Closing summary
Election day 2024 is still a long way off, but we’re getting closer to 23 August, when Republican presidential candidates will have their first debate. Most of the big names have qualified, but Donald Trump says he might not attend, while his former vice-president, Mike Pence, is struggling to qualify, as are Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson. We’ll see if these candidates can turn it around in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, the White House expressed alarm at the latest news from Israel, where the far-right government has won passage of a key part its judicial overhaul. Opponents of the move say it could threaten the country’s democracy.
Here’s what else happened today:
Texas’s Republican governor has rejected a justice department demand that the state remove floating barriers intended to stop migrants entering from Mexico.
Mitt Romney says donors should cut off support to Republican presidential contenders who have no hope of winning the nomination, in an effort to winnow the race to two candidates and defeat Trump.
House Republicans may decide to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt.
Special counsel Jack Smith has obtained documents from Bernie Kerik, who advised the Trump campaign’s attempt to prove fraud in the 2020 election.
Alabama Republicans are resisting a supreme court order to draw a second majority Black congressional district.
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Mitt Romney, the Utah senator who was the Republican nominee for president in 2012 but lost to Barack Obama, has proposed a strategy to unite the current crop of GOP contenders for the White House against Donald Trump.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Romney, one of Trump’s most outspoken opponents in Congress, calls on donors backing Republican presidential candidates to withdraw their support once it becomes clear that their choice can’t win. The goal is to winnow the field to a two-person race, in hopes the other candidate can keep Trump from returning to office.
Here’s more of what he has to say:
Despite Donald Trump’s apparent inevitability, a baker’s dozen Republicans are hoping to become the party’s 2024 nominee for president. That is possible for any of them if the field narrows to a two-person race before Mr. Trump has the nomination sewn up. For that to happen, Republican megadonors and influencers – large and small – are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed. That decision day should be no later than, say, Feb 26, the Monday following the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
There are incentives for no-hope candidates to overstay their prospects. Coming in behind first place may grease another run in four years or have market value of its own: Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum got paying gigs. And as former New Hampshire Gov John H Sununu has observed, ‘It is fun running for president if you know you cannot win.’
Left to their own inclinations, expect several of the contenders to stay in the race for a long time. They will split the non-Trump vote, giving him the prize. A plurality is all that is needed for winner-take-all primaries.
…
Our party and our country need a nominee with character, driven by something greater than revenge and ego, preferably from the next generation. Family, friends and campaign donors are the only people who can get a lost-cause candidate to exit the race. After Feb 26, they should start doing just that.
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Special counsel obtains documents from ex-adviser to Trump campaign - report
CNN has reported new details of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2022 election loss, including that Bernie Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner who worked with the Trump campaign to uncover fraud, has turned over a trove of documents to the prosecutor.
The materials include research and witness statements produced by the team, which was led by Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani. CNN reports that Kerik will meet with Smith’s prosecutors next month for an interview.
Here’s more from CNN’s story:
Former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik was part of the team led by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani trying to uncover fraud that would swing the election in favor of Trump.
For months, Kerik had tried to shield some of the documents from investigators, citing privilege.
But in recent weeks, Kerik gave the documents to the Trump’s 2024 campaign to review. After that review, the campaign declined to assert privilege, according to Kerik’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who turned over the documents to Smith’s office on Sunday.
“I have shared all of these documents, approximately 600MB, mostly pdfs, with the Special Counsel and look forward to sitting down with them in about 2 weeks to discuss.” Parlatore said.
Kerik is scheduled to sit down for an interview with the special counsel’s office next month, CNN has learned.
Among the materials now in Smith’s possession are witness statements, research and other documents produced by Giuliani’s team.
When the January 6 congressional committee subpoenaed Kerik for documents, he provided a log of his communications that he said he was withholding due to privilege. Those communications have never been disclosed publicly, as the committee did not challenge Kerik’s privilege claims in court.
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The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax authority today announced it would end the practice of sending its employees on unannounced visits of the homes of people who owed taxes.
The IRS received a major infusion of funds to modernize its systems under last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, but wound up in the crosshairs of Republicans, who claimed, without evidence, that the money would pay for armed agents.
In a statement, IRS commissioner Danny Werfel said the decision to end the decades-old practice of dispatching unnamed agents to homes and businesses was part of its modernization plan.
“We are taking a fresh look at how the IRS operates to better serve taxpayers and the nation, and making this change is a common-sense step. Changing this long-standing procedure will increase confidence in our tax administration work and improve overall safety for taxpayers and IRS employees,” Werfel said. The IRS added that the change in policy was supported by its employee union.
