educators in the aftermath of a school shooting.

Greg Johnson, a principal at West Liberty-Salem High School in West Liberty, Ohio, said that even though no student died at his school’s shooting in 2017, students and faculty had lasting trauma.

“Hundreds of students heard the piercing shotgun blasts, and those same hundreds barricaded the doors of their classrooms before they evacuated and in random ditches and across fields in search of safety,” he said. “Many were traumatized, though almost all tried their very best to hide it by putting on a mask of strength and normalcy. Our students suffered in silence.”

Sarah Burd-Sharps, the senior director of research at Everytown for Gun Safety, added that the economic cost of gun violence is estimated at more than $550 billion a year.

Mental health funding

Patricia Greer, principal at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky, said that while the bipartisan gun safety bill that Congress passed in 2022 provided substantial funding for mental health, Congress should consider increasing such funding to help students and staff recover from trauma.

“Schools are uniquely positioned to provide mental health support, but they need our help to meet the growing demand,” Greer said.

She pushed for Congress to consider increasing funding for Title II and Title IV to support professional development for educators and expand school-based mental health services. Those titles refer to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provides federal grants to schools.

“Recovery requires sustained support and resources,” she said. “By increasing funding for … Title II to $2.4 billion, and Title IV to $1.48 billion, we can provide schools with the resources they need to prevent tragedies and support students through trauma.”

Melissa Alexander, whose son survived the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, said “a mass shooting is not something you get over.”

She said her then 9-year-old son called her during the shooting, begging for her to save him.

“He prepared to die,” she said.

Alexander, who is now a firearm safety advocate, said that even though she is in a deep-red state, nearly 75% of residents support some type of red flag laws. Such laws allow courts to order the temporary removal of a firearm from people at risk of harming themselves or others.

Despite the widespread support, state lawmakers have not taken action, she said.

“It’s not translating up to the (state) Legislature,” she said.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 47th Annual Leadership Conference at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on September 18, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris warned Wednesday of her GOP rival’s plans to enact mass deportations.

Former President Donald Trump has made immigration a core campaign topic and has often demonized immigrants such as in Aurora, Colorado, and in Springfield, Ohio. Trump has pledged to conduct mass deportations of immigrants in the country without legal authorization.

“They have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation, in American history,” Harris said during a speech at an event hosted by the?? Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the nonprofit arm of the congressional caucus.

A Scripps News/Ipsos survey published Wednesday found that a majority of Americans support mass deportations, including 58% of independents.

The survey showed 54% of respondents overall supported mass deportations, with 86% of Republicans and 25% of Democrats saying they supported the idea.

Harris asked the crowd at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute 2024 Leadership Conference to imagine how mass deportations would be carried out.

“How’s that gonna happen, massive raids? Massive detention camps?” she said. “What are they talking about?”

Trump has not offered details on his proposal, despite being asked about it at the Sept. 10 presidential debate.

Harris said that the U.S. should instead focus on reforming “our broken immigration” system.

“We can do both,” she said. “Create an earned pathway to citizenship and ensure our border is secure.”

Trump also urged House Republicans on Wednesday to cause a government shutdown if a provision to require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections is not included in a stopgap spending bill that would avert a government shutdown by Oct. 1.

Teamsters decline to endorse

The General Executive Board of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters decided Wednesday to not endorse either candidate for president, because it “found no definitive support among members for either party’s nominee.”

“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.

“We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries—and to honor our members’ right to strike—but were unable to secure those pledges,” he continued.

Harris made a surprise visit this week to the Teamsters office in Washington, D.C.

After the non-endorsement, the Trump campaign released a statement arguing that the “rank-and-file of the Teamsters Union supports Donald Trump for President.”

The union released internal polls Wednesday that showed members favored Trump over Harris 58% to 31%. An earlier poll taken when President Joe Biden was still in the race showed members backed Biden 44.3% compared to Trump’s 36.3%.

The union endorsed Biden in 2020 and has traditionally backed Democrats.

On the trail

The candidates continue to hold events across the country.

Trump is scheduled to hold an evening rally in Uniondale, New York, his second live campaign event since his second apparent assassination attempt at his golf course in Florida over the weekend. He held a town hall in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, announced late Tuesday that the bipartisan group a bipartisan task force created to investigate the July assassination attempt against Trump would expand to include the apparent assassination attempt at the GOP presidential nominee’s Florida golf club.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, delivered remarks in Raleigh, North Carolina, late Wednesday afternoon.

Thursday’s campaign schedule shows a packed day of public events for all the major campaign figures.

• Harris is expected to make a campaign stop in Detroit. She’s then scheduled to return to Wisconsin.
• Trump is scheduled to attend a “Fighting Anti-Semitism in America Event” in Washington, D.C at 6 p.m. Eastern.
• Harris is expected to join an 8 p.m. Eastern “Unite for America” livestream hosted by Oprah Winfrey in collaboration with the group Win With Black Women, along with more than 140 grassroots groups.

Inauguration platform

Congressional leaders participated in a longtime tradition Wednesday, hammering the first nail of the stage that will be used to swear in the 47th president Jan. 20.

Members of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies partook in the First Nail Ceremony, where they picked up a hammer and smacked preset nails into wooden planks.

Senators on the committee included Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska.

“At the very least it’ll be therapeutic,” Klobuchar joked about the hammering.

The House lawmakers included Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Republicans of Louisiana, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York.

Scalise was the first lawmaker to finish hammering his nail, followed by Johnson. Klobuchar was the last, and ended her final swing of her hammer with a laugh.

It takes about six months to build the platform for the ceremony, Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin said.

Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group speaks at a Capitol Hill briefing urging the EPA to ban the use of the herbicide paraquat dichloride to protect farmworkers. (Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom.)

WASHINGTON — Public health advocates and farmworkers called for a federal ban on a toxic herbicide they say led to their Parkinson’s disease during a Tuesday briefing for congressional staffers.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will determine next year if the herbicide, paraquat dichloride, should have its license renewed for another 15 years. The herbicide is used for controlling weeds in agriculture settings. It’s currently banned in more than 70 countries and has several serious health conditions it’s linked to, such as cancer and increases the likelihood of developing Parkinson’s disease.

Nora Jackson, a former farmworker of Indiana, said that her cousin, whose job it was to spray paraquat on farms, developed Parkinson’s at 55 years old. Signs of Parkinson’s usually appear around 60 years old.

“Farmworkers often have to do extremely risky jobs … but it doesn’t have to be that way,” Jackson said. “It is possible to have an agriculture system that does not depend so heavily on paraquat and it does not have to be a pesticide that puts so many people’s lives at risk.”

The disease has drastically affected his life, Jackson added.

“He now relies heavily on medication and uses a walking stick to be able to walk every day,” she said.

The briefing on the health risks of paraquat was hosted by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, which is an alliance for farmworker women, and the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that produces research and advocates for public health.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research was established by the actor who starred in blockbusters Back to the Future, Doc Hollywood and Teen Wolf. Fox was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s at the age of 29.

Ban necessary

The EPA has until Jan. 17 to make a decision on paraquat’s future availability.

Advocates at Tuesday’s event called for the agency to deny paraquat’s license renewal, saying other regulations to reduce exposure to the herbicide have come up short.

“Keep in mind that people have been using this chemical as directed, and are still developing Parkinson’s disease,” Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group’s senior vice president of government affairs, said. “So putting more restrictions on how it’s used, when it’s used, what equipment you use, and so on, is not the answer.”

Parkinson’s disease affects the nervous system and causes unintended shakiness, trouble with balance and stiffness. There is no cure.

The California Legislature is moving to ban the herbicide.?

David Jilbert, of Valley City, Ohio, a former farmworker with a background in engineering, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2021.

“As a longtime environmental engineer, I understood the importance of personal protection equipment, and I particularly followed all safety protocols,” he said.

He sold his vineyard in 2019 because he wasn’t feeling well and his hands were beginning to move slowly.

“My diagnosis changed everything, affecting every aspect of my life, from physical capabilities to emotional wellbeing, financial stability,” he said. “There is no cure for Parkinson’s. It is degenerative and it will only get worse, not better.”

Charlene Tenbrink of Winters, California, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2020. She worked on her family farm from 1993 to 2000 where she would mix, load and spray paraquat.

Tenbrink said she felt let down by the federal government because she was unaware of the health risks that paraquat could pose.

“We’ve been trying to change this for a long time,” she said.

Law enforcement personnel continued to investigate the area around Trump International Golf Club on Monday after an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump a day earlier. The FBI is leading the investigation and has said the incident “appears to be an attempted assassination of former President Trump” while he was golfing at his West Palm Beach, Florida, club. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Ryan Wesley Routh appeared in federal court Monday on two firearm charges after being apprehended by local law enforcement Sunday in what the FBI is investigating as a possible assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.

Authorities found a rifle in an area Routh was seen fleeing on Sunday, but acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe said Monday that Routh did not fire his weapon. Trump was unharmed, his campaign confirmed shortly after Sunday’s incident.?

The Secret Service agent who spotted someone holding a rifle near the treeline of Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, fired toward the suspect. Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, was golfing at the time.

The incident is being investigated as the second assassination attempt against Trump in two months. He sustained an injury to his ear during a shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.

The Trump campaign Monday blamed Democrats and the media for the shooting.

“Democrats and the Fake News must immediately cease their inflammatory, violent rhetoric against President Trump — which was mimicked by yesterday’s would-be assassin,” the campaign said in a statement.

Routh, 58, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ryon McCabe in West Palm Beach federal court and was charged with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and for obliterating the serial number on a firearm, according to court records. If convicted, he would face up to 20 years in prison.

Routh is being held in pretrial detention, according to a criminal complaint filed by FBI special agent Mark Thomas.

The FBI is leading the investigation.

Separately, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state will conduct its own investigation into the possible assassination attempt to determine if Routh broke any state laws.

A detention hearing on the federal charges is set for Sept. 23, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Initial investigation

According to an affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint, at 1:31 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, a Secret Service agent walking the perimeter of the golf course spotted a rifle poking out of the tree line. The agent fired toward the rifle.

Rowe said at a Monday press conference that Routh did not have a line of vision at the former president and he did not fire his weapon.

“The agent who was visually sweeping the area … saw the subject armed with what he perceived to be a rifle and immediately discharged his firearm,” Rowe said. “The subject, who did not have line of sight to the former president, fled the scene. He did not fire or get off any shots at our agents.”

Routh fled in a Nissan SUV, according to the charging documents. A witness took photos of the license plate and local law enforcement officers stopped the vehicle in Martin County, which borders Palm Beach County.

West Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said the witness was able to identify the driver as “the person that he saw running out of the bushes that jumped into the car.”

Routh was the sole person in the vehicle, according to the complaint.

According to the charging documents, agents found at the site Routh fled a digital camera, two bags, an SKS-style 7.62 x 39 rifle, which is the predecessor to the AK-47 assault rifle that law enforcement initially said they found Sunday, and a scope.

They also found a bag of food and noticed the rifle had the serial number obliterated “to the naked eye,” according to the filing documents.

The weapon also must have crossed state lines, Thomas noted.

“SKS-style 7.62 x 39 caliber rifles are not manufactured in the state of Florida,” Thomas wrote. “Therefore, I submit that there is probable cause to believe that the SKS-style rifle, which was seized from the tree line at Trump International… traveled in interstate or foreign commerce.”

The officers who stopped Routh on Interstate-95 noted that the license plate associated with the Nissan is registered to a 2012 white Ford truck that was reported stolen, according to the complaint.

Law enforcement found a July 10 Facebook post in which Routh directed his followers to contact him on WhatsApp and listed a contact number, according to the complaint.

Phone records associated with that number indicated that the phone “was located in the vicinity of the area along the tree line described from 1:59 a.m. Eastern to 1:31 p.m. Sunday,” according to the complaint.

Secret Service response

The incident follows the July 13 assassination attempt of Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which the Secret Service was heavily criticized for its response.

Then-Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned and Congress established a bipartisan task force to investigate the July shooting.

The leaders of that task force, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, Republican of Pennsylvania, and U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat, have requested a briefing from the Secret Service on the security response to the shooting in West Palm Beach.

Members of Congress have been more complimentary of the Secret Service’s response to the Florida incident.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, commended the agency’s response during an interview with “Fox and Friends” on Monday.

“What I understand happened is that those agents that were with him yesterday saw that barrel of that gun between the bushes on a golf course. I mean, you know, that’s a difficult thing to spot. Thankfully, they did,” Johnson said. “But unlike in Butler, they did not pause. They immediately pulled their weapons and fired. I think that’s why this guy, the suspect, the shooter, threw the gun in the bushes and ran.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said on the Senate floor Monday that senators are open to giving the Secret Service more funding in legislation this month needed to keep the government open past Sept. 30.

“If the Secret Service is in need of more resources, we are prepared to provide it for them,” he said. “Possibly in the upcoming funding agreement.”

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, said Sunday they’d been briefed on the matter and condemned political violence.

Prior arrests, Ukraine activism

In 2002, Routh was convicted in Greensboro, North Carolina, for possession of a weapon of mass destruction, which is a felony in the state. He was arrested after fleeing law enforcement and barricading himself for three hours in a business, according to the Greensboro News & Record.

He was also arrested in North Carolina in 2010 for possession of stolen goods.

Jeffrey Veltri, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s Miami field office, said during a Monday press conference that the FBI is conducting interviews with family and friends in Honolulu and Charlotte, North Carolina.

He added that in 2019 the FBI received a tip that Routh possessed a firearm, which was illegal because of his felony record. When FBI agents followed up, the tipster “did not verify providing the initial information,” Veltri said.

The agency referred the matter to Honolulu police, he said.

Routh was interviewed by The New York Times last year about his efforts to recruit Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban to fight in Ukraine’s war against Russia.

Routh, who had spent time in Ukraine and does not have any U.S. military experience, said he had planned to illegally obtain documents to move those Afghan fighters from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine.

“We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country,” Routh told the Times in the interview.

He wrote an ebook that he published on Amazon Kindle about his time in Ukraine, during which he became disillusioned about the country’s ability to win its war against Russia.

Kathleen Shaffer, who said Routh was her fiancé, set up a GoFundMe in 2022 to help Routh travel to Ukraine for 90 days to fight in the war.

The fundraiser has been deleted, but can be accessed through internet archives.

“Any and all funds will support purchase of additional flags, tactical gear, any supplies needed for incoming volunteers, and hostel lodging,” according to the fundraiser, which raised $1,865 out of its goal of $2,500.

States Newsroom called a number associated with Shaffer, but could not reach her.

Public records show Routh currently lives in Kaaawa on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.

In 2018, Hawaii News Now interviewed Routh about torrential rains in Kaaawa. Routh talked in the interview about a recent home project he finished after buying his home a year prior.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw holds a photograph of the rifle and other items found near where a suspect was discovered as he stands with Rafael Barros, right, special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service's Miami field office, during a press conference regarding an apparent assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump on Sept. 15, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. The FBI and U.S. Secret Service, along with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office, are investigating the incident, which the FBI said "appears to be an attempted assassination of former President Trump' while he was golfing at Trump International Golf Club. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating a possible assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump after gunshots were fired Sunday near Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the GOP presidential nominee was playing golf.

The FBI said in a statement to States Newsroom the incident “appears to be an attempted assassination of former President Trump.”

A male suspect is in custody, law enforcement officials said.

“President Trump is safe following gunshots in his vicinity. No further details at this time,” Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said in a statement about 20 minutes after the incident occurred just before 2 p.m. Eastern.

The FBI is taking a lead on investigating, said Jeffrey Veltri, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s Miami field office during a late afternoon press conference by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters that a Secret Service agent with Trump spotted a rifle coming out of bushes next to the golf course.

“The Secret Service agent that was on the course did a fantastic job,” he said. “What they do is, they have an agent that jumps one hole ahead of time to where the president was at, and he was able to spot this rifle barrel, stickin’ out of the fence, and immediately engage that individual, at which time the individual took off.”

The suspect in the bushes had an AK-47 style rifle with a scope, two backpacks filled with ceramic tile and a GoPro camera, Bradshaw said.

Bradshaw said a witness saw the suspect come out of the bushes and take off in a black Nissan. The witness took a picture of the license plate and local law enforcement officers were able to stop the vehicle in Martin County, which borders Palm Beach County.

“They spotted the vehicle and pulled it over and detained the guy,” Bradshaw said.

Once the driver was detained, Bradshaw said the witness was able to identify the driver as “the person that he saw running out of the bushes that jumped into the car.”

Bradshaw said the suspect was about 300 to 500 yards away from Trump.

“With a rifle and a scope like that, that’s not a long distance,” he said.

Bradshaw did not provide more details about the suspect’s identity.

U.S. Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said on social media prior to the press conference that “a protective incident” involving Trump occurred and that the Secret Service was investigating the incident with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. He also confirmed that Trump was safe.

The private golf club is about 4 miles from Trump’s primary residence at Mar-a-Lago.

Reaction from Vance, Harris, Biden

The Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, wrote on social media that he has spoken to Trump, who is “in good spirits.”

“Still much we don’t know, but I’ll be hugging my kids extra tight tonight and saying a prayer of gratitude,” Vance wrote.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, said on social media that she had been briefed and she is glad Trump is safe.

“Violence has no place in America,” she said.

The White House said that President Joe Biden had also been briefed.

“They are relieved to know that he is safe,” the White House said of Biden and Harris. “They will be kept regularly updated by their team.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement that he applauded “the Secret Service for their quick response to ensure former President Trump’s safety.”

“There is no place in this country for political violence of any kind,” he said. “The perpetrator must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The incident follows a July 13 assassination attempt of Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Congress set up a bipartisan task force to investigate that attempted assassination. The chair of the task force, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, Republican of Pennsylvania and the top Democrat, U.S. Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado released a joint statement, requesting a briefing from the Secret Service on the shooting in West Palm Beach “and how security responded.”

“We are thankful that the former President was not harmed, but remain deeply concerned about political violence and condemn it in all of its forms,” they wrote. “The Task Force will share updates as we learn more.”

U.S. Rep. Dave Joyce, an Ohio Republican and a member of the task force investigating that incident, said on social media “with continued threats against Trump, it is critical to remain dedicated to our work on the Task Force to Investigate the Attempted Assassination of President Trump.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Sen. Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, introduced the Senate version of the House’s bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. (Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A handful of U.S. Senate Republicans called Wednesday for the chamber to pass a bill to keep the government open that would also require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections to deter voting by people who are not citizens, something that is rare and already illegal.

Republican Sens. Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama urged the chamber to take the House’s approach to a stopgap government funding bill by adding the proof-of-citizenship measure.

“We have to make sure we ensure that there’s actually zero fraud,” Scott said.

The senators argued that because elections can be decided by as little as a few hundred votes, legislation requiring proof of citizenship is needed.

“Protecting the integrity of our system by requiring proof of citizenship isn’t controversial. It’s actually common sense,” Marshall said. “Just as we have laws to prevent speeding, we need laws to prevent illegal voting.”

Shutdown politics

The press conference came hours after U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana pulled the stopgap spending bill from heading to a floor vote after several House Republicans came out against it.

Congress must pass a bill to fund the government by the end of the month to avoid a partial government shutdown.

Scott said he and the other speakers Wednesday did not support shutting the government down over including the provision.

“Nobody up here wants to shut down the government,” Scott said.

Lee introduced the Senate version of the House bill, S. 4292.

“Look, we all know that elections, including and especially presidential elections, tend to be decided within a pretty narrow range, in fact, within a few states, and very often within just a few counties nationwide,” Lee said. “And it would be folly for us to leave open this vulnerability.”

Johnson blamed the Biden administration for its immigration policy and claimed that the administration was paroling immigrants into the country in order to vote for Democrats.

“I can think of no other reason than to bring in a bunch of people, very grateful to you, and encourage them and facilitate their ability to vote unlawfully,” Johnson said.

Tuberville, who was sworn into Congress three days before the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, said the legislation is needed so that people can have confidence in their elections.

“What’s (going to) happen, if we do not show the American people that the elections are (going to) be fair and they’re (going to) be satisfied with the outcome, no matter whether Republicans win or Democrats win, you are going to have hell to pay in this country,” he said. “It’s coming, and I’m not so sure that’s not what the Democrats want.”

The House passed the election bill in July, but it has gone nowhere in the Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority.

Democratic Senate leaders have also opposed attaching the bill to government funding and the White House has already said President Joe Biden would veto such a measure.

The provision is supported by former President Donald Trump, the current GOP presidential nominee, who urged congressional Republicans to force a government shutdown if Democrats don’t accept the GOP’s inclusion of the voting bill.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson looks on as Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes speaks during a House Administration Committee hearing in the Longworth House Office Building at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 11, 2024 in Washington, D.C. The hearing examined “American Confidence in Elections” while looking forward to the 2024 presidential election in just under two months. (Photo by Bonnie Cash/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Republicans on the House Administration Committee at a Wednesday hearing argued that legislation to bar people from voting who are not citizens — something already illegal — is what’s needed to prepare for the November elections.

But Democratic secretaries of state in battleground states told committee members they are more concerned about the detailed threats they and their election workers are experiencing resulting from election misinformation.

Three Democratic secretaries of state, Adrian Fontes of Arizona, Jocelyn Benson of Michigan and Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico, said that people who are not citizens voting in federal elections do not constitute a problem, despite the GOP push for legislation barring the act.

“There’s no evidence that noncitizens are voting and if they were, it would be easy to prove, since voting records are public. And despite numerous organizations spending a lot of money to try to convince people that noncitizens are voting, none of these groups have actually been able to provide any evidence of it,” Benson said.

Those Democratic secretaries of state added that since former President Donald Trump has continued to perpetuate the falsehood that he won the 2020 presidential election, they have been forced to deal with threats and are concerned the lie has led to overall distrust in election results.

The insurrection on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was an attempt by a mob of pro-Trump supporters to stop Congress from certifying the electoral results of the 2020 presidential election.

The three Republican secretaries of state at the hearing, Frank LaRose of Ohio, Cord Byrd of Florida and Mac Warner of West Virginia, argued that federal legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register is necessary to prevent people who are not citizens from voting and to secure elections. Research has found that noncitizen voting rarely happens.?

“The fact is it’s rare, but we keep it rare by enforcing the law,” LaRose said of such voting. “It is my duty to carry that out. Unfortunately, that duty is not as easy to carry out as it should be.”

Bill pulled from floor

House Republicans are currently trying to attach H.R. 8281, passed in July, that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, to a stopgap government funding bill. A vote was planned late Wednesday, but House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana pulled the bill because he didn’t have enough votes for passage.

However, it’s dead on arrival in the Senate and President Joe Biden has already promised a veto.

House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil, Republican of Wisconsin, said he is still working to get H.R. 8281 passed ahead of the November elections.

“As we approach the upcoming federal election, it is imperative that we take a close look at how each Secretary of State will implement federal and State election laws to guarantee that every legal vote counts,” Steil said in his opening remarks.

Multiple GOP-led states have ballot initiatives this November to bar noncitizens from voting, including in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin.

It’s also a priority for Trump, the current GOP presidential nominee, who has made immigration a core campaign platform and has falsely stated that noncitizen voting cost him the popular vote in 2016.

The top Democrat on the committee, Joe Morelle of New York, noted that the election is already here, as ballots are going to be sent to military members overseas and states are getting ready for early voting in the coming weeks.

He raised concerns about threats to election workers as well as misinformation about the security of elections.

“Election officials are operating in an election season that continues to be marred by a steady drumbeat of mis- and disinformation,” he said in his opening statement. “For months, we have heard the former President and others either refuse to say they will accept the outcome of the election, or condition their acceptance with an ‘if they are free and fair’— which undermines Americans’ confidence that our elections are, in fact, fair and secure.”

More consistent funding

Morelle said that Congress needs to do more to help election officials, including providing consistent funding in election security grants.

He said that in fiscal year 2024, Congress appropriated about $55 million to states and U.S. territories in election grants.

Oliver and Benson said that a consistent stream of federal funding would also help them deal with misinformation about elections.

Benson said that her state is often scraping together funding and that a “predictable and sustainable stream of funding” would help, especially when dealing with threats of violence and intimidation.

She added that she knows all eyes will be on Michigan, a battleground state, and noted that during the last presidential race, her state was able to post results within 24 hours. Michigan’s 2020 presidential election results were challenged by Republicans.

“We’ll never sacrifice accuracy and security in tabulating our votes over efficiency,” Benson said. “We understand the urgency of the movement and the fact that the eyes of the nation will often be on our state.”

Biden order on voter registration

Republicans on the committee took issue with a three-year-old executive order from President Joe Biden that directed federal agencies to help register eligible voters.

“It is our duty to ensure that registering to vote and the act of voting be made simple and easy for all those eligible to do so,” according to the executive order.

GOP Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina took issue with the initiative and argued it was partisan because it helped Democrats in elections.

“This is where the angst and the anger comes from,” he said, referring to Americans’ distrust in elections. “It is absolutely for Democrats.”

Oklahoma GOP Rep. Stephanie Bice agreed, and said that while voter registration is important, it’s not something the federal government or its agencies should undertake. She asked the Republican secretaries of state if they had been contacted about the executive order.

LaRose said that because he sued the Biden administration over it, “I think they know better than to ask me.”

Byrd said that he’s instructed Florida agencies not to participate and Warner said that he sent a letter to the White House asking them to rescind the executive order because he believes it’s unconstitutional.

Threats to election workers

California Democratic Rep. Norma Torres said she is concerned about threats to election workers.

Oliver said that misinformation about elections had led to mistrust for voters. She said that the discussion of voting by people who are not citizens is an example.

“When voters are misinformed, they lose trust in the system,” she said. “Noncitizen voting does not happen in any systematic way in New Mexico or across the nation.”

Torres asked how that type of misinformation affects their work and that of election workers.

Benson, who was elected as Michigan’s secretary of state in 2018, said that she’s had people show up at her house to threaten her.

“People show up on my doorstep when I’m inside trying to hang Christmas decorations with my 4-year-old son, screaming into a megaphone ‘You’re a murderer and you should be arrested and tried for treason,’” she said. “That’s the reality of all this. That’s who it all impacts.”

Benson said lies and misinformation about election results “make us afraid to go to work, afraid to go grocery shopping, afraid to take our kid to school, afraid to go into our backyard because we don’t know what might be lurking in the bushes.”

“That’s what we’ve been experiencing not just this last week, but these last four years,” she said.

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, Democrat of Alabama, speaks at a press conference on voting rights legislation outside the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 10, 2024. She said she is looking forward to reintroducing a voting rights act bill named after the late Rep. John Lewis, Georgia Democrat and voting rights icon. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers and a coalition of civil rights leaders Tuesday urged Congress to reform the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation next Congress.

“Voting rights, succinctly put, are preservative of all other rights,” U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, said at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol.

McConnell says GOP control of the U.S. Senate would protect the filibuster

Warnock was joined by Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Reps. Joe Morelle of New York, Terri Sewell of Alabama and John Sarbanes of Maryland, as well as dozens of representatives of civil rights groups, including plaintiffs in voting rights lawsuits in South Carolina and Alabama.

They advocated for Congress to pass several pieces of legislation including:

• ?H.R. 14, which would restore a preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act that was gutted by a U.S. Supreme Court decision;
• ?S. 1, which would curb political spending in campaigns and modernize federal elections; and
• HR. 51, which would make the District of Columbia a U.S. state.

Another bill, H.R. 5008, is a voting rights act for Native Americans intended to help tribes access the ballot box.

The Senate filibuster means there is a 60-vote threshold required for almost all legislation. With Democrats in a slim majority, they have not been able to reach that number of votes for major legislation, from voting rights to gun safety.

Sewell is the sponsor of H.R. 14, named after the late Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who was a civil rights and voting rights champion. She called for reform of the filibuster.

“We know that it’s been stymied in the Senate by an archaic structural practice,” Sewell said of her bill, which the House passed when Democrats controlled the chamber.

Klobuchar said she is hopeful that Senate Democrats can convince their colleagues to change the rules to create an exception in the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.

Two independent senators who oppose exceptions to the filibuster are Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia. Neither is running for reelection.

“I’m excited about what the future holds in terms of what we’re gonna get done on these important pro-democracy bills,” Klobuchar said. “I want us never to give up heart.”

Sarbanes, who sponsored the House companion to S. 1, said that the path to passage of the four bills lies with the opportunity to challenge the “procedural path” of the filibuster.

“Everybody here is equipped and ready to take advantage of that clear day, that moment,” Sarbanes said. “We hope it’s coming soon. We believe it’s coming soon. We will be ready.”

Taiwan Scott, a plaintiff in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, a case now before the South Carolina Supreme Court regarding racial gerrymandering in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, said he and about 30,000 Gullah Geechee residents “were removed from my rightful congressional district and packed into one in a deliberate move to lessen our political power.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in May issued a 6-3 ruling tossing out the case brought on behalf of Scott, a Black Hilton Head Island resident who lives in the 1st District.

Gullah Geechee residents are descendants of enslaved Africans on the rice and cotton plantations on the lower Atlantic Coast. They have the only distinctly African Creole language spoken in the U.S. in the coastal areas of Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

“The Gullah Geechee cultural heritage corridor, which Congress itself established, was meant to protect our culture, but instead of support, we find ourselves marginalized,” he said. “Our voices diluted, our representation weaker, even though three federal judges ruled in our favor … after an eight-day trial, the Supreme Court chose to disregard that decision, forcing us to live and vote under a racially gerrymandered map. This is why federal voting rights legislation is so critical.”

The U.S. House as it returns from a five-week recess is preparing to vote on a stopgap spending bill that also includes a provision to bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — As Congress returns from a five-week recess Monday, House Republicans have attached a provision to bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections — which is already unlawful — to a stopgap funding bill that is already teeing up a battle with the Senate and White House.

The GOP drive in Congress echoes state lawmakers’ push for ballot measures this November that would bar noncitizens from voting in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin.

It also comes in the heat of the presidential campaign, as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump repeatedly calls for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and faces the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, in a crucial Tuesday night debate.

Current federal government spending will expire Oct. 1, so Congress must pass a continuing resolution, or CR, to approve temporary spending beyond that date or risk a shutdown.

The measure that requires proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, which U.S. House Republicans and some vulnerable Democrats passed in July, has been added by the House GOP to a CR that would extend spending until March 28. A vote by the House is expected this week.

The White House on Monday vowed President Joe Biden would issue a veto if Congress passed the measure in that form.

“Instead of meeting the security and disaster needs of the Nation, this bill includes unrelated cynical legislation that would do nothing to safeguard our elections, but would make it much harder for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls,” the White House said in a statement Monday. “It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections—it is a Federal crime punishable by prison and fines.”

Senate opposition

The voting language is a nonstarter among Senate Democrats, who hold a slim majority in the chamber.

“As we have said repeatedly, avoiding a government shutdown requires bipartisanship, not a bill drawn up by one party,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray of Washington said in a joint statement Friday.

“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands,” they continued.

Democrats have argued that the bill is an attempt to sow distrust in U.S. elections ahead of November elections.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has stressed that noncitizen voting in federal elections is an issue, although research has found it rarely happens.?

“As the 2024 election nears, it is imperative that Congress does everything within our power to protect the integrity of our nation’s election system,” he said in a statement.

The bill is also supported by Trump.

In April, Johnson while at Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida,? announced the House would pass a bill relating to noncitizen voting. The former president has often falsely blamed voting by large numbers of undocumented people for his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton as the reason he lost the popular vote.

Other Democrats objected to passing a CR that would last until next year.

The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, criticized the six-month measure because it is “shortchanging veterans and jeopardizing their care by kicking the can down the road until March.”

“A continuing resolution to the end of March provides Republicans with more leverage to attempt to force their unpopular cuts to services that American families depend on to make ends meet,” she said in a statement.

Texas congressman spearheads bill

The original noncitizen voting bill, H.R.8281, was first introduced by Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus. It passed 221-198, with five Democrats voting with Republicans, but stalled in the Senate.

Those five Democrats who voted in support of the measure are: Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Donald Davis of North Carolina, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.

Under current U.S. law, only citizens can vote in federal elections, but the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 prohibits states from confirming citizenship status.

Along with the ballot measures, hundreds of Republican state legislators have also signed on to a letter by the Only Citizens Vote Coalition urging Congress to pass a bill to bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections.

The Only Citizens Vote Coalition includes election denier activists, organizations headed by former Trump aides and anti-immigrant groups. It was founded by Cleta Mitchell, a key figure who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election and is now running a grassroots organization to aggressively monitor elections in November.

Five of the eight states — Idaho, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin —? with votes set on ballot measures have state legislators who sponsored bills to put the question on the ballot and are signed on to the letter by Only Citizens Vote.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, addresses the 2024 Human Rights Campaign National Dinner on Sept. 7, 2024 in Washington, D.C. Walz spoke to the LGBDQ+ group as part of Human Rights Campaign National Dinner and Equality Convention Weekend. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz Saturday night touted his and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ advocacy for LGBTQ rights in a keynote address he delivered at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual gala — and also criticized comments by his GOP opponent Sen. J.D. Vance that school shootings are a “fact of life.”

“It’s a fact of life, some people are gay,” Walz said in his remarks. “But you know what’s not a fact of life? That our children need to be shot dead in schools.”? In a Wednesday school shooting in Georgia at Apalachee High School, two students and two teachers were killed.

Vance, when asked at a campaign stop in Phoenix Thursday about policies to stop school shootings, said, “I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you’re, if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets, and we have got to bolster security at our schools.”

The school shooting renewed calls from Democrats to ban assault weapons, push for safe storage of firearms and enact red flag laws, which allow a court to temporarily remove firearms from an individual who is deemed a threat to themselves or others.

“Our kids should be free to go to school without being shot dead in the halls,” Walz said Saturday night.

In his speech, Walz praised Vice President Harris for her long history of supporting LGBTQ rights, including officiating some of the first marriages in California after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed same-sex marriage was a legal right in 2015.

“This is the most pro LGBTQ+ administration in American history,” Walz said of Harris and President Joe Biden, noting the enactment of the Respect for Marriage Act, which would ensure same-sex and interracial couples continue having their marriages recognized regardless of future U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

When Harris picked Walz as her running mate in early August, the Human Rights Campaign, which is the largest LGBTQ advocacy organization in the country, praised the decision.

“Coach Walz not only embraces the fabric of our community, he embraces the fabric of our society, that thing that lifts us up, that strengthens us, that connects all of us,” Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said before introducing Walz at the dinner.

Walz has a long history of supporting LGBTQ rights. As a teacher and coach, he said he agreed to serve as an adviser for the gay-straight alliance at the high school where he taught in the late 1990s after concerns were raised about queer students being bullied.

“I understood what it meant to be that older, straight, white guy who was coaching football,” he said. “It’s easy to be an ally, when it’s easy to be an ally. What really matters is knowing who’s going to be at your side and stand up when it’s hard.”

Advocacy in Congress

Walz said during his run for Congress in 2006, he was asked during a debate if he supported same-sex marriage.

“My marriage to my wife Gwen is the most important thing in my life. I love her deeply. Why would I stop anybody else from marrying the person they love?” he said. “That makes no sense.”

He highlighted his work in Congress as an early proponent of same-sex marriage and related how he voted to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gay, lesbian and bisexual military members.

“No one should get a pat on the back for doing what’s right,” he said. “For God’s sake, the bar is pretty damn low here to treat people like human beings. Equal justice under law, it’s not a high bar.”

Walz talked about his work passing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, which expands the federal hate crime law to include a crime motivated by the victim’s gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. Matthew Shepard was a student who was tortured and murdered in Wyoming in 1998 because he was gay.

Walz said he walked to the U.S. Capitol for the final vote on the bill with Matthew’s mother and the sheriff who found Matthew’s body.

“I remember walking with a mother who’d lost her son and hearing the sheriff tell me the only place it wasn’t bloody is where the tears ran down Matthew’s eyes, and I watched a mother, and the unbelievable pain that I couldn’t even fathom, to lose a child this way, walk with her head held high to make sure that none of the rest of us ever have to get a call from someone,” Walz told the crowd.

Walz said when he was elected governor, for the first time in more than a decade, Minnesota had control of both chambers in the state legislature and quickly moved to pass Democratic legislation.

“You don’t get elected to office to bank political capital, so you can get elected again,” Walz said. “You get elected (to) office to burn political capital to improve lives as quickly as you can.”

As governor, Walz signed an executive order protecting access to health care for transgender people and a “trans refuge” bill that protects transgender people and their families from legal repercussions if they travel to Minnesota to seek health care.

He also signed into law a ban on conversion therapy for children and adults.

“In Minnesota, you are seen, heard, loved and respected and safe,” he said of LGBTQ rights.

Book bans, school shootings

Walz heavily criticized Republicans who have led a wave of book bans by LGBTQ authors, and advocated for laws banning transgender student athletes and restricting access to health care for transgender people.

He noted that Minnesota passed a law that banned the act of banning books.

“This is what these folks are focusing on spending all their time, like reading about two male penguins who love each other is somehow going to turn your children gay, and that’s what you should worry about,” he said.

Walz’s speech represented a stark difference with the GOP presidential ticket and former President Donald Trump’s false claims about transgender people.

During Trump’s first term, the administration rolled back an Obama-era regulation to mandate health care as a civil right for transgender patients under the Affordable Care Act. Trump also enacted a ban on transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, a policy the Biden administration rescinded.

Walz called it a “stupid, bigoted policy.”

“If you want to serve this nation, you should be allowed to, and what we should do is respect that service,” Walz said. “They should not get incoming fire from their commander in chief, attacking their basic dignity, humanity and patriotism.”

When Trump announced Vance as his running mate, the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD, a national LGBTQ media advocacy group, raised concerns about past comments Vance made about LQBTQ people.

“I’ll stop calling people ‘groomers’ when they stop freaking out about bills that prevent the sexualization of my children,” Vance wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in 2022.

During a Saturday afternoon campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, Trump accused Walz of signing a bill to require menstrual products like tampons be available in boys bathrooms, which is not what the 2023 law says.

The law requires district or charter schools to provide menstrual products free to students in fourth grade through the end of high school. It does not specify which bathrooms must provide access to the products.

“He’s a wack job,” Trump said of Walz.

Trump also continued to perpetuate a false right-wing claim that children are obtaining surgeries at schools and changing their genders.

“Keep critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools,” Trump said.

Cheney endorsement

In other campaign developments, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday endorsed Harris for president. His daughter, former GOP U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, also endorsed Harris.

Harris, who is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, preparing for her debate with Trump, said Saturday that both Republicans put their country over their party.

“People are exhausted about the division and the attempts to kind of divide as Americans, and them stepping up to make this public statement, I think is courageous,” Harris said, according to White House pool reports.

A poll worker walks past voting booths as he waits for voters to arrive at the Miami Beach Fire Station 4 to cast their ballot during the primary on March 19, 2024 in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Latino voters are concerned with the high cost of living, the minimum wage and rising housing costs heading into the November elections, according to a comprehensive survey released Wednesday by UnidosUS, the largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy center in the nation.

“Laying out a coherent economic policy agenda that will resonate with Latinos … would go a long way, I think, for our community,” Janet Murguía, the president and CEO of UnidosUS, said on a call with reporters detailing the results of the survey.

The survey included 3,000 eligible Hispanic voters who were interviewed in either English or Spanish, from Aug. 5-23, with oversampling of residents of Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida, Texas and California. The poll, conducted by BSP Research, had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.

