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.
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:
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 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.
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.”
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.
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.
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:
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Joe Biden has no public events scheduled, but press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at 3.30pm eastern time.
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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.
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The House judiciary committee may this week vote to hold Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in contempt, Punchbowl News reports.