<Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has complained that his creditors are placing "onerous punitive and overreaching" conditions on his emergence from bankruptcy.

Giuliani's creditors had submitted a proposed set of conditions which they want a New York judge to impose on Giuliani before allowing him to come out of bankruptcy.

They want their lawyer, Philip Dublin, to be appointed a trustee over all of Giuliani's finances, with the power to sell Giuliani's $6.5 million New York penthouse for the benefit of his creditors.

In a letter to bankruptcy judge, Sean Lane, on July 16, four of Giuliani's lawyers said that their client had read the proposed conditions and strongly opposed them.

The lawyers, from the Berger, Fischoff law firm in New York, complained that the creditors "want it both ways."

"They want the case dismissed while they exercise complete control over the debtor," they wrote.

Newsweek reached out to Giuliani's spokesperson via email for comment on Tuesday.

Giuliani declared bankruptcy in December after a jury awarded $148 million to two Georgia election workers who had won a defamation lawsuit against him. As an attorney for Donald Trump in 2020, Giuliani falsely accused mother and daughter Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss of adding ballots for Joe Biden, who won the state.

Giuliani does not object to a lien being placed on his East 66th Street penthouse in the name of Global Risk Data LLC "to ensure they are paid the fees awarded by the court."

In May, the court allowed the creditors to hire Global Risk Data to conduct a forensic accounting investigation into Giuliani's finances.

However, Giuliani does not want to transfer $350,000 to Global Risk Data, as was proposed by the creditors. This was meant as an initial payment until the firm had calculated how much its services would cost.

His lawyers submitted their own proposed order in which Giuliani would emerge from bankruptcy without a trustee placed over his estate.

His lawyer's filing states that Giuliani consents to Global Risk Data "placing a lien on the New York apartment to ensure they are paid the fees awarded by the court."

They said that Giuliani's proposed order is "consistent with the court's wishes" and gives Global Risk Data "adequate protection."

Giuliani Attorney Gary Fischoff told Judge Sean Lane on July 10 that the former mayor's estate was worth about $8 million, which could "easily" be consumed by legal fees if Giuliani remains bankrupt.

Fischoff said that Giuliani, who is now an "80-year-old disbarred attorney," may not want to work if it is to serve a bankruptcy trustee and would be better off making money for his debtors outside of bankruptcy.>

The ignorant twat had no problem making others' lives miserable, yet wants everything his way now.

<State and federal Republicans are joining a lawsuit challenging an executive order from President Biden aimed at registering up to 3.5 million new voters before Election Day.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose joined with Reps. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, and Beth Van Dune, R-Texas, in accusing Biden of "weaponizing" federal institutions. The lawsuit, filed with the America First Policy Institute, argues the Biden administration is attempting to turn federal election agencies into a "Democratic turnout machine."

"The Biden Administration is once again weaponizing federal agencies, this time to steer taxpayer resources to liberal activist groups who want to sway the election" LaRose told Fox News Digital in a statement Tuesday. "This is a cynical attempt to turn government agencies into a Democratic turnout machine, and it’s wrong. That’s why I’m joining this lawsuit and working to hold the administration accountable," he added.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the northern district of Texas, relates to an executive order Biden signed in March 2021 that sought to register 3.5 million additional voters before the 2024 election, and also mobilize them to vote.

The administration justified the move through the National Voter Registration Act, but the lawsuit argues that the law has never been interpreted to authorize such an action. The lawsuit further highlights the outside groups the White House has worked with to implement the order, many of which are left wing.

"Instead of instilling policies that Americans want and need, they turn to the well-oiled DC swamp filled to the brim with deep state loyalists to illegally register voters in an attempt to help them win," Jackson said in a statement to AFPI.

"To facilitate the EO’s implementation, the White House has held listening sessions with far-left groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU, Demos, and Black Lives Matter, which strongly suggests that the EO is intended to provide a partisan advantage to liberal Democrats," AFPI said.

The White House dismissed the lawsuit in comments to Fox News Digital, arguing Republicans are only trying to limit the voting pool.

"These are baseless claims brought by the very people who spread debunked lies about the 2020 elections and have used those same debunked lies to advance laws across the nation that make it harder to vote and easier to undermine the will of the people," White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson said.

"The Biden-Harris Administration will continue working to protect the voting rights of every eligible American regardless of their political affiliation," Patterson added.

AFPI is seeking a preliminary injunction to block the Biden administration from further implementation of the order until litigation is complete.>

<President Joe Biden on Tuesday made his first major speech since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, lamenting how heated politics have become, but pivoting back to fiery attacks on the former president's claims and policy proposals -- avoiding personal attacks but at one point accusing him of "lying like hell."