Murguía said Latinos are the second-largest voting-age population and 1 in 5 of them will be casting ballots for the first time in a presidential election this November.

“Top of mind are pocketbook issues,” she said. “Hispanic voters are most deeply concerned, like many of their fellow Americans, about the rising cost of living.”

Another issue that Latinos strongly supported is access to abortion. By a 71% to 21% margin, Latinos oppose abortion bans, according to the survey.

“They do not support making it illegal,” Murguía said.

Minimum-wage workers

Wages and jobs that provide economic security are a top priority for Latino voters, Gary Segura, who conducted the research poll for UnidosUS, said.

Latino workers are disproportionately workers who earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which has not increased since 2009. If the federal minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, it would be around $24 an hour, according to the AFL-CIO.

“The lived economy for Latinos is different than the lived economy for the nation as a whole,” Segura said.

Segura said during the poll, interviewers followed up with respondents on their concerns about jobs and wages and found that being able to afford necessities like food and housing were top issues.

“People are struggling to make ends meet,” he said.

The number one response was that “jobs don’t pay enough, or I have to take a second job to make ends meet,” Segura said. “We talk a lot about the low levels of unemployment in this society now, which is certainly good news, but the issue is that many of those jobs do not pay enough for the holder of that job to essentially pay their basic living expenses.”

Opinions on immigration

Murguía noted that immigration, which the Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, has made a core campaign issue, ranks fifth in priorities among Latino voters, tied with concern about gun violence and too-easy access to assault weapons.

“We want to be crystal clear that Latino voters overall are not buying into campaign tactics that demonize immigrants,” Murguía said. “They know the difference between those who mean us harm and those who are contributing to the fabric of our nation.”

Latino voters strongly support a legal pathway to citizenship for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, referred to as Dreamers, and for long-term undocumented immigrants, the survey found.

Trump has promised mass deportations should he win a second term, a policy issue that has “virtually no support” by Latino voters sampled in the survey, Segura said.

Segura added that while Trump has campaigned on the issue, his promise to launch mass deportations is not particularly well known in Latino communities.

“Many of the people we speak to believe that (Trump) will do it if he can, but they just don’t actually believe that he can pull that off,” Segura said. “So there’s both a lack of awareness of these really draconian measures or proposals and then a lack of belief that they would actually come to pass.”

He added that he thinks it’s an opportunity for Democrats to campaign on the issue, but Vice President Kamala Harris has mainly criticized Trump for tanking a bipartisan border security deal.

“Our own results suggest that the primary border concern comes from voters who lean in the GOP direction in the first place, and so I don’t see a lot of movement there or a lot of risk for (Democrats), particularly in targeted advertisements and Hispanic voters,” Segura said.

‘Dismissive and diminishing language’

The poll found that 55% of those Latinos had not been contacted by either political party this year.

“We often hear a really dismissive and diminishing language about Latino participation in elections,” Segura said. “‘Latinos don’t vote as often as they should. Latinos will let you down’ and so forth, and no one ever wants to address the elephant in the room, which is that no one is asking Latinos to vote.”

The Harris campaign last month launched a bilingual WhatsApp campaign to target Latino voters. Michelle Villegas, the national Latino engagement director for the Harris campaign, said during a Hispanic Caucus meeting at the Democratic National Convention that the Latino vote is key to victory in three battleground states — Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The survey also found that running mates had an impact on Latino voters. Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, gave her a 3-point boost, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, made his rating drop by 3 points.

“Vance has (a) negative impact on the Republican ticket, which is consistent with his low favorability among Latino voters,” according to the survey.

While Democrats have an advantage with Latino voters, and Harris has seen a boost in support compared to when President Joe Biden was in the race, she is still not reaching the levels of Latino support seen in previous elections, Clarissa Martinez De Castro, the vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, said.

“There is work to be done to reach the levels of support Democrats need and had achieved in previous elections, and more intense communication with these voters is needed, particularly on economic issues and immigration,” Martinez De Castro said.
Equis Research, which conducts research and polling specifically about Latino voters, found in a recent poll that Harris has gained significant support from Latinos but that Harris “remains a few points shy of what Biden received in 2020” across battleground states.

Former President Donald Trump speaks with Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice during the 2024 Joyful Warriors National Summit on Aug. 30 in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump late Friday rarely touched on education issues during the third conference of Moms for Liberty, a conservative parental rights group that has ties to Project 2025, the far-right playbookTrump has tried to distance himself from.

Instead, in a more than one-hour interview with Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice, he gave lengthy commentary on immigration; the Afghanistan withdrawal; his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election; his old T.V. show “The Apprentice;” and frustration at running against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris instead of President Joe Biden.

“Our country is being poisoned,” Trump said of migrants and their children in public schools. “And your schools and your children are suffering greatly because they’re going into the classrooms … they don’t even speak English.”

Trump didn’t give details on how he would enact education policy changes at the federal level but said he was against public schools allowing transgender students to identify with their gender identity in the classroom.

Trump added that he was supportive of “parental rights” and the mission of Moms for Liberty, which supports vouchers for private school tuition, running for local school boards and dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.

“I’m for parental rights all the way,” Trump said. “I don’t even understand the concept of not being.”

Across the campaign trail Trump has also floated the idea that parents should be allowed to elect principals in public schools.

Trump attacked Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and called her a “Marxist.” He added that he looked forward to debating her on Sept. 10 on ABC News.?

The Harris campaign criticized Trump for speaking at the event.

“Donald Trump is celebrating the new school year by pushing his frightening Project 2025 agenda that would hurt kids and dismantle public education as we know it, while Vice President Harris helped deliver the largest public education investment in American history and is fighting for every child to have access to a good school and a shot at the American dream,” Joseph Costello, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, said in a statement.

Harris has said little about education policy on the campaign trail. But during her campaign speeches she has opposed book bans and has stressed the need to address the student loan debt crisis, while touting some of the debt forgiveness initiatives of the Biden administration.

During Friday’s interview, Justice took aim at the policies of Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Walz is a former geography teacher who was the teacher adviser for his school’s first gay, straight, alliance club in 1999. And as governor, he signed a bill into law making free school lunches available for students.

Justice raised a question about a bill Walz signed into law making Minnesota a safe haven for access to gender-affirming care.

Justice asked Trump what were some of the things he would be able to do as president because “there’s been an explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender, and children are being taught that they were born in the wrong body.”

“Well, you can do everything,” Trump said. “President has such power.”

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presidents have immunity for some official acts in office.

Justice asked Trump what policies he would enact at the federal level to protect “parental rights,” such as school choice, which gives parents an option to enroll their children in a school other than the assigned public one, often using public funding to do so.

House Republicans already passed a similar bill last year, but it’s likely to go nowhere in the Senate where Democrats hold a slim majority.

Trump said that Republicans are “the party of common sense.”

“I mean we’re conservative,” he said. “All of these things we’re talking about, no men in women’s sports, no gender operation, I mean it’s these operations, it’s crazy.”

Project 2025 ties

This is the second time Trump has attended a Moms for Liberty conference, and while he embraces their culture war issues, the former present has not made “parental rights” a predominant issue in his reelection campaign.

Instead, he has centered his campaign on immigration and on the promise of undertaking mass deportations of undocumented people. During the interview, he mainly criticized the Biden administration over its immigration policies.

Moms for Liberty has strong GOP ties, appearing at the Republican National Convention this summer in Milwaukee. It has more than 130,000 members across 300 chapters in 48 states, according to the organization.

The group considers the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that wrote Project 2025, a key sponsor. Moms for Liberty also sits on an advisory board for Project 2025, which Trump has tried to distance from his campaign as Democrats highlight his ties to the aggressive conservative playbook.

The Heritage Foundation put together several sessions during the Moms for Liberty summit, one by Lindsey Burke, the director of the Center for Education Policy at the think tank. She was the lead author on the Department of Education section of Project 2025 that calls to abolish the agency. Another Heritage session was titled: “Boyhood and the Changing Role of the Man in American Life.”

While Moms for Liberty rose to prominence in 2021 amid the coronavirus pandemic, with a focus on public schools and culture war topics, its hold on local school board elections has started to wane.

In school board election races last year, candidates endorsed by the group underperformed, with fewer than one-third winning their races, according to an analysis from the left-leaning think tank, the Brookings Institution.

Moms for Liberty also announced a $3 million campaign and advertising blitz in key states with a focus on local school board elections in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin — all battleground states.

The group, which is a nonprofit, started in Florida and was at the forefront of pushing against mask mandates during school reopenings, eliciting book bans and challenges, and objections to structural racism being discussed in classrooms.

With the new Title IX regulations from the Biden administration, the group filed lawsuits against the new rules, which broaden sex discrimination to include gender ideology and sexual orientation, and give protections to transgender students.

While Moms for Liberty quickly rose on the far right, the organization has had its share of controversy, from its co-founder to local chapters.

Police records from a now-closed criminal investigation allege that Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler helped her husband, former Florida GOP chairperson Christian Ziegler, look for women the couple could have sexual relations with, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Authorities were investigating Christian Ziegler for allegedly illegally filming a woman who accused him of sexual assault, but the state attorney’s office in Sarasota announced in March that it would not pursue charges.

A local chapter in Indiana had to apologize for using a quote by former Nazi leader Adolf Hilter in a newsletter to members, and two Kentucky chapter leaders were removed after posing in a photo with the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Biden administration plan to give deportation protection to undocumented people married to U.S. citizens for at least 10 years. (File photo of a 2018 protest against the Trump administration’s immigration policies. By David McNew/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A Texas federal judge late Monday sided with 16-Republican led states to temporarily block a Biden administration program that grants deportation protections for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens and a potential pathway to citizenship.

The ruling by Judge J. Campbell Barker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, is an administrative stay, meaning no applications can be processed while the case is ongoing. The Department of Homeland Security began accepting applications last week.

“The claims are substantial and warrant closer consideration than the court has been able to afford to date,” Barker, who former president Donald Trump appointed, wrote in his order.

A DHS spokesperson said the agency will defend the program, known as Keeping Families Together, in court.

“Keeping Families Together enables U.S. citizens and their family members to live without fear of separation, consistent with fundamental American values,” a DHS spokesperson said. “The Department of Homeland Security will comply with the court’s decision, including continuing to accept applications, while we defend Keeping Families Together in court.”

DHS is still allowed to collect applications for the program, but not allowed to approve them, according to the order from Barker. Applications that have already been processed and a parole in place granted, are not impacted by the current stay.

The states, which filed the suit last week, are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

They are being represented by America First Legal, an organization established by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller — the architect of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.

Those states argue that the Biden administration overreached its authority in creating the program and they argue the program would financially harm them if that group of undocumented people — roughly 500,000 — are allowed to remain in the country.

In his order, Barker set a court timeline that could deliver a decision by mid-October, right before the presidential election. Both sides have until Oct. 10 to submit their briefs.

“The court does not, however, express any ultimate conclusions about the success or likely success of those claims,” Barker wrote. “As with most administrative stays, the court has simply undertaken a screening, ‘first-blush’ review of the claims and what is at stake in the dispute.”

President Joe Biden in June unveiled the program, which is a one-time action that applies to long-term undocumented people married to U.S. citizens for 10 years as of June 17 this year. It also applies to their children. It’s expected to roughly include 50,000 children who are undocumented but have an immigrant parent married to a U.S. citizen.

The program allows for those undocumented spouses and their children to apply for a green card under certain requirements, which DHS will review on a case-by-case basis.

Under current U.S. immigration law, if a noncitizen enters the country without authorization, they are ineligible for permanent legal status and would need to leave the U.S. and then reenter through a green card application by their U.S. spouse. It’s a lengthy process that can take years.

A?person holds a sign that reads “Mass Deportation Now” on the third day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 17, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — “Mass deportation now!” is a catchphrase for the Trump presidential campaign, as the Republican nominee proposes a crackdown on immigration that would oust thousands of undocumented people.

Often citing a deportation operation enacted by former President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, former President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed in campaign rallies that he plans to not only go back to the tough immigration policies of his first term in office, but expand them greatly.

“We’re going to have the largest deportation,” Trump said at a June campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin. “We have no choice.”

The crowd responded with a chant: “Send them back. Send them back. Send them back.”

Mass deportation would be a broad, multipronged effort under Trump’s vision. The plan includes invoking an 18th-century law; reshuffling law enforcement at federal agencies; transferring funds within programs in the Department of Homeland Security; and forcing greater enforcement of immigration laws.

But whether a Trump administration could accomplish a mass deportation is doubtful. Historians, lawyers and immigration and economic experts interviewed by States Newsroom said removal of the more than 11 million undocumented people in the country would require enormous amounts of resources and overcoming legal hurdles. The effects on the U.S. economic and social fabric would be profound, they said.

“I don’t think it will happen,” Donald Kerwin, a senior researcher on migration at the University of Notre Dame, said of mass deportations. “But what it can do is it can make the lives of the undocumented and their families miserable.”

GOP support

Trump repeatedly has pledged mass deportation.

At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, delegates waved “Mass Deportation Now” signs as Trump said “to keep our families safe, the Republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”

In a March rally in Dayton, Ohio, Trump said some undocumented immigrants were not “people.”

“I don’t know if you call them people,” Trump said. “In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion, but I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”

Trump’s campaign message comes as the Biden administration has dealt with the largest number of migrant encounters at the southern border in 20 years and immigration remains a top issue for voters.?

However, since President Joe Biden signed a recent executive order, border crossings have fallen to their lowest level since he took office.?

The GOP and Trump have now set their sights on the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

House Republicans already led a resolution disapproving of Harris’ handling of the southern border and labeling her the “Border Czar,” a title she was given by the media. Her campaign has argued she never had such an official title? and her involvement with immigration has been focused on root causes of migration in Central and South America, rather than domestic immigration.

Even though Biden is no longer in the race, and has undertaken his own crackdown on immigration, he warned in mid-June, during an announcement of protections offered for the spouses of long-term undocumented people, that Trump would undertake mass deportations.

“Now he’s proposing to rip spouses and children from their families and homes and communities and place them in detention camps,” Biden said of Trump. “He’s actually saying these things out loud, and it’s outrageous.”

How does the public feel?

Polls have found Americans are split on the idea of mass deportations but Republicans are more supportive.

A recent CBS News poll that found nearly 6 in 10 voters favor a new government agency that would deport all undocumented immigrants. Of those voters, one-third were Democrats and 9 in 10 were Republicans.

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests from States Newsroom for comment on the specifics of how a second Trump administration would plan to carry out mass deportations.

The massive deportation campaign that Trump often cites in his campaign rallies was conducted under the Eisenhower administration in the summer of 1954, with a pejorative, racist name attached to it.

“Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said at a September rally last year in Ankeny, Iowa.

But what the Trump campaign is proposing is not an Eisenhower-style crackdown, said Michael Clemens, a professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University.

“That policy was instituted hand-in-hand with a crucial other arm of the policy,” he said — which was that lawful work pathways for Mexicans to the U.S. were nearly tripled at the same time as the mass deportations.

“We’ve heard zero about substantial increases in lawful migration pathways from the people who are now talking about an Eisenhower-style crackdown,” Clemens said. “What they’re proposing is not an Eisenhower-style crackdown — it is something that the Eisenhower administration understood would not work and therefore it did not do.”

Additionally, the Eisenhower program was not as successful as thought.

The Eisenhower administration claimed that it deported 1 million people back to Mexico, but the real number is a couple hundred thousand, said Eladio Bobadilla, an assistant history professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

“It wasn’t really about getting rid of immigrants in any real sense,” he said. “It was a way to sell to the American public that the problem had been solved.”

While one agency of the Eisenhower administration was deporting Mexicans — and often U.S. citizens of Mexican descent — another agency was sometimes bringing those same workers back in through the so-called Bracero program, which was created through an executive order by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942.

States and local governments also worked in tandem with the 1950s deportation operation, something unlikely to happen under a second Trump administration, said David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

“You also had the cooperation of the employers in those areas, because the Eisenhower administration was totally explicit that all the people that we’re deporting, you’re gonna get workers back legally through the Bracero guest worker program,” said Bier.

Obama deportation

The most recent mass deportation campaign came during the Obama administration, said Clemens, who studies the economic effects of migration.

That was the Secure Communities program, which was a set of agreements between local law enforcement and federal level immigration enforcement officials such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Localities shared information about noncitizens who were encountered by local law enforcement, such as at traffic stops.

“Our most recent experience with mass deportation at the federal level, mostly under the Obama administration, directly harmed U.S. workers,” Clemens said.

The program was slowly rolled out, from 2008 to 2014, but over those six years nearly half a million workers were deported.

For every 10 workers who were deported, one U.S. job was eliminated, Clemens said.

“The net effect is that Secure Communities cost jobs for Americans across the country,” he said.

In a recent paper for the Center for Migration Studies of New York, Kerwin and Robert Warren found that mass deportations would financially harm U.S. families, especially the more than 3 million mixed-status families.

“The household income in those households plunges, and drops all of these families, or a high percentage of them, into poverty,” Kerwin said.

Of those mixed-status families, meaning some family members have different citizenship or immigration status, about 6.6 million members are U.S. citizens, said Warren, a senior visiting fellow at the center, a think tank that studies domestic and international migration patterns.

“So you say, ‘We took out one undocumented immigrant,’ but you damaged a family of U.S. citizens,” Warren said.

Expanded executive authority

The early architects of the Trump administration’s immigration policies such as Stephen Miller and Ken Cuccinelli have laid out a second term that would expand the use of executive authority to carry out mass deportations and curtail legal immigration.

Such policies include limiting humanitarian visas and parole and moving to end Temporary Protected Status, known as TPS, said ManoLasya Perepa, policy and practice counsel with the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Like the first Trump administration, Perepa anticipates that there will be a slew of lawsuits to file injunctions, such as preventing the ending of TPS.

The Trump administration dealt with a flurry of lawsuits over an order to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects a little over half a million undocumented people brought into the United States as children without authorization.

The Supreme Court eventually blocked it and kept the program, but DACA is still at risk of being deemed unlawful in a separate suit that is likely to head again to the high court.?

“I think anybody with a status that keeps getting renewed is really, really at risk,” she said. “All you’re doing is driving people into the shadows.”

With the courts likely to get involved, Trump has said he wants to go back to his policy that expanded expedited removals, which means if an undocumented person is in the country for two years without a court hearing or any type of authorization, they can be deported without a hearing before a judge.

That type of removal is limited to 100 miles from a border zone, but the Trump administration expanded that to the rest of the country.

“The reality is, if the (Trump) administration increases interior enforcement, technically, all of these people could be detained,” Perepa said.

The Migration Policy Institute, a think tank that researches migration, has estimated that “the expansion of expedited removal to the U.S. interior could apply to as many as 288,000 people.”

Miller, a senior White House adviser during the Trump administration, said on the right-wing podcast “The Charlie Kirk Show” in November 2023 that the U.S. military would need to be involved for those mass deportations to Mexico, which is “why Trump has talked about invoking the Alien Enemies Act.”

“Because of the logistical challenges involved in removing…you would need to build an extremely large holding area for illegal immigrants that at any given points in time, you know, could hold upwards of 50, 60, 70,000 illegal aliens while you are waiting to send them someplace, somewhere that would be willing to accept them,” Miller said.

The Alien and Sedition Act, an 18th-century wartime law, allows the executive branch to deport any noncitizen from a country that the U.S. is at war with and deport any noncitizen deemed dangerous.

The law can also be used for extraordinary measures that are not deportation, including the last time it was invoked after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It led to the internment camps of more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent, more than half of whom were U.S. citizens, as well as German and Italian nationals, during World War II.

Trump has vowed to use a title within the Alien and Sedition Acts to target drug dealers, gang members and cartel members.

“I will invoke the Alien Enemy Act, to remove all known or suspected gang members from the United States ending the scourge of illegal alien gang violence once and for all,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Reno, Nevada.

Cuccinelli, a former attorney general of Virginia and acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Trump administration, wrote the policy section for the Department of Homeland Security for the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – a conservative “battle plan” for the next Republican president.

In that section, he laid out recommendations for an incoming Republican administration to curtail the use of temporary work visas for workers in agriculture, construction and hospitality; prevent U.S. citizens from qualifying for federal housing subsidies if they live with someone who is a noncitizen; and require driver’s license information to be shared with federal authorities; among other policies.

The Heritage Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.

Punishing states

In a lengthy interview Trump conducted with Time magazine, he said he would withhold federal funding from states and local governments that don’t cooperate in deportation proceedings.

That could violate the 10th Amendment in the Constitution, said Mae Ngai, a historian and Asian American studies professor at Columbia University.

“States and municipalities cannot be coerced to enforcing federal laws,” she said, adding that immigration law is a federal matter. “You cannot force the police department or sheriffs … to pick up immigrants.”

State and local cooperation in detaining immigrants could be a challenge, said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.

Legal challenges make it costly for local law enforcement to detain people solely to wait for immigration proceedings, and many local governments have decided not to hold people beyond their criminal detentions.

Funding issues

Deploying the military for immigration enforcement and constructing detention camps would also come with a large price tag.

Those large expenses would have to be approved by Congress, which may not be a willing partner.

There are ways to get around the legislative branch, such as reshuffling money within the Department of Homeland Security, but they come with downsides, Bier of the Cato Institute said.

“That’s politically risky because if there’s any kind of natural disaster, and you’re using money to deport people that can have some big blowbacks in the affected areas,” he said.

The Trump administration did this in 2019, when it transferred $271 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It also transferred $23.8 million from the Transportation Security Administration to ICE.

Trump could also reassign law enforcement agencies to tackle immigration enforcement, Bier said, but he would face pushback from affected agencies that have their own priorities.

“They’re not going to want to cooperate with just giving up on everything they’re trying to do,” Bier said.

Left to right, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz celebrate after Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination during the final day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 22, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

CHICAGO — Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination for president Thursday evening, pitching her candidacy as an opportunity for the nation to move forward, rather than accept a dark future she said would follow a second election of her Republican opponent.

Harris on the last night of the Democratic National Convention took advantage of the largest television audience she’s likely to have at least until her first debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump next month.

The vice president told her life story to the millions of Americans watching, saying it informed her agenda meant to boost the country’s’ middle class.

She characterized herself as a lifelong public servant and unifier, in contrast to what she described as Trump’s divisive self-centeredness.

“My entire career, I have only had one client: the people,” she said. “And so, on behalf of the people, on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender, or the language your grandmother speaks, on behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever set out? on their own unlikely journey … on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination for president of the United States of America.”

She professed her patriotism several times in her roughly 40-minute address. Near the close, she urged the Democrats in the arena and viewers at home to work for her election on behalf of the country.

“Let’s get out there and let’s fight for it,” she said “Let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”

Americans across the nation made their assessments. Yvette Young, a lifelong Philadelphia resident and project manager at SEPTA who attended a watch party at a Harris campaign office, said she thought it was an excellent speech and comprehensive.

“She touched on, I think, every issue,” Young said. “She wasn’t afraid to call Donald Trump out on his nonsense and put into perspective how he has harmed our country.”

A middle-class childhood

Harris has downplayed the historic nature of her candidacy — she is the first Black and South Asian woman to lead a major party ticket and would be the first woman president of any race — but expanded Thursday on the values her immigrant mother instilled in her.

Her mother, a scientist from India, “was tough, courageous, a trailblazer in the fight for women’s health,” she said.

Harris described her upbringing as middle class, saying she was raised mainly by her mom after her parents divorced. Harris’ father was a Jamaican student who met her mother at a civil rights meeting, Harris said Thursday.

The vice president promised to be a middle-class champion, creating what she called “an opportunity economy” that would unite labor, small businesses and workers. Additionally, she pledged to “end America’s housing shortage,” to lower the cost of everyday needs.

Ahead of the convention, Harris unveiled policy details to stop price gouging, boost the child tax credit, curb rent hikes and help first-time homebuyers.

“We know a strong middle class has always been critical to America’s success,” she said. “And building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. This is personal to me. The middle class is where I come from.”

Her remarks were applauded by another person at the watch party, Lindsay Davis, a Germantown resident and UX designer.

Davis believes that there’s a particular issue that Harris can talk about that can sway undecided voters.

“A lot of the stuff she’s already said about making it easier for first-time homebuyers to buy a house that was, like, huge,” she said. “I think that’s really big for, like, younger people that aren’t boomers, I guess Gen Z, Gen X, Gen whatever, all the Gens.”

A sense of justice

Harris’s mother also taught her daughters “never to complain about injustice, but to do something about it,” she said, repeating a line former first lady Michelle Obama used throughout a Tuesday speech.

She said the same sense of justice motivated her to become a prosecutor, which she did as the district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California before her election to the U.S. Senate in 2016.

As the top lawyer in California, Harris won a $20 billion settlement for homeowners in the state as part of a nationwide lawsuit against banks over predatory lending during the 2008 financial crisis.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who was also his state’s attorney general at the time, said Thursday in remarks just before Harris spoke that he saw her demand much more than what the banks initially offered.

“America, we’ve got a lot of big fights ahead of us,” he said. “And we’ve got one hell of a fighter ready to take them on.”

Trump’s ‘dark agenda’

Harris described much of her policy objectives in contrast to her opponent, the former president seeking another term, Trump.

While her administration would work to expand reproductive rights, Trump would further restrict them, she said.

Trump would pursue a nationwide abortion ban “with or without Congress,” limit access to birth control and require women to report miscarriages, she said.

“Why is it that they don’t trust women?” she asked the packed United Center crowd. “Well, we trust women.”

She said if she is elected, and Congress passes a bill restoring the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, she will sign it into law. For that to happen, Democrats would likely need to not only control both chambers, but also have 60 votes in the Senate.

On foreign policy, Harris said Trump wouldn’t stand up to dictators, “because he wants to be an autocrat himself.”

She described November’s election as a “fight for America’s future.”

The crowd broke out in a chant: “We’re not going back.”

She also asked the audience to imagine how dangerous Trump would be in office after a July 1 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said Trump could not be prosecuted for most actions he took in office.

Second woman candidate

Harris addressed a packed crowd in which many women wore white, a nod to the women’s suffrage movement.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who gave a speech Monday, was the first woman to accept the presidential nomination of a major party at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, when she gave her acceptance speech in a white pantsuit.

But Harris dressed head to toe in black.

She took the stage to Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” a song the campaign has made its anthem. Beyoncé, however, did not appear in person, despite widespread rumors she would show up.

After Harris’ speech, what Democratic officials said were 100,000 red, white and blue balloons were released, a convention tradition. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen Walz, held hands onstage and acknowledged the cheers of the delegates.

‘Unexpected’ path to nomination

Harris acknowledged her abbreviated path to the nomination, which began just 32 days ago, was highly unusual.

After President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Harris on July 21, the party quickly coalesced around the vice president.

She racked up the necessary delegates and after a short vetting period tapped Walz. They soon hit the campaign trail in the seven key battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

Throughout the whirlwind, she has praised Biden for his leadership and accomplishments.

She did again in the opening lines of her speech Thursday.

“Your record is extraordinary, as history will show,” she said. “And your character is inspiring.”

Republicans have criticized the process that led to Harris’ nomination, calling it a “coup” against Biden.

In a written statement ahead of Harris’ address Thursday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley repeated that claim and slammed Harris’ policy proposals as “the most radical agenda ever put forward at a major party convention.”

“After staging a coup to take the nomination from Joe Biden just weeks ago, Kamala Harris will take the stage at the DNC to share her dangerously liberal agenda with the Democrats gathered to coronate her in Chicago,” he said.

Convention capstone

Harris’ acceptance marked the end of a four-day convention focused on the theme of passing the torch to the next generation that was woven through the speeches of long-established Democrats in the party, such as former President Bill Clinton, who said he loved “seeing all these young leaders.”

On the first night, Biden, who dropped out of the race last month, delivered a farewell address to Democrats, endorsing Harris. The Obamas Tuesday made the case for Harris, saying in her candidacy, “hope is making a comeback.”

As Harris gave her speech aimed at defining her candidacy and vision for the country as one of freedom and joy, a sit-in protest occurred outside the United Center. Dozens of Uncommitted delegates who advocated for a Palestinian American to have a speaking slot at the DNC said they had their request denied by the Harris campaign.

Inside the arena, Harris said negotiating an end to the war, with a return of Israeli hostages and a lasting cease-fire, was a top administration priority.

“President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity,” she said.

At the watch party in Philadelphia, Alina Taylor, a special education teacher who lives in Upper Dublin, said as a Democratic committee person for her area, she plans to volunteer and canvass for the Harris campaign.

“I came down here because I’m fired up and I’m ready to go,” she said.

She said prior to Harris’ speech that she wants to hear her talk about the economy and what she plans on doing about reproductive rights.

“That’s so huge, because I want my daughters to have more rights than me, and I don’t want them to have less,” she said.

Pennsylvania Capital-Star reporter John Cole contributed to this report.

U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., center, speaks on stage during the final day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 22, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

CHICAGO — The final night of the Democratic National Convention Thursday included a lineup of lawmakers and others who have long advocated for gun safety and have dealt with the aftermath of gun violence in their communities.

“Our losses do not weaken us — they strengthen our resolve,” Georgia U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, a longtime gun safety advocate, told delegates.

McBath became an advocate for gun safety after her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was murdered at a Florida gas station in 2012.

Her son was shot and killed by a white man who was angry about the loud music being played by the Black teenager and his friends.

McBath’s remarks on gun violence were a leadup to the keynote address by Vice President Kamala Harris, as she not only aims to energize her Democratic base, but make her case to the American people to elect the first woman president come November.

As gun violence remains a top concern for Americans, Harris is uniquely positioned to campaign on the issue. Last year, she was tasked with overseeing the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is an avid hunter but believes in banning assault weapons.

Harris is also able to campaign on a major accomplishment of the Biden administration in passing and signing into law the most comprehensive gun safety legislation in decades.

That measure, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, provided millions for states to enact so-called red flag laws and allocated billions for mental health services for youth.

McBath has been an advocate for passing the red flag laws, which allow federal courts to temporarily remove a firearm from an individual who is adjudged to pose a threat to themselves or others.

She was able to get the legislation passed in the House, when Democrats controlled that chamber.

It followed mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.

In Buffalo, a white supremacist targeted a Black neighborhood and killed 10 Black people in a grocery store. And in Uvalde, 19 children and two teachers were murdered, making it the second-deadliest mass shooting since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012.

There have been 353 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun violence in the U.S.

McBath on the DNC stage was joined by Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter was killed in the Uvalde mass shooting, and a former teacher from Sandy Hook Elementary School, Abbey Clements.

“They should still be here,” Clements said of her students.

Former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt when she was shot while meeting with constituents, received a standing ovation from the crowd at the United Center.

She now runs a gun safety advocacy group — the Giffords Law Center.

Giffords spoke of her life growing up in Arizona, and how it gave her “grit.”

“I fell for an astronaut,” she said of her husband, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, before planting a kiss on his forehead.

She said she sees that same grit in Harris, who “is tough” and will fight against gun lobbyists.

Uncommitted delegates speak during a sit-in outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024. (Photo by Shaun Griswold / Source NM)

CHICAGO — Uncommitted delegates Thursday said they will continue their sit-in protest outside the United Center to advocate for a Palestinian American speaker at the Democratic National Convention, as Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to deliver her keynote address on the convention’s final night.

While Harris will aim to galvanize Democrats to aid her meteoric rise to the top of the ticket, the lack of a Palestinian American person speaking to the crowd is part of a larger concern over the massive death toll of Palestinians in Gaza from the Israel-Hamas war.

That first spurred the Uncommitted National Movement, which has about 30 delegates at the DNC. There are 11 from Minnesota, the most of any state and the home state of the vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

It’s an inflection point that has fractured Muslims, Arab Americans and anti-war Democrats within the party, as it did with Harris’ predecessor who dropped out of the race last month, President Joe Biden.

Several progressive Democratic lawmakers speaking at the convention have called for a cease-fire, such as Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Both were met with resounding cheers in the United Center.

On Wednesday, the Uncommitted National Movement said the Harris campaign denied its request to have speaking time for Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American pediatric intensive care surgeon, to talk about her time treating patients in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war.

“We’ve requested (she) get speaking time from the stage so that she can speak from her perspective as a health care worker who’s been on the ground in Gaza treating children whose lives have been obliterated and whose bodies have been destroyed using U.S. weapons,” Abbas Alawieh, co-founder of the Uncommitted movement and an uncommitted delegate from Michigan, said Wednesday.

Alawieh said the organization tried for two months before the DNC to get a speaker approved and that Wednesday night they negotiated with DNC officials and the Harris campaign until 2:30 a.m. Central time.

Frustration has mounted after DNC organizers have included speakers who are former Trump administration officials and Republicans who have pledged to vote for Harris.

“I’ve had some pretty crushing days, but to be honest today took the cake,” Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman said on social media Wednesday. “I do not understand how there’s room for an anti choice Republican but not me in our party. I need someone to explain to me what to do now.”

Romman is the only Palestinian serving in Georgia’s state legislature.

Florida U.S. Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who has a speaking slot Thursday night, advocated on social media for Romman to get a spot as well.

“Rep. Ruwa is a Democratic leader who has been working to keep Georgia blue and elect VP Harris,” he said. “She would be a unifying speaker for peace.”

The DNC Wednesday included a speaking slot for the parents of an American held hostage — their son — by Hamas, after the Oct. 7 attack in which hundreds of people were taken hostage and 1,200 people killed. On Tuesday, Israeli officials announced they had recovered six hostages’ bodies that were taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.

The decision from DNC officials to not include a Palestinian American speaker also caused a coalition group working to support Harris and Walz — Muslim Women for Harris-Walz — to suspend its campaign.

“The family of the Israeli Hostage that was on stage tonight, has shown more empathy towards Palestinian Americans and Palestianains, than our candidate or the DNC,” the group wrote. “This is a terrible message to send Democrats. Palestinians have the right to speak about Palestine.”

The Uncommitted movement has also received support from other organizations at the DNC like the United Auto Workers.

“If we want the war in Gaza to end, we can’t put our heads in the sand or ignore the voices of the Palestinian Americans in the Democratic Party,” UAW said in a statement. “If we want peace, if we want real democracy, and if we want to win this election, the Democratic Party must allow a Palestinian American speaker to be heard from the DNC stage tonight.”

Those uncommitted delegates earned a spot at the DNC after more than 740,000 voters across the United States voted “uncommitted” in primaries to protest then-presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Biden’s support of Israel in the war, where more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past 10 months, according to health authorities there.

While the movement started in Michigan, it soon went national and uncommitted delegates were sent from Hawaii, Washington, Rhode Island and Minnesota.

With Harris now the new Democratic presidential nominee, those uncommitted delegates said they were hopeful Harris would listen to them in asking for a cease-fire and an arms embargo on Israel. But all they want now is for a Palestinian American to be able to address the party.

“The Democratic Party’s platform includes specific language that insists that Israeli lives and Palestinian lives are equal in the eyes of this party,”? Alawieh said. “We believe, like our party platform says, that every Israeli life and every Palestinian life is equal. There should also be a Palestinian American to speak from this stage. This is urgent.”

Ross Williams contributed to this story.?

Former President Bill Clinton speaks on stage during the third day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 21, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

CHICAGO — Former President Bill Clinton, a titan in the Democratic Party with a talent for connecting with rural white voters, Wednesday praised Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for her ability to move the country forward and touted her middle-class roots.

“Kamala Harris is the only candidate in this race with the vision, the experience, the temperament, the will, and yes — the sheer joy —to do that on good and bad days. To be our voice,” he said.

On the third day of a Democratic National Convention that heavily focused on passing the torch to the next generation, Clinton said he loved “seeing all these young leaders.”

He highlighted Harris’ time working at McDonald’s and how she picked a running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who got his start as a school teacher.

“I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president — she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s,” said Clinton, who was known for his affection for the Golden Arches during his presidency.

Clinton, who was born in Hope, Arkansas, said as “the man from Hope, we need Kamala Harris, the president of joy, to lead us.”

The last time Clinton gave a speech during the DNC in Chicago, he was accepting the Democratic presidential nomination in 1996.

Praise for Biden

Clinton gave a tribute to President Joe Biden and commended him for his work on the economy and steering the country during the coronavirus, and his support for Ukraine and working for a cease-fire in Gaza.

“And then he did something that’s really hard for a politician to do, he voluntarily gave up political power,” Clinton said.

Biden suspended his reelection bid last month after a disastrous June 27 debate that sparked fears among Democrats that he couldn’t beat Donald Trump this November. After Biden announced he would not seek reelection he endorsed Harris to pick up the mantle and the party has coalesced around her as she and Walz sprint to Election Day.

Clinton likened Biden’s decision to quit the race to that of the first president of the United States, George Washington, who stepped down after two terms, setting a precedent for how long a presidency should last.

Democrats hearing this from Clinton erupted in cheers and started a chant, “Thank you, Joe.”

“It’s a stark contrast to what goes on in the other party,” Clinton said of Republicans.

Clinton said that Trump would not care about Americans, and called the former president selfish. He drew a stark contrast between the two candidates, saying that Trump would only care about himself and when it comes to Harris, “every day will begin with ‘You, you, you, you.’”

Clinton, who turned 78 this week, and now is the same age as Trump, who turned 78 in June, said that “the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I am still younger than Donald Trump.”

But he warned Democrats to not “underestimate your adversaries,” and he advised them “as somebody who spends a lot of time in rural areas,” in Arkansas and New York, to talk to their neighbors.

“I urge you not to demean them, but not to pretend you don’t disagree with them if you do,” Clinton said. “Treat them with respect.”

He warned against overconfidence, saying there can still be slip ups before Election Day on Nov. 5.

“We’ve seen more than one election slip away when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phony issues or overconfidence,” Clinton said.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus moderates a panel with eight Democratic women governors during the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 21, 2024. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

CHICAGO — Actress and climate activist Julia Louis-Dreyfus asked eight Democratic women governors Wednesday if she would be ready for public office after playing a vice president and president on the hit cable TV show “Veep.”

“You’re more qualified than Donald Trump, don’t worry about it,” New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul quickly replied, to laughter in the packed room.

Louis-Dreyfus moderated a panel made up of the Democratic women governors at the Democratic National Convention. The political leaders in their roughly hour-long discussion touched on the unique benefits of being a woman in politics, and talked about how they are planning for potential interference and problems in the upcoming presidential elections.

Fake electors

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said she’s working closely with the secretary of state and attorney general to ensure that Arizona’s electoral votes are cast and to prepare for “every single scenario that comes our way.”

“I think the challenges that we saw in 2020 are going to look like kindergarten compared to what we see now,” she said. “But we are ready.”

A grand jury indicted 18 people in a fake elector scheme that aimed to install Donald Trump as president after he lost the state of Arizona in the 2020 election.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer faced a similar scenario, in which six individuals now face felony charges for submitting false electoral votes for Trump in 2020.

Whitmer said her state legislature has worked to pass legislation to protect election workers and make it easier for people to partake in early voting.

“We know that there are going to be all sorts of efforts” to influence the results, she said.

Louis-Dreyfus noted during Whitmer’s term she’s had to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, natural disasters and an attempted kidnapping and assassination plot.

“How do you stay afloat … under those circumstances?” she asked.

Whitmer said she keeps a gratitude journal and every day writes down three things that give her joy. She said sometimes the list stretches to 10 items, but other days it is not so long.

“Some days it is just my dog and my bed and tequila,” she said.