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In an interview with CNN, a top official with the NAACP civil rights group explains the problems with Alabama’s new congressional maps:
“This is not about proportional representation — this is about the ability to elect a candidate of choice of the Black community.”
— The Recount (@therecount) July 24, 2023
— @NAACP_LDF President Janai Nelson pushes back on GOP claims that Alabama’s new district lines will increase Black voters’ representation. pic.twitter.com/Wf9IqOZ1vX
Nonetheless, the GOP-led state has gone ahead with maps that appear to violate a supreme court ruling ordering lawmakers to draw a second majority African-American congressional district.
Israel’s far-right government today won a battle in their case to reform the judiciary, but as the Guardian’s Chris McGreal reports, American Jews opposed to the government’s policies against Palestinians say they are feeling optimistic about changing minds in the United States:
Mike Levinson has been pushing back for 40 years and finally thinks he might be getting somewhere.
“There’s a change and the politicians see it. I think it scares them,” said Levinson, holding a sign demanding “Stop Israeli settler violence” as he marched through New York on Thursday.
“There’s a tremendous change going on in the American Jewish community. There are a lot of Jews, especially young people, who are not so quick to automatically and unconditionally support everything that Israel does. People are accepting the fact that it’s OK to be Jewish and criticise Israel.”
Levinson, a Jewish New Yorker, began protesting against Israeli government policies during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. It’s been a long and often lonely road since then as he has sought to get his fellow Americans to pay attention to decades of Israeli occupation, military assaults on the West Bank and Gaza, and the unrelenting expansion of Jewish settlements.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was seen joining striking writers and actors on a picket line outside Netflix’s Manhattan offices today.
Watch as AOC speaks to a crowd of demonstrators at the #ActorsStrike picket line in NYC today pic.twitter.com/JuwmeBxFty
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) July 24, 2023
An overwhelming majority of voters in Ohio support a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee access to abortion in the state, according to a new poll.
A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll showed 58% of Ohio voters backed the amendment enshrining abortion rights. Among those who backed the amendment included a third of Republicans and 85% of independent women.
The proposed amendment states that:
Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.
Under this proposal, abortion could still be banned after “fetal viability”, or whether it can live outside the womb.
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Republican congressman of Florida Matt Gaetz has been defending his decision to introduce legislation to defund investigations into Donald Trump led by special counsel Jack Smith.
Gaetz made the announcement last week, just hours after the former president said he had received a letter identifying him as a target of the justice department’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection, led by Smith.
In an interview with Newsmax, Gaetz said he didn’t “need Jack Smith to tell me what happened on January 6”. He said:
I was there. I saw President Trump encourage people to peacefully and patriotically go into places where permits had been reserved with city government for lawful protest activity.
“I don’t need Jack Smith to tell me what happened on January 6th … I saw President Trump encourage people to peacefully and patriotically go to places where permits had been reserved.”
— The Recount (@therecount) July 24, 2023
— Rep. Gaetz (R-FL) defends bill defunding Special Counsel Smith’s investigation into Trump pic.twitter.com/rAPlhR9kXA
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A key group of Senate Democrats have urged the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to pressure Senator Tommy Tuberville to end his “reckless, dangerous” hold on military nominations.
The letter, led by armed services committee member Senator Mazie Hirono and obtained by NBC, calls on McConnell to “exercise your leadership to protect the readiness of our military”.
Tuberville, who for months has been blocking military nominations in protest of the Pentagon’s policy to reimburse travel expenses for those seeking reproductive care, including abortions, across state lines, has been “threatening our national security”, the letter says. It continues:
We know you share our concerns about the consequences of this hold on our Armed Services, and as the leader of your conference, we urge you to take stronger action to resolve this situation.
The Democratic signatories to the letter all serve on the Senate armed services committee with Tuberville.
The day so far
Election day 2024 is still a long way off, but we’re getting closer to 23 August, when Republican presidential candidates will have their first debate. Most of the big names have qualified, but Donald Trump says he might not attend, while his former vice-president Mike Pence is struggling to qualify, as are Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson. We’ll see if these candidates can turn it around in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, the White House has expressed alarm at the latest news from Israel, where the far-right government has won passage of a key part its judicial overhaul. Opponents of the move say it could threaten the country’s democracy.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Texas’s Republican governor has rejected a justice department demand that it remove floating barriers intended to stop migrants entering from Mexico.
House Republicans may decide to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt.
Alabama Republicans are resisting a supreme court order to draw a second majority Black congressional district.