Women in state and local politics

Louis-Dreyfus asked why it was important to support women down the ballot, and not just on the national level.

Hobbs said early support is important, and noted that’s how Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, got her start as a San Francisco district attorney in 2003.

“Down ballot races are critical,” Hobbs said.

Several of the governors agreed, noting that’s how they were able to enter politics, through their local elections.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said she got her start in the state legislature. Kotek was the longest-serving speaker in the Oregon House of Representatives and the first openly lesbian speaker, elected in 2013.

“When I became speaker, all the other leadership at the time was male, and you notice when you’re the only one in the room,” she said.

It’s an occurrence that Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey knows, noting last year she became the first woman and open member of the LGBTQ community elected governor in her state.

Whitmer said as a woman in politics, she was often underestimated, which she said she sees as a strength, rather than a limitation.

“There are a lot of different ways that we are treated as compared to male candidates, but I would also say that it is a huge advantage to be underestimated,” she said.

Kansas Gov. and Democratic Governors Association Chair Laura Kelly said she thinks the underestimation that women face in politics “will fade away over time.”

Whitmer nodded. “With President Harris, it will.”

Louis-Dreyfus, who is also a comedian and starred in “Seinfeld,” asked how humor can find a place in politics.

“I think humor is an effective tool when things are hot and tense,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said.

Louis-Dreyfus asked the governors why are Republicans “so f- – – – – – weird?”

Maine Governor Janet Mills laughed and said she knows Republicans in her state who are planning to vote for Harris because “they don’t have a place to go.”

“They’re not all weird,” she said. “They know the traditional (Republican) party is not about Trump.”

Reproductive rights

Louis-Dreyfus asked how the overturning of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision has affected abortion access in the governors’ states.

Since the conservative Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion two years ago, Democrats have campaigned on it at the state and federal level. Reproductive right advocates have also led grassroots campaigns to put measures on state ballots to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

In four states — California, Michigan, Ohio and Vermont — measures to amend the state constitutions to enshrine abortion protections passed, according to health policy organization KFF’s abortion ballot tracker.? There are currently seven states with citizen-initiated measures on the ballot in November that will protect abortion access, in Arizona, Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, Colorado, Missouri and Florida.

Hochul said that after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the first thing she did was go to a vigil.

“It broke my heart,” she said.

Hochul said she called the state legislature back for an emergency session to pass legislation to protect medical professionals and patients who travel to New York to access abortion care.

“We let women from other states know this is a safe harbor for you to come here,” she said. “I’m going to fight like hell to get back (abortion rights) for my granddaughter.”

Actress and director Eva Longoria speaks to attendees at the Hispanic Caucus at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024. She urged them to continue reaching out to Latino voters, a key voting bloc in this year’s election. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

CHICAGO — Latino lawmakers and organizers Wednesday stressed their voting bloc as key to delivering battleground states to Democrats in November, as the Harris campaign launched a bilingual WhatsApp channel to target Latino voters.

“The Latino vote will be the deciding factor in this election,” actress and Democratic surrogate Eva Longoria said during a Hispanic Caucus meeting on the third day of the Democratic National Convention.

Members of Congress and officials from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign told delegates how they were reaching out to Latino voters, including the launch of the bilingual WhatsApp channel.

“The channel will be the first-of-its-kind in an American presidential election, and will provide culturally relevant content that reflects the Latino community that already exists on the platform and serve as another tool to combat misinformation and disinformation,” the Harris campaign said in a release.

WhatsApp is a popular messaging tool among immigrant populations and Latinos, and it’s a free encryption messaging app that can be used globally.

A Pew Research Center report found that about a quarter of Americans use WhatsApp, but that 46% of Hispanic Americans use it compared to 23% of Black Americans and 16% of white Americans.

Julie Chavez Rodríguez, manager of the Harris campaign, launched the start of the WhatsApp campaign with a video message, noting that the channel will provide a “behind the scene” look at the campaign and information about Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.

The channel will be operated by “Latinos con Harris-Walz.”

Michelle Villegas, the national Latino engagement director for the Harris campaign, said the Latino vote is key to victory in three battleground states, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

“These are places where Latino voters are going to help us win and beat the margin of victory in these races,” Villegas said.

Villegas said the campaign is also launching bilingual phone outreach and local organizations, as well as several coalitions like “Latino Men for Kamala.”

Former President Donald Trump has made some inroads with Latino voters, specifically with men, according to a recent poll by the New York Times.?

“This is the first time that a presidential campaign in the United States has ever had a WhatsApp channel,” Villegas said. “It’s huge. It’s super exciting and super important, because we know that Latinos are communicating on WhatsApp.”

The app, which is a dominant source of communication, has also been rife with misinformation, something that Longoria noted Democrats needed to stay on top of, especially when that misinformation and disinformation is in Spanish.

“Our Spanish language brothers and sisters are being targeted with misinformation, and we have to help them,” she said.

Longoria, who has close ties to the Biden administration, said that she will also be doing Latino voter outreach on WhatsApp.

Last year, the White House hosted a screening of the film “Flamin Hot,” which was Longoria’s directorial debut. The movie tells the legendary origin story of “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos,” a popular snack in the Latino community. The Los Angeles Times has debunked the tale, but it’s still a popular rags-to-riches story.

Longoria added that Democrats need to talk about issues important to the Latino community, such as the economy and inflation.

“We have so much work to do,” Longoria said. “I think one of the big issues for Latinos, people think it’s always immigration, and that’s important, but the argument of the economy is something that I think we’re not articulating well enough to our Latino brothers and sisters.”

The deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to Harris, Sergio Gonzales, said that Latino voters are critical.

“We will not take any Latino vote for granted,” he said, adding that Harris also hails from a state with a high Latino population — California.

Polling on Latino voters

Equis Research, which conducts research and polling specifically about Latino voters, found in a recent poll that Harris is ahead of Trump when it comes to registered Hispanic voters, 56% to 37%.

The poll found that Harris has also gained support from Latina women compared to when Biden was still in the race before he dropped out last month. For example, Biden was polling at 50% among Latina women and Harris is polling with about 59% support from Latinas.

“With the entrance of Kamala Harris, we are seeing results that are back in a historically normal range,” according to an analysis of the poll. “Relative to Biden, she sees rebounds across Latino subgroups, with the largest among young people.”

However, the report noted that Harris “remains a few points shy of what Biden received in 2020” across battleground states such as Arizona.

The CEO of the political organization Voto Latino, María Teresa Kumar, said that the states where the group is doing Latino voter registration include Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas.

No congressional action

U.S. Democratic Reps. Greg Casar of Texas and Delia Ramirez of Illinois said the Biden administration has continued to have an impact on immigration reform without Congress, such as with the recent implementation of deportation protections for undocumented spouses.

Immigration reform is virtually dead in a divided Congress. A bipartisan border security measure that was crafted in the Senate collapsed after Trump raised objections to it, wanting to campaign on the issue of immigration.

Instead, most immigration reform has come from the White House through rulemaking, like expanding health care access to uninsured people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and the most recent executive action for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens.

The deportation protection for those married to a U.S. citizen is a one-time action that is expected to allow roughly 500,000 undocumented spouses and their children to apply for lawful permanent residence — a green card — under certain requirements.

Ramirez, whose husband is a DACA recipient, said immigrants and Latinos are “tired of waiting” for immigration reform. She said it’s an issue Harris should campaign on, because of the economic benefit that immigrants provide.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated an economic boost over the next year due to the contributions of immigrants, lowering the deficits by $990 billion over the 2024-2034 period and raising federal revenues by $1.2 trillion.

“We have a daughter of immigrants running to be our president,” Ramirez said of Harris’ parents — her father is a Jamaican immigrant and her late mother was an Indian immigrant. “This is our moment to lean in on the contributions of immigrants.”

UAW president Shawn Fain speaks to reporters during a roundtable discussion during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.?(Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

CHICAGO — United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain told reporters Tuesday that working-class people can see themselves in the new Democratic presidential ticket.

“There’s a very distinct difference in these two people and where they stand with working-class people,” Fain said of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Fain, who spoke to the Democratic National Convention on its first night on Monday and is often critical of former President Donald Trump, called him a “con artist.”

“He didn’t do a damn thing for autoworkers when he was president,” Fain said, noting that Trump appointed Peter Robb as general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board, who Fain called a “union buster.”

The meeting with the press followed Fain’s remarks on the first night of the convention. The labor leader wore a jacket that he dramatically discarded to reveal a red shirt that read “Trump is a scab,” a term that refers to people who cross the picket lines and don’t support striking workers.

Fain told the crowd at the United Center that Harris would support unions and working-class people.

Unions, a traditionally strong Democratic constituency, have a major presence at the convention.

“Kamala Harris stands shoulder to shoulder with workers when they’re on strike,” he said Monday.

Polling among members

There are more than 400,000 active UAW members, and more than 600 local unions, according to the organization. The union also has nearly 600,000 retired members.

The UAW has already endorsed Harris, as has another major union, the American Federation of Teachers, which represents about 1.8 million members.

Fain said that UAW member polling has been relatively consistent at 56% support for Democrats and about 32% for Republicans, but he thinks there will be bigger support for the Harris-Walz ticket come November.

“I believe our members will be overwhelming behind Kamala Harris, because she brings a new energy to this,” he said.

Fain added that Walz also has strong labor ties.

“Adding Tim Walz as her running mate was a home run,” he said. “He’s a teacher. He’s one of us.”

In Walz’s first solo campaign rally in Michigan, he told a union-heavy crowd that he would prioritize worker-friendly policies. He was a union member as a public school teacher in southern Minnesota before he won a U.S. House seat in 2006.

Fain said if Harris and Walz win the White House, and Democrats take control of both chambers in Congress, he hopes they would attempt passage of worker-friendly policies such as H.R. 20, known as the PRO Act.

However, Fain noted that even if there is a possibility of Democrats controlling both the White House and Congress, there would need to be 60 votes in the Senate to pass the PRO Act, which supports workers’ rights to unionize.

“As far as the filibuster goes, I don’t know where that goes right now,” Fain said of passage of the PRO Act. “I would say we hope so.”

Having the support of unions will help aid Harris in battleground states that boast high union membership such as Pennsylvania and Nevada.

A new Emerson College Polling/RealClearPennsylvania poll found Trump with 49% support in Pennsylvania and Harris down by 1 percentage point.

“Pennsylvania likely voters in unions break for Harris by 15 points, 57% to 42%, while those not in a union and without union members in the household break for Trump, 50% to 48%,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a statement. “Those with union members in the household break from Trump, 50% to 42%.”

Before President Joe Biden suspended his reelection bid, he often touted himself as the “most pro-union president.” Biden is also the first president to have walked a picket line with members, when he did so last year.

Fain said that Harris also has strong union ties, noting that she walked the picket line with UAW in 2019.

“I mean, it wasn’t a publicity stunt, wasn’t for the hell of it,” he said. “It’s because that’s who she is.”

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks onstage during the first day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 19, 2024 in Chicago. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

CHICAGO — Hillary Clinton, the first woman to clinch a major political party’s presidential nomination, on the first night of the Democratic National Convention praised Vice President Kamala Harris — the second woman in U.S. history to be nominated — for her bright vision for the nation and her ability to lead the country forward.

“The story of my life and the history of our country is that progress is possible, but not guaranteed,” Clinton told a packed crowd in the United Center. “We have to fight for it. And never, ever give up.”

Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, said that together, women have put “a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling.”

“On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris taking the oath of office as our 47th President of the United States,” she said. “When a barrier falls for one of us, it … clears the way for all of us.”

Clinton said that Harris’ historic nomination, as the first Black and South Asian woman at the top of a major party ticket, is an opportunity for the country to progress.

Clinton said that every generation has “carried the torch forward,” and that Harris will carry that torch as she pushes for the restoration of abortion access, affordable housing and child care.

Harris has often promised to restore Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that gave Americans the constitutional right to an abortion. However, in order to pass legislation in Congress, Democrats would need to control the House and have 60 votes in the Senate to advance legislation past the filibuster.

Women in history

Clinton highlighted Democratic women who had broken barriers throughout history. She cited the late U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first woman to run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, and the first Black person to seek to be a major party’s candidate for president, and the late U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman nominated for the vice presidency by a major political party.

Clinton said that accepting the presidential nomination was the greatest honor of her life. She touched on her loss to Donald Trump in 2016, and noted that despite it, there was a wave of women who ran for public office following Trump’s ascension to the White House.

“We refused to give up on America,” she said.

Clinton said that when she looks at Harris’ campaign she sees freedom.

“I see freedom from fear and intimidation, from violence and injustices, from chaos and corruption,” she said.

Harris indeed has framed her campaign as a fight for freedom, and as an effort to move forward as opposed to Trump and the GOP. Additionally, Beyonce’s song “Freedom” is the campaign’s anthem.

Harris speaks

Harris, who made a brief surprise appearance before Clinton spoke, thanked President Joe Biden for his leadership before she stressed that the November elections are a fight for the future.

“This November, we will come together and declare with one voice, as one people, we are moving forward,” Harris said. “We all have so much more in common than what separates us.”

Harris is expected to give her speech accepting the nomination on Thursday night.

Clinton said that Harris would be “for the people,” which was also the theme of the first night of the convention. Clinton criticized Trump and said that the former president only cares about himself, not Americans.

She said that Democrats have Trump “on the run,” but urged them to not get too comfortable, even as Harris’ campaign has energized Democrats across the nation. Clinton warned Democrats to not rely on the polls, which have shown Harris either gaining on Trump or ahead, and said they must keep campaigning until November.

Since Biden suspended his reelection campaign, after a disastrous June debate that rattled his party’s belief in his ability to defeat Trump, several battleground states that were leaning toward Republicans, such as Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, moved to a “toss-up,”?according to The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.?

“No matter what the polls say, we can’t let up,” Clinton said.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, on Monday touted to Florida delegates accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, such as the temporary expansion of the child tax credit.?(Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

CHICAGO — Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried told delegates at a breakfast meeting at the Democratic National Convention Monday that an abortion-related ballot measure will make the Sunshine State a battleground in the November elections.

“We will not be counted out,” Fried said, sporting a white blazer — often symbolic of the women’s suffrage movement — over a University of Florida shirt.

Fried added that Democrats are aiming to re-engage with their base.

She introduced Florida U.S. Reps. Kathy Castor and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and both lawmakers said they believed the Sunshine State would? support Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris as well as other Democrats down the ballot.

Fried added that what is key to making Florida competitive again — as the state has leaned more Republican — is the ballot measure on abortion, known as Amendment 4, that would bar any state interference with the right to abortion in Florida up to the point of viability, around 24 weeks’ gestation.

It’s a measure that Fried called an “inflection point.”

“My hope is that we have secured a woman’s right to choose on the ballot,” she said.

Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, speaking to the delegates, said making Florida a battleground state “ain’t gonna be easy,” but that she believes the ballot measure will help Democrats in November elections.

Another guest, Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, said he’s optimistic about Florida supporting Harris. The last time Florida went blue in a presidential election was in 2012, the second term of former President Barack Obama.

“We’re gonna surprise some people in the Sunshine State,” Shapiro said.

Hazel Gillis, a 77-year-old delegate from Jacksonville Florida, said she believes that ballot question will help make Florida a battleground state in the 2024 election.

“We’re talking about women’s rights,” she said. “All women should vote in favor of that amendment because it’s our body.”

The United Center in Chicago, where the Democratic National Convention is being held. (Photo by Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom)

CHICAGO — State legislators from across the country mingled Monday during a Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee meeting at the Democratic National Convention, where they overwhelmingly agreed that the new Harris-Walz presidential ticket has reenergized the party base.

“I think that there is a collective opportunity to bring a whole new set of Democrats, and voters in general, into understanding how really important their statehouses are, and building that for a future where voters better understand why their representation in their statehouses matters so much,” Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in an interview with States Newsroom.

Democratic state lawmakers from states that typically lean Republican, like Iowa, Tennessee and Oklahoma, said they too have seen an increase in volunteers since Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race as the new Democratic presidential nominee. President Joe Biden stepped down from his reelection bid following a disastrous debate performance and pressure from top Democrats.

Tennessee state Rep. John Ray Clemmons, the House Democratic Caucus chair, said that he’s seeing volunteers not only on the national level, but for Tennessee state House races.

“With this new energy, comes new excitement, and people feel like there’s this new sense of hope and purpose,” he said.

He said the presidential race feels similar to former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Iowa state Senate Democratic Leader Pam Jochum said that she’s seen an uptick in people wanting to volunteer.

“Iowans are very excited,” she said. “It has spurred on additional fundraising, and we do have people who are … calling us and saying, ‘What can we do to help?’”

State lawmakers added that they’ve seen an even bigger boost in enthusiasm with Harris tapping Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.

“We haven’t really felt that kind of hope and energy for a while,” Jochum said, adding that Walz “brings common sense and a real passion for our democracy and freedom, and compliments Kamala (Harris) really, really well.”

Oklahoma State Sen. Carri Hicks said that it’s been refreshing to see Walz on the ticket, “who is giving a different face of masculinity, embracing, supporting women … what I consider just true kindness and compassion, in his leadership style.”

Hicks said that Harris’ work on reproductive rights since Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Walz’s frequent mentions of his daughter Hope, who was born with the help of in vitro fertilization, have resonated with voters in her state.

“In my state Senate district, health care is the number one economic engine for the district that I represent,” she said. “So when you’re thinking about access to reproductive care, being able to build a family, I think that it humanizes that story that so many of my constituents have gone through, that so many Americans have gone through.”

In swing states, the reaction was much the same.

North Carolina state House Democratic leader Robert Reives said that reproductive right issues such as abortion, IVF and contraception have played a big part in voter turnout.

“What you definitely see, especially in urban areas, is a recognition by women of all ages that there is a war on women,” he said. “All these rights and opportunities that women should have are suddenly gone.”

Michigan House Speaker Joe Tate said that the energy around the Harris and Walz campaign has been a “shot in the arm.”

“I think we’re going to continue to see that trend just increase with Democrats from the top of the ticket all the way down,” Tate said, adding that he’s hoping to expand Democratic control in the statehouse, as well as have Michigan go blue for Harris.

Since Harris entered the race, The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter moved several battleground states — Arizona, Georgia and Nevada — from “lean Republican” to a “toss-up. “

Harris and Walz have aggressively hit the battleground states already, with less than three months until November. During a Monday breakfast with Wisconsin delegates, another battleground state, Walz encouraged those delegates to keep campaigning until Election Day.

“We’ve got 78 days of hard work,” Walz said. “We can sleep when we’re dead.”

Vice President Kamala Harris is introduced by International President Dr. Stacie NC Grant of the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority at their Grand Boule at the Indiana Convention Center on July 24, 2024 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — As Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention Thursday, making her the first Black and South Asian woman to lead a major party ticket, her nomination has energized a strong and loyal voting bloc in the Democratic Party — Black women.

Since President Joe Biden last month bowed out of his reelection race and named Harris as his choice for the nomination, her campaign has quickly scooped up the necessary delegate votes, raked in more than $300 million and galvanized the Democratic base. Black women are playing a major role in this rapid mobilization.

Emory University political scientist Andra Gillespie said in an interview with States Newsroom that Harris is benefiting from not only an influx of cash, but also an army of volunteers.

The campaign’s battleground states director, Dan Kanninen, told reporters in late July more than 360,000 volunteers have signed up to knock on doors, canvass and make phone calls.

“What we’ve seen happen in the last couple of weeks is an influx of resources that will allow Harris to mount as effective a mobilization campaign as she can,” Gillespie said.

All of this is key to mounting a competitive race, Gillespie said, especially in all-important Georgia.

In that state, Black women’s work to encourage turnout and register voters was credited with turning the state blue for Biden in 2020. The victory sent two Democratic U.S. senators to Congress, solidifying a split Senate in which Harris was the tiebreaker and in which a Democratic majority confirmed numerous federal judges to lifetime appointments — as well as the first Black woman named to the Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walters moved Georgia from a “lean Republican” ranking to “toss-up” after Harris entered the presidential race, noting a 1 percentage point lead over her GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump. For comparison, Biden was trailing 2.5 percentage points behind Trump in the Peach State.

Keneshia Grant, an associate professor of political science at Howard University in Washington, D.C., said that when Biden first announced he was stepping down July 21 under pressure from party leaders following his disastrous debate performance, it was not immediately clear that Harris would be next in line. It took Biden a little over 30 minutes to endorse her as his chosen successor.

In the days before Biden’s announcement, South Carolina’s U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn urged the party to coalesce around Harris, should Biden no longer be on the ticket. Clyburn was pivotal in delivering Black support for Biden in 2020 and remains a close Biden ally.

“We should do everything we can to bolster her, whether she’s in second place or at the top of the ticket,” he said of Harris.

Grant said that Black women — often referred to as the backbone of the Democratic party — had signaled to top party members that “passing over this Black woman in this moment would not be tolerated.”

Within hours of Biden quitting the race, a Zoom call with organizers of #WinWithBlackWomen drew in more than 90,000 participants and raised more than $1.3 million to support Harris’ bid.

“The (Democratic) Party might not have had a notion of a Black woman as president, right now, but clearly the people feel differently and felt differently,” Grant said.

Influence of ‘Divine Nine’

As a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the first Black sorority, established in 1908 at Howard University, Harris has an untapped resource in the “Divine Nine” – Black Greek-letter organizations, made up of four sororities and five fraternities.

Deborah Elizabeth Whaley, a professor of African American studies at the University of Iowa, said that Black sororities and fraternities are more than a social group. She added that they’ve been at the forefront of civil rights issues such as the women’s suffrage movement and anti-lynching legislation.

“The whole idea is that you’re coming together in the name of service to help Black communities as well as holding up academic excellence,” Whaley said.

As soon as Harris entered the race at the top of the ticket,? the Divine Nine, which boasts more than 2 million members, swung into action.

“One of the things that the Black sororities and (fraternities) are known for is voter registration,” Whaley said.

The National Pan-Hellenic Council, Inc. —? the governing body of the Divine Nine — announced it would undertake a major voter turnout mobilization campaign. Because the groups are nonprofits, they can’t endorse a candidate and must remain nonpartisan.

“This campaign will activate the thousands of chapters and members in our respective organizations to ensure strong voter turnout in the communities we serve,” the National Pan-Hellenic Council, Inc. said in a statement.

Harris’s sorority, AKA, formed its own political action committee on Aug. 9, according to ProPublica’s Federal Election Commission tracker.

Whaley said she’s not surprised Harris has prioritized inclusion of Black sororities, such as her visit to the Zeta Phi Beta sorority conference in Indianapolis, Indiana when she was the likely Democratic presidential nominee, in late July.

“We know when we organize, mountains move,” Harris said to more than 6,000 sorority sisters. “When we mobilize, nations change. And when we vote, we make history.”

Whaley said that Black sororities are a “training ground to be of service to community, to be a leader, and to function effectively in a world where you are a member of a starkly marginalized group and you are a minority in terms of your gender.”

A different tune

On Harris’ first visit to the campaign headquarters in Delaware, before she addressed the staff, the song she walked out to was Beyoncé’s “Freedom.”

It’s a song that is played during all her campaign stops and, according to CNN, Beyoncé has given the campaign permission to use the 2016 song from her Grammy-nominated album, “Lemonade.”

Grant noted that in choosing that particular Beyoncé song, it not only signals to voters that Harris at 59 is a younger candidate — compared to Trump, who is 78 — but it’s a departure from the catchphrase coined by former first lady Michelle Obama at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, “When they go low, we go high.”

“From the things I’m seeing in the campaign and from her posture, she’s not saying ‘When you go low, I go low,’ but she is saying … ‘When you go low, we at least call you out on it,’” Grant said.

The song choice is also not lost on Kinitra Brooks, an associate professor and the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University.

Brooks, who co-edited a collection of essays on Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” said that the song is about more than breaking chains, but “the cost of freedom.”

“It takes hard work to achieve freedom, but also to maintain it,” she said. “I think that leads to the conversations that we’re having about the rollback of rights.”

As Harris has set out on a rapid-fire campaign tour in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, she has positioned her campaign as a “fight for the future,” and has accused the Trump campaign of focusing on the past.
“Across our nation, we have been witnessing a full-on assault on hard-won, hard-fought freedoms and fundamental rights,” Harris said at an Aug. 10 campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada. “We are not going back.”

Signs marking states’ seating sections are installed and adjusted ahead of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 15, 2024 in Chicago. The convention will be held Aug. 19-22. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Just a little over a month after she became a candidate for president in the biggest shakeup in generations of presidential politics, Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday will deliver a widely anticipated speech accepting the Democratic nomination at the party’s convention in Chicago.

Harris’ ascent to the top of the ticket after President Joe Biden changed course and said he would not seek reelection has breathed new life into the Democratic bid, with polls showing Harris — who is already the party’s official nominee after a virtual roll call earlier this month — faring much better than Biden was against Republican rival Donald Trump.

Over the course of four days, Democrats will look to capitalize on their base’s newfound enthusiasm for the campaign, with leading speakers aiming to rally the faithful around the party’s positions on reproductive rights, gun safety and voting rights, while making a strong pitch to young voters. Harris will also be expected to further lay out her policy positions.

Harris’ nomination is historic. The daughter of immigrants, Harris is the first Black and South Asian woman selected to lead a major party ticket. She would be the first woman of any race to guide the nation as chief executive.

The party has not released an official detailed schedule of speakers, but a convention official confirmed that “current and past presidents are expected to participate in convention programming.” Biden and two former presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as former nominee Hillary Clinton, will all speak, according to the New York Times.

Vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is expected to address the convention Wednesday evening, with Harris’ acceptance speech closing out the convention Thursday, the convention official said.

The evening programming block will run from 6:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday and 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. the rest of the week.

In addition to the usual television broadcasts, the convention will livestream on several social media platforms, including YouTube, X, Instagram and TikTok. The official live stream will be available on DemConvention.com.

Scores of Democratic caucus and council meetings, as well as state delegation breakfasts and gatherings, are also scheduled throughout the week’s daytime hours. Media organizations and outside groups are also holding daytime events that will feature Democratic officeholders and candidates.

Protests are also expected over the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, with the backdrop of a delegation of uncommitted voters who oppose the war.

As many as 25,000 protestors are expected over the course of the convention, according to DemList, a newsletter for Democratic officials and allies.

A contest transformed

Harris’ entry into the race, nearly immediately after Biden announced on July 21 he would no longer seek reelection, energized Democrats distressed over Biden’s poor showings in polls against Trump, whose reelection bid Biden turned back in 2020.

A Monmouth University poll published Aug. 14 showed a huge jump in enthusiasm for Democrats. The survey found 85% of Democratic respondents were excited about the Harris-Trump race. By comparison, only 46% of Democratic respondents said in June they were excited about a Biden-Trump race.

Harris is also seeing better polling numbers in matchups against Trump, with battleground-state and national surveys consistently shifting toward the Democratic ticket since Biden left the race.

Polls of seven battleground states published by The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter on Aug. 14 showed Harris narrowly leading in five states —?Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and?tied in Georgia and trailing in Nevada. All were improvements from Biden’s standing in the same poll in May.

An Aug. 14 survey from Quinnipiac University showed Harris with a 48%-45% edge in Pennsylvania. The 3-point advantage for Harris was within the poll’s margin of error.

Democrats hope to carry the momentum through the convention. Polls typically favor a party during and immediately after its national party gathering.

Despite the recent polling, Harris and Walz continue to describe themselves as underdogs in the race.

Campaign themes

In her short time on the campaign trail, Harris has emphasized a few core messages.

She’s made reproductive rights a central focus, including the slogan “We are not going back” in her stump speech after describing Republicans’ position on abortion. Additionally, a Texas woman who had to leave the state for an emergency abortion will speak at the DNC, according to Reuters.

Harris has also played up her background as a prosecutor, drawing a contrast with Trump’s legal troubles.

Walz has highlighted his working-class background and military service, while attacking Republican positions to restrict reproductive rights and ban certain books in schools.

Walz’s first solo campaign stop since Harris selected him as her running mate was at a union convention, where he emphasized his union background as a high school teacher.

Walz was not initially considered the favorite to be Harris’ running mate, but his appeal as a Midwesterner with a record of winning tough elections and enacting progressive policies led to his selection Aug. 6.

Harris has faced criticism for not sitting down for a formal media interview or holding a press conference since she became a candidate.

Platform in flux

Democrats have not finalized their platform for 2024. Adopting a party platform is generally among the official items at a convention.

The party set a draft platform in July just eight days before Biden dropped his reelection bid. The document centered on the theme of “finishing the job” and mentioned Biden, then the presumptive nominee, 50 times and Harris 12.

Party spokespeople did not respond to an inquiry this week about plans for an update to the platform.

Reproductive rights will likely be a focus point of any policy wishlist.

Harris, during her time as vice president, has led the administration’s messaging on reproductive rights after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in the summer of 2022.

In her campaign speeches, she has often stressed the need to “trust women” and that the government should not be deciding reproductive health.

Harris has often promised that if she is elected, she will restore those reproductive rights, but unless Democrats control a majority in the U.S. House and 60 Senate votes, it’s unlikely she would be able to achieve that promise.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in that Supreme Court decision, Democrats have campaigned on reproductive rights that expand beyond abortion and include protections for in vitro fertilization.

The 2020 party platform focused on recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, quality health care, investing in education, protecting democracy and combating climate change.

Democrats are likely to continue to criticize the Project 2025 playbook — a blueprint by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank, to implement conservative policies across the federal government should Trump win in November.

Trump has disavowed the document, but has not detailed his own policy plans.

Chicago conventions

The Democratic National Convention will take place in Chicago, a city with a long history of hosting the event. Democrats have held their convention in Chicago 11 times, first in 1864 and most recently in 1996.

This year’s will be the first in-person Democratic National Convention since 2016. It was upended due to the coronavirus pandemic and held virtually in 2020.

Throughout the four-day convention, there will be speeches and side events hosted by state Democratic party leaders.

The ceremonial roll call vote with delegates on the convention floor will take place Tuesday. The vice presidential nomination speech by Walz will be Wednesday night and on Thursday night, Harris will give her nomination acceptance speech.

The city is also preparing for massive protests from several groups on reproductive rights, LGBTQ protections, housing and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, according to WBEZ News.?

The City Council of Chicago in January approved a ceasefire resolution, with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson the tiebreaker, making it the largest city to call for an end to the Israel-Hamas war, in which more than 40,000 Palestinians have died.

The war followed an Oct. 7 attack from Hamas, in which nearly 1,200 people were killed in Israel and hundreds taken hostage.

Road to nomination

Harris’ acceptance speech will cap a five-year journey to her party’s nomination.

In 2019, the California senator announced a bid for president in the next year’s election, but dropped out before the first primary or caucus votes were cast after she failed to catch on with Democratic voters.

Biden later picked her as a running mate, and the two defeated Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence in the 2020 election.

Biden launched a reelection campaign for 2024, but stepped aside after a disastrous debate performance in June spurred questions about his ability to campaign and serve for another four-year term.

After Biden bowed out, Harris quickly secured 99% of delegates to become the party’s likely nominee. The virtual five-day vote secured her official nomination.

With less than three months until Election Day, Harris and Walz already have sprinted through battleground states including Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Their campaign has also pulled in more than $300 million, according to the campaign. Official Federal Election Commission records will be released in mid-October.

Harris and Trump have agreed to a Sept. 10 debate hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia. Trump proposed two more debates, and Harris has said she would be open to another one between the first debate and Election Day.
Walz and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio have agreed to an Oct. 1 debate on CBS News, in New York City.

U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) arrives on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance Thursday agreed to an Oct. 1 vice presidential debate against Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz on CBS News.

Walz agreed to the October debate invitation from CBS on Wednesday. It will take place in New York City.

Vance also argued for more debates against Walz, including one on CNN on Sept. 18.

“Not only do I accept the CBS debate on October 1st, I accept the CNN debate on September 18th as well,” he wrote on X. “I look forward to seeing you at both.”

The Harris-Walz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from States Newsroom.

Sept. 18 is also the date that GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled for his sentencing in his hush money trial, in which he was convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in an attempt to conceal payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in an effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.

In a letter dated Wednesday, but made public Thursday, attorneys for Trump asked the judge overseeing his sentencing to delay it until after the presidential election, according to CNN.?

Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris are scheduled for a presidential debate Sept. 10, hosted by ABC News.

The South Portico of the White House is seen Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

WASHINGTON — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has agreed to a vice presidential debate on Oct. 1 hosted by CBS News.

In a statement, CBS News said it reached out to both presidential campaigns, but it’s unclear if the Republican vice presidential candidate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, will participate in the debate in New York City.

The Donald Trump campaign did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

“See you on October 1, JD.,” Walz wrote on X, responding to CBS.

CBS News gave both campaigns four dates to choose among for a vice presidential debate — Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct. 1 and Oct. 8.

Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris are scheduled for a presidential debate Sept. 10, hosted by ABC News.

The first presidential debate, hosted by CNN on June 27, led to President Joe Biden suspending his campaign after a disastrous performance that rattled his party’s confidence that the president could beat Trump in November.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 24, 2024 in National Harbor, Maryland. Trump said Thursday he would debate Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 10. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Thursday he has agreed to debate Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Sept. 10, a reversal from his position last week that he would not participate in the ABC News event.

During a press conference at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, the former president said he had also agreed to debates on Sept. 4 and Sept. 25.

The first debate would be hosted by Fox News, he said.

He initially misspoke and said the Sept. 10 debate would be on NBC, with ABC hosting the debate on Sept. 25. His campaign later clarified the ABC News debate would be Sept. 10, the date Trump and President Joe Biden agreed to with ABC before Biden dropped out of the race, with NBC hosting the final debate.

ABC News confirmed that Trump and the Harris campaign have agreed to the network’s debate.

“I think it’s very important to have debates,” Trump said.

He then quickly moved on to disparaging Harris.

The Harris campaign, Fox News and NBC did not respond to States Newsroom’s requests for comment.

In a press release, the Harris campaign called Trump’s press conference a “public meltdown,” but did not mention if Harris would participate in the Fox News or NBC debate.

Peaceful transfer of power

During Thursday’s press conference,? a reporter asked if there would be a peaceful transfer of power if Trump lost the election.

“Of course, there’ll be a peaceful transfer and there was last time and there’ll be a peaceful transfer,” Trump said. “I just hope we’re going to have honest elections.”

The 2021 transfer from the Trump to Biden presidencies was among the most chaotic and violent in the country’s history.

On Jan. 6, 2021, a group of pro-Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results. Congress impeached Trump for a second time due to his role in inciting the insurrection.

In September of 2020, Trump didn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost that election.?

Trump said that the hundreds of people the U.S. Justice Department has charged and convicted in their role in the Jan. 6 attack, were not being treated fairly.

“Nobody was killed on January 6,” Trump said, which is not true. “I think that the people of January 6 were treated very unfairly.”

Two police officers, Howard Liebengood of the U.S. Capitol Police and Jeffrey Smith of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, died by suicide after Jan. 6 that were ruled a line of duty death. A woman, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer as she tried to breach the Speaker’s Lobby adjacent to the U.S. House floor.?

Vice President Kamala Harris gives the eulogy during a service for U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee at Fallbrook Church in Houston. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, praised the late U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, one of the most prominent Black women lawmakers in Congress, in a Thursday eulogy focused on the Texan’s decades of fierce advocacy.

“Her fight was born out of love, she had a big, big heart,” Harris said. “Very few people have loved the people of Houston more than Sheila Jackson Lee.”

Fallbrook Church in Houston hosted Jackson Lee’s homegoing service. Local and national leaders commended Jackson Lee for her public service.

Jackson Lee announced in early June that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was undergoing treatment. She died July 19 at the age of 74.

She survived a previous breast cancer diagnosis.

Harris remarked that Jackson Lee would sometimes have to “get a little creative” to help her constituents. She recalled the city of Houston had a budget shortfall in 2011 and was going to close outdoor public pools and several community centers for the summer.

“Well, Sheila Jackson Lee wasn’t having that,” Harris said.

Harris told how Jackson Lee called business owners and convinced them to donate more than $350,000 to keep the pools and community centers open.?

“She touched the lives of people all over our country,” Harris said.

Advocate for Black community, women

A long-time advocate for progressive causes, Jackson Lee is known for her work in leading federal protections for women from domestic violence and making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

She was also an advocate for reparations for the descendants of enslaved African Americans, civil rights and voting rights. In 2021, Jackson Lee was arrested for civil disobedience over a federal voting rights bill.

She also served as whip of the Congressional Black Caucus and as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the caucus.

“She worked with all her heart to lift up the people of her city, of her state and of our nation. And to honor her memory, let us continue to fight to realize the promise of America,” Harris said. “A promise of freedom, opportunity and justice, not just for some, but for all.”

Before Jackson Lee was elected to Congress, she sat on Houston’s city council from 1990 to 1994.

She joined the House in 1995 and served this Congress on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee.

Accolades in Houston

Several members of Congress, including House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, paid their respects at Thursday’s service.

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also made remarks.

Jackson Lee was a surrogate for Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign, and gave a speech during the Democratic National Convention that year.

Hillary Clinton said she had a message for Jackson Lee, that Democrats “will carry your good work onward.” She added that she wished Jackson Lee could see Harris sworn in as the first Black and Asian American woman president if she wins this November.

Jeffries said that Jackson Lee was beloved by her colleagues in Congress and that he was amazed how Jackson Lee was “always on the scene.”

“I don’t think there was a single event on Capitol Hill that she missed,” Jeffries said.

Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Pramila Jayapal of Washington said that Jackson Lee was courageous and caring.

“She believed in our collective power to stand up for justice and she pulled all of us forward with her strength and her vision,” Jayapal said.

President Joe Biden paid his respects earlier this week, bringing a bouquet of flowers to a service at Houston City Hall on Monday.

“She spoke truth to power and represented the power of the people of her district in Houston with dignity and grace,” Biden said.

During his visit, he also offered condolences to her immediate family: husband, Elwyn Lee, and their two adult children, Erica Lee Carter and Jason Lee, according to White House pool reports.

There was a guest book at the service that Biden signed: “Fearless, proud, and bold. May God bless a dear friend and great American. May God bless you, Sheila Jackson Lee,” according to the White House.

The Democratic National Committee announced grants to state candidates. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A conservative group and a group of Republican state parties Thursday filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of improperly assuming control of Biden campaign funds after he withdrew from the race.

The complaint is asking the FEC’s six-person commission — split evenly between Democrats and Republicans — to “immediately initiate enforcement proceedings to prevent Harris from using her ill-gotten gains for her campaign in the little time remaining between now and the November general election.”

After President Joe Biden suspended his reelection campaign and endorsed Harris to take his place as the likely Democratic nominee, the Biden campaign officially changed its name to the Harris campaign, giving the vice president access to about $96 million of campaign funds as of June 30.

Harris campaign spokesperson Charles Kretchmer Lutvak said in a statement to States Newsroom that the complaint had no merit.

“Republicans may be jealous that Democrats are energized to defeat Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, but baseless legal claims – like the ones they’ve made for years to try to suppress votes and steal elections – will only distract them while we sign up volunteers, talk to voters, and win this election,” he said.

The FEC declined to comment.

Citizens United, a group that led the reversal of campaign finance restrictions in a 2010 Supreme Court case, was joined by one U.S. territory, the Virgin Islands, and 16 state GOP parties.

Those state GOP parties are Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming.

The Harris campaign stated it raised $100 million from Sunday, when Biden announced he would bow out of the race, to Monday evening. Those campaign records won’t be publicly available until mid-October, when quarterly reports are due to the FEC.

The Trump campaign also filed a similar complaint to the FEC on Tuesday, according to CNN.?

The chair of the FEC, a Republican appointed in 2020 by Donald Trump, Sean Cooksey, indicated in a social media post that Harris might not have access to the funds, pointing to a regulation.

“If the candidate is not a candidate in the general election, all contributions made for the general election shall be either returned or refunded to the contributors or redesignated …, or reattributed …, as appropriate,” he wrote.

Because Harris is the vice president, her name was on Biden’s presidential campaign committee. However, any complaint is likely not going to be resolved before the November elections, as the FEC is still reviewing cases from the 2016 election.

U.S. Capitol on March 14, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON ?— The U.S. House Thursday passed a Republican-led resolution condemning the president and Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, for the administration’s immigration policies.

Republicans announced they would move forward with the resolution hours after President Joe Biden suspended his reelection campaign and threw his support to Harris to become the new Democratic nominee to face off with former President Donald Trump this November.

The resolution, H.R. 1371, was introduced Wednesday. It passed? 220-196 shortly before the House was due to leave for a six-week recess.

Six Democrats voted with Republicans: Reps. Yadira D. Caraveo of Colorado, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Mary Peltola of Alaska and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.

Immigration policy at the U.S.-Mexico border has remained a core campaign issue in the presidential elections and a top concern for voters.

Ahead of the vote, the White House Thursday put out a fact sheet pointing out that for the past seven weeks, encounters at the southern border have decreased by more than half, or 55%.

“While the President’s action has led to significant results, our nation’s immigration system requires Congressional action to provide needed resources and additional authorities,” the White House said.

‘Border czar’ label

Since Harris gained the necessary Democratic delegates to become the party’s likely nominee on Monday night, Republicans have criticized her for the Biden administration’s immigration policies and labeled her the “Border Czar,” inaccurately claiming it’s an official title given to her from the White House. It was also a title used in some media reports.

In March 2021, Biden tasked Harris with addressing the root causes of migration, in an effort to stem the flow of undocumented people at the southern border.

Harris was never given the title of “Border Czar,” but that title was officially given to Roberta Jacobson, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Jacobson’s role was created for a short stint — Biden’s first 100 days in office — before ending in April 2021.

Additionally, U.S.-Mexico border security is tasked to the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans in February impeached DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over policy disagreements. The Senate dismissed the articles of impeachment in April.

Republicans said Harris and the administration are one and the same. “She owns all of his failed border policies,” House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green of Tennessee said during debate? Thursday.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said the resolution was “unserious,” and “nothing more than a campaign press release.”

“This resolution is only before this body because Vice President Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee for president,” Thompson said. “This resolution is incredibly petty.”

Republicans like Indiana Rep. Rudy Yakym and Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez again referred to Harris as a “Border Czar” and blamed her for the high number of encounters at the southern border.

Gimenez also criticized Harris for not visiting the southern border frequently. She made one trip to El Paso, Texas, which is a border town, in June 2021, but that was due to her work addressing the root causes of migration leading to the border problems.

Task was narrower, Dems say

Democrats argued that Harris was given a diplomatic role rather than a border security role.

Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, said that Harris was never a “Border Czar.”

“She was narrowly tasked with developing agreements that could help bring government and private sector investments to those countries that are sending migrants to the United States, so that those countries could help strengthen the conditions in those countries,” she said.

The White House in March said that Harris had secured about $5 billion in commitments from the private sector to promote economic opportunities in the region and reduce violence in Northern Central America.

The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Democratic Rep. Nanette Barragán of California, said that border security is the responsibility of Mayorkas and that Harris was never placed in charge of domestic immigration policy.

“Now they have a desperate resolution to blame Vice President Harris for the border,” she said of House Republicans.

Republican presidential candidate former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event on January 06, 2024 in Newton, Iowa. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a Tuesday call with reporters committed to a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic presidential candidate.

“I would be willing to do more than one debate,” Trump said.

Harris, who says she is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, won pledges from enough Democratic delegates by late Monday night to gain the nomination. President Joe Biden on Sunday dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Harris.

During the call, Trump also said that he’s not worried about campaigning against Harris because “she’s the same as Biden” in her policies.

Trump later in the call criticized Harris for the Biden administration’s immigration approach, a topic that he has made a core part of his platform in his third run for the White House.

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment on Trump’s remarks about debating.

Trump also said he is not sure he wants to take part in a debate hosted by ABC News that was scheduled for Sept. 10 with then-presumptive Democratic nominee Biden.

Biden’s shaky performance in a June 27 debate with Trump led to weeks of growing Democratic unease with his campaign, and members of both the U.S. House and Senate called for the president to drop his reelection bid.

Trump also noted that he hasn’t agreed to the ABC debate because he “agreed to a debate with Joe Biden,” and not Harris.

Harris held her first campaign rally Tuesday in Milwaukee, where she leaned into her prior work as a prosecutor and the attorney general for the state of California.

United States Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday, July 23, 2024. The day before, Cheatle testified before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — ?U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday, following widespread outrage that her agency failed to prevent the assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump during a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Cheatle’s resignation follows an intense congressional hearing where Democrats and Republicans demanded she step down after they grew dissatisfied with her answers about how a gunman was able to get within shooting range of the former president. In the hearing, Cheatle noted that the Secret Service was told about a suspicious person two to five times before the shooting.

According to an email obtained by The Associated Press, Cheatle said to her staff that she took “full responsibility for the security lapse.”

Ronald L. Rowe, the U.S. Secret Service Deputy Director will serve as acting Director of the Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

“I appreciate his willingness to lead the Secret Service at this incredibly challenging moment, as the agency works to get to the bottom of exactly what happened on July 13 and cooperate with ongoing investigations and Congressional oversight,” Mayorkas said. “At the same time, the Secret Service must effectively carry on its expansive mission that includes providing 24/7 protection for national leaders and visiting dignitaries and securing events of national significance in this dynamic and heightened threat environment.”

The Secret Service declined to comment and deferred to DHS.

“I am responsible for leading the agency, and I am responsible for finding the answers to how this event occurred and making sure that it doesn’t happen again,” Cheatle said during Monday’s House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing.

Task force will still investigate

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said even though Cheatle has stepped down, he still plans to continue with plans to form a bipartisan task force to investigate the security failures that led to the attempted assassination, in which Trump was shot and his right ear injured.?

“Her resignation is overdue,” Johnson told reporters. “It certainly was the director, but there may be others in the line of authority who are also culpable in what happened in the errors and mistakes there.”

Johnson said the task force will continue “to ensure that those mistakes do not happen again.”

On Trump’s social media site, Truth Social, the former president wrote that the Biden administration “did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy. IT WAS MY GREAT HONOR TO DO SO!”

In a statement, President Joe Biden thanked Cheatle for her service and said he plans to appoint a new director soon.

“As a leader, it takes honor, courage, and incredible integrity to take full responsibility for an organization tasked with one of the most challenging jobs in public service,” Biden said.

He added that an independent review, which he directed the Department of Homeland Security to undertake shortly after the shooting, will “get to the bottom of what happened on July 13.”

“We all know what happened that day can never happen again,” Biden said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, issued a joint statement in which they said they have introduced bipartisan legislation that would require all future directors of the Secret Service be subject to confirmation by the Senate and serve a single 10-year term.

“Our bill is a crucial step toward providing the transparency and accountability that Congress and the American people deserve from the Secret Service,” Grassley said. “In light of former Director Cheatle’s resignation, Congress must now move quickly to pass our legislation and put a qualified individual at the agency’s helm.”

Cortez Masto said that by requiring the director of the Secret Service to be confirmed by the Senate, this will “ensure the same level of oversight as other federal law enforcement agencies and support our hardworking agents in doing the best job they can.”

Mayorkas also praised Cheatle for her work, noting her 29 years of service.

“Over the past two years, she has led the Secret Service with skill, honor, integrity, and tireless dedication,” Mayorkas said in a statement. “She is deeply respected by the men and women of the agency and by her fellow leaders in the Department of Homeland Security.”

A supporter holds a sign as members of the San Francisco Democratic Party rally in support of Kamala Harris, following the announcement by President Joe Biden that he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, on July 22, 2024 at City Hall in San Francisco, California. Biden has endorsed Harris, the former San Francisco district attorney, to be the Democratic nominee. (Photo by Loren Elliott/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris’ path to the Democratic nomination cleared Monday as she secured endorsements from potential rivals and other high-profile party members the day after President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid.

A swarm of Democratic legislative leaders, governors -— including some thought to harbor presidential ambitions of their own — and influential unions as well as key outside groups endorsed her within 24 hours of Biden’s unscheduled Sunday afternoon announcement, while no serious challenger emerged.

In Harris’ first public appearance since Biden’s announcement and endorsement of her, the vice president met with college sports champions at the White House. She opened her brief remarks with a tribute to Biden, who, while recovering from COVID-19, was “feeling much better” Monday, she said.

“Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three years is unmatched in modern history,” she said. “In one term, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms in office.”

Harris was also scheduled to travel to the campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, late Monday to meet with campaign staff, according to the White House.

Several key Democrats had not publicly backed her by Monday afternoon. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and former President Barack Obama had not offered endorsements.

Jeffries told reporters that he and Schumer were planning to meet with Harris “shortly.” While Jeffries did not endorse Harris, he said she has “excited the House Democratic Caucus and she’s exciting the country.”

Congressional Dems line up behind Harris?

But endorsements rolled in from Capitol Hill.

Top congressional Democrats like the No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and the No. 2 House Democrat, Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, also early Monday gave Harris their support.

And former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement that she supported Harris and noted her work advocating for reproductive rights — a topic that Democrats have centered various campaigns on following the end of Roe v. Wade.

“Politically, make no mistake,” Pelosi said. “Kamala Harris as a woman in politics is brilliantly astute — and I have full confidence that she will lead us to victory in November.”

The chair of the campaign arm for House Democrats, Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington, also gave her support to Harris.

Harris has also earned the backing of all the House Democratic leaders of influential congressional caucuses.

That includes Reps. Steven Horsford of Nevada of the Congressional Black Caucus, Nanette Barragán of California of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Pramila Jayapal of Washington of the Progressive Caucus and Judy Chu of California of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.

Obama holds off

Obama did not yet endorse Harris but in a lengthy statement Sunday said he has “extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”

Similarly, in 2020 the former two-term president waited until Biden was formally nominated by the Democratic National Committee before he gave an endorsement.

The DNC will move forward with the process to formally nominate a presidential candidate Wednesday when its Rules Committee meets in a public virtual session amid ongoing efforts to set up a virtual roll call vote ahead of the convention next month in Chicago.

No serious challenger to Harris’ nomination had emerged by Monday afternoon, as independent Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia said in a morning MSNBC interview he would not seek the Democratic nomination.

Governors endorse Harris

Following Biden’s endorsement of Harris, several Democratic governors have also offered their support for the vice president, including the governors speculated to be among Harris’ choices for a running mate and would-be rivals for the nomination.

Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Wes Moore of Maryland and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois all offered their endorsements in the day since Biden withdrew from the race.

Beshear announced his support for Harris in a television interview Monday morning. He wouldn’t say if he’d like to join Harris’ ticket, but said in a statement on X that the vice president will “bring our country together and move us past the anger politics we’ve seen in recent years.”

Other governors around the country also offered their support, including Jared Polis of Colorado, Tony Evers of Wisconsin, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Laura Kelly of Kansas, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Tim Walz of Minnesota, Katie Hobbs of Arizona, Janet Mills of Maine, Jay Inslee of Washington state, and Maura Healey of Massachusetts.

Governors from Oregon and Rhode Island, both Democrats, have yet to voice their support for Harris. Both thanked Biden for his service as president on X.

State parties planning next moves

Several state parties endorsed Harris or indicated they would support her.

North Carolina Democrats voted to endorse a ticket of Harris and Cooper, their term-limited governor, NC Newsline reported.

At Beshear’s request, Kentucky Democrats voted “overwhelmingly” to back Harris, the Kentucky Lantern reported.

New Hampshire’s state party coalesced behind Harris at a Sunday evening meeting, according to the New Hampshire Bulletin.

Maine Democrats were scheduled to meet Monday night and are likely to consider a proposal to switch the party’s support from Biden to Harris, the Maine Morning Star said.

Advocacy groups?

Several influential Democrat-aligned organizations announced their support for Harris.

Emily’s List, which works to elect Democratic women who favor abortion rights, tweeted its endorsement Sunday.

LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign also backed Harris, noting her early support for marriage equality and other work on LGBTQ issues.

UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights group, also endorsed Harris.

Gen-Z for Change, formerly called TikTok for Biden, had withheld an endorsement of the president over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war in which more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed. But quickly following the announcement from Biden to step out of the race, the organization gave an endorsement to Harris.

The political action committees of the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus also backed Harris.

Several unions jump in

Harris has also garnered the backing of several labor unions in the day since announcing her bid for office. The Service Employees International Union, which represents 2 million service workers including health care and property and public services, announced its endorsement for Harris Sunday.

In a written statement, SEIU President April Verrett said “SEIU is ALL IN” for Harris and that the vice president “has made sure to use every lever of government to do everything possible to make things better for working people.”

The American Federation of Teachers unanimously endorsed Harris Sunday. AFT represents 1.7 million education professionals across the country, ranging from teachers and paraprofessionals to school health care workers and higher education faculty.

The United Farm Workers also quickly switched its support from Biden to Harris on Sunday afternoon. The union said it “could not be prouder to endorse her for President of the United States,” in a written statement, citing her support of farm workers during her time as an attorney general and senator in California.

SEIU, AFT and UFW all endorsed Biden for president in 2020 and this year prior to his withdrawal from the race.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has not endorsed in the presidential race, but invited Harris to a roundtable with rank-and-file members. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien addressed the Republican National Convention last week. The union endorsed Biden in 2020 but had not voiced its support for his reelection this year.
Notably, the UAW has not announced an endorsement for Harris. Biden walked the picket line in Michigan during the historic autoworker protests last September. The UAW thanked Biden for his service in a statement Sunday.

DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison is joined by business and political leaders during a lakeside event held to announce that Chicago was chosen to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention on April 12, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago last hosted the convention in 1996. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Democratic National Convention delegates from across the country praised President Joe Biden’s decision Sunday to end his reelection bid, and a few state party leaders followed Biden’s endorsement and immediately threw their support to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Delegates are scheduled to hold a virtual roll call vote early next month to officially select the party’s pick to face Republican Donald Trump in November, with the nominee to accept the nod at the party’s convention on August 22.

Until recently, that candidate was presumed to be Biden, but a poor debate performance on June 27 presaged a weeks-long pressure campaign from Democratic leaders to drop out of the race. Biden heeded those calls Sunday.

Biden endorsed Harris shortly after saying midafternoon Sunday he would not seek reelection. A handful of state delegations were ready Sunday afternoon to shift their support to Harris, though Democratic officials in many more states had not made any statements about whom they’d support at next month’s Democratic National Convention.

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement Sunday that in “the coming days, the Party will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward as a united Democratic Party with a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November.”

“This process will be governed by established rules and procedures of the Party,” he said. “Our delegates are prepared to take seriously their responsibility in swiftly delivering a candidate to the American people.”

Harrison did not include details about how the party would formally nominate a presidential candidate.

Harris gains support

Reaction among state Democratic party officials on Sunday was near universal in praising Biden for his accomplishments as president and decision to leave the race.

Delegates in several states have already thrown their support behind Harris.

“We will be supporting Kamala Harris,” Alabama Democratic Party Chair Randy Kelley said, according to the Alabama Reflector.

In Colorado, several delegates and elected officials, some of whom would have a vote after the first round of balloting at the Democratic National Convention, said they would back Harris.

One delegate in Colorado, state Rep. Leslie Herod of Denver, was a co-chair for Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign in Colorado.

Herod told Colorado Newsline that she would be supporting Harris’ campaign and that the vice president “is committed to not only our country, but the people in it … She’s not an isolated leader. She is one that leads with the people and alongside of them.”

Randal Gaines, chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party, told the Louisiana Illuminator that the state delegation will support Harris’ nomination and that she will “energize our core voters to an unprecedented level.”

Tennessee delegates reached Sunday by the Tennessee Lookout indicated they were inclined to support Harris.

“I’m extremely pleased he has endorsed Kamala Harris and it would be awfully difficult to not strongly support her,” said Chip Forrester, an at-large delegate from Tennessee.

All the congressional Democrats from Wisconsin, a key battleground state in November’s election, quickly endorsed Harris, the Wisconsin Examiner reported. The state’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and party Chair Ben Wikler both stopped short of endorsing the vice president.

One national delegate reached by the Oregon Capital Chronicle, Medford City Councilor Kevin Stine, said he would vote for Harris.

Indiana state Sen. Karen Tallian said she would support Harris, even as others among the Hoosier State’s 88 DNC delegates declined to comment Sunday.

Holding out on endorsements

But far from all Democratic delegates have lined up behind Harris.

South Dakota delegates have not taken a position on endorsing Harris. Instead, they are waiting for guidance from the national party, the executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, Dan Ahlers, said to South Dakota Searchlight.?

Delegates in North Dakota praised Biden’s decision, according to the North Dakota Monitor. Jamie Selzler, a DNC national committee member from North Dakota, said the process to choose a replacement should be transparent.

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said Sunday that Democrats would “unite behind a candidate who will defeat Donald Trump this November.”

First lady Jill Biden, U.S. President Joe Biden, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff join hands as they depart a ”Reproductive Freedom Campaign Rally” at George Mason University on January 23, 2024 in Manassas, Virginia. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Democrats Sunday applauded President Joe Biden’s decision to bow out of the presidential race, and some quickly said they support his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democratic nominee, four months before the November elections.

Congressional Democrats lauded Biden for his record and for passing the torch to a new generation. Democrats for weeks pressured the president to withdraw from the race following a disastrous June 27 debate that rattled their belief the president could defeat Donald J. Trump in a rematch.

“While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a one-page letter he posted to X, formerly Twitter.

Shortly after the announcement, Biden endorsed Harris in a separate social media post.

In a statement, Harris said she was honored to have Biden’s endorsement and that her “intention is to earn and win this nomination.”

“We have 107 days until Election Day,” she said. “Together, we will fight. And together, we will win.”

Clintons endorse Harris

Citing Trump as a threat to democracy and the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity, former President Bill Clinton and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said in a joint statement that “now is the time to support Kamala Harris and fight with everything we’ve got to elect her.”

Former President Barack Obama said in a statement that Biden is “a patriot of the highest order.”

“I also know Joe has never backed down from a fight,” Obama said. “For him to look at the political landscape and decide that he should pass the torch to a new nominee is surely one of the toughest in his life.”

Obama stopped short of endorsing Harris, but said he has the “extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, who chairs the Senate Committee on Appropriations, said in a statement that she is supportive of Harris and believes the vice president can beat Trump.

“She is exactly the woman we need to prosecute the case against Donald Trump, save American democracy, lead the fight to restore abortion rights, and build an economy that puts working people—not billionaires—first,” Murray said. “I will do everything I can to help elect Kamala Harris as our next President.”

If Harris is formally nominated at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which is a month away, she would become the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to become a major party’s presidential nominee.

Florida Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor said in a statement that she has full confidence in Harris as the new Democratic nominee for president.

“There is a lot at stake in this election,” she said. “She is a fighter who stands up for reproductive freedoms, civil rights, lowering costs for families and lifting up all Americans.”

Republicans called for Biden to resign from office, arguing that because he is dropping out of the race, he is unfit to continue in the Oval Office.

“If Joe Biden is not fit to run for President, he is not fit to serve as President,” House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana wrote on X.

Montana Republican Steve Daines, who chairs the Senate GOP campaign arm, said in a statement that he is calling on Biden to resign because “of concern for our country’s national security.”

“Being President is the hardest job in the world, and I no longer have confidence that Joe Biden can effectively execute his duties as Commander-in-Chief,” Daines said.

Trump posted a highly critical statement to his social media site, Truth Social.

“Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve – And never was!” he wrote.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell did not call for Biden to step down as president, but criticized his record in a short written statement.

“For four years, the American people have faced historic inflation at home, chaos at the border, and weak leadership on the world stage,” the Kentucky Republican wrote. “Our nation is less prosperous and less secure than it was in January, 2021. We cannot afford four more years of failure.”

‘Putting country over ego’

Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, who was the first congressional Democrat to call for Biden to step down, said in a statement that the president is “putting country over ego in a way that Donald Trump never could.”

He added that while Harris “is clearly the leading candidate, we should be open to all talented individuals who wish to be considered.”

Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said in a statement that he saluted Biden’s decision to end his campaign for a second term.

“Let no one underestimate how hard this was,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries both commended the president on his record, but neither gave their support to Harris.

“Joe Biden has not only been a great president and a great legislative leader but he is a truly amazing human being,” Schumer said. “His decision of course was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future first.”

Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, who earlier this month raised concerns that Trump could win in a landslide, thanked Biden in a social media post for stepping aside because it has “given us the chance to beat Donald Trump and give our children the future they deserve.”

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said in a statement that Biden has “always put our country first, and in making this decision, he has once again done what he thinks is best for the future of our democracy.”

Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said in a statement that he respected Biden’s decision to step down.

“While there has to be an orderly process and the decision ultimately rests in the hands of the DNC delegates, I believe Vice President Harris has the experience, energy, and resolve to lead our nation,” he said.

Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith said in a statement that she “proudly and enthusiastically” supports Harris “whom I believe is the very best person in this moment to unify the Democratic Party and lead us forward to victory.”

“The work is not done,” Smith said. “In fact it is just beginning.”

U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey (Kentucky Lantern photo by Arden Barnes)

WASHINGTON — Kentucky’s lone Democrat in the U.S. Congress joined nine of his Democratic colleagues Friday in calling on President Joe Biden to drop his reelection bid, the most in a single day since a poor debate performance shook confidence in his ability to win November’s election.

U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, said Democrats need a nominee who can “defeat Donald Trump, flip the House, and protect the Senate.”

In a statement shared on social media, the first-term congressman said “critical issues at stake” include the future of the U.S. Supreme Court, health care, climate change and “a woman’s right to choose.”?

Increasing the pressure on Biden to withdraw from the race, the 10 Democrats on Friday — the day after former President Donald Trump officially accepted his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee — brought the total to 31.

While no member of congressional Democratic leadership has publicly called for Biden to step down, several top Democrats who were either involved with handling Trump’s impeachment trials or with investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol have raised their concerns, citing the former president’s threat to democracy.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, who was the lead impeachment manager in Trump’s first impeachment trial, called on Biden to drop out, saying in a statement that he had “serious concerns” about the president’s ability to win a second term.

And Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who was a member of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, stopped short of explicitly calling on Biden to step down, but urged the president to reconsider whether he should remain in the presidential race.

Biden remained at home in Delaware with no public events scheduled after testing positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday evening.

In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” early Friday, Biden campaign co-chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said the president remained “absolutely” in the race, even as a growing number of Democrats voiced unease about his ability to defeat Trump.

“Absolutely the president is in this race, you’ve heard him say that time and time again,” she said. “He is the best person to take on Donald Trump.”

But reports also surfaced Friday that Vice President Kamala Harris, a potential replacement for Biden if he takes the unprecedented step of withdrawing from a race less than four months from Election Day, was scheduled to speak by phone with top Democratic donors in the afternoon.

Harris did not respond to reporters’ questions at an appearance at a Washington ice cream shop Friday, according to a pool report.

And 10 more congressional Democrats, including more senior members than had previously broken ranks with the president, said Friday that Biden should step aside.

U.S. Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune.

Reps. Jared Huffman of California, Marc Veasey of Texas, Jesús “Chuy” Garcia of Illinois and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin wrote a joint open letter to Biden that they posted on social media.

The quartet represents important constituencies in the House Democratic Caucus.

Veasey is the first member of the influential Congressional Black Caucus, which has been among Biden’s staunchest Democratic backers, to join the call for him to step down. He is also a member of the moderate New Democrat Coalition.

Pocan is the co-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus and a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Garcia is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Reps. Greg Landsman of Ohio, Zoe Lofgren of California also released their own statements. Betty McCollum of Minnesota told the Star Tribune newspaper she wanted Biden step aside and allow Harris to lead the ticket with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.

The calls came a day after Sen. Jon Tester, in a difficult reelection race in Montana, said in a statement to the Daily Montanan that Biden should withdraw.

Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who was one of few Democrats who called on Biden to step down two weeks ago, expanded on his view in an op-ed Friday.

Moulton wrote in the Boston Globe that when he went on a June trip to Normandy to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the president didn’t recognize him, despite their decade-long relationship.

“Of course, that can happen as anyone ages, but as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem,” Moulton wrote. “It was a crushing realization, and not because a person I care about had a rough night but because everything is riding on Biden’s ability to beat Donald Trump in November.”

U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, speaks to reporters in the spin room following the CNN Presidential Debate between U.S. President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, at the McCamish Pavilion on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus on June 27, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Donald Trump announced Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate Monday during the first day of the Republican National Convention, capping off months of speculation about who would get the nod as his vice presidential pick.

Vance has not been a member of Congress long, having less than two years experience as a senator and having voted against major bipartisan bills throughout his tenure in the upper chamber.

Before becoming a U.S. lawmaker, Vance served in the Marine Corps during the Iraq war, worked as a venture capitalist and wrote a book about growing up in Appalachia. He holds a law degree from Yale.

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump, who will be nominated as the 2024 Republican presidential candidate on Thursday night, posted on social media.

“J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond….,” Trump added.

Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, received the news while he was speaking to reporters at the foundation’s all-day policy fest in downtown Milwaukee.

“You will see a broad smile on my face,” Roberts said, adding that he and Vance are “good friends” and that he “personifies” Heritage’s values.

“He listens. He’s thoughtful. He’s funny. He and I had a similar upbringing, challenging childhood, so we hit it off like that when we met. He’s obviously going to be his own man. He’s got to work with our conservative standard bearer,” Roberts said. “The second thing is in terms of policy, he understands the moment we’re in in this country, which is that we have a limited amount of time to implement great policy on behalf of forgotten Americans.”

Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence has distanced himself from Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building — requiring Trump to find a different person to join him on the ticket this year.

Pence was in the Capitol that day, when a pro-Trump mob attacked police officers, broke into building and disrupted Congress’ certification of the electoral college votes for President Joe Biden.

Pence has been critical of how the Republican Party has changed under Trump’s leadership, including rejecting how the platform evolved on abortion this year.

The Biden-Harris campaign immediately slammed the selection of Vance.

“Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people,” said Biden-Harris 2024 Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon.

“Over the next three and a half months, we will spend every single day making the case between the two starkly contrasting visions Americans will choose between at the ballot box this November: the Biden-Harris ticket who’s focused on uniting the country, creating opportunity for everyone, and lowering costs; or Trump-Vance – whose harmful agenda will take away Americans’ rights, hurt the middle class, and make life more expensive ?– all while benefiting the ultra-rich and greedy corporations.”

Vance background

Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio in August 1984. After graduating from high school in 2003 he enlisted in the Marine Corps, later deploying to the Iraq War.

He attended Ohio State University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy in 2009. Vance went on to attend Yale Law School, graduating in 2013 before working for the law firm Sidley Austin LLP.

Vance gained national attention with his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” which tells the story of him growing up in poverty in the Rust Belt. However, the book faced backlash from many historians and journalists over his depictions of Appalachia and the people who live there.

The 39-year-old worked in San Francisco in the tech industry as a venture capitalist. He served as a principal at one of the firms of Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal.

Vance later moved back to Ohio and raised more than $90 million to co-found a venture capital firm in Cincinnati, Narya Capital, which received financial backing from Thiel.

Vance ran his first campaign for U.S. Senate in 2022, defeating Democratic candidate and former U.S. House Rep. Tim Ryan with 53% of the vote.

Since being sworn into office in January 2023, Vance has voted against several big-ticket legislative items, including the law that raised the debt limit, the national defense policy bill and two must-pass government funding packages.

Aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan

Vance also voted against legislation that held $95 billion in military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as a ban on TikTok within the United States unless the social media app’s Chinese parent company sold it.

Vance was among the 18 senators who voted against that emergency spending bill heading to President Joe Biden’s desk. Another 79 senators voted to approve the legislation.

During floor debate on the supplemental spending package, Vance spoke out against sending more aid and arms to Ukraine, arguing that there were parallels between its fight to eject Russia from its borders and the U.S. war in Iraq.

“And the same exact arguments are being applied today, that you are a fan of Vladimir Putin if you don’t like our Ukraine policy, or you are a fan of some terrible tyrannical idea because you think maybe America should be more focused on the border of its own country than on someone else’s,” Vance said.

“This war fever, this inability for us to actually process what is going on in our world to make rational decisions is the scariest part of this entire debate,” he added.

Bipartisan efforts

Vance has also worked across the aisle on bipartisan legislation during his somewhat brief tenure in the U.S. Senate.

He sponsored a bill alongside Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Pennsylvania Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman, all three of whom are Democrats, to address rail safety in the aftermath of the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine.

Vance wrote in a statement released when the bill was unveiled in March 2023 that with the legislation “Congress has a real opportunity to ensure that what happened in East Palestine will never happen again.”

“We owe every American the peace of mind that their community is protected from a catastrophe of this kind,” Vance wrote. “Action to prevent future disasters is critical, but we must never lose sight of the needs of the Ohioans living in East Palestine and surrounding communities.”

The bipartisan legislation has yet to advance in the Senate to either a committee markup or a floor vote.

Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the White House on Sunday, July 14, 2024 on the assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump. A shooter opened fire injuring Trump, killing one audience member, and injuring two others during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. Biden was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris and Attorney General Merrick Garland. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden Sunday called for unity and pledged an independent review following the campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday where former President Donald J. Trump was shot and injured.

“An assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation,” Biden said in remarks from the White House Sunday afternoon, adding that “there is no place in America for this kind of violence or any violence for that matter.”

Biden said the independent review will “assess exactly what happened and we’ll share the results of that independent review with the American people as well.”

“Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is (more) important than that right now,” Biden said. “We’ll debate and we’ll disagree, that’s not going to change. But we’re not gonna lose sight of the fact (of) who we are as Americans.”

Biden added that he is directing the U.S. Secret Service to assess the security measures for the Republican National Convention beginning Monday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the GOP will formally nominate Trump for president.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was initially planning to delay his trip to the RNC by two days, but said he could not “allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else” and so would arrive later Sunday.

Outraged congressional Republicans on Sunday demanded answers from the Secret Service as to how the shooter was able to access a rooftop within range of the former president, and committee leaders began planning hearings and probes. The FBI is investigating the shooting as an attempted assassination.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” he was grateful the former president “survived an assassination attempt,” and noted how dangerous the situation was.

“How could this happen?” Graham asked. “How could somebody get within 130 yards of the president with a rifle?”

On Sunday night, in an address from the Oval Office, Biden repeated his plea for unity and called for Americans to cool down their political rhetoric.

“Remember, we may disagree. We are not enemies. We’re neighbors. We’re friends, coworkers, citizens. And most importantly, we’re our fellow Americans. We must stand together,” he said.

Biden stressed that political participation needed to remain peaceful.

“In America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box,” he said. “Not with bullets.”

Pennsylvanian killed

Several loud pops rang out as Trump was beginning a campaign event Saturday that quickly ended with him cupping blood on the side of his face and defiantly pumping his fist at the crowd and shouting “Fight, fight, fight,” before he was whisked off-stage by Secret Service agents.

Trump was injured but pronounced safe by the Secret Service and he later wrote on his social media site Truth Social that he was shot “with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”

An attendee at the rally was killed, and two others were injured in the shooting.

Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro on Sunday identified the person killed as Corey Comperatore. Local news reports said he was a former fire chief.

“Corey died a hero,” Shapiro said during a news conference. “Corey dove on his family to protect them last night.”

Shortly after the shooting, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement the shooter “fired multiple shots toward the stage from an elevated position outside of the rally venue,” and Secret Service personnel shot and killed the individual.

The FBI identified the shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

Congressional Republicans said they want answers from the Secret Service about how the event unfolded and if there were any security shortcomings.

The Secret Service is responsible for the safety of current and former presidents, and certain government officials.

Guglielmi on Sunday morning on X addressed “an untrue assertion that a member of the former President’s team requested additional security resources & that those were rebuffed.”

He said that was “absolutely false.”

“In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo,” he said.

The agency falls under the Department of Homeland Security, and congressional Republicans have clashed with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, to the point of impeachment. The Senate, controlled by Democrats, dismissed the two articles of impeachment.???

House GOP inquiry

Hours after the Saturday night shooting, House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X that the House will conduct an investigation of the incident.

On the “Today” show Sunday, Johnson said that the House’s probe will “determine where there were lapses in security and anything else that the American people need to know and deserve to know.”

Republican Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter to Mayorkas saying he was concerned how the shooter was able to “access a rooftop within range and direct line of sight of where President Trump was speaking.”

“The seriousness of this security failure and chilling moment in our nation’s history cannot be understated,” Green wrote in the letter. “Had the bullet’s trajectory been slightly different, the assassination attempt on President Trump might have succeeded.”

Green asked Mayorkas to provide the committee with several documents by July 22, such as the security plan for the rally, Secret Service protocol for assassination attempts and copies of briefing materials given to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris about the incident.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri sent a letter to Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Gary Peters of Michigan to push for an investigation into the shooting.

Hawley, who sits on the committee, said the investigation “must include public testimony, hearings, and robust oversight over the relevant federal departments as they respond to this assassination attempt.”

Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, who also sits on the committee, made the same request, and argued the need for an investigation because “individuals and groups will use yesterday’s tragedy to sow division in our country,” and that the committee “can help push back on those efforts by investigating and publicizing the facts surrounding yesterday.”

An aide to Peters, speaking on background, said the “committee will be conducting an investigation,” and that the committee has requested a briefing for members as soon as possible.

Peters, a Democrat, is “speaking with Secretary Mayorkas today, and committee staff are receiving a briefing from the department this afternoon,” the aide said.

“As we learn more about what happened, the investigation will likely include additional steps including hearings,” the aide said.

Comer wants Secret Service director to testify

Chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky said in a statement that he will send a formal invitation for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to appear for a hearing.

“There are many questions and Americans demand answers,” Comer said.

Biden, who spoke Saturday night briefly after the shooting, denounced political violence and declined to say if the incident was an assassination attempt.

“I have an opinion, but I don’t have any facts,” Biden said, speaking from the Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, police department, near his vacation home. “So I want to make sure we have all the facts before I make some comment.”

‘Cool things down’

Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle immediately condemned the political violence.?

On Sunday, they took to various talk shows and urged for a cooling down of political rhetoric.? “We’ve got to turn the temperature down in this country,” Johnson said.

Rep. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania, who was at the rally Saturday, made similar remarks on “Meet the Press,” where he said “we all need to take responsibility and cool things down.”

Melania Trump, the president’s wife, on Sunday called for Americans to “reunite.”

“Dawn is here again,” she said in a statement. “This morning, ascend above the hate, the vitriol, and the simple-minded ideas that ignite violence. We all want a world where respect is paramount, family is first, and love transcends.”

Shootings, threats, attacks

Threats against lawmakers and political violence have increased over the years.

Then-Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona, a Democrat, was shot at a constituent event in 2011. Her husband, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, on X condemned the violence: “No one should ever have to experience political violence — we know that firsthand.”

And House Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana was shot and injured in 2017 during a congressional baseball practice.

Of the 7,501 threats made to members of Congress during 2022, only 22 led to prosecution, the U.S. Capitol Police confirmed to States Newsroom.

Two years ago, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was attacked and injured in their home in California and a kidnapping and assassination attempt was thwarted in 2020 against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

And in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, a mob of pro-Trump supporters breached the building in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the electoral results.

No motive cited yet

The motivation behind the attack is still under investigation. According to The Associated Press, there were bomb-making materials found in Crooks’ home.

Crooks is a registered Republican, according to Pennsylvania voting records, and he made a $15 donation to Progressive Turnout Project PAC in 2021, according to Federal Election Commission records.?

The shooting came two days before thousands of Republicans gather for the Republican National Convention, where they will formally nominate Trump on Thursday. Trump also will announce his running mate at some point.

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican convention host committee in Milwaukee, said on ABC News that he spoke with Trump after the shooting and that the former president wants the convention to move forward.

“It’s not going to be scaled back,” Priebus said. “In fact, if you had to ask me, I would say this convention is going to be epic.”

Senior advisers to the Trump campaign, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, said in a joint statement after the shooting that Trump wasn’t changing his plans for the RNC.

“President Trump looks forward to joining you all in Milwaukee as we proceed with our convention to nominate him to serve as the 47th President of the United States,” they said. “As our party’s nominee, President Trump will continue to share his vision to Make America Great Again.”

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill on June 26, 2024. Luna recently introduced a resolution to fine Attorney General Merrick Garland for not turning over audio tapes of President Joe Biden’s interview with then-Justice Department special counsel Robert K. Hur. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna plans to force a vote as early as next week to invoke the House’s rarely used power of “inherent contempt” to levy a daily fine against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in an attempt to obtain audio tapes from a Justice Department special counsel’s interview of President Joe Biden.

The strategy represents a change from an earlier effort by Luna to pursue a vote to have the House sergeant-at-arms detain Garland.

Luna introduced a resolution on June 28 that would levy a $10,000 daily fine on Garland until he complies with a subpoena to release the tapes of Justice Department special counsel Robert K. Hur’s interview with Biden regarding his handling of classified documents.

The resolution would use the House’s inherent contempt power to levy the fine. That power — which has not been used in nearly a century — has generally been thought to allow Congress to detain and bring to trial someone accused of contempt, leaving questions about how a fine would work.

“While pursuing a fine-based approach eliminates some of the logistical concerns and challenges related to arrest and imprisonment, other questions about how a fine would actually be enforced remain,” Molly Reynolds, senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, told States Newsroom.

Luna’s office did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment about the switch in resolutions.

Following the July 4 recess, the House is scheduled to be in session for just four days before breaking again for more than a week for the Republican National Convention.

House GOP’s push to get audio?

The latest maneuver from Luna is part of a broad attempt by the GOP to obtain the tapes of the Biden-Hur interview.

The effort has only intensified after Biden’s poor performance during the first presidential debate.

Republicans have said Biden isn’t fit to remain in the Oval Office for another four years. After the June 27 debate, even some Democrats raised concerns, with Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas calling Tuesday for the president to withdraw from his reelection campaign.

House Republicans in early June voted to hold Garland in contempt of Congress after he agreed with the president asserting executive privilege over the tapes, but the Department of Justice declined to pursue any contempt charges against Garland.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee filed a civil lawsuit July 1 against Garland asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to overturn Biden’s assertion of executive privilege.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said last month that Republicans are “looking at all avenues” to obtain the audio tapes.

If the House passes the resolution, it’s unclear how the fine would be implemented or if any legal challenges from the Justice Department would ensue. The department declined to comment on Luna’s efforts.

Luna initially announced she would force a vote on her inherent contempt resolution June 28, but later wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that it would be brought up “this upcoming session” with Johnson’s “full support.”

“It is imperative that we do not let time lapse and that we obtain those tapes,” Luna said during an interview with Fox News that day.

Combative freshman

Luna has clashed throughout her first House term with the Biden administration, co-sponsoring resolutions to impeach officials such as U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Garland.