Republicans have hammered Joe Biden over migration at the southern border ever since he took office, but over the weekend, one GOP lawmaker said he believed both state and federal authorities had mishandled the crisis, the Guardian’s Maya Yang reports:
A Texas Republican representative, Tony Gonzales, has called the current tactics used to deter migrants at the US-Mexico border “not acceptable” and urged the Biden administration and Congress to focus more heavily on legal immigration.
In an interview with CBS’s Face The Nation on Sunday, Gonzales, whose 23rd district in Texas includes 800 miles of the US-Mexico border, said that the border crisis “has been anything but humane” and called recent reports of Texas troopers allegedly pushing small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande “not acceptable”.
“It’s not acceptable and it hasn’t been acceptable for two years … Everything that is happening along the border is just adding fuel to the fire,” Gonzales said. He went on to say that Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who has come under fire from human rights groups over his controversial Operation Lone Star border security program, “is doing everything he can to secure the border”.
Texas rejects Biden administration demand to remove floating barriers targeting migrants
A battle is brewing in Texas between its Republican governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration, which has demanded the state remove floating barriers placed in the Rio Grande to prevent people from crossing from Mexico.
Today, Abbott vowed to defy the request from the justice department, potentially setting up a legal fight with the Democratic administration:
President Biden's Dept. of Justice threatened to sue Texas over the marine barriers we deployed on the Rio Grande.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) July 24, 2023
Mr. President, Texas will see you in court.
Texas will fully utilize our sovereign authority to deal with the humanitarian crisis Biden created at our border. pic.twitter.com/hlnHahwDi8
As the Guardian’s Maya Yang reported last week, the deployment of the floating barriers comes amid reports that Texas authorities are mistreating migrants who cross into the state from Mexico:
Two pregnant migrant women who were trying to turn themselves in to US immigration authorities have alleged that Texas national guard soldiers refused to provide them with water.
Speaking to CNN at a shelter in Eagle Pass, Texas, the two women, identified as Carmen from Honduras and María from El Salvador, recounted their experiences at the border amid recent reports of “inhumane” behavior by American border authorities.
“They told us it was a crime to cross into the US and that we should return to Mexico,” Carmen, who said she is six months pregnant, told CNN. She added that she and her husband had initially tried to cross the Rio Grande on 12 July but were stopped by Texas national guard soldiers.
White House calls Israel judicial overhaul vote 'unfortunate'
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has weighed in on events in Israel, where today the far-right government won passage of a key part its judicial overhaul that opponents warn threaten its democracy.
Here’s what she had to say:
As a lifelong friend of Israel, President Biden has publicly and privately expressed his views that major changes in a democracy to be enduring must have as broad a consensus as possible. It is unfortunate that the vote today took place with the slimmest possible majority. We understand talks are ongoing and likely to continue over the coming weeks and months to forge a broader compromise even with the Knesset in recess. The United States will continue to support the efforts of President Herzog and other Israeli leaders as they seek to build a broader consensus through political dialogue.
Speaking of the House, Punchbowl News reports that Republicans may use the chamber’s powers to hold in contempt … Mark Zuckerberg.
There’s no doubt that social networks like Facebook and Instagram, all of which are under Zuckerberg’s Meta umbrella, play important roles in politics globally, but dragging Zuckerberg before Congress is a little unusual. As Punchbowl News reports, the dispute concerns Meta’s cooperation with subpoenas issued by judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan, who has used his panel to launch a number of investigations intended to prove malfeasance by Democrats:
The House Judiciary Committee is considering a vote this week to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt. While this is a mostly symbolic step for the House GOP majority, it would be a huge escalation of Republicans’ war on Big Tech — if it happens.
Judiciary Republicans claim Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, hasn’t been cooperating with the panel’s effort to investigate potential censorship by Big Tech, including the failure to hand over internal company documents.
“Meta has critical information that it has not turned over to the committee regarding federal government efforts to censor speech online and how Meta responded to those efforts,” Russell Dye, spokesperson for Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told us.
“It is imperative the committee get these materials and we will take whatever actions necessary to facilitate that end,” Dye added.
The committee is eyeing voting on the resolution Thursday, according to multiple sources.
Last month, the conservative-dominated supreme court gave voting rights advocates – and Democrats hoping to retake the House of Representatives – a surprise victory when it struck down Alabama’s congressional maps and ordered lawmakers to draw a second majority African-American district. But as the Associated Press reports, the state’s Republican leaders are trying to defy the ruling:
Alabama Republican lawmakers say they are trying to satisfy a landmark US supreme court order to draw a new district giving a voice to Black voters, but with hours to go before a court-ordered deadline on Friday, experts said proposals fell far short of what the law requires.