As a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, she’s grilled the president’s son Hunter Biden over his business ties and if those financial gains benefited the president — something House Republicans have not found any evidence of.

Luna, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, has also rebuffed establishment figures in her own party. She initially voted against former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during his bid for the gavel in January 2023.

With the support of former President Donald J. Trump, Luna’s 2022 campaign flipped Florida’s 13th Congressional District from Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist, who forewent his bid for reelection in an attempt to run against Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Luna lost to Crist in 2020.

In June 2023, less than six months into her first term, the 35-year-old, who is the first Mexican American woman elected to Congress from Florida, went after Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California who was the lead House manager in the first impeachment trial against Trump.

Luna led the censure effort against Schiff for comments he made about Trump’s ties to Russia. The House agreed to the censure resolution.

Hur investigation

In January 2023, Garland tapped Hur, who was a federal prosecutor during the Trump administration, to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents.

The Department of Justice has provided a written transcript of Hur’s October 2023 interview with Biden to the House Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, but House Republicans have pushed for the audio since Hur finished his report earlier this year.

Hur declined to prosecute Biden. He concluded in a 388-report released in February that Biden “willfully retained” classified information during his time as vice president, but depicted Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” with whom jurors would likely sympathize.

Biden, 81, has vehemently rejected the characterization of his memory, but Republicans have sought to gain access to the audio tapes for a more detailed record of the interview.

‘Cumbersome’ and ‘inefficient” process’

Luna has argued the process of inherent contempt would likely be quicker than waiting on a lawsuit to obtain the tapes, which the House Judiciary Committee is also pursuing.

But House parliamentary experts wrote in a massive and detailed guide to the chamber this year that Congress has largely abandoned inherent contempt because it is a lengthy and burdensome process.

The 1,073-page document, written by two former House parliamentarians and the current parliamentarian, notes that the inherent contempt power “has not been invoked by the House in recent years because of the time-consuming nature of the trial and because the jurisdiction of the House cannot extend beyond the end of a Congress.”

The last time either chamber used inherent contempt was 1935, the guide said.

And the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said the procedure is typically a multi-step process that “has been described by some observers as cumbersome, inefficient.”

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at the White House on May 31, 2024. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Texas U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett called for President Joe Biden to withdraw as the Democratic nominee Tuesday, becoming the first congressional Democrat to do so after Biden’s poor performance in last week’s presidential debate that has sent the party reeling four months before the November presidential election.

Biden has acknowledged a shaky debate performance but has maintained he is still fit for the job and remains a better alternative than his GOP rival, former President Donald Trump.

Doggett praised Biden’s record, but said the stakes of an election that could hand power back to Trump –?newly empowered by a Supreme Court ruling Monday granting broad presidential immunity –?meant Biden should step aside.

“Recognizing that, unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw,” Doggett said in a statement.

Doggett said that during the 90-minute debate, Biden “failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”

After the debate on CNN, Democrats have raised concerns about Biden’s performance, which included a raspy, low voice and confusing answers that often began one way before veering into a completely separate topic.

Biden, 81, addressed his performance at the debate during a campaign event the next day in North Carolina, where he acknowledged that he’s “not a young man,” but that he’s still up for four more years on the job because Trump, 78, is a “genuine threat to this nation.”

Leading Democrats have largely remained supportive of Biden in public.

“I’m with Joe Biden,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a press conference in Syracuse, New York, on Tuesday, according to a local report.

Speculation

But the discontent with the president’s debate performance has prompted speculation that Biden could withdraw before he is officially nominated next month.

Democratic Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Andy Beshear of Kentucky have each sought to distance themselves from speculation they could be on a short list of replacements.

A co-chair of the Biden-Harris Campaign, Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, said Tuesday he would support Vice President Kamala Harris should Biden decide to step down.

“I will support her, if he were to step aside,” he said during a Tuesday interview with MSNBC.

Clyburn, a close ally of Biden’s who was instrumental in helping him secure the Democratic nomination in 2020, reiterated that he still supported Biden at the top of the ticket.

“We should do everything we can to bolster her, whether she’s in second place or at the top of the ticket,” he said of Harris.

‘A bad night’

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that it’s a “legitimate question” on whether Biden is mentally fit for another four years.

“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘is this an episode or is this a condition?’” Pelosi said during a Tuesday interview with MSNBC. She called on Biden to agree to interviews “with serious journalists.”

Biden is scheduled to be interviewed by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Friday and will participate in a press conference during a NATO conference next week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at Tuesday’s press briefing.

Jean-Pierre said Pelosi asked a fair question and that “we understand the concerns.”

“It was a bad night,” she said repeatedly over the course of the roughly hour-long briefing where virtually every question related to Biden’s fitness for office, debate performance or Doggett’s statement.

Jean-Pierre added that Biden had a cold, which is why his voice was hoarse during the debate.

She said Biden is scheduled to meet with Democratic congressional leaders and governors this week, but declined to give details about what would be discussed during those meetings.

More voices

Former U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio wrote an op-ed Tuesday, calling for Biden to withdraw and Harris to pick up the mantle.

Ryan ran against Biden and Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

Moderate Maine Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden also published an op-ed Tuesday, writing that Biden’s performance at the debate wasn’t unexpected and that he’s fine with a second Trump presidency.

“Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system,” Golden said.

Moving forward

Despite the concerns, Democrats are still moving forward with plans to nominate Biden as their official presidential candidate before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in late August.

Because of the deadline for candidates to get on Ohio’s ballot, the all-virtual roll call vote is supposed to take place before Aug. 7. The state requires candidates to be officially nominated at least 90 days before the November election.

Any final decisions about Biden’s candidacy would likely need to take place in July.

Business as usual

As the debate about Biden’s future continued Tuesday, the president stuck to his regular schedule.

Biden delivered remarks at the District of Columbia’s Emergency Operations Center on his administration’s efforts to address extreme weather.

The president noted the Department of Labor’s new rule aimed to protect workers from heat-related illnesses, as well as $1 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency funding for projects to mitigate effects of flooding and other extreme weather.

Biden announced that he will hold the first ever White House Summit on Extreme Heat to bring together state, local and tribal leaders to develop solutions and protections, as well as the launch of a new government website showing in real-time the communities that face dangerous heat conditions.

“We want the American people to know help is here and how to get that help,” Biden said.

He didn’t answer a reporter’s question about Doggett’s statement calling for him to withdraw, according to White House pool reports.

Lia Chien contributed to this report.?

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference on Jan. 12, 2023, at the Justice Department to announce the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified documents held by President Joe Biden at an office and his home. The investigation did not result in any charges against Biden. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Judiciary Committee Monday filed suit against Attorney General Merrick Garland, in an ongoing effort to obtain audio recordings from President Joe Biden’s interview with a special counsel during an investigation of the president’s handling of classified documents.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks to overturn Biden’s assertion of executive privilege over the recordings of his interviews with Robert K. Hur.

The Republican-controlled committee argues in the suit that the tapes are relevant in its impeachment inquiry into Biden and “whether the President willfully retained the classified materials to benefit either his family … or himself.”

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said in a statement to States Newsroom that the “Department is reviewing the lawsuit and will respond in court at the appropriate time.”

The suit also asks for audio recordings of Hur’s interview with Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter of Biden’s 2017 memoir.

It’s one of several efforts by Republicans to obtain the tapes, after Hur declined to bring charges against Biden and described him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden rebuffed many of those claims.

“The Committee thus needs those recordings to assess the Special Counsel’s characterization of the President, which he and White House lawyers have forcefully disputed, and ultimate recommendation that President Biden should not be prosecuted,” according to the suit.

Separately, Florida GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is leading efforts to hold an “inherent contempt” vote when lawmakers return next week against Garland with the hope of obtaining the tapes.

Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said that House Republicans will “be as aggressive as we can and use every tool in our arsenal to make sure” that the audio tapes are released.

The House in early June voted to hold Garland in contempt for not releasing the audio recordings. However, the Department of Justice provided a written transcript of Hur’s interviews with Biden to the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden dropped by a Waffle House in Atlanta to pick up food shortly after midnight following his debate with Donald Trump on Thursday, June 27, 2024. He told reporters “I think we did well” when asked about his debate performance. (Photo by Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden touched on a flood of criticism of his debate performance during a rally on Friday, while Democrats interviewed on Capitol Hill said the party must figure out a way to reassure voters after what they described as a “terrible” showing and a “bad night.”

Biden, speaking from Raleigh, North Carolina, acknowledged some of the blunders that plagued him during the Thursday night debate on CNN, which included a raspy, low voice and answers that often began one way before veering into a completely separate topic.

“I know I’m not a young man, let’s state the obvious,” Biden said. “I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but … I know how to tell the truth.”

Biden, 81, told the crowd that despite the mishaps, he’s still up for four more years on the job and said that his rival, the 78-year-old presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, is a “genuine threat to this nation.”

“When you get knocked down, you get back up,” Biden said. “I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job because, quite frankly, the stakes are too high.”

Outside the Beltway, Democrats continued to try to absorb what they saw on Thursday night. In Colorado, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis would not answer directly when asked about calls from some Democrats for Biden to step aside. In the swing state of Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro as well as other Democrats came to Biden’s defense on social media and on the airwaves.

Hoyer rejects idea of Biden quitting

Back in Washington, D.C., lawmakers had mixed reviews for how Biden performed during the debate, with some saying one bad night shouldn’t lead the party to change its nominee in the weeks ahead, while others said Biden should reassess his decision to run for reelection.

Maryland Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer said Biden “had a bad night,” but said the president still showed respect for “people, the truth and the Constitution.”

“The other candidate, who respects none of those, showed that last night,” he said of Trump.

Hoyer rejected a question about whether Democrats need a new presidential candidate, saying they already had one and it “is Joe Biden.”

“He’s got an extraordinary record of accomplishments,” Hoyer said.

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig said it was a “terrible debate.”

“We all have to acknowledge that and Donald Trump lied every time he opened his mouth,” Craig said, adding that she wasn’t worried about November, but focused on flooding in her home state.

Mood on House floor

New York Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks said he didn’t expect that all of a sudden members of the party would “jump ship” from the Biden-Harris ticket, but said Biden has a lot of work to do before Election Day.

“I know Joe Biden. I’ve sat across the room from Joe Biden in some very important meetings,” Meeks said. “And I know that he’s all there and he has the ability to do that. He did not do that last night. But I do know that he has that ability.”

The mood on the House floor Friday morning, however, was less than ideal, he said.

“You can’t hide that, people are not pleased. Nobody’s in there jumping for joy, saying that, you know, ‘That was a great night last night,’” Meeks said. “Is there concern? Yeah, because we know how important it is to make sure that we win this election.”

Meeks declined to speculate about whether Biden will back out of the second debate in September, but said “it might be difficult, maybe, to get out of it.”

Biden, he said, needs to get in front of voters much more before the election through town halls and interviews to provide reassurance.

Meeks also sought to draw a difference between Biden and Trump, saying that the lies Trump told during the debate signal he hasn’t evolved.

“Nothing has changed with reference to Trump. He is still that pathological liar that Lindsey Graham called him. He’s still the con man that Marco Rubio called him,” Meeks said, referring to Republican senators from South Carolina and Florida. “And I definitely don’t want a pathological liar and a con man to be President of the United States of America. It would be bad for us and will be bad for our allies.”

House speaker sees ‘serious problem’

House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Cabinet members should “search their hearts” on what represented the best path forward for the country, about “this alarming situation.”

“I think they know they have a serious problem — but it’s not just political, it’s not just the Democratic Party, it’s the entire country,” Johnson said. “We have a serious problem here because we have a president, who, by all appearances, is not up to the task.”

“This is a very serious moment in American history and it needs to be regarded and handled as such,” Johnson added.

The Louisiana Republican didn’t rule out that the 25th Amendment, which deals with presidential disability and succession, might be appropriate. But he noted that’s up to the Cabinet, not the House.

Trump, during the debate, “showed the temperament, the stamina and the mental acuity that is necessary to do this really important job at this really important time,” Johnson said.

Biden, on the other hand, “showed last night that he was weak, sadly, that he is feeble,” Johnson added.

Democrats are moving forward with plans to nominate Biden as their official presidential candidate before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in late August.

The all-virtual roll call vote is supposed to take place before Aug. 7, the final date for candidates to get on Ohio’s ballot. The state requires candidates to be officially nominated at least 90 days before the November election.

That means any final decisions about Biden’s candidacy likely need to take place during the month of July.

No need to replace Biden

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Richard Neal said he was taking the “long view” of the campaign and didn’t believe Democrats needed to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.

“I think that we are kind of caught up in a moment where personalities are a big deal in politics,” Neal said. “At the same time, I think that Joe Biden’s got a really good track record to run on … And I think we want to make sure that people see it in the fullness of his presidency.”

Neal said that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president in 2016, won her first debate against Trump, even though Trump went on to win the election.

He also noted that Walter Mondale, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1984, was widely considered to have won his first debate against Republican Ronald Reagan, though Reagan went on to sweep him during the election.

Florida Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel said that “there was only one decent, honest man who reflected my values, and that was Joe Biden.”

Frankel said she wasn’t too concerned about calls for Biden to step down from the top of the ticket, though she said she hasn’t been involved in those talks.

Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright said Biden’s performance reminded him of a 2022 debate he had where his own performance was “lousy,”

“He had a tough night,” Cartwright said, adding that he believes Democrats shouldn’t “overreact.”

Cartwright said he didn’t believe Biden’s debate performance would affect how voters in his district, which covers sections of northeastern Pennsylvania, including Scranton, will vote for down-ballot races later this year.

“People split their tickets where I live,” Cartwright said. “They know who I am and they know I’m not the same guy as whoever’s in the White House.”

Republicans react

Arkansas Republican Rep. Steve Womack said Biden’s performance “validated” a lot of the concerns that lawmakers and others had about his “cognitive abilities” heading into the debate.

“But at the end of the day, you have to assume that they’re both still going to be head-to-head in November,” Womack said.

Republicans, he said, need to move “full steam ahead” to hold the House, flip the Senate and win back the White House in November, but that’s only the beginning of the hard work.

“If that happens, we’ve got a couple of years and we need to be able to demonstrate that we’re serious about leading America,” Womack said.

Iowa Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said it’s up to “Democrats to determine whether or not they feel that their candidate is up to the task of running the country for the next four years.”

“From my perspective, what I saw last night emphasizes to me that he’s not and that I will be voting for President Trump,” Miller-Meeks said. “I thought President Trump’s answers and policies were well reasoned, show that he was very sharp, very in tune and very well-informed.”

Miller-Meeks said it will be challenging for the Biden campaign and Democrats to brush aside concerns about Biden’s mental functioning following the debate.

“I think what has been appearing to a lot of people is now very apparent and difficult to hide, given the performance that everyone saw last night,” Miller-Meeks said.

Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, one of the lawmakers on Trump’s short list for vice president, said that Trump “did what he was supposed to do — demonstrated leadership, demonstrated command talking about the issues that are plaguing this country.”

“As far as I’m concerned, whether it’s Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or anybody else, the Democrat agenda has been a failure. Period.”

The U.S. Supreme Court said in a 6-3 decision on Friday, June 28, 2024, that the enforcement of local laws that regulate camping on public property, including by people without homes, does not constitute the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. (Photo by Jub Rubjob/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Friday sided with a local ordinance in Oregon that effectively bans homeless people from sleeping outdoors, and local governments will be allowed to enforce those laws.

In a 6-3 decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the opinion that the enforcement of those local laws that regulate camping on public property does not constitute the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

“Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it,” he wrote. “The Constitution’s Eighth Amendment serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges to wrest those rights and responsibilities from the American people and in their place dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy.”

The case originated in Grants Pass, a city in Oregon that argues its ordinance is a solution to the city’s homelessness crisis, which includes fines and potential jail time for repeat offenders who camp or sleep outdoors.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent arguing that the ordinance targets the status of being homeless and is therefore a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

“Grants Pass’s Ordinances criminalize being homeless,” she wrote. “The Ordinances’ purpose, text, and enforcement confirm that they target status, not conduct. For someone with no available shelter, the only way to comply with the Ordinances is to leave Grants Pass altogether.”

During oral arguments, the justices seemed split over ideological lines, with the conservative justices siding with the town in Oregon, arguing that policies and ordinances around homelessness are complex, and should be left up to local elected representatives rather than the courts.

The liberal justices criticized the city’s argument that homelessness is not a status protected under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The liberal justices argued the Grants Pass ordinance criminalized the status of being homeless.

The Biden administration took the middle ground in the case, and U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler offered partial support.

“It’s the municipality’s determination, certainly in the first instance with a great deal of flexibility, how to address the question of homelessness,” he said during oral arguments in late April.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

People watch the CNN presidential debate between President Joe Biden and the Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, at a debate watch party at Shaw’s Tavern on June 27, 2024 in Washington, D.C. Biden and Trump faced off in the first presidential debate of the 2024 presidential cycle. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Immigration occupies center stage in the 2024 presidential campaign and also was a major focus during the first presidential debate Thursday night between President Joe Biden and the presumptive GOP nominee, Donald J. Trump.

Immigration is a top issue for voters and for Trump, while the Biden administration has struggled to deal with the largest number of migrant encounters at the southern border in 20 years.

Biden during the 90-minute debate at CNN in Atlanta defended his administration’s handling of immigration and blamed Trump for tanking a bipartisan U.S. Senate border security deal.

Biden also pointed to that deal as a reason he should be reelected, because the White House was able to forge the agreement in the first place.

“We worked very hard to get a bipartisan agreement,” Biden said.

Senate Republicans rejected the bipartisan border security deal earlier this year, siding with their House colleagues and Trump. The agreement would have significantly overhauled U.S. immigration law by creating a temporary procedure to shut down the border during active times and raising the bar for asylum claims.

Trump in the debate argued that Biden did not need legislation to enact policy changes at the southern border because “I didn’t have legislation, I said close the border.”

In early June, Biden made the most drastic crackdown on immigration of his administration, issuing an executive order that instituted a partial ban on asylum proceedings at the southern border.

Trump called that action “insignificant.”

The debate came the day after U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas gave a briefing from Tucson, Arizona, about a decline in migrant encounters following Biden’s executive order.

He said the Tucson sector has “seen a more than 45 percent drop in U.S. Border Patrol encounters since the president took action, and repatriations of encountered individuals in Tucson have increased by nearly 150 percent.”

“Across the entire southern border, Border Patrol encounters have dropped by over 40 percent,” Mayorkas said.

‘Remain in Mexico’ policy

Trump cited his prior policies that he felt were successful and criticized Biden for rolling them back, such as one that required migrants to remain in Mexico while they awaited their asylum cases.

Biden slammed Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy that separated parents from their children in efforts to deter unauthorized immigrants at the border.

“When he was president he was … separating babies from their mothers and putting them in cages,” Biden said.

And, without citing evidence, Trump blamed immigrants for crime, calling it “migrant crime.”

Overall violent crime in the country is down by 15%, according to recent FBI statistics, and researchers have found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens.

Trump brought up the death of a Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley, and blamed Biden’s immigration policies.

“All he does is make our country unsafe,” Trump said.

In late February, Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University, was reported missing by her roommate when she did not return home after a run on the campus of the University of Georgia at Athens.

Local police found her body and shortly afterward arrested a 26-year-old man from Venezuela for her murder — an immigrant previously arrested in Georgia on a shoplifting charge who entered the country without authorization in 2022, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. U.S. House Republicans in reaction passed the Laken Riley Act.

Trump was asked by debate moderators how he would carry out mass deportations, but he did not go into detail.

He has repeatedly claimed he would carry out a mass deportation campaign of undocumented immigrants by utilizing local law enforcement, the National Guard and potentially the U.S. military. He’s done so on the campaign trail and during a lengthy interview with Time Magazine.?

“We have to get a lot of these people out and we got to get them out fast because they’re destroying our country,” Trump said during the debate.

A customer tries out a semi-automatic pistol at The Gun Store on Nov. 14, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Friday upheld a federal law that bars people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from owning a firearm.

In an 8-1 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion that “our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms.”

“When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible

threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment,” Roberts wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment, was the lone dissent.

Thomas argued that the question before the court was not if someone can have their firearms taken away under the Second Amendment, but instead whether the “Government can strip the Second Amendment right of anyone subject to a protective order — even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime. It cannot.”

This was the first major test of the 2022 Supreme Court decision – New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen – that struck down a New York law limiting carrying firearms in the open in a decision from the high court that greatly expanded gun rights. Thomas wrote that decision.

Because of the Bruen decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit vacated Zackey Rahimi’s conviction on the grounds that the federal law violated his Second Amendment rights.

In 2019, Rahimi assaulted his girlfriend in Arlington, Texas, and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone, according to the Department of Justice. That led to a restraining order that suspended his handgun license and prohibited him from possessing firearms.

But Rahimi did not adhere to that order and then threatened another woman with a gun, and two months later opened fire in public five times.

During oral arguments in November before the court, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, argued that the 5th Circuit misinterpreted the Bruen decision.

She said there is historical precedent in the ability of Congress to “disarm those who are not law-abiding, responsible citizens.”

Under a 1994 federal law, anyone who has been convicted in any court of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence,” and, or, is subject to domestic violence protective orders, is prohibited from purchasing and having possession of firearms and ammunition.

During those oral arguments, the justices – both liberal and conservative – seemed to side with Prelogar’s argument that the federal law is in line with the longstanding practice of disarming dangerous people and does not violate an individual’s Second Amendment rights.

More than half of female homicide victims are killed by current or former male intimate partners. Firearms are used in more than 50% of those homicides.

More than two dozen states have laws that prevent someone subject to an order in a domestic violence case from buying or possessing a gun and ammunition.

Some of those states include Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

This is a developing story that will be updated.

Razor wire along the Rio Grande on the Texas side of the U.S.-Mexico border. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

EL PASO, Texas — Seventeen-year-old Karina Parababire gently rocked her three-month-old daughter as they waited in a migrant shelter before a Friday night bus ride to Chicago.

“I want my daughter to have everything that I didn’t have,” Parababire, who traveled up the extremely dangerous route of the Darien Gap while pregnant, said in Spanish.

The Venezuelan, who is traveling with her family, had to stop in Honduras to give birth to her daughter, Avis, before continuing to the United States. Once in Mexico, she and her family were granted an appointment through the CBP One app — a tool the Biden administration uses to grant migrants a meeting with an asylum officer.

She had been at the Sacred Heart Church shelter with her family for four days. They planned to continue on to Chicago, where they’ll be met by her cousin. Parababire hopes that after she gets to the Windy City, she can go back to high school and possibly enter college.

Parababire and her relatives arrived in the U.S. just before President Joe Biden issued an executive order that partly bans asylum claims when unauthorized crossings exceed a daily threshold. Because the family was admitted using the CBP One app, they were allowed to continue their journey.

Executive order limiting asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border signed by Biden?

As for other migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, local leaders said recently they are anticipating the effects of the order to be somewhat beneficial in limiting unauthorized crossings, though there was also plenty of skepticism.

Immigration advocates expressed deep concern the order — issued after Congress failed to take action on sweeping immigration legislation — would lead to more harm to already vulnerable people.

“I’ve come here today to do what Republicans in Congress refuse to do, take the necessary steps to secure our border,” Biden said in announcing the order, referring to a bipartisan border security deal Republicans walked away from earlier this year. “This action will help us gain control of our border.”

Uncertainty about a new policy

The shelter at Sacred Heart Church that housed Parababire currently has a relatively low number of migrants — about 70 compared to a capacity of 120.

The director, Michael DeBruhl, said it’s unclear how the order will affect the number of migrants who arrive not only at the shelter, but at the many ports of entry along the southern border.

“The thing is that the Border Patrol is going to take the brunt of this executive order and that they will have to process everybody,” he said. “The difference is going to be that there are nuances regarding how everything can apply to asylum, so they’re going to make it more difficult for you to apply to asylum.”

The big question, DeBruhl said, “is how exactly they are doing that.”

“You’re gonna have all these Border Patrol agents making these decisions, all these nuances, of a policy that’s just been implemented,” he said.

A Customs and Border Protection official declined to comment on the effects of the new executive order, but noted it would change the processing of noncitizens at the southern border.

Local officials saw some positives. “This is a start, but it’s just the beginning,” the mayor of El Paso, Oscar Leeser, said during a Wednesday presentation to journalists with local border officials.

Leeser was one of the several Texas mayors who attended the White House’s announcement of the June 4 executive order.?

Leeser said he believes the order will stop unauthorized border crossings because “the consequences are greater now and that’s the difference.”

Presidential campaign

The order, which is Biden’s most drastic crackdown on immigration during his administration, comes five months before a presidential election in which it’s a top issue for voters and for his GOP rival, former President Donald Trump.

The order is currently in effect because daily unauthorized crossings have reached a threshold of more than 2,500 encounters with migrants each day for a week at the southern border.

“Simply put, the Departments do not have adequate resources and tools to deliver timely decisions and consequences to individuals who cross unlawfully and cannot establish a legal basis to remain in the United States, or to provide timely protection to those ultimately found eligible for protection when individuals are arriving at such elevated, historic volumes,” according to the text of the interim final rule from the executive order.?

The order goes away once government officials determine that fewer than 1,500 people a day have crossed the border in a week’s time span. Unaccompanied children are exempt, along with victims of human trafficking, people with visas, people with medical emergencies or those who report serious threats to their lives.

Those migrants who arrive at ports of entry to claim asylum once the cap is reached and do not establish a “reasonable probability of persecution or torture in the country of removal,” will be removed and subjected to a five-year ban from applying for asylum in the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security.??

Returning to Mexico or home countries

Leeser said the order will help manage high numbers of arrivals of migrants at ports of entry because it will allow the Biden administration to return those migrants either to their home countries or elsewhere in Mexico if their home country is deemed too dangerous.

Leeser said because of this, he expects migrants to use more legal pathways, such as the CBP One app, through which appointments can be made with an immigration official to claim asylum.

Through the CPB One app, more than 1,400 migrants are processed for appointments each day with an immigration official. The wait time for an appointment can take about five to eight months, according to a May report by the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin, which documents asylum claims at ports of entry.

But Juan Acereto Cervera, the adviser to the mayor of Juárez, Mexico, which borders El Paso, expressed skepticism that the new White House policy will stop people from trying to cross the border to claim asylum.

“Nothing’s going to stop this migration,” he said. “It’s because something is happening in their other countries that make these people to try to find the best country in the world, that is the United States. That’s the truth.”

Jorge Rodriguez, the coordinator for the El Paso City & County Office of Emergency Management, said that it’s common for the number of migrants that arrive in El Paso to fluctuate, based on immigration policy changes from the White House.

“With time … what we’ll see is how this one will ultimately play out,” he said.

Legal action looms

Under U.S. immigration law, for a noncitizen to claim asylum, they have to reach U.S. soil and then make that claim. They can stay in the U.S. and receive due process if they have a fear of persecution based on their “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”

Biden to unveil protections for some undocumented spouses, easier DACA work visas

The American Civil Liberties Union, which was at the forefront of many legal cases against the Trump administration’s immigration policies — including ones that restricted asylum — has already stated it plans to sue the Biden administration over its executive order.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, whose district includes El Paso, said in a statement that she was disappointed that the Biden administration focused its executive order only on enforcement.

“It is my sincere hope that administrative actions on immigration relief, like parole in place for the spouses of US citizens and designations of Temporary Protected Status for vulnerable populations, will also happen,” she said.

‘A very dangerous place’

Immigration advocates and attorneys in El Paso said during a separate Wednesday panel with journalists they fear for the impact the executive order could have on migrants.

“I think we do kind of know what’s going to happen — it creates a backlog,” said Imelda Maynard, an attorney at Estrella Del Paso Legal Aid.

Maynard said she can easily see how the executive order will be misinterpreted by migrants who will think the 2,500 threshold is a quota to allow people into the U.S.

“What the government is trying to do, right, lessen the amount of irregular entries, I think that’s going to increase,” she said.

Father Rafael Garcia, a priest who serves Sacred Heart Church, said he expects the executive order will cause more migrants to wait in Mexico, which could burden Mexico and leave those migrants in dangerous situations.

“It’s hard to know how this is gonna play out, but it doesn’t look too good,” Garcia said.

The director of Sacred Heart Church, DeBruhl, said that he thinks it will take a few weeks to see the full impact of the executive order.

“The conservatives are saying that it’s not going to make any difference… the (Biden) administration is saying this is going to have a specific (effect), and be quite impactful,” he said. “I don’t think anybody really knows how this is going to play out.”

Aimée Santillán, a policy analyst at the Hope Border Institute, which advocates for solidarity and justice across the borderlands, said that the order will require many migrants to wait in Mexico, and “right now, Mexico is a very dangerous place for migrants to be in.”

“We think that this might exacerbate the situation, or push people to … find other routes of entering the country that are less controlled, have less services, have less people receiving them and giving them assistance,” she said.

This story was reported through an El Paso-based fellowship on U.S. immigration policy organized by Poynter, an institute for the professional development of journalists, with funding from the Catena Foundation.?

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., leaves a House Republican Conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol Oct. 3, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Ethics Committee released a statement Tuesday saying it has “identified additional allegations that merit review” based on its investigation of prior allegations that Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz had inappropriate sexual relationships and violated rules by accepting gifts.

The committee is investigating allegations that Gaetz may have “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”

Gaetz’s office referred to a post on X, formerly Twitter, in response to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

Gaetz called the additional allegations the committee is reviewing “new frivolous investigations,” but did not elaborate what those new investigations were.

“Representative Gaetz has categorically denied all of the allegations before the Committee,” the committee statement said.

“Notwithstanding the difficulty in obtaining relevant information from Representative Gaetz and others, the Committee has spoken with more than a dozen witnesses, issued 25 subpoenas, and reviewed thousands of pages of documents in this matter,” the statement added.

The House Ethics Committee did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment about the new investigations.

The committee began its investigation in Gaetz in 2021 after multiple reports from the Daily Beast alleged the Florida Republican engaged in sex trafficking and illicit drug use. CNN also reported Gaetz showed naked photos of women he claimed to have slept with to other lawmakers while on the House floor.

The committee referred the case to the Department of Justice, which the agency requested as it looked into whether Gaetz had an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old girl and if his involvement with other women violated prostitution and federal sex trafficking laws.

The Justice Department later declined to move forward with charges and after that announcement, the House committee took up the investigation again last year.

Some allegations the committee is not taking any further action on include “allegations that he may have shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe or improper gratuity.”

“The Committee notes that the mere fact of an investigation into these allegations does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred,” the committee said.

President Joe Biden will formally make an announcement about protections for undocumented spouses and speedier work visas for DACA recipients during an afternoon White House event to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the DACA program. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration Tuesday will announce deportation protections for long-term undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens, along with quicker approval of work permits for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

President Joe Biden will formally make the announcement during an afternoon White House event to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the DACA program. The initiative was launched during the Obama administration and was meant to temporarily protect undocumented children brought into the United States without authorization.

The new policies were previewed by senior administration officials to reporters late Monday.

The new DACA policy will allow those recipients who have graduated from an accredited university and have an offer by a U.S. employer for a highly skilled job to quickly qualify for one of the existing temporary work visas, such as an H-1B visa.

The new policies came two weeks after Biden enacted his harshest crackdown on immigration with a partial ban on asylum proceedings at the southern border. Immigration remains a top issue for voters and for Biden’s GOP rival, former President Donald Trump.

Democrats and immigration advocates have long pressed the Biden administration to instill permanent protections for the nearly 579,000 DACA recipients as they await a decision from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that could deem the program unlawful. The legal dispute is likely to head to the Supreme Court.

Many immigration policy experts have called DACA outdated, because there are now thousands of undocumented people who are not eligible for the program because they were not even born yet. To qualify, an undocumented person needs to have continuously resided in the U.S. since 2007.

Biden pushed to take action

Americans with undocumented spouses have expressed their frustration and pushed for the Biden administration to use executive action to grant relief for the more than 1.1 million Americans who fear their undocumented spouses could face deportation.

The deportation protections to those married to a U.S. citizens are a one-time action expected to allow roughly 500,000 noncitizen spouses and their children to apply for a lawful permanent residence — a green card — under certain requirements.

To qualify, a noncitizen must have resided in the U.S. for 10 years as of Monday, June 17, 2024, and be married to a U.S. citizen since that date as well. That spouse who is a noncitizen also cannot be deemed a security threat.

The Department of Homeland Security will consider those applications, which are expected to be open by the end of summer, on a case-by-case basis, a senior administration official said.

This move is also expected to affect roughly 50,000 children who are noncitizens and have an immigrant parent married to a U.S. citizen.

For those children to qualify, they have to be 21 or younger, unmarried “and the marriage between the parents has to have taken place before the child turned 18,” a senior administration official said.

Under current U.S. immigration law, if a noncitizen enters the country without authorization, they are ineligible for permanent legal status and would be required to leave the U.S. and reenter legally through a green card application by their U.S. spouse, which is a lengthy process that can take years.

“The challenges and uncertainty of this process result in many eligible spouses not applying for permanent residence,” a senior administration official said.

Application info coming

More information on the application and eligibility process will be published in the Federal Register in the coming weeks, a senior administration official said.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the legal immigration system, has a similar program that allows noncitizens who are immediate family members of U.S. military service members to obtain green cards without leaving the country.

“This announcement utilizes existing authorities to keep families together,” a senior administration official said. “But… only Congress can fix our broken immigration system.”

Any immigration reform from Congress is unlikely, with Republicans in control of the House and Democrats controlling the Senate. A bipartisan border security deal fell apart earlier this year. There was no pathway to citizenship in that deal for DACA recipients or longtime immigrants.

The closest Congress came to bipartisan immigration reform was in 2013, when the “Gang of Eight,” made up of four Republican and four Democratic senators, crafted a bill that would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented people.

It passed the Senate, but Republican House Speaker John Boehner never brought the bill to the floor for a vote.

A 7.62X39mm round sits next a a 30-round magazine and an AK-47 with a bump stock installed at Good Guys Gun and Range in Orem, Utah, on Feb. 21, 2018. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down a 2018 rule to ban bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire at a rapid rate similar to fully automatic guns. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump is applauded by U.S. Senate Republicans before giving remarks to the press at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters on June 13, 2024. Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, visited Capitol Hill to meet with House and Senate Republicans. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — In his first visit to Capitol Hill since leaving office in January 2021, former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee,?mapped campaign strategy with GOP lawmakers and projected party unity?ahead of the November elections.

Trump said the meetings brought “great unity.”

Surrounded by Republican senators who were smiling and applauding him after a meeting at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters near the Capitol, Trump said “we have one thing in mind and that’s making our country great.”

The positive reception from GOP leaders showed Trump’s standing in the party improved since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that saw a mob of Trump supporters attack the U.S. Capitol in an effort to block Congress from certifying the electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election.

The U.S. House impeached Trump – for the second time – for his role in the attack, though the Senate vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict him.

Trump’s visit Thursday came two weeks after he was convicted on 34 felony counts in New York for falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star before the 2016 election. Republicans have denounced the verdict as a weaponization of the justice system.

Trump met with House and Senate Republicans separately. Lawmakers exiting their respective meetings said they were unified behind the former president and they discussed a legislative strategy for a potential second term, such as reinstating Trump-era immigration policies.

“He understands he needs a majority in both bodies to have a successful presidency and he is determined to do that,” Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma said.

Trump has made immigration a core campaign issue – as he did in 2016 – and has promised to not only reinstate his policies at the southern border, but to carry out mass deportations.?

Democrats have remained on the offense on immigration policy, with the White House enacting an executive order that limits asylum claims at the southern border and the Senate failing on a second attempt to pass a border security bill. Vulnerable U.S. Senate Democrats in Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania are aiming for reelection.

Trump urges ‘careful’ abortion talk

The meetings occurred on the day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on another hot-button issue for the GOP. In a much-anticipated decision, the court unanimously upheld access to mifepristone, one of two pharmaceuticals used in medication abortion, under current prescribing guidelines.

House GOP lawmakers leaving the early meeting said that Trump did not comment on the court’s ruling.

But New York Rep. Marc Molinaro said that the former president advised Republicans that they “have to be very careful about” how they talk about abortion and that “is to show respect for women and the choices that they have to make.”

Just days ago, Trump promised to work “side by side” with a religious organization that wants abortion “eradicated.” Trump has yet to release his policy stances on contraception and access to medication abortion, a two-drug regimen approved for up to 10 weeks gestation.

Access to reproductive health care, including contraception and IVF, has become a central campaign theme for Democrats.

The Senate tried to pass legislation last week that would have provided protections for access to contraception, but most Republicans voted against it. The Senate also took a procedural vote Thursday on legislation from Democrats that would bolster protections for IVF, but it failed in the face of Republican opposition.

Birthday, baseball and an ‘aggressive agenda’

GOP House members leaving their meeting reported singing “Happy Birthday” to Trump, whose 78th birthday is Friday.

Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said the conference presented Trump with a baseball and bat from the previous night’s Congressional Baseball Game, a charity event which Republicans won 31-11.

Burchett said they wanted to give him the memorabilia because “he’s the leader of our party, and the Republicans destroyed the Democrats, as we should do on Election Day.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana told reporters after the meeting that Trump “brought an extraordinary amount of energy and excitement and enthusiasm this morning.”

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, of New York, said Trump was “warmly welcomed” and that GOP lawmakers had a “very successful” meeting with him.

“We are 100% unified behind his candidacy,” said Stefanik, a contender on Trump’s short list for vice presidential picks.

Johnson told reporters that Republicans have “an extraordinary stable of candidates” and that the party is “headed for a great November.”

Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida made similar remarks, and said that she believes “momentum is on our side.”

“We’re very, very motivated, our base is motivated and everyday Americans are motivated,” Cammack said.

She added that the former president is working to grow the Republican party.

“It’s pretty clear that November for us is gonna be incredible,” she said.

Stakes in November

Johnson said that he’s confident Trump will win the White House and that Republicans will flip the Senate and grow their majority in the House.

Control of each chamber of Congress is expected to be closely fought in the November elections, and it’s possible that the House and Senate will continue to be split between the parties, but political observers see the prospect of a big switch.

If current trends continue through the year, it’s possible that the Senate could swing from Democratic to Republican control, and the House could flip from the GOP to Democrats.

House Democrats only need a gain of five seats to regain power and Senate Republicans only need two, or one if Trump wins the presidential race. Republicans have an easy opportunity to pick up a Senate seat in West Virginia after Joe Manchin III, a centrist Democrat, decided not seek reelection.

“We will be working on a very aggressive agenda to fix all the great problems facing this country right now,” Johnson said.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said that Trump is focused on increasing the GOP majority in the House. Because of the razor-thin majority that Republicans hold in the chamber, Johnson has often had to rely on Democrats to pass government funding bills along with foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel.

Insult to convention city

Republicans are gearing up for the party’s national convention in Milwaukee in mid-July, where they will officially nominate Trump as their 2024 presidential nominee and a yet-to-be-named vice presidential pick as well.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in New York four days before the convention begins.

The former president did not mention a running mate during his meeting with GOP senators, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said.

Trump told lawmakers Thursday that Milwaukee is a “horrible” city, according to Punchbowl News.?

Wisconsin Republicans had varying interpretations of the remark, with Rep. Derrick Van Orden saying Trump was talking about crime in the city and Rep. Bryan Steil denying that Trump even made the comment.

Trump is scheduled to visit southeastern Wisconsin next week, for a campaign rally in Racine on Tuesday.

Key to Senate majority?

Following the meeting Trump had with senators, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville offered a handful of words to characterize the meeting: “Unification. Leadership.”

But not all Senate Republicans were in attendance. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins did not attend due to scheduling conflicts, according to the Washington Examiner.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said that despite those absences, Republicans are still unified in their support of Trump.

Even those senators who have been at odds with the former president, such as Utah’s Mitt Romney and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, attended, which South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham felt was beneficial.

“We realize that his success is our success,” Graham said of Trump. “The road to the Senate majority is also the road to the White House.”

Dismissing guilty verdict

Johnson of Louisiana said Trump’s guilty verdict in New York has “backfired fantastically,” as the party boasted of a fundraising bump after “the terrible, bogus trial in Manhattan.”

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall made a similar argument that the verdict benefited Trump.

“It’s helping him,” he said, noting that after the May 30 verdict, the Trump campaign raised $141 million in May.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming said “there was an absolute meeting of minds” that the verdict was a “sham.”

“We are so sorry that he has to endure that,” Lummis told States Newsroom on her walk from the meeting back to the Capitol.

Trump is also charged in three other criminal cases, including federal charges that allege he knowingly spread false information after the 2020 presidential election, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to join the scheme to overturn the results and whipping his base into a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Supreme Court is set to decide in the coming weeks whether Trump enjoys presidential immunity, as he claims, from those charges.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, who was the ranking member of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, criticized Republican lawmakers for meeting with Trump.

She reposted a New York Times photograph of McConnell shaking Trump’s hand Thursday on X and wrote “Mitch McConnell knows Trump provoked the violent attack on our Capitol and then ‘watched television happily’ as his mob brutally beat police officers and hunted the Vice President.”

“Trump and his collaborators will be defeated, and history will remember the shame of people like @LeaderMcConnell who enabled them,” Cheney, a Wyoming Republican who lost her reelection bid in a 2022 Republican primary, wrote.

Dems blast return

The Biden campaign has also latched onto Trump’s return to Capitol Hill, releasing statements from various Democrats who led investigations into the insurrection and criticized the former president’s return.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement on behalf of the Biden campaign that “the instigator of an insurrection is returning to the scene of the crime.”

“With his pledges to be a dictator on day one and seek revenge against his political opponents, Donald Trump comes to Capitol Hill today with the same mission of dismantling our democracy,” she said.

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, former chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, criticized Republicans for allowing Trump “to waltz in here when it’s known he has no regard for democracy.”

“He still presents the same dire threat to our democracy that he did three years ago — and he’d be wise to head back to Mar-a-Lago and await his sentencing,” Thompson, of Mississippi, said in a statement on behalf of the Biden campaign.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who served as an impeachment manager for Trump’s role in the insurrection, said in a statement on behalf of the Biden campaign that “Donald Trump is a one-man crime wave and a clear and present danger to the U.S. Constitution and the American people.”

Lia Chien contributed to this report.?

President Joe Biden speaks to a conference hosted by Everytown for Gun Safety in Washington on June 11, 2024. (Screenshot from CSPAN livestream.)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Tuesday touted his administration’s efforts to reduce gun violence as the second anniversary of bipartisan gun safety legislation he signed into law approaches.

“Never give up on hope,” Biden said during an annual conference hosted by the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

The speech came hours after the president’s son Hunter Biden was found guilty in a federal court in Delaware of lying on paperwork related to purchasing a gun and unlawfully possessing that gun, according to media reports.

The federal jury found Hunter Biden, who has struggled with drug addiction, guilty on three related felony charges: lying to a licensed gun dealer, falsely stating on an application for a gun that he was not using drugs and for unlawfully having the gun for 11 days.

He could face up to 25 years in prison, though as a first-time offender his sentence is expected to be much less severe.

The president has avoided publicly commenting on his son’s case and he did not mention the verdict in his speech.

Gaza protest

Shortly after Biden began his speech, he was interrupted by a protester who accused the president of being “complicit” in the high death toll of the Israel-Hamas war that has killed 35,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, according to the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip run by the Hamas-controlled government. An agreement over a U.S. backed cease-fire deal remains elusive.

The crowd immediately drowned out the protester. A group of protesters was removed, according to a White House pool report.

Biden tried to calm the crowd.

“That’s alright,” he said. “Folks, it’s ok, look they care, innocent children have been lost, they make a point.”

Law nears second anniversary

Biden went back to his speech, and thanked the gun safety advocates and survivors “who have turned their pain” into advocacy.

“You’ve helped power a movement,” Biden said.

The gun safety law Biden signed in 2022 was the most comprehensive federal gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. It stemmed from two deadly mass shootings less than two weeks apart in 2022.

One was at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were murdered, making it the second-deadliest mass shooting since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012.

The other was in Buffalo, New York, where a white supremacist targeted a Black neighborhood and killed 10 Black people in a grocery store.

The 2022 law provided $750 million for states to enact “red flag laws,” which allow the courts to temporarily remove a firearm from an individual who is a threat to themselves or others as well as $11 billion in mental health services for schools and families. The law cracked down on straw purchases, illegal transactions in which a buyer acquires a gun for someone else.

The bill also requires those who are under 21 and want to purchase a firearm to undergo a background check that takes into account a review of juvenile and mental health records. It also led to the creation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

The Justice Department also announced Tuesday it has charged more than 500 people under provisions of the gun safety law to “target the unlawful trafficking and straw-purchasing of firearms.”

The statutes “directly prohibit straw purchasing and firearms trafficking and significantly enhance the penalties for those crimes, providing for up to 15 years in prison,” according to the Justice Department.

“Criminals rely on illegal gun traffickers and straw purchasers to obtain the weapons they use to harm our communities,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

More work to do

Biden acknowledged that more needs to be done on gun safety legislation and he called on Congress to ban assault weapons and require universal background checks and safe storage of firearms. In a divided Congress, any gun-related legislation is unlikely to pass.

The last time Congress passed major gun legislation was 1994, when then-President Bill Clinton signed a ban on assault weapons that spanned 10 years. When it expired, Congress did not renew the ban.

Biden also took a jab at his rival, former President Donald J. Trump, and said that he won’t tell people to “get over” a mass shooting.

After a school shooting in Perry, Iowa, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said during a campaign speech in Sioux City, Iowa, that while the school shooting that left two dead – an 11-year-old student and the principal – was a “terrible thing that happened,” his advice was to “get over it. We have to move forward.”

Republican U.S. Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas on Tuesday, June 11, 2024, met with reporters to discuss the GOP farm bill. (Photo by John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)

WASHINGTON — Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on Tuesday released their framework for a new five-year farm bill that will set the policy and funding levels for key food, agriculture and conservation programs.

The top Republican on the committee, Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, laid out?GOP priorities?with reporters during a Tuesday morning briefing prior to publication of the framework.

Those priorities include an increase in reference prices for all covered commodities; increased spending for conservation programs by pulling funds from climate legislation passed in 2022;?“cost-neutral” updates?to the formula that calculates benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP; increased crop insurance levels; and reporting requirements for foreign purchase and ownership of farmland.

“Hopefully, we can take all of these together and build on that so we can actually get a farm bill passed,” Boozman said.

The GOP measure also doubles funding for land grant universities for research on topics such as fertilizer application, pesticides and labor, Boozman said.

Boozman said the investment in research will help with “getting agriculture into this century.”

Boozman said the framework will also boost crop insurance by increasing support for the?Supplemental Coverage Option?to 80% and the coverage level to 90% for more than 55 specialty and row crops.

He added that the Senate’s framework is similar to the one House Republicans put forth.

“Following on the House Committee on Agriculture’s bipartisan passage of (a) farmer-focused farm bill, we are putting forth a framework that exhibits a shared common ground with our Democrat counterparts on several key priorities and offers a path forward in the places where we differ,” Boozman said.

House action

The House Committee on Agriculture?passed its version of the farm bill out of committee in late May,?and while four Democrats joined Republicans in approving the bill, nearly two dozen Democrats were against it.

The House version of the farm bill is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, but there is currently no cost estimate for the Senate GOP version. There is also no bill text for the Senate version.

The current farm bill expires on Sept. 30, and if Congress doesn’t pass a new one, an extension would be needed of policies enacted under the 2018 farm bill.

Boozman said he hopes Congress doesn’t have to pass an extension, but if so, he expects to get the farm bill done during the lame-duck session after the November elections.

Like the House GOP version, the Senate legislation would divert funds from climate-related legislation passed in 2022 for conservation projects that would remove some climate-smart guardrails, which has drawn objections from Democrats.

Boozman said taking off the guardrails would “make it more useful.”

Nutrition programs

The Senate Republican farm bill framework would not make any changes to benefits and eligibility for SNAP, but it curtails an update tool used by the Thrifty Food Plan.

“The Republican framework restores Congress’ constitutional spending authority by returning to a cost-neutral and transparent process for future five-year reevaluations of the (Thrifty Food Plan) based on the most up-to-date consumption data and dietary guidance, all while ensuring an annual inflationary adjustment,” according to the framework.

In 2018, the farm bill allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reevaluate the Thrifty Food plan and?in 2021 the agency updated?it to reflect the cost of living, which led to a 21% increase in SNAP benefits. About 12.8% of U.S. households were food-insecure in 2022,?according to USDA.?More than 41 million people?use SNAP benefits.

The Senate’s version reverts to a “cost-neutral” model, Boozman said, which is similar to the House Republican version. Democrats have already opposed those changes.

The Democratic chair of the Senate committee, Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, released a?section-by-section version?of the Democrats’ farm bill in early May. That version would boost eligibility for SNAP benefits, but there is no legislative text for that bill either.

Foreign ownership of farmland

Limiting foreign ownership of U.S. farmland has?garnered bipartisan support in Congress, as states have passed their own laws on the issue.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has said the biggest foreign land ownership comes from Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, but there is concern in Congress about ownership by Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — which own less than 400,000 acres of land.

Lawmakers are pushing for federal reporting requirements in the Senate GOP farm bill under Title XII, the miscellaneous section.

“This modernization will help ensure compliance with reporting requirements and provides a clearer picture of the scope and scale of the issues foreign ownership of U.S. farmland poses to our country,” according to the framework.

In an aerial view, a Texas National Guard soldier walks past a barrier of shipping containers and razor wire at the U.S.-Mexico border on March 17, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Tuesday issued an executive order that will allow him to partially suspend asylum requests at the U.S.-Mexico border when daily unauthorized crossings reach a threshold of 2,500 migrants.

“I’ve come here today to do what Republicans in Congress refuse to do, take the necessary steps to secure our border,” Biden said. “This action will help us gain control of our border.”

The 2,500-crossing threshold would likely be triggered immediately, a senior administration official said on a Tuesday call with reporters previewing the executive order. The order would terminate once unauthorized crossings drop. It only applies to the southern border, including the southwest land border and southern coastal borders.

Biden was joined by lawmakers, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and local leaders from Texas cities.

Biden added that in the coming weeks he’ll talk more about “how we can make our immigration system more fair and just.”

Lawmakers from both parties panned the order Tuesday, while immigrant advocacy groups promised legal challenges.

Border changes

The White House has been dealing with the largest number of migrant encounters at the southern border in 20 years. In addition, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made it a top issue for voters. Biden’s move marks his most drastic crackdown on immigration during his administration.

The order makes three changes to current asylum law under Title 8 of the Immigration and Nationality Act? when that threshold of 2,500 migrants is reached, a senior administration official said. The first is that a noncitizen who crosses the border without authorization will be ineligible for asylum.

The second is any noncitizen who crosses the border while the order is in effect and is processed for removal will only be referred to a credible fear interview with an asylum officer “if they manifest or express a fear of return to their country or country of removal, a fear of persecution or torture, or an intention to apply for asylum,” a senior administration official said.

And the third is raising the standard for credible fear interviews to a “reasonable probability of persecution or torture standard,” which is “a new, substantially higher standard than is currently being applied at the border,” a senior administration official said.

“Taken together, these measures will significantly increase the speed and the scope of consequences for those who cross unlawfully or without authorization and allow the departments to more quickly remove individuals who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States,” a senior administration official said.

Trump comparisons

The order, versions of which were reported ahead of the White House announcement, drew criticism from both parties.

Republican leaders said the order didn’t go far enough. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana called it a “weak executive order.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called the order “too little, too late.”

Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, slammed it as a partial ban on asylum, and advocacy groups blasted the order for betraying Biden’s campaign rhetoric.

Biden tried to frame the order as different from the immigration policies of the Trump administration by stating he would not separate children from their parents, bar people from the U.S. because of their religion or invoke white supremacist language that refers to immigrants as “poisoning the blood of a country” – all actions taken by Trump.

“I believe that immigration has always been a lifeblood of America, we’re constantly renewed by an infusion of people and new talent,” he said. “So I will never demonize immigrants.”

A senior administration official also argued that the executive order is different from the Trump administration’s immigration policies because the order will “only apply during times of high encounters.”

Biden, who campaigned in 2020 on protecting asylum law, is relying on the same presidential authority — Section 212(f) of the Immigration Nationality Act — that the Trump administration used to justify several immigration-related restrictions, such as the travel ban from predominantly Muslim countries.

The Biden order would also allow border officials to return certain individuals who cross the border without authorization back to Mexico – nationals from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela.

There will be exemptions for lawful permanent residents, unaccompanied minors, people with an “acute medical emergency” or an extreme threat to life or safety, and for victims of human trafficking, a senior administration official said.

A senior administration official said this temporary order would go away when there are seven consecutive days when daily encounters are less than 1,500 migrants between ports of entry. Once that is established, the order expires in 14 calendar days.

Blocked bill

The Biden administration began to consider the executive order after an immigration deal the White House and Senate brokered earlier this year fell apart after Trump came out against it and Republicans quickly fell in line to oppose it.

Among other things, that deal would have given Biden the authority to shut down any asylum requests once encounters reached 5,000 people in a week or 8,500 in a day.

A senior administration official said the 2,500 threshold was chosen to be similar to the deal stuck in the Senate.

“To Joe Biden, the safety of American families should always come first,” senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a memo.

“That’s why today, the President is announcing new historic executive actions to bar migrants who cross our Southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum. Because of President Biden’s leadership, law enforcement will gain new capabilities that congressional Republicans cannot block.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, tried in late May to bring up the bipartisan border bill in the Senate but it failed for a second time during a procedural vote.

The lead Democratic negotiator on that bipartisan deal, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, expressed skepticism Tuesday that the Biden administration could move forward with its executive order.

“I am sympathetic to the position the administration is in, but I am skeptical the executive branch has the legal authority to shut down asylum processing between ports of entry on its own,” Murphy said. “Meaningful asylum reform requires a bipartisan solution in Congress.”

‘Immediate litigation’

Section 212(f) of the Immigration Nationality Act allows the president “to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens,” if the president “finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Since the 1980s, administrations, including Biden’s, have evoked this code in certain circumstances, such as in 2022 for any individuals connected with Russia amid its war with Ukraine.

In general, the 212(f) code has been narrowly applied, said Amy Grenier, policy and practice counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. She added that she expects Tuesday’s executive order to be legally challenged.

“There will be pretty much immediate litigation around whether or not that conflicts with the part of the statute that guarantees the ability to apply for asylum,” Grenier said.

A senior administration official said the White House expects those legal challenges.

“We are prepared for any litigation on this rule,” a senior administration official said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which was at the forefront of many legal cases against the Trump administration’s immigration policies that restricted asylum, has already stated it plans to sue the Biden administration over its executive order.

“We intend to challenge this order in court. It was illegal when Trump did it, and it is no less illegal now,” Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

The executive order is a stark reversal of the president’s campaign promise to “restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum-seekers,” as Biden said in his 2020 acceptance speech at the virtual Democratic National Convention.

“This new executive order that we’re expecting, (is) unfortunately part of the trend of the Biden administration adopting many of the policies that were enacted under the Trump administration that are rooted in xenophobia, and a disregard for our international obligations to provide asylum,” Kate Mahoney, a senior staff attorney at Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said.

Mahoney said applying a numbers-based cap on asylum will only harm the most vulnerable of asylum seekers and will do little to deter people from coming to the southern border.

“This kind of blunt instrument will just turn away everyone,” she said. “It’s not doing anything to better identify people who have strong claims who will truly suffer harm in their home country.”

A growing share of migrants at the southern border are families, according to Pew Research Center, where as of December families make up 41% and unaccompanied children make up 5%. The rest, 54%, are single adults.

Progressives disappointed

Democrats expressed their disappointment in the new executive order.

Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus and is the top Democrat on a House Judiciary Committee panel on immigration policy, said in a statement that Tuesday’s announcement was “extremely disappointing.”

“This attempt to shut down the border to asylum seekers uses the same section of U.S. immigration laws that convicted felon Donald Trump used to implement the Muslim Ban and in attempts to cut off all access to asylum,” she said. “While there are some differences from Trump’s actions, the reality is that this utilizes the same failed enforcement-only approach, penalizes asylum seekers, and furthers a false narrative that these actions will ‘fix’ the border.”

Biden addressed those criticisms and said “be patient.”

“Doing nothing is not an option,” Biden said.

However, some Democrats in border states, including Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, welcomed the executive order. Kelly said in a statement that more needs to be done in Congress to address immigration.

“In Arizona, where Border Patrol agents and nonprofits are often overwhelmed by daily migrant crossings, this new effort will support their crucial work and help relieve border communities from the burden of our broken immigration system,” he said.

Several Senate Republicans held a Tuesday press conference where Texas Sen. John Cornyn accused the president of “not being serious” about the southern border for only issuing the order three years into his first term.

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham said that the only way to curb migration at the southern border is to remove hundreds of thousands of noncitizens from the U.S. – something that Trump has promised to do should he win a second term.

“The only policy changes that will work is to have mass deportations,” Graham said.

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024, speaks during a press conference at Trump Tower on May 31, 2024 in New York City. Trump was found guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first of his criminal cases to go to trial. (Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump, now a convicted felon, vowed to launch an appeal based “on many things” he considered unfair during his New York trial, he said Friday in the lobby of Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan.

Meanwhile Friday, legal and political analysts predicted he will spend little if any time in jail depending on the outcome of that appeal, fundraising among supportive Republicans appeared to surge and eight GOP members of the U.S. Senate pledged they will not support any Democratic priorities or nominations.

The reactions came as Americans continued to digest the news that on Thursday, a jury in Lower Manhattan found the Republican Party’s presumed 2024 presidential nominee guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a felony in New York.

Kentucky Republicans stand by Trump, blame Democrats for former president’s convictions

The roughly seven-week proceeding marked the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

“We’re going to be appealing this scam,” Trump said at his late-morning press conference, referring to New York Justice Juan Merchan as a “tyrant.”

Over about 30 minutes of often misleading or false comments delivered in his familiar stream-of-consciousness style that jumped from topic to topic, Trump complained about aspects of the trial, said the case shouldn’t have been prosecuted at all and made campaign-style appeals on immigration and crime.

Trump has centered his public relations defense on the idea that the prosecution was politically motivated, often blaming the Biden administration, and he repeated the theme throughout his Friday remarks.

“If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he said.

President Joe Biden said Friday that Trump “was given every opportunity to defend himself.”

“It was a state case, not a federal case. It was heard by a jury of 12 citizens, 12 Americans, 12 people like you, like millions of Americans who’ve served on juries. This jury was chosen the same way every jury in America is chosen. It was a process that Donald Trump’s attorney was part of,” Biden said from the White House before delivering remarks on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Biden said Trump now has the opportunity “as he should” to appeal, just like anyone else who is tried in the U.S.

“That’s how the American system of justice works,” Biden said. “It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”

Jail time?

Trump told the crowd Friday morning he could spend “187 years” in jail for being found guilty of falsifying business records. It was not clear how he arrived at that number.

Most observers of his trial and the New York justice system disagree with that estimate.

Merchan set Trump’s sentencing for July 11 at 10 a.m. Eastern, just four days before the Republican National Convention kicks off in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the GOP will officially nominate Trump for president in November’s election.

Trump is convicted of class E felonies, the lowest level felony in New York state, and each carries the possibility of probation to up to four years in prison.

Any incarceration sentence up to a year would be served in the city’s Rikers Island jail or another local facility. Incarceration beyond that time frame would be served at a state facility.

“If that jail sentence happens, it probably will be less than a year,” said Norm Eisen, former White House special counsel in the Obama administration, who has been commenting on the indictment and trial for months.

Eisen spoke during a virtual press conference hosted by the Defend Democracy Project.

New York state law experts say Merchan may not be inclined to imprison a former, and possibly future, U.S. president. And, if he sentences Trump to any length of incarceration, it will likely be stayed — a temporary stop to the action —pending appeal.

Trump could remain free on bail conditions set by the court, or no bail conditions, subject to a decision by the appeals court and potentially any other review if an appeals judge sends the case to the state’s highest court.

“When there is a stay pending appeal, generally, the process is expedited more quickly than it would be if the defendant was at liberty and there was no stay. But even so, this is going to go beyond the election,” said retired New York Supreme Court Judge Michael Obus at the press conference with Eisen.

Appeal strategy?

While Trump said Friday morning he plans to appeal the verdict based on “many things,” legal observers speculate his team’s approach may come down to a few options.

In New York, falsifying a business record is illegal in the first degree when the “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

While the jurors had to unanimously agree on an intent to commit another crime, they did not have to agree unanimously on what that underlying crime was, according to Merchan’s instructions to the jury prior to deliberations.

Merchan said jurors could consider three options for the other crime: violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act; falsification of other business records; or, violation of tax laws.

Obus said a “non-frivolous argument” that Trump’s team might use is that one of those underlying crimes was a federal, not a state crime.

“That’s the kind of argument that we might see on appeal — the argument being that New York courts don’t have the authority to prosecute the case with that being the object crime because it’s a federal crime,” Obus said. “I don’t think that’ll be successful.”

In addition to the challenge regarding federal election law, Shane T. Stansbury of Duke Law told States Newsroom in an interview Friday that he expects to see Trump’s legal team challenge evidentiary issues.

“For example, I would expect that the defense would make a claim that the salacious testimony by Stormy Daniels about the details of her sexual encounter with Donald Trump was unfairly prejudicial,” Stansbury said.

Also, Trump’s lawyers might challenge the judge’s decision to strike from defense attorney Todd Blanche’s closing statement a plea he made to the jury, asking them to not send Trump “to prison.”

The charge against Trump could, or could not, result in prison time.

“You can imagine the defense saying that that correction may have prejudiced the jury. Now, I should say that those kinds of evidentiary issues are a much steeper climb for the defense,” Stansbury said.

‘A legal expense’

Trump remains under a gag order imposed by Merchan in March to keep the former president from further attacking court staff and potential witnesses online.

Trump violated the order 10 times, leading Merchan to fine him $9,000 on April 30, and again $1,000 on May 6.

During his comments Friday morning, Trump complained of having to pay “thousands of dollars” because of his “nasty gag order.”

Still, Trump spent several minutes during his remarks talking about one of the prosecution’s star witnesses, his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

According to testimony and document evidence presented during trial, Cohen wired $130,000 of his own money to porn star Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election to silence her about an alleged affair with Trump. Trump then reimbursed Cohen the following year under the guise of “legal expenses.”

Prosecutors never should have brought the case accusing him of falsifying business records, Trump said.

The payments to Cohen were for Cohen to create a nondisclosure agreement with Daniels and secure her signature, which is legal, Trump said Friday. That was a legal service, and the payments were properly recorded that way, he said.

“I paid a lawyer a legal expense,” he said.

“The whole thing is legal expense was marked down as legal expense,” he said. “Think of it: This is the crime that I committed that I’m supposed to go to jail for 187 years for.”

Trump, who wouldn’t say Cohen’s name Friday because of the gag order, said Cohen was not a “fixer” as he is often described, but a lawyer in good standing.

“By the way, this was a highly qualified lawyer,” Trump said. “Now I’m not allowed to use his name because of the gag order. But, you know, he’s a sleazebag. Everybody knows that. Took me a while to find out. But he was effective. He did work. But he wasn’t a fixer. He was a lawyer.”

Trump said he wanted to testify at his trial, but was advised not to by his lawyers.

Attacks on Biden?

Trump pivoted nearly immediately after his remarks began to campaign-style attacks on Biden’s administration and the anti-immigration positions that comprise Trump’s most consistent policy message since his political career began in 2015.

He focused on immigrants from predominantly non-white countries and made false claims that many had been institutionalized in prison and mental hospitals.

“Millions and millions of people are flowing in from all parts of the world, not just South America, from Africa, from Asia and from the Middle East, and they’re coming in from jails and prisons, and they’re coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums,” he said. “And we have a president and a group of fascists that don’t want to do anything about it.”

He also called crime “rampant in New York.” He added that Biden wanted to quadruple taxes and “make it impossible for you to get a car,” neither of which are based on Biden’s actual policy positions.

In a statement, Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler called Trump’s remarks “unhinged.”

“America just witnessed a confused, desperate, and defeated Donald Trump ramble about his own personal grievances and lie about the American justice system, leaving anyone watching with one obvious conclusion: This man cannot be president of the United States,” Tyler wrote. “Unhinged by his 2020 election loss and spiraling from his criminal convictions, Trump is consumed by his own thirst for revenge and retribution.”

GOP convention in less than two months

The Republican National Convention begins July 15. The Republican National Committee, which called Thursday’s verdict “rigged,” did not immediately respond to questions Friday about whether it will adjust plans in the event Trump is placed under any restrictions during his July 11 sentencing.

Trump encouraged supporters to continue backing his campaign as a response to the verdict, calling Nov. 5 – Election Day – “the most important day in the history of our country.”

Throughout his remarks Friday, he touted an online poll conducted by J.L. Partners and published in the conservative British tabloid The Daily Mail on Friday that showed Trump’s approval rating gained points after the verdict.

There were signs that showed Republican support, at least, consolidated even more behind Trump following the verdict.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign organization for U.S. Senate Republicans, said it had its highest fundraising day of the cycle Thursday, bringing in $360,000 in donations that the group directly attributed to the verdict in Manhattan.

Other official GOP channels, including the Republican National Committee social media accounts, echoed Trump’s message that the former president was the victim of a political prosecution and predicted the conviction would push voters toward Trump.

Elected Republicans throughout the country continued Friday to almost universally reject the verdict and defend Trump.

A group of eight U.S. Senate Republicans –?Mike Lee of Utah, J.D. Vance of Ohio, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio of Florida and Roger Marshall of Kansas –?signed a letter Friday pledging to increase their resistance to administration priorities in response to the verdict.

“Those who turned our judicial system into a political cudgel must be held accountable,” Lee said in a post to X. “We are no longer cooperating with any Democrat legislative priorities or nominations, and we invite all concerned Senators to join our stand.”

The Biden administration and congressional Democrats played no role in the trial, which was in New York state court.

‘No one is above the law’

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, said that Thursday’s verdict shows that “no one is above the law.”

Nadler was joined by Eisen, along with accountability advocates and historians, on a Friday webinar for the press hosted by watchdog group Public Citizen. Eisen participated in multiple press appearances Friday.

Nadler said that Republicans are attempting to sow distrust in the verdict, as the chair of the Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan of Ohio, has already sent a letter to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg requesting that he testify in a hearing before the panel’s Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee on June 13.

Nadler said he disagreed with Jordan’s decision to request testimony from the DA who prosecuted Trump.

“It’s a continuing attempt to bully the prosecutors into abandoning prosecutions and to tell the country the false story of persecution of the president (Trump) and to help undermine confidence in the criminal justice system,” Nadler said.

Nadler said the New York trial was important because it’s likely going to be the only trial that finishes before the November elections. Trump faces two federal criminal cases, and another criminal case in Georgia.

“It is very important for the American people to know, before an election, that they’re dealing with a convicted felon,” Nadler said.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who specializes in authoritarianism, propaganda and democracy protection, said during the virtual press conference that the trial was a demonstration of American democracy being upheld.

“The fact this trial took place at all and was able to unfold in the professional way it did is a testament to the worth and functioning of our democracy,” she said.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, flanked by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, left, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, speaks during a news conference to support a border security bill on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. The bill failed on a procedural vote Thursday.?(Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate failed Thursday to advance a border security bill as both parties seek to hone their messages on immigration policy in the runup to November’s elections.

The Senate bill failed to advance on a 43-50 procedural vote. The chamber already rejected the measure as part of a broader foreign aid package earlier this year. The bill, negotiated with the White House and a bipartisan trio of senators in the hopes of winning broad appeal, would have overhauled immigration law for the first time in more than 30 years.

Two of the border deal’s chief Senate negotiators, Oklahoma Republican James Lankford and Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema, voted against advancing the measure Thursday, protesting what they said was an unserious process focused on political optics. The bill’s third major sponsor, Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, voted in favor.

The procedural vote to advance to debate on the bill came as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer aimed to contrast Democrats’ approach to immigration policy with Republicans’ ahead of the November elections. The issue continues to rise as a top concern for voters and remains a core campaign theme for the GOP and its presumptive presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.

Both chambers are readying other votes seemingly aimed at highlighting election themes.

The Democratic-led Senate is teeing up votes as early as next month on access to contraceptives, and protections for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, as Democrats have continued to campaign on the issue of reproductive rights.

The Republican-controlled House is moving forward with immigration related legislation, such as barring noncitizens from voting in federal elections, something that is rare and already illegal, as the GOP continues to highlight its disagreements with the White House over immigration policy.

Shortly after the Senate vote, President Joe Biden in a statement said Senate Republicans “put partisan politics ahead of our country’s national security.”

“Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” he said. “If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history.”

Losing support

The border security bill, S.4361, received fewer votes Thursday as a standalone bill than it had as part of the larger foreign aid package in February, when it failed on a 49-50 procedural vote. Sixty votes are needed to advance bills in the Senate.

The bill did not get all Democrats on board, which Schumer acknowledged earlier this week was a possibility.

“We do not expect every Democrat or every Republican to come out in favor of this bill,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “The only way to pass this bill – or any border bill – is with broad bipartisan support.”

But the bill failed to attract that broad support, losing backing even from Democrats who’d voted for the foreign aid package.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said in a Wednesday statement that while he voted for the larger package in early February – mostly because it included critical aid to Ukraine – he would not do so this time around because the bill was too restrictive.

“I will not vote for the bill coming to the Senate floor this week because it includes several provisions that will violate Americans’ shared values,” Booker said. “The proposed bill would exclude people fleeing violence and persecution from seeking asylum and instead doubles down on failed anti-immigrant policies that encourage irregular immigration.”

‘Another cynical, political game’

Democratic senators who voted against moving the bill forward included Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler of California, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Booker. Independents Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sinema?also voted against.

Sinema said she voted against advancing her own bill because she felt Democrats were using her bill to “point the finger back at the other party.”

“Yet another cynical, political game,” she said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican to vote to advance the bill after Lankford voted against the bill he helped write.

Lankford said Thursday’s vote was “a prop.”

“Everyone sees this for what it is,” he said. “It is not an actual effort to make law, it is an effort to do political messaging.”

Padilla, who voted against the larger package, said on the Senate floor Thursday that he was disappointed Democrats were voting on the bill again because it did not address the root causes of migration or create lawful pathways to citizenship for children brought into the U.S. without authorization known as Dreamers, farmworkers, and noncitizens who have been in the country for decades.

He urged other Democrats to vote no.

“The proposal before us was initially supposed to be a concession, a ransom to be paid to Republicans to pass urgent and critical aid to Ukraine,” Padilla said. “What’s this concession for now? It’s hard to swallow.”

Senate Republicans accused Democrats of bringing the bill as a political stunt.

“One thing the American people don’t have to wonder about is why Washington Democrats are suddenly champing at the bit to convince their constituents that they care about border security,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on the Senate floor Thursday. “(Americans) know the solution is not cynical Senate theater.”

Biden called McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday night to ask them to vote for the bill, but both Republican leaders rejected that appeal.

First vote

Lankford, Sinema and Murphy introduced the bill earlier this year, optimistic that months of bipartisan negotiations could lead to the first immigration policy overhaul in decades.

But Trump opposed the measure, and after those senators released the legislative text, House Republicans said they would fall in line with the former president. Senate Republicans then walked away from the deal they had said would be needed in order for passage of a supplemental foreign aid package to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific region.

The sweeping border security bill would have raised the bar for migrants claiming asylum, clarified the White House’s parole authority, ended the practice of allowing migrants to live in U.S. communities as they await their asylum hearings, and given Biden the executive authority to close the southern border when asylum claims reached high levels, among other things.?

Dueling messages

The day leading up to Thursday’s vote, Senate Democrats and Republicans held dueling press conferences on the bill.

Democrats, including Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, argued that the bill negotiated earlier in the year would address the fentanyl crisis by providing new scanning technology at ports of entry and increasing staffing for custom agents.

Stabenow said she’s tired of Senate Republicans saying that “‘somebody should do something about the border,’” and that Thursday’s vote would give them an opportunity to address the southern border.

She was joined by Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, who talked about how many people in their states had died from fentanyl overdoses.

Republicans in their press conference argued that Democrats were holding a second vote to protect vulnerable incumbents in competitive races in Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“It is an election-year political stunt designed to give our Democratic colleagues the appearance of doing something about this problem without doing anything,” Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn said Wednesday.

She was joined by Republican Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas, Rick Scott of Florida, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, John Coryn of Texas, J.D. Vance of Ohio and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

House opposition

Even if the border security bill passed the Senate, it would have no chance in the House, where Johnson has vowed it will be dead on arrival.

The Louisiana Republican in a Wednesday press conference called the measure a messaging bill and said Schumer was “trying to give his vulnerable members cover.”

And not all House Democrats were on board with the bill negotiated out of the Senate.

The chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state and the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Nanette Barragán of California, slammed Senate Democrats for putting forth the legislation and urged them to abandon the effort.

“We are disappointed that the Senate will once again vote on an already-failed border bill in a move that only splits the Democratic Caucus over extreme and unworkable enforcement-only policies,” they wrote in a statement.

“This framework, which was constructed under Republican hostage-taking, does nothing to address the longstanding updates needed to modernize our outdated immigration system, create more legal pathways, and recognize the enormous contributions of immigrants to communities and our economy.”

Latino Democrats also voiced opposition to the bill when it was first released because it contained many hard-line policies that were reminiscent of the Trump administration.

Signage at an early voting center on September 23, 2016, in Minneapolis. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Administration Committee voted along party lines Thursday to advance two election-related bills to the House floor.

The Republican-led committee approved H.R. 8281, a bill to bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections, something that is rare and already illegal, and H.R. 8399, which would restrict the contributions of foreign nationals in political campaigns. The votes on both were 6-1.

The votes came as Republicans are making immigration a core campaign theme for the November elections.

“Noncitizen voting in our elections must be stopped,” committee Chair Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican, said in his opening statement.

The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, said the bills would undermine Americans’ confidence in U.S. elections.

“This narrative will aggravate the perilous infection of election denialism that is spreading in the American civic body,” Morelle said.

The noncitizen voting bill the committee voted on Thursday would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, and would allow states to check citizenship through federal databases with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

“We’re working to increase the integrity of our elections, block noncitizens from voting in our elections,” Steil said.

Morelle said the bill would disenfranchise eligible voters by requiring a birth certificate or passport to register to vote.

“This bill is unreasonably restrictive,” he said.

Morelle also objected to the bill dealing with foreign donations in political campaigns.

“This does nothing to get foreign money out of our politics,” he said.

He argued that some of the provisions would “kneecap” the Federal Election Commission, by curtailing its enforcement authority.

D.C. bill

Steil pointed to Washington, D.C., which allows noncitizens to vote in local elections, and said that Congress cannot allow D.C.’s “voting law to spread across the United States.”

A handful of cities and towns allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, a trend that has sparked a national conservative rallying cry about noncitizens voting.

The House voted 262-143 Thursday to pass H.R.192, which would overturn the D.C. law.

The bill is unlikely to see a vote in the Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority.

Under the Constitution, Congress has authority to overturn local D.C. laws.

enate Majority Leader Chuck?Schumer, a New York Democrat, on Tuesday said he wants to see Republicans go on the record with a vote on a bipartisan border bill. In this photo, he speaks with reporters in the basement of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024.?(Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats are pushing for a second attempt to pass a bipartisan border security bill that failed in February after Republicans walked away from the very deal they helped craft, and it’s likely to fail again when the Senate votes on the legislation Thursday.

“So why are we bringing this bill up the second time?” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who was one of three negotiators of the measure. “The answer is simple. Democrats care about border security.”

The expected vote comes as immigration has continued to rise as a top concern for voters in the polls and as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, has centered his reelection campaign on the issue, promising to reinstate his previous policies and carry out mass deportations.

President Joe Biden called Republican leaders in both chambers Monday night to advocate for them to vote for passage of the bill that, among various things, would give Biden the executive authority to close the southern border when it’s overwhelmed.

“Mr. President, you caused this problem,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he told Biden in their phone call.

McConnell said he pushed for Biden to reinstate Trump-era policies such as the completion of the border wall and the so-called Remain in Mexico policy, which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while waiting for their cases.

“The president needs to step up to it, do everything he can do on his own, because legislation obviously is not going to clear this year,” McConnell said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, already said in a statement that should the bill pass the Senate, it’s dead on arrival in the House.

Schumer says GOP must go on record

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said he wanted Senate Republicans on the record for voting on the stand-alone bill. Republicans last year originally said they would only vote for vital aid to Ukraine if a border security bill was attached.

“Do Republicans want to improve the situation on the border, or not?” Schumer said. “Maybe they’re happy with the way things are.”

Schumer said that Republicans were on board with voting for the border security bill, “until President Trump told them to make a U-turn.”

Murphy as well as Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, and Republican James Lankford of Oklahoma spent months crafting a bipartisan border security bill that would overhaul U.S. immigration law. Senate Republicans walked away from the bill, eventually siding with their House colleagues and Trump.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican, said Democrats are only holding Thursday’s vote to protect vulnerable incumbents up for reelection this November such as Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Montana’s Jon Tester.

“Where we are right now, this has become a political liability, a political vulnerability for the Democrats,” Thune said, adding “all the charades and political theater the Democrats are trying” are meant to protect incumbents.

The sweeping border security bill would raise the bar for migrants claiming asylum, clarify the White House’s parole authority and end the practice of allowing migrants to live in U.S. communities as they await their asylum hearings, among other things.?

The Biden administration expressed frustration after Senate Republicans voted to kill the border security deal, frequently blaming Trump and Republicans for walking away.

“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends,” Biden said in February.

Law enforcement officers speak together outside of Robb Elementary School following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. As the two-year anniversary of the shooting approaches, gun control advocates are pushing for stricter laws. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin and a coalition of medical officers advocated Tuesday for Congress to pass stronger gun safety laws.

Congress should build on the 2022 gun control law following high-profile mass shootings, Durbin, Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy and about 80 members of OnCall4Kids, a group of doctors and healthcare professionals that advocates for stricter gun laws, said at a Tuesday press conference.

“There is a constant in America, and one that I’m very embarrassed to say we have allowed to transpire and to exist for too long a period of time, and that is gun violence,” Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said.

Speakers included Emily and Elliot Lieberman of Illinois and Ashlee Jaffe of Pennsylvania who survived the July 4, 2022, mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, where seven people were killed.

“It is unlikely that I’ll ever be able to do my job again as a result of my injuries,” Jaffe, a pediatric physiatrist, who was shot in the hand and sustained nerve damage, said.