The Republican-controlled state house and senate were scheduled to meet on Friday and could advance separate plans increasing the share of Black voters in Alabama’s second congressional district. Legislative leaders say they intended to meet the deadline, meaning the two chambers must reach one plan.
Both plans preserve the current Black majority of the seventh district. But neither plan comes close to creating a second Black majority district in a state that is 27% Black.
Mike Pence struggling to qualify for first Republican debate
Back on the campaign trail, the Washington Post has an incisive look at Mike Pence, who, as a former vice-president, should be running a strong race for the GOP’s presidential nomination.
Instead, Pence has yet to qualify for the 23 August GOP debate, and is struggling to raise enough funds, as was plain during the candidate’s swing through New Hampshire. Here’s more from the story:
As he finished up his remarks at an outdoor garden party hosted by a former state senator, Mike Pence made one final request to prospective voters.
“Even one dollar, although I want to emphasize you can give a lot more, would be a help tonight, even before you go to bed tonight, go online, send us a buck or whatever,” the former vice president said, dressed in a crisp light-blue button-down and navy slacks on a hot summer day in the Granite State. “We’re working around-the-clock to make sure we get enough donors to be up on that debate stage and I’ll see you all at the inauguration.”
One day later, nearly 80 miles away at the Wicwas Lake Grange in Meredith, N.H., state Sen. Timothy Lang Sr. stood alongside Pence at an evening town hall with a similar plea, encouraging attendees to grab a “Mike Pence for President” card with a QR code: “If you want to donate just a dollar, it counts toward the 40,000.”
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The Guardian’s Michael Sainato spoke to Sean O’Brien, leader of the Teamsters union, whose UPS employees are threatening to embark on what could be a major strike starting next week:
Sean O’Brien has a long family legacy at the Teamsters: his great-grandfather, grandfather and father were all Teamster union members in Boston. O’Brien joined the union after dropping out of college at age 19 to haul equipment on construction sites in 1991. Thirty-two years later, he is on the verge of leading the union in one of the biggest – and costliest – strikes at a single private employer in US history.
The Teamsters has 1.2 million members, making it one of the largest unions in the world. Its membership is diverse, ranging from police to bakers, but it is most famous for representing freight drivers and warehouse workers. Shipping and logistics giant UPS is the single largest employer in the Teamsters Union.
Under O’Brien, the Teamster’s general president, the contract negotiations between the two have become a test case for a union giant that is flexing its muscles after corporations have stonewalled nascent labor movements at Starbucks and Amazon with long delays toward a first contract.
“We are going to set the tone – and we have – for how organized labor should deal with corporate America, with politicians, and how they should stand up and fight. We will set the example through this situation with UPS whether we get a deal or if UPS chooses not to do the right thing to strike themselves,” said O’Brien.
Stepping away from the campaign trail for minute, we are about a week away from what will be one of the biggest single-employer strikes in US history, if UPS workers walk off the job on 1 August. The Guardian’s Dharna Noor reports that intense heat – like much of the United States experienced last week – is one of the big sticking points in the ongoing talks:
As a UPS delivery driver in Dallas, Texas, Seth Pacic is intimately familiar with the dangers of extreme heat. After a long day’s work through record-breaking temperatures in summer 2011, he found himself dry heaving in the parking lot, incapable of driving home until he spent an hour and a half in the air-conditioned office.
“It was one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had in my entire life,” he said. “I didn’t feel like I fully recovered for a couple of weeks.”
For some, the heat has had even more serious consequences. Last June, Pacic’s friend and coworker had a heat stroke while driving home from work; he is still recuperating, Pacic said. That same summer, 24-year-old UPS driver Esteban Chavez collapsed and died in California as temperatures soared into the high 90s; his family filed a wrongful death lawsuit and later settled with UPS. And the year before that, Jose Cruz Rodriguez Jr, 23, died of a heatstroke while driving a UPS truck in Waco, Texas.
Whether or not Donald Trump shows up to the first debate of GOP presidential candidates, it’s tough out there for his competitors. The Guardian’s David Smith took a look at the fortunes of some of the other Republicans who have thrown their hats into the ring, and what he found was bleak:
For Asa Hutchinson, former governor of Arkansas, there were boos and chants of “Trump! Trump!”. For Francis Suarez, mayor of Miami, there were jeers and cries of “Traitor!” And perhaps most tellingly, there was no Florida governor Ron DeSantis at all.