The speakers pushed for Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, legislation to regulate the storage of firearms and restrictions on the sale, transfer and receipt of gas-operated semi-automatic firearms and high capacity magazines.

But in a divided Congress, with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans holding a majority in the House, any gun safety legislation is unlikely to pass.

Durbin called for voters to elect candidates who would enact gun-safety legislation.

“What we need to do and say as American voters: ‘We’re going to the polls to elect women and men who have a sense of responsibility to change this once and for all, to take away these gun threats,’” Durbin said.

The press conference came ahead of Friday’s two-year anniversary of the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting where 19 children and two teachers were killed.

“We are losing a generation of children in this country to the trauma of gun violence,” Murphy said.

That mass shooting, coupled with another in Buffalo, New York, where a white supremacist targeted a predominantly Black neighborhood and killed 10 Black people, led to the passage of gun safety legislation in 2022.?

Murphy led the coalition of 20 bipartisan senators to pass the legislation.

That law led to the creation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, allocated $750 million for states to enact “red flag laws,” provided $11 billion in mental health services for schools and families and aimed to curb the illegal trafficking of guns known as straw purchases, in which a buyer can acquire a gun for someone else.

‘Incremental progress’

While the legislation was historic – it was the first time in 30 years Congress passed a comprehensive gun safety bill – many Democrats noted that it did not ban assault weapons, a term that generally refers to semiautomatic rifles, or high-capacity magazines.

Shooters used those weapons in seven of the most deadly mass shootings in the last decade, according to the Giffords Law Center, an organization that conducts research on gun violence and advocates to end it.

“Let us not judge the legislation for what it does not do, but for what it does,” then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said at the time of the bill’s passage in the House.

Several of the speakers from OnCall4Kids mentioned they were grateful for the gun safety legislation that Congress passed nearly two years ago, but that more needed to be done.

“Incremental progress is still progress,” Emily Lieberman said. “However, death rates from firearms continue to climb.”

Elliot Lieberman said that the leading cause of death for children is firearms.

“If your child dies in this country, the most likely reason will not be a drowning accident. It won’t be a car crash and not even cancer,” Elliot said. “It’s a bullet.”

Sofia Chaudhary, a pediatric emergency physician in Atlanta, advocated for laws to require safe storage of firearms. She said those kinds of laws could have saved the lives of several of her patients –?including a one-month-old –?who were unintentionally shot by other children

“These patients haunt me,” she said. “Their needless, senseless loss haunts me. The piercing cries of their parents haunt me.”

Soybeans being loaded from a grain bin onto a truck on June 13, 2018 in Dwight, Illinois. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding $300 million in grants to expand overseas U.S. agriculture (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Tuesday $300 million in funding for more than 60 groups seeking to diversify American agricultural exports.

“USDA is pleased to be able to provide the startup capital to tap into these opportunities,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on a call with reporters Monday night previewing the announcement.

In total, 66 organizations will be funded under the new Regional Agricultural Promotion Program, or RAPP. The USDA launched the $1.4 billion program in October in order to develop new export markets for U.S. food and agricultural products beyond the traditional partnerships with Canada, Mexico, the European Union and China.

“What this program really provides is an opportunity for us not only to expand geographically the opportunities for trade, but also the products that can be made available,” Vilsack said. “It’s a tremendous opportunity for us to diversify in a variety of different ways to grow market opportunity.”

The program focuses on tapping U.S. exports into new markets in regions such as South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

“When you have the major markets, as we’ve had, where 60 to 65% of what we export goes into four or five markets, that can create a sense of complacency,” Vilsack said.

‘The riskiest business in the world’

Vilsack said the funding would be an important step in building wealth in rural areas of the United States.

“We want to make sure our foreign-market development programs and agricultural trade in general work for the full spectrum of American agricultural producers, regardless of their size, their location, their product or target market,” he said. “By investing in exports, we’re investing in the future of American agriculture and rural communities.”

Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who leads the Senate Committee on Agriculture, joined the call with reporters. She said that USDA investing in exports is crucial to growing American agriculture.

“The bottom line is (to) create new revenue for the folks that have the riskiest business in the world,” Stabenow said. “This is a really important way to support them.”

According to a list provided by the USDA, some of the grant recipients include:

• The Hazelnut Marketing Board in Oregon and Washington state will receive $455,000 to conduct market research and trade missions in several countries in Africa.

• The U.S. Dairy Export Council, based in Virginia, will receive $10 million to expand its presence in Africa by using the funds to study and develop dairy import regulations and regulatory frameworks in those markets.

• The U.S. Meat Export Federation based in Colorado will be awarded $21 million to expand its export efforts to new markets throughout Africa. It will also expand its investment in the convenience-store industry in South Korea, Central America and Colombia.

• The Brewers Association in Colorado will be awarded $2 million to partake in the craft beer scene in Southeast Asia, by participating in the region’s premier brewing trade show and festival and bring buyers from that region to top trade shows in the US.
• The Cranberry Institute in Massachusetts will receive $1 million to conduct trade education seminars and other events to identify opportunities in India, Brazil, Colombia and Southeast Asia.

Doug Goyings, a fifth-generation farmer in northwestern Ohio, received a USDA Rural Energy for America Program grant in 2023 to install a 288-panel solar array (seen at left) at his family grain farm, meeting 100 percent of the farm’s energy needs and saving money that he can re-invest back into the operation. (USDA photo by Mark McCann)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Agriculture Committee Friday released the draft bill text of the long-awaited $1.5 trillion farm bill, which is likely to face opposition in the Senate from Democrats due to disagreements over federal anti-hunger programs and climate change requirements.

The chair of the committee, GOP Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson of Pennsylvania, said in a statement that the bill, which will set farm, nutrition, commodity and conservation policy for the next five years, is a “product of extensive feedback from stakeholders and all Members of the House, and is responsive to the needs of farm country through the incorporation of hundreds of bipartisan policies.”

The legislation funds programs across 12 titles for five years.

It would boost rural farming, promote a new global market for farmers to sell their products abroad, require new reporting requirements for the foreign purchase of farmland, increase funding for specialty crops and expand eligibility for disaster assistance, among other initiatives.

“The markup is one step in a greater House process, that should not be compromised by misleading arguments, false narratives, or edicts from the Senate,” Thompson said.

The House Agriculture Committee plans to mark up the 942-page bill on Thursday. It is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years. A title-by-title summary can be found here.

In a statement, the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. David Scott of Georgia, slammed the draft bill for “taking food out of the mouths of America’s hungry children, restricting farmers from receiving the climate-smart conservation funding they so desperately need, and barring the USDA from providing financial assistance to farmers in times of crisis.”

Scott warned that the current draft bill is unlikely to pass the House. Although Republicans have a slim majority, any piece of legislation will have to be bipartisan in order to make it through the Senate, which Democrats control.

The current farm bill extension expires Sept. 30.

On the Senate side, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Committee on Agriculture, released Democrats’ own proposal in early May. Among other things, it would boost eligibility for nutrition programs for low-income people like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Stabenow made public a summary of the bill, but not legislative text.

Scott and Stabenow released a joint statement Tuesday following a meeting with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats on the House Agriculture committee. They advocated for Republicans to craft a bipartisan farm bill.

“House Republicans are undermining this goal by proposing policies that split the broad, bipartisan coalition that has always been the foundation of a successful farm bill,” they wrote.

“We need a farm bill that holds the coalition together and upholds the historic tradition of providing food assistance to our most vulnerable Americans while keeping our commitment to our farmers battling the effects of the climate crisis every day,” they continued.

The House bill has a few provisions that Democrats oppose.

One would remove climate-smart policy requirements for about $13 billion in conservation projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. Another? would limit future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the formula that calculates benefits for SNAP. “The economic impact of the SNAP cuts alone would be staggering,” Scott said.

A freeze in the Thrifty Food Plan would result in a roughly $30 billion SNAP cut over the next decade, according to the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. There are more than 41 million people who use SNAP benefits, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.?

However, the House farm bill would remove the ban on low-income Americans who have a drug conviction felony from obtaining SNAP benefits.

Environmental groups are also opposing the draft of the farm bill, raising concerns about reallocating IRA money and including a bill relating to how states regulate animal practices.

A watchdog group that focuses on government and corporate accountability in water, food and corporate overreach, Food & Water Watch Managing Director of Policy and Litigation Mitch Jones said in a statement that the draft bill would gut important climate-smart provisions.

“Some of leadership’s more dangerous proposals would take us backwards on animal welfare, and climate-smart agriculture,” Jones said. “It’s time Congress put the culture wars aside and got back to work on a Farm Bill that puts consumers, farmers, and the environment above politicking and Big Ag handouts.”

Donald Trump, then president, answers a question as Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, listens during the second and final presidential debate at Belmont University on Oct. 22, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Morry Gash-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — CNN announced on Wednesday morning that it will host a debate between President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at the network’s Atlanta studios on June 27.

CNN said there would be no audience present for the debate and moderators will be announced later.

A second debate will be hosted by ABC News on Sept. 10 in which both candidates have agreed to partake,?according to ABC News.

Biden earlier Wednesday had called for two debates to be held before early voting for the November election begins — and Trump responded that he would do it.

On X, formerly Twitter, Biden wrote that he had accepted an invitation from CNN for a debate on June 27.

“Over to you, Donald,” Biden wrote. “As you said: anywhere, any time, any place.”

Trump has also accepted to participate in the June debate, according to CNN.

Biden started Wednesday’s exchanges over debates when he wrote to the Commission on Presidential Debates saying he would not agree to a three-debate schedule laid out earlier by the nonpartisan organization, which has been organizing presidential debates since the 1980s. The first would have been Sept. 16.

“President Joe Biden believes the interests of the American people are best served by presidential debates that offer timely and relevant information to help inform voters before they make their choices — and that allow a head-to-head comparison of the two candidates with a chance of winning the election,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, the chair for the Biden campaign, wrote in a letter to the commission.

Trump then accepted Biden’s proposed debates, one in June and another in September, on his social media site, Truth Social. “I am Ready and Willing to Debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September,” Trump wrote.

“Crooked Joe Biden is the WORST debater I have ever faced – He can’t put two sentences together!,” he also wrote.

Trump added that he wants to debate with Biden on immigration policy, electric vehicles, inflation, taxes and foreign policy. He also called for more than two debates.

Breaking with precedent

By notifying the Commission on Presidential Debates that the president would not partake in its debates, the Biden campaign broke precedent and instead said that news organizations should host the debates.

The Biden campaign proposed that the hosting broadcast news organizations be any that held a Republican primary debate in 2016 that Trump participated in and any news organization that hosted a Democratic primary debate in which Biden participated in 2020.

That is so that “neither campaign can assert that the sponsoring organization is obviously unacceptable,” according to the letter.

The campaign proposed that the first debate be held in late June, “after Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial is likely to be over and after President Biden returns from meeting with world leaders at the G7 Summit.”

The second debate should be at the start of early September, the campaign argued, so that it is “early enough to influence early voting, but not so late as to require the candidates to leave the campaign trail in the critical late September and October period.”

The Biden campaign is also proposing that a vice presidential debate be held in late July, after the GOP nominee and running mate are selected at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

One unknown is whether an independent candidate such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might also qualify for debates.

CNN said in a press release that to qualify for participation in its debate, ”a candidate’s name must appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to reach the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidency prior to the eligibility deadline; agree to accept the rules and format of the debate; and receive at least 15% in four separate national polls of registered or likely voters that meet CNN’s standards for reporting.”

The statement added that acceptable polls will include those sponsored by: CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, Marquette University Law School, Monmouth University, NBC News, the New York Times/Siena College, NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College, Quinnipiac University, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

“The polling window to determine eligibility for the debate opened March 13, 2024, and closes seven days before the date of the debate,” the statement said.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas participates in a fireside chat with Mike L. Sena during the National Fusion Center Association 11th Annual Training Event on March 28, 2024, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. (DHS photo by Tia Dufour)

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced Thursday it’s proposing changes to the asylum system that would allow immigration officials to reject asylum seekers who have a criminal record that poses a threat to national security or public safety and quickly remove them.

Those changes will occur during the initial screening stages, a senior U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said on background during a call with reporters.

The proposed rule would allow asylum officers to issue a denial within days if there is evidence that a migrant is ineligible to claim asylum due to ties to terrorism, a threat to national security or a criminal background.

“This really only applies to individuals who have a serious criminal history or who are linked to terrorist activity and that is inherently a small fraction of the individuals that we encounter or interview on a given day,” the senior DHS official said. “We don’t think that the rule will apply to large numbers of people but it will apply to the people that we are most concerned about.”

Currently, when a migrant claims asylum, they undergo a “credible fear” screening even if they have criminal charges levied against them, and depending on the severity of the charges, they can continue to seek asylum or be disqualified.

“The proposed rule we have published today is yet another step in our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of the American public by more quickly identifying and removing those individuals who present a security risk and have no legal basis to remain here,” DHS Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

DHS is also issuing revised guidance to asylum officers to consider whether an asylum seeker can relocate to another part of their country where they fear persecution, known as internal relocation. This was implemented under the Trump administration by Ken Cuccinelli and the Biden administration rolled that policy back.

The new guidance “will ensure early identification and removal of individuals who would ultimately be found ineligible for protection because of their ability to remain safe by relocating elsewhere in the country from which they fled,” according to a DHS press release.

The Biden administration is dealing with the largest number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in 20 years, and has faced continued intense criticism about its immigration policies from Republicans and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Congressional Republicans have passed legislation to reinstate hard-line Trump-era immigration policies, walked back a bipartisan border security deal and recently impeached Mayorkas.

The public comment period on the notice for the proposed rule will be from May 13 to June 12. The senior DHS official said the agency anticipates the proposed rule to be finalized this year and quickly implemented.

A bill passed in the U.S. House Wednesday would add a citizenship question to the census and end the practice of including noncitizens in the official population count. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans passed a bill Wednesday to add a citizenship question to the census and exclude noncitizens from the official headcount when determining population for representation in Congress and electoral votes.

The legislation, which passed on a 206-202 party-line vote, is part of a trend of House GOP bills relating to immigration as the November elections approach. Republicans and their presumptive presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, have centered their campaigns on immigration.

The Trump administration tried to add a citizenship question in the 2020 census but the Supreme Court blocked it.

“We should not reward states and cities that violate federal immigration laws and maintain sanctuary policies with increased Congressional representation,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement after the bill passed. “Common sense dictates that only American citizens should be counted for electoral apportionment.”

The bill, H.R. 7109, sponsored by North Carolina GOP Rep. Chuck Edwards would impact the 2030 census and onward if signed into law.

The census, which occurs every 10 years, helps determine congressional seats in the House and can determine political power.

Since the first census in 1790, citizens and noncitizens have been included in the official population count of the U.S. due to the 14th Amendment’s requirement to include “whole numbers of persons in each State.”

Edwards argued during debate of the bill that the Constitution did not specify that noncitizens should be counted in the census.

He argued that the word “persons,” in the 14th amendment, “carries no definition.”

It’s unlikely to pass the Senate, which Democrats control by a slim margin, and the White House already put out a statement opposing the bill.?

The White House said the bill “would preclude the Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau from performing its constitutionally mandated responsibility to count the number of persons in the United States in the decennial census,” and would “make it more difficult to obtain accurate data.”

“The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring that the census remains as accurate as possible and free from political interference, and to upholding the longstanding principle of equal representation enshrined in our Constitution, census statutes, and historical tradition,” the White House said.

Numbers padded in Dem areas, GOP claims

During debate on the House floor, Republicans argued that areas that have high immigrant populations take away congressional representation from U.S. citizens and benefit states led by Democrats.

“This is absolutely outrageous,” Republican Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana said. “This is 100% about stacking the vote.”

Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett said states with more noncitizens “will get more congressional districts and more electoral votes.” He said those votes would also benefit Democrats and “skew things in their favor.”

Dems warn of? Hispanic undercount

Democrats argued that the bill would not only violate the Constitution but also harm immigrant communities by undercounting, and could threaten the accuracy of the census.

“The census is essential to democracy,” Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said. “This bill would destroy the accuracy of the census, which may have something to do with its actual motivations.”

Raskin added that the bill would not only carve out all noncitizens, including permanent residents with green cards “who are on the pathway to citizenship.”

Raskin said the GOP’s move to add a citizenship question for the 2020 census led to a chilling effect and undercount of communities of color, especially Hispanics.

There were six states – Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas –?that counted fewer people in the 2020 census than were estimated to live there.

Nationally, there was a record undercount of Hispanics in the 2020 census of about 3 million, according to the Pew Research Center.

Eight states –?Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and Utah –?had overcounts, according to Pew.

The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán of California said the bill would have a chilling effect on accuracy of the census and would harm immigrant communities.

“It’s a bill that threatens fair and equal representation of immigrant communities,” she said.

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, center, and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, right, both Republicans, speak to reporters on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie left a meeting with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday, saying the “ball is in his court” on whether they hold a floor vote to remove him from leadership.

Greene filed the so-called motion to vacate in late March and has been using it as leverage ever since to try to get Johnson to move further to the right and not put certain bills on the House floor for up-or-down votes.

Last week, Greene said she would call for a vote this week on kicking Johnson out of the speaker’s office, but after meeting with him for two hours on Monday and 90 minutes on Tuesday, she said it’s up to him whether she calls for a floor vote.

“It’s really simple. It’s up to Mike Johnson to be our Republican speaker,” Greene said. “And we’ll see what he does. And again, it’s actions for me. I do not care what words he says.”

Greene declined to say what her deadline may be for Johnson to comply with her four proposed changes, but she noted it’s “pretty short.” She declined to say if there would be more meetings with the speaker.

Massie said Johnson shouldn’t prolong agreeing to the four suggestions from him and Greene.

“If it does become obvious that he’s just trying to drag this out, we’ll do him a favor, we’ll do you a favor, we’ll do the GOP a favor and we’ll call this motion to vacate,” Massie said.

Any vote to remove Johnson is likely to fail, since House Democratic leaders announced last month they would support keeping him as speaker.

Four demands for the speaker

Greene, speaking on Steve Bannon’s livestreamed show before the meeting, said she had four requirements that Johnson must meet if he wants her to set aside the motion to vacate.

He must:

• ?Agree not to hold floor votes on additional aid to Ukraine amid its ongoing fight against Russia’s invasion;
• Agree not to hold floor votes on bills that don’t have the support of a majority of the chamber’s 217 Republicans;
• Defund the Department of Justice’s special counsel; and
• Agree to move a 1% spending cut if Congress doesn’t approve all dozen of the annual government funding measures before the Oct. 1 deadline.

Efforts to eliminate funding for the special counsel who has been investigating former President Donald Trump and the proposals to force an automatic spending cut are highly unlikely to make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate or gain President Joe Biden’s approval.

Greene said on Bannon’s show that she isn’t willing to negotiate with Johnson on those issues.

“I have high expectations and they have to be met in full,” Greene said. “There is no middle ground. There is no compromise.”

Following the meeting, Johnson said he’s working through some of the ideas and suggestions from Greene.

“That’s part of the process here,” the Louisiana Republican said. “I’m optimistic that we can get to some resolutions on all that.”

He did not go into details, but said, “they’ve been very productive discussions.”

President Joe Biden seen speaking from the White House on Feb. 8, 2024. Biden warned in a Holocaust remembrance speech Tuesday of rising antisemitism. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden warned Tuesday of rising antisemitism in the U.S. and said too many are forgetting the attack on Israel in October.

During a Holocaust memorial speech at the U.S. Capitol, Biden stressed the importance of honoring the 6 million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, and the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in Israel that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.

“Now here we are, not 75 years later but just seven… months later and people are already forgetting, they’re already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror,” he told attendees at the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Day of Remembrance Celebration.

“I have not forgotten, nor have you, and we will not forget,” he continued.

Biden criticized student protests at college campuses across the country over Israel’s war effort. Protestors have called for their institutions to divest from businesses that are tied to Israel and have called for a ceasefire.

“We’ve seen a ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world,” Biden said. “There is no place on any campus in America, any place in America for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.”

Biden last week commended students’ peaceful protests, while criticizing those that turned violent.

As the war reaches its seven-month mark, more than 34,000 Palestinians – 13,000 of them children – have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The war began after Hamas militants killed about 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and took 199 people hostage on Oct. 7.

Combating antisemitism

Biden announced several new administration initiatives to combat antisemitism Tuesday.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will issue new guidance to all school districts and colleges to provide examples of antisemitic discrimination and how those instances can violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The agency said it has opened more than 100 investigations in the past “seven months into complaints alleging discrimination based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, including Antisemitism.”

The Department of Homeland Security will also build an online campus safety resource guide and develop best practices for “community-based targeted violence and terrorism prevention to reduce these assaults and attacks,” according to a fact sheet provided by the White House.

The Department of State also has an agency, the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, which will convene technology firms to identify best practices for addressing antisemitism content online.

U.S. House action

Biden was joined Tuesday by GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

The House last week passed legislation to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism for the Department of Education’s enforcement of the Civil Rights Act. All schools that receive federal funding are required to comply with that law.

Some Democrats have raised concerns that the language is too broad and could lead to restrictions on freedom of speech.

The lead drafter of the definition, Kenneth Stern, then an antisemitism expert with the American Jewish Committee, has repeatedly opposed the definition, raising concerns when the Trump administration tried to issue an executive order similar to the recent House bill.

“It was never intended to be a campus hate speech code, but that’s what Donald Trump’s executive order accomplished this week,” Stern wrote in 2019. “This order is an attack on academic freedom and free speech, and will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself.”

Johnson is also leading a House-wide effort to address the college campus protests, such as grilling university presidents and threatening to pull federal funding from those institutions.

Members of the House Education and Workforce Committee grilled Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Tuesday about antisemitism on college campuses. Several similar hearings are scheduled in the coming weeks.

“We are witnessing American universities quickly becoming hostile places for Jewish students and faculty,” Johnson said.

Johnson said there has been a rise in antisemitism since Oct. 7, which was the most deadly attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

“The threat of repeating the past is so great,” Johnson said. “There are some who would prefer to criticize Israel and lecture them on their military tactics…than punish the terrorists who perpetrated these horrific crimes.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speak to reporters in Statuary Hall after meeting with U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., in the U.S. Capitol Building on May 06, 2024, in Washington, D.C. Last week, Greene threatened to move forward with a ‘motion to vacate’ over her dissatisfaction with the Speaker’s handling of the government funding legislation. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene plan to meet privately Tuesday amid her calls for him to resign or face a floor vote that could, but likely won’t, remove the Louisiana Republican from leadership.

Greene announced the meeting Monday evening after she and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie met privately with Johnson for two hours over disagreements about how he’s been running the House with a narrow GOP majority.

Greene, speaking briefly to reporters outside the speaker’s office after the meeting wrapped up, didn’t divulge details of what she, Massie and Johnson discussed.

“Let me tell you, I have been patient. I have been diligent. I have been steady. And I’ve been focused on the facts,” Greene said. “And none of that has changed. So I just had a long discussion with the speaker in his office about ways to move forward for a Republican-controlled House of Representatives.”

Greene, standing next to Massie, then said they would be meeting again on Tuesday.

Greene repeatedly has expressed her anger that Johnson has brought successful pieces of legislation to the House floor with bipartisan backing. Some of those recent bipartisan measures include government funding packages in March and military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in April.

Johnson last week issued a statement that Greene’s motion to vacate was wrong.

“This motion is wrong for the Republican Conference, wrong for the institution, and wrong for the country,” he wrote.

House Democratic leaders last week issued a statement vowing to back Johnson if far-right Republicans try to remove him as speaker, which makes it unlikely the motion to vacate will succeed.

In late March, Greene filed a resolution to remove Johnson, following a bipartisan vote to approve the last remaining appropriations bill of fiscal year 2024. Since then, she has gained support from Massie and Arizona’s Paul Gosar.

Johnson was unanimously elected to the post about seven months ago following three weeks of chaos in October, in which Republicans were unable to agree on a lawmaker to take the speaker’s gavel after a small group of GOP lawmakers ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra testifies at his 2021 confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. HHS published a final rule Friday to expand health care access to DACA recipients. (Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will publish a final rule Friday that will allow about 100,000 uninsured people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to enroll in state-run or private health insurance plans provided under the Affordable Care Act, administration officials said.

The new rule from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services could provide an opportunity for those uninsured DACA recipients to enroll in health coverage through a Health Insurance Marketplace plan or a state-run Basic Health Program, also called BHP, in the few states where those plans are available.

“By providing new opportunities for quality, affordable … health care, this rule will give DACA recipients the peace of mind and opportunity that every American deserves,” White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden said on a Thursday call with reporters previewing the final rule.

Only two states, Minnesota and New York, operate Basic Health Programs. Oregon is set to become the third this year. The program, created in the Affordable Care Act, allows states to provide affordable health care coverage to low-income people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid. The programs are almost entirely federally funded.

In a statement, President Joe Biden said DACA recipients, often called Dreamers, deserve access to health coverage.

“Dreamers are our loved ones, our nurses, teachers, and small business owners,” Biden said. “And they deserve the promise of health care just like all of us.”

There are about 600,000 DACA recipients who were brought into the country without authorization when they were children. The Obama-era program protects them from removal.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said about one-third of DACA recipients are uninsured.

“DACA recipients are currently three times more likely to be uninsured than the general U.S. population and individuals without health insurance … are less likely to receive preventative or routine health screenings,”? Becerra said on the Thursday call.

November start date

The rule will go into effect Nov. 1, “in order to align with the individual market Open Enrollment Period in most states and allow time for required operational updates,” according to a fact sheet provided by the White House. The move could affect as many as 100,000 DACA recipients, the White House said.

“DACA recipients are no longer excluded from receiving coverage from a quality health plan,” Becerra said.

DACA recipients who qualify to enroll in a Marketplace plan could also qualify for “advance payments of the premium tax credit (APTC) and cost-sharing reductions (CSRs) to reduce the cost of their Marketplace coverage, depending on their income,” according to the fact sheet.

The rule will update the definition of “qualified noncitizen” to receive Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits to clarify the categories of noncitizens who qualify for coverage. The rule will not otherwise change eligibility for those programs for noncitizens.

A senior administration official also noted that most DACA recipients have health care coverage through their employment, but that this rule will catch any recipients who are uninsured. The administration official spoke to reporters on the condition they not be named.

DACA recipients are currently awaiting a court case that is likely to head to the Supreme Court to determine the legality of the program after the Trump administration tried to end it. If the Supreme Court deems the program unlawful, it’s unclear what happens to those in the program.

University of Wisconsin-Madison protesters sit around tents on May 1, 2024, as police work to dismantle their encampment on Library Mall. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden responded Thursday to weeks of protest on college campuses calling for a ceasefire in Gaza with a brief statement that the right to protest should be protected, but “not the right to cause chaos.”

“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” Biden said from the White House’s Roosevelt Room. “In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues. But neither are we a lawless country.”

Biden said that the student-led protests have not made him reconsider policy in the Middle East and that he did not believe the National Guard should be authorized in response to protests across the country.

He criticized the protests that have led to classes being canceled.

“Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to deny the rights of others so students can finish a semester or finish their college education,” Biden said. “Order must prevail.”

Students have set up encampments to protest the Israel-Hamas war at about 30 college campuses across the country, including Tulane University in Louisiana and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Some have turned violent.

Fights broke out Tuesday night at UCLA when counter-protesters attempted to dismantle an encampment set up by protesters on the university’s campus, according to NPR.?

“Violent protest is not protected,” Biden said. “Peaceful protest is.”

Student protesters have called for a ceasefire and for their institutions to divest from businesses that are tied to Israel, including companies that make weapons that have been used in the war.

More than 34,000 Palestinians have died in nearly seven months of war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Universities have called in police to sweep the encampments, leading to about 1,300 arrests, according to The Guardian.

Calls from Congress

Lawmakers have also called on higher education institutions to quell the protests, and have raised concerns about antisemitism.

The House on Wednesday passed a bipartisan bill that would require the? Department of Education to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.

Republicans and some Democratic advocates of the bill have argued that the protests are a form of antisemitism.

Critics of the bill say it could chill freedom of speech at educational institutions.

Nationwide protests began at Columbia University in New York on April 17 after the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, testified before the House Education and Workforce committee about antisemitism on college campuses.

Students pitched tents to establish a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” A day later Shafik authorized the New York Police Department to sweep the area. NYPD officers arrested 108 students – the largest mass arrest on Columbia’s campus since 1968, according to the independent student newspaper the Columbia Spectator.?

After that sweep, students returned and stayed for two weeks until Tuesday, when hundreds of NYPD officers entered Columbia’s campus and cleared the encampments and Hamilton Hall, which students occupied, according to the Columbia Spectator.

California Highway Patrol officers patrol at a pro-Palestinian encampment, the morning after it was attacked by counter-protestors at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus, on May 1, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans Wednesday passed a bill, with heavy support from Democrats, that would define antisemitism for the Department of Education, amid nationwide college campus protests in which students are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The 320-91 vote would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – with which all schools that receive federal funding are required to comply.

But some Democrats raised concerns that the language is too broad and could chill freedom of speech at schools.

“Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination,” the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, said during debate of the bill, H.R. 6090.

Republicans have slammed the leaders of higher education institutions that are the sites of protests, calling for them to resign and to send in law enforcement to crack down on the students protesting.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana is also rolling out a Congress-wide effort to address the protests, such as tougher oversight of university presidents and pulling funding.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York in a Wednesday press conference did not commit to putting the House bill on the Senate floor.

“We haven’t seen what the House is sending us yet,” he said.

Lawmakers have focused on Columbia University in New York, where students set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”

Students are demanding that the university cut financial ties, such as endowments, with companies that do business with Israel or those that make weapons used in the war in Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The New York Police Department was deployed on the campus early Wednesday by Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, who authorized the NYPD to sweep the campus after students took over one of the buildings that has a history of student activism, Hamilton Hall, according to the Columbia Spectator.?

However, students occupying the building have drawn criticism from Democrats as well.

“Smashing windows with hammers and taking over university buildings is not free speech — it is lawlessness, and those who did it should promptly face the consequences that are not merely a slap on the wrist,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

More than 300 students were arrested by the NYPD, according to The Associated Press.?

Cotton calls for protection of Jewish students

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton held a press conference Wednesday, where he was joined by several Senate Republicans in urging university presidents to crack down on the encampments and to protect Jewish students.

Cotton called for the State Department to pull the visas of international students who have participated in the protests and for the Department of Education to withhold federal funding to those schools where protests are taking place.

“They have a right if they want to go out and make fools of themselves, and protest on behalf of Hamas, but they don’t have the right to build little Gazas in violation of the laws,” Cotton said, referring to protesters and encampments.

Cotton was joined by Sens. Rick Scott of Florida, James Lankford of Oklahoma, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Roger Marshall of Kansas.

Lankford said that the protesters have crossed a line and have made Jewish students feel unsafe.

“Every university and every student has the right to be able to speak their mind, to be able to test out new ideas — it’s the nature of being on a college campus to be able to speak out and be able to think through different things,” Lankford said.

“We’re a nation that prides ourself on the right to speak out, but we’re also a nation that says, ‘You cannot go and intimidate someone else in the process.’”

Kennedy and Marshall said policies on diversity, inclusion and equity resulted in the protests on college campuses.

Kennedy said he blamed some of the faculty members at those higher education institutions for the protests.

“There are members of the faculty at some of these universities who believe in diversity, equity, inclusion,” he said.

Ernst said the universities need “to put an end to this.”

“If they don’t, they should kiss their federal funding goodbye,” she said.

?Argument against bill

Nadler was the sole Democrat to speak out against the bill during Wednesday’s floor debate.

He argued that the language is too broad and would curtail freedom of speech.

“While there is much in the bill I agree with, its core provision would put a thumb on the scale in favor of one particular definition of antisemitism to the exclusion of all others to be used when the Department of Education assesses claims of antisemitism on campus,” Nadler said.

He took issue with some of the examples the definition provides that can be considered antisemitic, such as criticism of the state of Israel.

That definition would be: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

GOP Rep. Tom McClintock of California said the bill was needed because there has been a spike in antisemitism since Oct. 7, the start of the Hamas-Israel war, when Hamas staged an attack against Israeli civilians.

“You cannot fight antisemitism if you cannot define it,” he said.

Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, who sponsored the bill, said without a clear definition of antisemitism, the Department of Education and college administrations are having trouble discerning what is considered antisemitic.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect students from discrimination based only on religion. If a student does bring up a complaint, the civil rights division in the Department of Education refers those complaints to the Department of Justice, according to the Department of Education.?

Nadler argued that the bill would threaten freedom of speech, “while doing nothing to combat antisemitism.”

The chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, said the definition is needed to “ensure the safety of Jewish students.”

Foxx has held several hearings throughout the year where she and Republicans on the committee grilled the leaders of universities about the pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses. Another is set for May 23 for the heads of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan.

A Department of Labor final rule means millions of salaried workers who are employed in the executive, administrative or professional industries will become eligible for overtime pay. (Getty stock photo)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor Tuesday announced a final rule that means millions of salaried workers who are employed in the executive, administrative or professional industries will become eligible for overtime pay.

The rule will affect roughly 4 million workers in the first year of implementation and will be broken into two checkpoints. The first will be on July 1, with an impact on 1 million workers, and another on Jan. 1, 2025, affecting 3 million workers, Wage and Hour Division Administrator Jessica Looman said on a call with reporters previewing the regulation.

On July 1, the agency will update standard salary levels using an existing methodology developed under the Trump administration, Looman said. The salary level at which salaried employees are exempt from overtime will rise at that point from $684 per week to $844 per week, which is the equivalent of $43,888 per year.

On Jan. 1, the agency will move to a new methodology that will set the standard salary level to the 35th percentile of “full-time salaried workers in the lowest-wage census region, which is the South,” Looman said.

That will result in an exempt salary level of $1,128 per week, or the equivalent of $58,656 per year.

“The strength of these protections continues to decline over time, and sometimes workers are working excessive hours with no additional pay,” Looman said, adding that some workers are exempt from protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

President Joe Biden, in a video, said, “We’re putting more money in the pockets of millions of American workers. Because you earned it.”

The Department of Labor has typically updated the salary requirement levels every five to nine years since 1938, but after 1975, those updates have been more unpredictable. Salary levels have not been updated in at least four years.

Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda said on the call with reporters that DOL has tried to “strike the right balance between the salary level and the duties,” and that “striking the wrong balance means that lower-paid salary workers don’t get the overtime protections that they should under the act.”

Future updates to the salary level will occur every three years, and will apply “up-to-date wage data to the salary and compensation methodologies in the regulation at the time of the update,” Looman said.

The next update will take place on July 1, 2027.

The Labor Department included exemptions to the new standards, including in U.S. territories.

“The final rule does not finalize proposals to raise the salary threshold for workers in the four U.S. territories that are currently subjected to the federal minimum wage, which are Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands,” Looman said. “The rule also doesn’t finalize updates to the special salary levels for American Samoa and the motion picture industry in relation to the new standard salary level.”

DOL will address those updates in a future final rule, she said.

“The final rule announced today restores and extends overtime protections to lower paid salary workers and prevents a future erosion of overtime protections while ensuring greater predictability,” Looman said.

Homeless rights activists hold a rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on April 22, 2024 in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson and Smith v. Spizzirri, a dispute over the constitutionality of ordinances that bar people who are homeless from camping on city streets. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A majority of U.S Supreme Court justices Monday seemed inclined to side with an Oregon town’s law that bans homeless people from sleeping outdoors, in a case that could have broad implications for local ordinances related to homelessness across the country.

During oral arguments in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, conservative justices said that policies and ordinances around homelessness are complex, and indicated it’s a policy question that should be left up to local elected representatives rather than the courts.

“Why do you think these nine people are the best people to judge and weigh those policy judgments?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked, referring to the Supreme Court.

Taking a much different tack, the three liberal justices said that Grants Pass officials went too far and targeted homeless people with fines for the basic human need to sleep when they camped outside.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor grilled the lawyer for Grants Pass on how the city law essentially criminalized homelessness.

“You don’t arrest babies who have blankets over them, you don’t arrest people who are sleeping on the beach, as I tend to do if I’ve been there a while. You only arrest people who don’t have a second home, is that correct?” Sotomayor said.

The case originated in Grants Pass, a city in northwest Oregon that argues its ordinance is a solution to the city’s homelessness crisis.

An attorney representing a group of homeless people argued that they are involuntarily without housing because there are limited shelter beds for the number of homeless people in the area. The lawyer also said the ordinances criminalize homelessness through fines and potential jail time for camping or sleeping in outdoor spaces.

The town of nearly 40,000 has about 600 people who are homeless and the only nonprofit that can provide shelter can house only up to 100 beds, according to a brief submitted by the nonprofit, Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission.

‘Cruel and unusual punishment’

The justices are being asked to decide whether the enforcement of that local ordinance on regulating camping on public property violated the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause of the Eighth Amendment.

Theane Evangelis, the attorney representing the city, argued that the city is going after the conduct of unhoused people, rather than the status of homelessness.

“We can look at the law and it has a conduct element — the conduct is establishing a campsite,” she said.

The attorney representing the plaintiffs, Kelsi B. Corkran, argued that the ordinance is a violation of the Eighth Amendment by inflicting punishment for the status of being homeless.

“Although the city describes its ordinances as punishing camping on public property, it defines campsite as any place a homeless person is while covered with a blanket,” she said. “The city interprets and applies the ordinances to permit non-homeless people to rest on blankets and public parks, while a homeless person who does the same thing breaks the law.”

Corkran is representing Gloria Johnson and John Logan, who are both homeless.

Effects across the United States

The case could not only have implications for the city in Oregon where the case originated, but for cities across the U.S., particularly in the West, that have similar ordinances and are grappling with an increasing homelessness crisis.

There are nearly 327,000 people who are homeless in the country, according to most recent U.S. Census data. States with the highest population of homeless people per 10,000 people include California, Oregon, Washington and Montana, according to five-year estimates in the American Community Survey.

Outside the court, advocates gathered to show their support of the injunction that bars the city ordinance from taking place.

“Homelessness is a result of systemic issues such as a lack of affordable housing, exorbitant rents, and a shortage of well-paying jobs,” Sarae Lewis, a spokesperson for Community Solutions, said in a statement. “Arresting and fining people for sleeping on the streets is ineffective, keeps people homeless for longer, and distracts from real solutions like those we see working in communities across the country.”

Community Solutions, a nonprofit that works to end homelessness, was joined by other organizations that advocate for people without homes such as the National Homelessness Law Center and the National Coalition for the Homeless.

History of the case

The city is appealing to the Supreme Court after lower courts ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, Johnson and Logan, who are homeless residents of Grants Pass.

A federal judge blocked the city’s ordinance that prohibited people from camping and sleeping in parks and on public property. Grants Pass also barred people who are homeless from using blankets, pillows or other material to protect themselves from the weather while sleeping outside.

If that ordinance was violated, it carried a $295 fine that, if not paid, increased to more than $530. Repeat offenders could also be jailed for up to 30 days.

A three-panel judge on the 9th Circuit determined in 2022 that the city has such strict restrictions on anyone sleeping outdoors that it led to a ban on being homeless.?

That decision relied on a 2018 case, Martin v. City of Boise. The case involved homeless plaintiffs who sued the city of Boise, Idaho after it fined them under a camping ordinance.

The 9th Circuit found that the city’s ordinance violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment because it imposes criminal penalties for homeless people sleeping outside or on public property when they do not have access to a shelter.

On Monday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that the state of Oregon enacted a statute that codified the Martin case, saying city regulations “of this nature have to be objectively reasonable as to time, place and manner, with regards to people experiencing homelessness.”

“It seems like the state has already precluded Grants Pass from doing the sort of thing it’s doing here,” Jackson said to Evangelis.

Evangelis said that the new law was not similar to the Martin case and that the city ordinance also takes into consideration the safety of the community.

“They protect the health and safety of everyone and it is not safe to live in encampments,” she said. “It’s unsanitary. There are the harms of the encampments themselves on those in them and outside.”

City’s argument

Evangelis argued that the court of appeals was wrong in its interpretation, as well as the plaintiffs, who cite a 1962 Supreme Court decision in Robinson v. California.

In that case, the Supreme Court deemed that a state cannot criminalize someone for their status of being addicted to drugs because it violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

That case barred the criminalization of narcotics addiction, but not the conduct of the crime that someone who is addicted to drugs might participate in, such as using, buying, selling or possessing drugs.

Evangelis argued that the Grants Pass law is “so far removed from what was at issue in Robinson that it just isn’t implicated here.” She said that the city’s ordinance does not criminalize the status of homelessness.

Justice Samuel Alito said that the Robinson case “presents a very difficult conceptual question.”

“The point is that the connection between drug addiction and drug usage is more tenuous than the connection between absolute homelessness and sleeping outside,” he said.

Evangelis said that the case the plaintiffs are making is that camping or sleeping outside and being homeless are “two sides of the same coin.”

“It’s collapsing the status that they claim into the conduct,” she said. “So we think the conduct here is very clear, because it applies generally to everyone. The law does not say on its face, ‘It is a crime to be homeless,’ I just want to make that clear.”

Justice Elena Kagan asked if under Robinson, the status of homelessness could be criminalized.

“I don’t think that homelessness is a status like drug addiction,” Evangelis said.

Kagan said that homelessness is a status, because “it’s the status of not having a home.”

Evangelis said she disagreed with that because being homeless is a fluid experience that could change from day to day.

Jackson said that the city’s ordinance seemed to punish the basic need for sleep.

“What’s happening is you’re only punishing certain people who can’t afford to do it privately,” she said.

Corkran argued that if someone is violating the city ordinance, and is told to leave but they have no place to go, that means that person is homeless.

“So again, homelessness is not something you can do, it’s just something that you are,” she said.

Department of Justice neutral?

The Biden administration took the middle ground, issuing a brief that is neither in support of nor against either party.

The brief agreed with the 9th Circuit decision in the Idaho case, but argued that cities should be allowed to enforce restrictions for the health and safety of their residents.

“Although the United States continues to believe that the fundamental principle recognized in Martin is sound, it shares amici’s concerns about the broad and burdensome injunctions entered by some district courts in the Ninth Circuit, which may limit cities’ ability to respond appropriately and humanely to encampments and other legitimate public health and safety concerns,” U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote.

U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler offered partial support in a brief statement and also answered questions posed by the justices.

“It’s the municipality’s determination, certainly in the first instance with a great deal of flexibility, how to address the question of homelessness,” he said.

A constitutional issue?

Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed skeptical that the city’s ordinance was a constitutional issue and instead is a policy one, such as how there are not enough beds.

“Do you think the constitutional role should be different when the number of beds available in the jurisdiction exceeds the number of homeless people versus the number of homeless people exceeds the number of beds available in shelters?” he asked Evangelis.

She said that it was unworkable.

“There is no way to count what beds are available and who is perhaps willing to take one and who would consider it adequate, then the question becomes, are those beds adequate?” she said.

Kavanaugh said that “it’s a difficult policy question.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Evangelis if the city laws are enforced, “is there a way for everyone to be cared for?”

“That ultimate question is for the legislature and policymakers to figure out what the right solution (is), what the right mix of policies is, but the wrong answer is to do what the 9th Circuit did here,” Evangelis said.

U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks during a news conference after a weekly House Republican Conference meeting in the U.S. Capitol Building on November 14, 2023, in Washington. Johnson brought a Republican border security bill to a floor vote Saturday in an effort to appease conservative members of his conference, but the bill was defeated. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Saturday failed to pass a border security bill that Republican leadership intended as an incentive for conservatives to support a foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The border bill, turned down on a 215-199 vote with five Democrats joining all Republicans in voting in favor, was brought to the floor under a fast-track procedure known as suspension of the rules that requires a two-thirds majority for passage. The conservatives it was meant to appeal to slammed it as a “show vote.”

The border security bill – nearly identical to legislation House Republicans passed last year – was an attempt by House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana to quell growing hard-right dissatisfaction prompted by his support for the $95 billion foreign aid package expected to pass Saturday with the help of Democrats.

The measure is separate and not part of a package of three supplemental funding bills containing aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as another so-called sidecar bill dealing with TikTok. The Senate will be able to clear the foeign aid package and ignore the border security bill that closely resembles another House-passed border bill the Senate has not acted on.

Rather than quell their unrest, Johnson’s move produced only more ire from hard-right members. Three Republicans – Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona – are already backing a move to oust Johnson through a motion to vacate.

During Friday’s floor debate, Democrats argued that the bill, H.R. 3602, was a rehash of H.R. 2, a bill House Republicans passed last year that would reinstate Trump-era immigration policies such as the construction of the border wall. Both bills would also require asylum seekers to remain in Mexico.

Border bill return

Republicans were largely in favor of the border bill, but several referred to the vote as a “sham” and admitted the bill would not pass in the Senate, which Democrats control.

“House Republicans are trying again to make our Democrat colleagues and President Biden take this border crisis seriously,” Alabama’s Barry Moore said.

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler of New York, said the bill was a “foolhardy attempt to pass for a second time one of the most draconian immigration bills this Congress has ever seen. This rehashing of H.R. 2 is a joke.”

“Republicans have proven that they want the issue more than they want solutions,” he said. “So here we are, again, taking a virtually same draconian bill as before, knowing that if it actually passes the House it will surely go nowhere in the Senate.”

Nadler argued if Republicans were serious about addressing immigration at the southern border, they would have supported the bipartisan border bill in the Senate, instead of rejecting it.

Three senators – Oklahoma Republican James Lankford, Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy and Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema – spent months crafting a bill that would overhaul immigration policy at the request of Senate Republicans who insisted border security provisions should be included in the foreign aid package.

But congressional Republicans walked away from it early this year at the urging of GOP presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, who was not supportive of the bill because he is centering his reelection campaign on immigration.

The chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, argued that the bill “isn’t quite H.R. 2.”

The bill is nearly identical to H.R. 2, but removes the mandate for employers to verify a worker’s immigration status and employment eligibility, and includes about $9 billion in grant programs for border states.

“Let’s take a step in the direction of fixing it and pass this legislation,” Jordan said of the southern border.

A ‘sham’

Washington state Democrat and chair of the Progressive Congressional Caucus Pramila Jayapal said the bill was pointless.

“The majority could barely pass this legislation last year,” she said, referring to the party-line vote in 2023. “And now it’s going to magically pass it in the House with a two-thirds majority? Give me a break. This bill is going nowhere, so let’s just be clear about that.”

Texas Republican Chip Roy agreed that the bill would not become law, and expressed his frustration that the GOP would not try to leverage foreign aid money for it.

“Republicans continue to campaign on securing the border and then refuse to use any leverage to actually secure the border,” Roy said. “We should get it signed into law but the only way to force Democrats to do it is to use leverage.”

Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs also agreed with Roy and Democrats that “this is a show vote.”

Pennsylvania’s GOP Rep. Scott Perry echoed similar remarks, but said he would still vote for the bill even though it’s “designed to fail.”

“But I want everybody to know it’s a sham,” Perry said.

A student concentrating and taking notes while working in a classroom with her classmates. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education on Friday announced a final rule that will update Title IX regulations governing how schools respond to sexual misconduct, undoing changes made under the Trump administration and former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

“For more than 50 years, Title IX has promised an equal opportunity to learn and thrive in our nation’s schools free from sex discrimination,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said on a call with reporters on Thursday night. “These final regulations build on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation’s students can access schools that are safe, welcoming, and respect their rights.”

This new rule will roll back Title IX changes overseen by DeVos. Those regulations narrowly defined sexual harassment, and directed schools to conduct live hearings to allow those who were accused of sexual harassment or assault to cross-examine their accusers.

Many advocates argued that practice would discourage victims of sexual misconduct from coming forward. President Joe Biden during his campaign in 2020 promised to nix the Trump administration’s Title IX regulations.

The final rule will protect students and employees from sex-based discrimination, such as sexual violence and other forms of sex-based harassment. It would also require schools to have in place measures to offer support to those who make complaints.

The rule also sets guidelines for schools, such as treating all forms of sexual discrimination complaints equitably and promptly.

The new rule codifies protections for transgender students from sex discrimination. It prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ students and employees based on their sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics.

“The final regulations clarify that a school must not separate or treat people differently based on sex in a manner that subjects them to more than de minimis harm, except in limited circumstances permitted by Title IX,” according to a fact sheet.

“The final regulations further recognize that preventing someone from participating in school (including in sex-separate activities) consistent with their gender identity causes that person more than de minimis harm.”

The rule does not establish new criteria for transgender athletes, which is a separate rule the Department of Education is still finalizing, a senior administration official said. That rule would prevent blanket bans on transgender athletes competing in sports that align with their gender identity. So far, 24 states have passed laws that ban transgender athletes from competing in sports that align with their gender identity.

The new rule also protects students, employees and applicants from discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth, recovery from pregnancy and other reproductive care.

It requires schools to “provide reasonable modifications for students based on pregnancy or related conditions, allow for reasonable break time for lactation for employees, and access to a clean, private lactation space for students and employees,” according to a fact sheet.

Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education Catherine Lhamon said on a call with reporters that the final regulations clarify the requirements that schools should follow to address all forms of sex discrimination.

“We look forward to working with schools, students, and families to prevent and eliminate sex discrimination,” Lhamon said.

Cardona said that the new rule will go into effect Aug. 1.

South Carolina Republican Rep. Ralph Norman, left, listens as Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy discusses a border security bill at a U.S. House Rules hearing April 18, 2024 (screenshot from committee livestream).

WASHINGTON — The border security bill U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson offered to conservatives to win support for a major foreign aid package had not broken a blockade of the package by hard-right members late Thursday.

The border security bill is nearly identical to a border security bill, H.R. 2, the House passed last year on a party-line vote that would reinstate Trump-era immigration policies. Including a border security bill was Johnson’s attempt to appease hard-right Republicans and win support for the foreign aid package many on his right flank oppose.

But as the U.S. House Rules Committee gathered for hours over two separate meetings Wednesday evening and Thursday to discuss the border security bill and the three separate bills totaling about $95 billion to aid Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific region, the panel had not adopted a rule that would allow the bills to receive floor consideration.

The new border security bill includes most provisions from H.R. 2 and would add more than $9 billion in grant programs for border states. It does not include a mandate for employers to verify a worker’s immigration status and employment eligibility.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, planned for votes Saturday on the foreign aid bills.

He also detailed a plan to move the border security bill under a separate rule.

That approach would allow the Senate to clear the bipartisan foreign aid bills without acting on the more controversial border bill. House Republicans’ first border security bill was not successful in the Senate – and the new version likely would not? pass the Democrat-controlled chamber either.

‘Pointless’

The Rules Committee called an emergency hearing on the border security bill late Wednesday, but did not have the Republican votes to adopt a rule to advance the measure to the floor.

Democrats on the committee declined to ask the witnesses, Reps. Tom McClintock of California and Jerry Nadler of New York, any questions. The top Rules Committee Democrat, James McGovern, called the meeting “pointless.”

“We are here to rehash an old bill,” McGovern said, referring to H.R. 2. “We’re here because you’re trying to figure whether you get some votes on the Ukraine package.”

The chair of the Rules Committee, Michael Burgess of Texas, said the bill was needed because it “reiterates our commitment to implementing strong border security measures.”

McGovern argued that several Republicans already publicly said they would not support advancing the bill to the House floor, meaning it would die in the committee.

Those Republicans, who are all members of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, are Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina.

Massie is also backing an effort by Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene to oust Johnson from his role as speaker.

“I think if the three of you vote ‘no’ on this rule, we’re done,” McGovern said to them. “This is a waste of time.”

Roy also said Wednesday night’s hearing “was a sideshow that wasn’t going to result in anything.”

Burgess said that he planned to vote for the rule and encouraged Republicans to support it. He then quickly adjourned the meeting and the members didn’t return Wednesday for a vote on the rule for the bill.

The Rules Committee remained deadlocked at another hearing Thursday.

Norman said at Thursday’s hearing he would vote against the foreign aid package because it isn’t tied to border security.

“Our only ask was to include a border bill in this rule,” Norman said. “Not a standalone, which the Senate will sit on, as they have (with) H.R. 2.”

Roy also expressed his frustration Thursday that Congress has not passed any laws relating to immigration reform.

“It remains true today that we have not passed and got the president to sign into law anything that would meaningfully change or alter what is happening at the border,” he said.

House Republicans earlier this year tanked a bipartisan border deal in the Senate at the behest of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

The Rules Committee recessed Thursday without adopting a rule again.

U.S. senators being sworn in for the impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on April 17, 2024. (Official U.S. Senate photo by Daniel Rios)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Wednesday dismissed two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The Democrat-controlled chamber voted, 51-49 along party lines, to adjourn the impeachment trial after finding that the impeachment articles accusing Mayorkas of not complying with federal immigration law and breaching the public trust did not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors and were therefore unconstitutional.

“The charges brought against Secretary Mayorkas fail to meet the high standard of high crimes and misdemeanors,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor before a series of votes. “To validate this gross abuse by the House would be a grave mistake and could set a dangerous precedent for the future.”

The adjournment vote followed successful votes to drop the two House-passed articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, as well as a series of Republican motions to adjourn the court of impeachment or enter closed session, which all failed.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only senator to break party ranks during an afternoon vote series. She voted “present” on a motion to drop the first article of impeachment.

Senators were sworn in Wednesday as jurors after House Republican impeachment managers delivered the two articles of impeachment the day before, starting the proceedings. House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas, on their second try, in February.

Republicans have demanded a trial, while Senate Democrats indicated they planned to either dismiss the articles or table the trial because they argued the charges against Mayorkas did not reach the constitutional threshold required of impeachment, which is “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

“To validate this gross abuse by the House would be a grave mistake and could set a dangerous precedent for the future,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said.

Republicans blast process

Following the vote, Republicans slammed Democrats, arguing the move to avoid a trial set a precedent.

“They created a new precedent saying you don’t even have to vote on the articles (of impeachment),” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told reporters off the Senate floor.

Missouri Republican Eric Schmitt warned that voters would remember the Senate’s decision in the November elections.

“They see what a disaster the border’s been,” he said to reporters.

Congressional Democrats and the White House have criticized Republicans’ efforts to impeach Mayorkas as political and campaign fodder for the November elections. Congressional Republicans and the Biden administration have clashed over immigration policy for years.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell argued Wednesday it was senators’ constitutional duty to hold a trial.

“It is the job of this body to consider the articles of impeachment brought before us and to render judgment,” the Kentucky Republican said on the Senate floor.

Even if a trial had been held, it’s unlikely that the two-thirds majority in the Senate required to remove Mayorkas could have been reached.

In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said House Republicans have not provided the necessary evidence to warrant an impeachment effort.

“Secretary Mayorkas spent months helping a bipartisan group of Senators craft a tough but fair bill that would give DHS the tools necessary to meet today’s border security challenges, but the same House Republicans playing political games with this impeachment chose to block that bipartisan compromise,” the spokesperson said.

“Congressional Republicans should stop wasting time with unfounded attacks, and instead do their job by passing bipartisan legislation to properly fund the Department’s vital national security missions and finally fix our broken immigration system.”

Amid the impeachment proceedings in the Senate, Mayorkas has been making his rounds on Capitol Hill to defend the president’s fiscal year 2025 budget for the Department of Homeland Security.

White House Spokesperson for Oversight and Investigations Ian Sams praised the Senate’s decision in a statement.

“Once and for all, the Senate has rightly voted down this baseless impeachment that even conservative legal scholars said was unconstitutional,” he said.

Several votes

Washington state Democrat Sen. Patty Murray presided over the impeachment proceedings, which included several votes Wednesday afternoon.

Schumer tried to approve by unanimous consent a structure for the trial, including debate time and the number of points of order senators could make, but Schmitt objected.

“I will not assist Sen. Schumer in setting our Constitution ablaze,” he said.

Schumer then raised a point of order declaring that the first article of impeachment did not rise to high crimes under the constitution, leading to a series of Republican senators demanding votes on proposals to delay a vote on Schumer’s motion

Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, moved to go to closed session and debate the articles of impeachment but Schumer objected. GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah made the same motion. Senators voted on both motions and rejected them 49-51.

Sen. John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, made a motion to adjourn the court of impeachment and begin impeachment proceedings on April 30 at noon.

Kennedy’s motion failed 49-51.

GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida made the same motion to adjourn, which also failed 49-51.

They went back to the point of order Schumer made that declared the first article of impeachment was unconstitutional. The Senate voted, 51-48, to reject the first article of impeachment on the grounds that it did not rise to the constitutional standard for impeachment, with Murkowski voting present.

Schumer made an identical point of order on the second article of impeachment.

Kennedy again filed a motion to adjourn to May 1, 2004 for impeachment proceedings. He corrected his request to 2024. It again failed 49-51.

GOP Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas then made a motion to adjourn until Nov. 6 until after the election and “before this body disrespects the Constitution.”? It failed 49-51.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, moved to table Schumer’s second point of order that the second article of impeachment is unconstitutional. It failed 49-51.

Senators then approved Schumer’s second motion, 51-49.

House action

Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been at the forefront of impeachment efforts against Mayorkas, first introducing the measure in September.

Greene is also a House impeachment manager, along with GOP Reps. Mark Green of Tennessee, Michael McCaul of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ben Cline of Virginia, Andrew Garbarino of New York, Michael Guest of Mississippi, Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Laurel Lee of Florida and August Pfluger of Texas.

Two of the impeachment managers, Biggs and Higgins, came to the Senate Wednesday to watch that chamber’s proceedings.

The two articles of impeachment charged Mayorkas with not complying with federal immigration law and breaching the public trust.

The first article of impeachment accused Mayorkas of contributing to myriad problems, including rising profits for smuggling operations, a high backlog of asylum cases in immigration courts, fentanyl-related deaths and migrant children found working in dangerous jobs. Republican state legislatures have moved to roll back child labor laws in industries from the food industry to roofing.

Republicans argued that the first article of impeachment would hold Mayorkas accountable for the large number of migrants that have traveled to the southern border to claim asylum. The Biden administration is dealing with the largest number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in 20 years.

The second article of impeachment charged Mayorkas with breaching public trust by making several statements in congressional testimony that Republicans argue are false, such as Mayorkas telling lawmakers that the southern border is “secure.”

The second article also charged Mayorkas with not fulfilling his statutory duty by rolling back Trump-era policies such as terminating contracts that would have continued construction of the border wall and ending the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy that was ended after it went up to the Supreme Court.

U.S. House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green of Tennessee (foreground), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and their fellow Republican impeachment managers walk back through the U.S. Capitol Rotunda after transmitting articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the U.S. Senate on April 16, 2024. The managers proceeded through the Capitol to inform the Senate they are prepared to prosecute Mayorkas for “willful and systemic refusal” to enforce border policies and a ‘breach of public trust.’ (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Eleven U.S. House Republicans serving as impeachment managers delivered two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.

The ceremonial delivery of the articles of impeachment, which charge Mayorkas with a “willful and systemic refusal to comply” with federal immigration law and breaking the public trust, is an escalation in a years-long clash between congressional Republicans and the Biden administration over its handling of immigration. The issue has taken center stage in the leadup to November’s elections.

Senate Democrats have indicated that they plan to move quickly to dismiss the impeachment process.

“We want to address this issue as expeditiously as possible,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement.”

Schumer, a New York Democrat, can make a motion to dismiss or table the articles, which would succeed with a simple majority. Democrats and independents who vote with them for the purposes of organizing the chamber hold a 51-49 majority.

The partisan makeup of the Senate and the two-thirds majority needed for conviction mean it’s unlikely that Mayorkas would be convicted and removed from his role.

Push for trial

However, Republicans are still pushing for a trial.

“We expect and we demand that all 100 senators listen to the arguments of the House impeachment managers,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said during a Tuesday press conference. “If Sen. Schumer cares at all about the suffering of Americans and the disaster that Mayorkas has wrought at the border, then he will hold a full and public trial.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky made similar remarks.

“It would be beneath the Senate’s dignity to shrug off our clear responsibility and fail to give the charges we’ll hear today the thorough consideration they deserve,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who is presiding over the proceedings, announced that the Senate will inform the House when senators are ready to proceed with a trial.

The Senate Sergeant of Arms introduced the impeachment managers: Mark Green of Tennessee, Michael McCaul of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ben Cline of Virginia, Andrew Garbarino of New York, Michael Guest of Mississippi, Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Laurel Lee of Florida, August Pfluger of Texas and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Green of Tennessee, lead impeachment manager and chair of the Homeland Security Committee that handled impeachment proceedings for Mayorkas, read the two articles of impeachment to senators after delivering them Tuesday afternoon.

The impeachment managers then went back to the House.

“The Senate has a responsibility to conduct a full trial, hear the evidence, and render a verdict,” Green said in a statement after delivering the articles of impeachment. “Refusing to do so would mark the first time the Senate has refused to hold an impeachment trial when it had the opportunity to do so.”

Schumer said that senators would be sworn in as jurors Wednesday at 1 p.m.?Eastern.

If a trial proceeds, it will be the first time that a sitting Cabinet member has gone through an impeachment trial. The last Cabinet official who was impeached, William Belknap in 1876, resigned before the House and Senate could vote to impeach him and remove him from his post as secretary of War.

Impeachment articles

Mere hours before House impeachment managers ceremoniously walked over the two articles of impeachment to the Senate, Mayorkas appeared before the same committee that moved forward with his impeachment—Homeland Security. At the morning hearing, Mayorkas answered questions about the budget request for his department for fiscal 2025.

During the hearing, questions about the impeachment arose.

Republicans grilled Mayorkas on migration at the southern border, while Democrats said that the move to impeach Mayorkas fell short of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” threshold needed for impeachment and was more about policy differences between Republicans and the White House.

The same committee advanced the articles of impeachment in January. It took House Republicans two attempts to vote to approve the articles of impeachment on the House floor.

The first article of impeachment cites sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act that Republicans say Mayorkas did not follow. The article accuses Mayorkas of failing to follow detention and removal requirements under the law, ignoring the requirement for expedited removals and abusing the administration’s humanitarian parole authority.

The White House has had parole authority since the 1950s, and the Biden administration has created temporary protections for certain nationals from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and other countries to allow them to temporarily work and reside in the country.

The second article of impeachment argues that Mayorkas breached public trust by making several statements in congressional testimony that Republicans argue are false. Specifically Mayorkas told lawmakers that the southern border is “secure.”

Conservative unrest

Johnson said that impeaching Mayorkas is a focus for House Republicans.

Johnson is also facing a challenge to remove him from his role as speaker, with one of the impeachment managers, Greene of Georgia, leading the effort.

The Georgia Republican released a scathing five-page letter on April 9 that threatened to oust Johnson from his role and made the case to her Republican colleagues to support his removal. Greene also filed a motion to vacate in late March, but has not forced a vote on it.

Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie joined Greene’s cause Tuesday, giving his support to removing Johnson as speaker.

Johnson tried to quell the dissent in the hard-right faction of his party with a show of unity with presumed Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, last week. During that visit, Johnson promoted an unreleased bill related to noncitizens voting in federal elections.

Greene, who first introduced articles of impeachment in September, months before the House Homeland Security Committee began impeachment proceedings, has a for a long time pursued the impeachment of Mayorkas.

Johnson originally planned for the impeachment managers to deliver the articles of impeachment last week, but delayed at the request of Senate Republicans.

Those Senate Republicans requested a delay in order to avoid the start of an impeachment trial on the same day that senators were scheduled to dash out of Washington and head home.

“You don’t want members trying to get out of town so quickly that they are influenced by the jet fumes,” Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee said last week.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks while former President Donald Trump looks on during a press conference at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida. (C-SPAN screenshot)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Donald J. Trump met Friday evening in Palm Beach, Florida, to promote an unreleased bill related to noncitizens voting in federal elections.

The event doubled as a show of support from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to the embattled GOP speaker.

The two men argued that strict voting requirements are needed because of?the Biden administration’s immigration policy.

“We have an election problem,” Trump said, sharply criticizing the White House approach.

The bill would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, Johnson said. That is already a requirement under federal law.

“Election integrity is tied to (the) border, the lack of border security,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the legislation would also require states to verify that someone who is registered to vote is a U.S. citizen, which states already do through federal databases, birth certificates or drivers licenses.

Johnson said he’ll bring the bill to the floor for a vote in order to put Democrats on the record.

“The Democrats are going to go on record,” Johnson said. “We’re about to find out their answer.”

An election bill would likely face a difficult path in the Senate where Democrats hold a slim majority and 60 votes are needed to pass legislation.

The visit to Trump’s golf resort and primary residence at Mar-a-Lago came as Johnson struggles to govern with a slim 218-213 majority and is fending off an effort from Trump ally and far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to oust him as speaker.

“He’s doing a really good job under tough circumstances,” Trump said, throwing his support behind Johnson.

Johnson is also facing pressure from members on his hard-right flank over the reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and approving additional aid to Ukraine – two issues that Trump has voiced disapproval of.

“Election integrity is tied to (the) border, the lack of border security,” Johnson said.

??In a statement from his campaign operation, Trump said that Johnson had agreed to hold “a series of public committee hearings over the next two months” to allow members of Congress to prepare to draft legislation.

The hearings will address mail-in voting, general preparedness for the 2024 election and voter registration list maintenance with a focus on preventing immigrants in the country illegally from registering to vote, the statement read.

Following the press conference, Alex Floyd, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee said in a statement that Trump and Johnson were “extreme election deniers and serial liars who are hellbent on threatening our democracy and spreading baseless falsehoods about the 2020 election.”

“The only thing this sad joint appearance will accomplish is to make it even more obvious to the American people that the future of our democracy is on the line this November,” Floyd said.

As in his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has made fear of immigration a central theme in his bid for the White House this November.

A 1996 law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.

However, as a handful of Democrat-led cities have passed laws allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, Republicans have pushed a narrative that noncitizens are engaging in voter fraud at the federal level and have advocated for more restrictive voting rules.

Previous attempt

House Republicans led a similar effort last year, where the House Administration Committee passed on a party line vote a package to overhaul voting requirements for states inducing set penalties for states that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.

The committee’s chair, Wisconsin Republican Bryan Steil, said at the time the 224-page bill contained similar provisions to the voting reform bill that Georgia’s Republican legislature passed after Joe Biden won the state in 2020 and sent two Democratic senators to Washington. The Georgia bill was widely criticized by Democrats and advocates of voting access for adding barriers to voting.

That bill, which has gone nowhere in Congress, would have repealed an amendment passed by the D.C. Council in 2022 to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. States including California, Maryland and Vermont have similar laws.

Trump has often, without evidence, claimed that large numbers of noncitizens are voting in federal elections.

Researchers have often disproven that. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, conducted an analysis of election conduct from 2003 to 2023 and found 29 instances of noncitizens voting.

Area of agreement

This is not the first time Trump and Johnson have aligned on voting issues.

A constitutional lawyer, Johnson played a key role in defending the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election through legal challenges. The Louisiana Republican led more than 100 House Republicans in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in a case challenging the election results in four key battleground states that President Joe Biden won – Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Supreme Court rejected the suit.

And during the Trump administration, Johnson served as Trump’s legal defense during his first impeachment in the House in 2020 when the former president was charged with obstructing Congress and abusing power.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas holds a press conference at a U.S. Border Patrol station in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Jan. 8, 2024. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — More than 40 U.S. Senate Republicans lobbied Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday to hold a full impeachment trial for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Schumer and other Democrats have indicated they’d be open to immediately voting to dismiss?the House-passed articles of impeachment rather than holding a trial in the Senate. The Republicans who signed the letter urged Schumer not to pursue that option, saying Mayorkas should be held accountable.

“In the face of the disaster that mounts daily at our southern border, and in communities across America, the House of Representatives has formally accused Alejandro Mayorkas of demeaning his office,” according to the letter signed by 43 Senate Republicans. “The American people deserve to hear the evidence through a Senate trial in the Court of Impeachment.”

Six Senate Republicans did not sign the letter: Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mitt Romney of Utah and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.

A simple majority of senators would be needed to approve a pretrial motion to dismiss. Democrats and independents who typically vote with them hold a 51-49 advantage in the chamber.

House Republicans failed to impeach Mayorkas on their first try and needed a second vote to approve the articles of impeachment against the Homeland Security chief. No Democrats voted in favor.

The two articles of impeachment accuse Mayorkas of a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” and a breach of public trust. Democrats say the charges are based on policy disputes rather than the “high crimes and misdemeanors” threshold of an impeachable offense.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and 11 House Republican impeachment managers had planned to ceremoniously walk over the two articles of impeachment to the Senate on Wednesday, which would have forced Schumer to begin the impeachment process the following day. But at the request of Senate Republicans concerned with catching flights back home the same day proceedings would start, Johnson delayed the delivery.

In a Tuesday statement announcing the delay, a Johnson spokesperson also said the Senate should not dismiss the charges without a trial.

“To ensure the Senate has adequate time to perform its constitutional duty, the House will transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate next week,” the Johnson spokesperson wrote in a statement. “There is no reason whatsoever for the Senate to abdicate its responsibility to hold an impeachment trial.”

The Senate Republicans who signed Thursday’s letter are:

• Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
• Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
• John Thune of South Dakota
• John Cornyn of Texas
• Mike Lee of Utah
• Ted Cruz of Texas
• John Kennedy of Louisiana
• John Barrasso of Wyoming
• Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee
• Ted Budd of North Carolina
• Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia
• Tom Cotton of Arkansas
• Mike Crapo of Idaho
• Steve Daines of Montana
• Deb Fischer of Nebraska
• John Hoeven of North Dakota
• Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi
• Jerry Moran of Kansas
• Pete Ricketts of Nebraska
• Michael Rounds of South Dakota
• Marco Rubio of Florida
• Eric Schmitt of Missouri
• Dan Sullivan of Alaska
• Thom Tillis of North Carolina
• Roger Wicker of Mississippi
• Josh Hawley of Missouri
• John Boozman of Arkansas
• Bill Hagerty of Tennessee
• James Risch of Idaho
• Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming
• Tim Scott of South Carolina
• Chuck Grassley of Iowa
• Ron Johnson of Wisconsin
• Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma
• Rick Scott of Florida
• James Lankford of Oklahoma
• Todd Young of Indiana
• Katie Boyd Britt of Alabama
• Joni Ernst of Iowa
• J.D. Vance of Ohio
• Roger Marshall of Kansas
• Kevin Cramer of North Dakota
• Mike Braun of Indiana

Potential buyers try out guns which are displayed on an exhibitor’s table during the Nation’s Gun Show on Nov. 18, 2016 at Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Virginia. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday finalized a new rule that would require anyone selling a gun to obtain a federal license and conduct background checks.

The rule aims to close what’s known as the “gun show loophole.” Gun merchants who sell online, by mail or at flea markets and gun shows until now have not been subject to the same federal regulations as those who own and operate gun stores as their main source of income.

“This single gap in our federal background check system has caused unimaginable pain and suffering,” Vice President Kamala Harris, who oversees the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, said on a call with reporters Wednesday previewing the regulation.

The new rule by the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, stems from requirements of the bipartisan gun safety legislation package Congress passed in 2022.?

It’s likely to face legal challenges, but a senior White House official told? reporters on the call that the Biden administration is confident the rule will survive any legal disputes.

“Strong regulations like this one are not in conflict with the Second Amendment,” the senior White House official said.

The 2022 law would require those gun sellers to obtain a Federal Firearm License, record gun purchases and conduct background checks, which are the same requirements as brick-and-mortar gun shops.

Prior to the rule, if someone claimed that selling guns was not a main source of income, they were not required to obtain a license or perform a background check.

There are 80,000 individuals who have a Federal Firearm License, a senior Department of Justice official on the call said. Under the new rule, there would be about 20,000 additional individuals who would be required to obtain a license and “that has the potential to impact tens and tens of thousands of gun sales,” the official said.

“This is part of a broader administration effort, where the president has focused our attention, resources and strategy at the source of illegal guns,” the senior Department of Justice official said. “All of this is intended to get beyond the individual who has committed a crime and look to the source of those illegal guns.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said on the call that the new rule is one of the “most significant gun regulations in decades.”

“Under this regulation, it will not matter if guns are sold on the internet, at a gun show, or in a brick and mortar store,” Garland said. “If you sell guns predominantly to earn a profit, you must be licensed and you must conduct background checks.”

ATF Director Steven Dettelbach said that “repeatedly selling guns for profit without running a criminal background check is not safe for innocent, abiding Americans, in fact, it’s doggone dangerous.”

Dettelbach added that there are some exemptions to the rule for hobbyists, antique gun collectors and occasional family transfers.

“(The rule) provides … clarity to make sure that true hobbyists and true collectors can enhance or liquidate their professional and personal collection without fear of violating the law,” Dettelbach said.

The new rule will go into effect 30 days after being published in the Federal Register.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas participates in a fireside chat during a March 28, 2024, event at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington DC. (DHS photo by Tia Dufour)

This story has been updated with new information.

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators returning from recess this week may soon have to deal with the two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that U.S. House Republicans passed last month.

Eleven House Republican impeachment managers are expected to walk the two articles of impeachment to the Senate next week, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, will have to decide whether to hold a trial or call a vote to either table or dismiss the charges.

The exact timing became less clear Tuesday afternoon when Senate Republicans said they no longer expected the articles to be delivered this week.

House Republicans had planned to deliver the articles on Wednesday, but delayed after a request from Senate Republicans, a handful of senators told reporters Tuesday.

Senators wanted more time to consider the issue before catching flights home for the weekend, Louisiana Republican John Kennedy said. Senators often return to their home states on Thursdays.

Once the articles arrive in the Senate, the chamber would have to begin next steps immediately.

“The Senate will receive the managers as they present the articles of impeachment for Secretary Mayorkas to the Senate,” Schumer wrote in a letter to his caucus Friday. “Please be advised that all Senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the day after the articles are presented.”

Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray would preside over an impeachment trial, Schumer said.

But Schumer could also have the Senate vote on dismissing the charges without a trial.

Schumer has called the articles of impeachment a “sham.” The White House has taken the same stance, calling the effort to remove Mayorkas politically motivated and “baseless.”

“This effort is a complete waste of time that constitutional and legal experts have said is ‘unconstitutional’ and that even Senate Republicans have made clear they don’t want to focus on,” White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations Ian Sams said in an email.

Democrats have also accused Republicans of using Mayorkas’ impeachment as a campaign issue this fall.

Thin charges

It took Republicans two tries to impeach Mayorkas, eventually making him the first Cabinet official to be impeached in nearly 150 years.

The only Cabinet official in U.S. history that Congress impeached was Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1876. Belknap was unanimously impeached by the House for “criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.” The Senate acquitted Belknap, who’d resigned just before the House vote.

The accusations against Mayorkas are less about corruption and more focused on policy differences, critics of the effort have said.

The first article of impeachment accuses Mayorkas of a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” and the second accuses him of a breach of public trust.

Democrats have said the handful of impeachment inquiry hearings led by House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green hearings failed to provide evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and instead showed policy disagreements.

But House Republicans have still pushed for a Senate trial.

“The American people demand a secure border, an end to this crisis, and accountability for those responsible,” House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana wrote in a letter to Schumer last month. “To table articles of impeachment without ever hearing a single argument or reviewing a piece of evidence would be a violation of our constitutional order and an affront to the American people whom we all serve.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told local reporters last week that he expects Schumer to hold a vote to dismiss or table the motion to impeach Mayorkas. Either option would require only a simple majority of senators.

With the slim majority Democrats have in the Senate, it’s likely the two articles of impeachment go nowhere and Mayorkas remains in his role.

“My preference would be to actually have a trial, but I think the majority is likely to prevent that,” McConnell told reporters.

That same week the impeachment managers are expected to walk over the articles of impeachment to the other chamber, Mayorkas is scheduled to appear before the House Homeland Security Committee – the same panel that approved his articles of impeachment. The hearing to discuss the president’s budget request for DHS for fiscal 2025 is scheduled for April 16.

The House Republican impeachment managers are Green of Tennessee, Michael McCaul of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ben Cline of Virginia, Andrew Garbarino of New York, Michael Guest of Mississippi, Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Laurel Lee of Florida, August Pfluger of Texas and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Campaign issue

Since Republicans flipped the House last year, GOP lawmakers have continued to ramp up their opposition to the Biden administration’s immigration policy.

The topic has also taken center stage in the 2024 presidential campaigns, as Biden and former President Donald Trump paid competing visits to the southern border in March.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee again this year, has campaigned on fears surrounding immigration — as he did in his 2016 presidential campaign, and the Biden administration is struggling to deal with the largest number of migrant encounters at the southern border in more than 20 years.

The first major push by Republicans last year was after the White House ended a pandemic-era tool known as Title 42 that was used to expel migrants. House Republicans the same day passed H.R. 2, a messaging bill that is filled with Trump-era immigration policies.

And following a bipartisan Senate deal that resulted from months of negotiations, House Republicans quickly sided with Trump, who urged them to reject the deal because he wanted to campaign on the issue.

Senate Republicans soon walked away from the deal to overhaul U.S. immigration law that GOP Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona, negotiated.

Tensions in Congress only increased following the collapse of that deal. House Republicans’ aggravation with the White House reached its peak with the impeachment of Mayorkas in late February.

On the eve of Biden’s State of the Union address in early March, House Republicans passed a bill named after a Georgia college student Laken Riley, whose murder has been blamed by conservatives on White House immigration policies.

GOP target

Impeaching Mayorkas has been a goal of Republicans – especially for Greene. She first introduced articles of impeachment for Mayorkas in September of last year, months before any impeachment inquiry began.

Republicans held two public impeachment hearings in January. The first included Republican attorneys general from three states – Montana, Oklahoma, Missouri – and a law scholar. Those attorneys general argued their states had been harmed by the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

The second hearing consisted of two mothers who said that the Biden administration’s immigration policies played a role in their daughters’ deaths.

Mayorkas was not a witness at either hearing.

Green, who has presided over impeachment efforts, has argued that the committee collected evidence in a December report from committee Republicans that found Mayorkas failed to “enforce laws passed by Congress.”

Mayorkas, the son of Jewish Cubans who fled the Nazis and came to the U.S. as political refugees, is the first immigrant and Latino confirmed to lead DHS.

He had a rocky confirmation process in 2021, with several Senate Republicans raising issues about the Biden administration rolling back Trump-era immigration policies.

When the Senate finally confirmed Mayorkas, six Republicans joined Democrats to make the 56-43 confirmation vote bipartisan.?

The six Senate Republicans who voted for his confirmation were Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and then-Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio.

McKenna Horsley contributed to this report.