The recent Turning Point USA conference brought thousands of young conservatives to Florida and there was no doubting the main attraction: former president Donald Trump, who made a glitzy entrance accompanied by giant stage sparklers. In a less than rigorous poll, 86% of attendees gave Trump as their first choice for president; DeSantis, who polled 19% last year, was down to 4%.
Events and numbers like this are cause for sleepless nights among those Republican leaders and donors desperate to believe it would be different this time. The Never Trump forces bet heavily on DeSantis as the coming man and the premise that Trump’s campaign would collapse under the weight of myriad legal problems.
But what about Doug Burgum, Asa Hutchinson and, perhaps most surprisingly, Mike Pence?
The three are considered among the major GOP presidential contenders, but Politico reports that none of them has qualified for the debate stage. It’s a bit of a shock for Pence, since he was Trump’s vice-president for four years, though has very publicly fallen out with him. Here’s why he hasn’t yet made the cut:
Former Vice President Mike Pence has also hit the polling threshold. But unlike the other six candidates, it’s not clear if he will meet the individual donor threshold — 40,000 unique donors, with 200 donors in 20 different states or territories — that the others have. “We will qualify. Getting 40,000 donors in just a few short weeks is a challenge,” Pence said on “Fox and Friends” on last week. “We’re not offering gift cards, not offering kickbacks or tickets to soccer games, just traveling.”
The fates of Burgum and Hutchinson are less surprising. Burgum is the current governor of North Dakota and Hutchinson the former governor of Arkansas who also worked in George W Bush’s administration, but neither is much of a household name. Both appear to have several obstacles ahead of them if they want to make the debate stage:
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is only one national poll away from meeting the polling threshold, after registering at 1 percent in the Fox Business Iowa poll and a second survey from the same outlet in South Carolina, also released on Sunday. But he still needs to amass 40,000 donors and was well short of that number at last count.
Some long-shot candidates have rolled out outlandish schemes to try to meet the donor threshold. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, for example, has promised people who give him a buck $20 gift cards in return, and he said earlier this week he had hit his goal.
Burgum — who has run millions of dollars worth of TV advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire — is still in search of two national polls showing him at at least 1 percent, after meeting that threshold in Iowa and a previously-released survey from the University of New Hampshire in the Granite State.
Trump mulls skipping first debate
Donald Trump is a shoo-in for the first debate of GOP presidential candidates, scheduled for 23 August in Milwaukee. In order to qualify, the party requires candidates to pledge to support the eventual nominee, have at least 40,000 unique donors spread across a minimum of 20 states, and poll at least 1% in at least three national polls.
The former president blows through all those criteria. He’s been raking in cash and dominating polls ever since announcing a renewed White House campaign last year. But in typical Trump fashion, he says he’s considering skipping the first debate. He told Reuters why in an interview last month:
In a telephone interview with Reuters, Trump said “possibly not” when asked if he would be at the debate, to be hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee on Aug. 23.
The debate will be the first chance for voters to see the Republican presidential candidates square off against each other.
Trump called Fox News, which he has criticized for not covering his campaign events, a “hostile network” and said he saw little merit in debating candidates like former New Jersey governor Chris Christie who are far behind him in polling.
“Why would I give them time to make statements? Why would I do that when I’m leading them by 50 points and 60 points,” Trump said.
Trump remains at the top as lineup for first GOP debate emerges
Good morning, US politics blog readers. One month from today, we will be digesting the aftermath of the first GOP presidential debate, which is set for 23 August in Milwaukee. Such events are a staple of the presidential nomination process, and two polls released over the weekend revealed the contours of the Republican race are largely the same as ever. Fox Business surveys of early voting states Iowa and South Carolina show Donald Trump with a big lead over all his competitors. In the former, Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott are the distant runners-up for second and third place, respectively, while in the latter, it’s former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and then DeSantis.
But the polls are not all bad news for the Republicans aiming to oust Trump as the party’s nominee. Six GOP candidates have qualified for the debate stage based on, among other things, their polling results, Politico reports. These include Trump, DeSantis, Haley and Scott, along with Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy, and it’s possible other candidates, such as Mike Pence, will qualify in the weeks to come. Debates can give candidates important opportunities to stand out in the field, but whether those who qualify show up is a different matter. We’ll tell you more about that later today.
Here’s what’s happening today:
Joe Biden has no public events scheduled, but press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at 3.30pm eastern time.
Remember Allen West? Or Scott Walker? They’ll be among the ex-lawmakers speaking at the National Conservative Student Conference, which begins today in Washington DC. Ramaswamy, who is actually seeking office, is the sole presidential candidate billed to appear.
The House judiciary committee may this week vote to hold Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in contempt, Punchbowl News reports.
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