As the GOP gathered for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in battleground Wisconsin, he traveled to Las Vegas to rally Black voters in battleground Nevada -- in what was billed as an official event but sounded like a campaign rally.

"I'm truly honored to be here at this tense moment in this country," he said, addressing the NAACP's national convention, referring to Saturday's shooting just three days before.

"It is a tense moment just a few days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, we're grateful he was not seriously injured," Biden said. "We continue to pray for him and his family. It's time for an important conversation in this country."

"Our politics has gotten too heated," he continued. "As I've said in the Oval Office on Sunday night, as I've made clear throughout my presidency, we all have responsibilities to lower the temperature and condemn violence in any form. You gotta remember, in America we're not enemies, we're friends, we're neighbors."

But Biden did not refrain from relentlessly criticizing the former president in his 30-minute speech, saying that "just because you must lower the temperature … doesn't mean we should stop telling the truth of who you are, what you've done, what you'll do."

Biden used Saturday's shooting to launch into a forceful condemnation of gun violence in America, nearly yelling when he cited the impact of gun violence on kids.

"You know, the pain, the price of violence. You understand if you're going to talk about standing against violence, you must stand against all violence," Biden said, addressing NAACP members, before listing off other notable acts of violence, including the killing of George Floyd, and the events of January 6, 2021.

"More children in America died of gunshot wounds than any other reason. That is stunning and that is sick," he later almost shouted.

Biden appeared careful to focus on policy differences and Trump's record -- and not calling Trump himself, as he has before, a "threat to democracy."

"Just think about where the Black community was when I came into office. Think about how far the Black community has come. We still got a long way to go. COVID no longer controls our lives. Our economy has not figuratively, literally, the strongest economy in the world; historic low Black unemployment, record growth of black small business. Let me say this again, because Trump is lying like hell about it," he said. "Black unemployment hit a record low under Biden-Harris administration."

"As Harry Truman said, 'I've never deliberately given anyone hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell,'" Biden said. "That's what I'm gonna do. Well, here's the truth about why Donald Trump's presidency was hell for Black Americans."

The president cited Trump's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, his tax cut which benefitted wealthy Americans, and his pandemic policies that Biden said were "especially devastating to Black communities."

Then, capitalizing on Trump's comment in last month's debate in which he referenced "Black jobs," Biden said, "Folks, I know what a Black job is: it's the Vice President of the United States! I know what a Black job is: the first Black president in American history, Barack Obama!" as audience members roared in approval....>

<....In a notable comment amid some calls for him to step aside for someone else to lead the ticket, primarily Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden said of her, "And by the way, she's not only a great vice president, she could be president of the United States."

At one point, Biden took aim individually at Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump's newly selected running mate, seeking to tie him, as he has done with Trump, to Project 2025.

"They're lying about their Project 2025. They want to deny your freedom: the freedom to vote, have your vote counted. They'd impose a nationwide ban on abortion. His new vice president, if you ever had any doubt, man, just take a look at what he's been saying," Biden said. "They want to prosecute their political enemies, they want to cut Social Security and Medicare."

Earlier in his remarks, though it's become the focus of his campaign's messaging in recent weeks, Biden flubbed his delivery of his anti-Project 2025 argument multiple times, at one point calling it "this project of 2024" and another "their program on 2025."

At another point, when announcing his administration's proposal to place a 5% cap on rent increases, the president seemed to have lost track of the teleprompter's words, pausing and leaning in before falsely saying the cap would be "no more than 55 dollars." About two minutes later, Biden correctly said it was 5%.

These flubs come as Biden's every comment under an intense microscope after last month's poor debate performance.

Though focus on the president's age has taken a temporary backseat with the attempted assassination of Trump and the addition of Vance to the Republican ticket, Biden alluded to the difficult two weeks he has endured after his debate performance.

"Harry Truman was a president who was often counted out. He was also known for something else," Biden said. "The story goes, Truman said, 'You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.' Well, guess what? Last couple weeks – after the last couple weeks, I know what he means," Biden said.

Biden has seen softening support among Black voters in recent polls, with Democrats fearing their base will sit out the election, but the attendees at Tuesday's event were largely in his corner, welcoming him with cheers of "Four more years!"

Shavon Arline-Bradley, the president and chief executive of National Council of Negro Women, one of those who spoke ahead of Biden, said Black women were going to stay in engaged.

"In the spirit of Bethune and Height this morning," she said, referencing civil rights icons Mary McLeod Bethune and Dr. Dorothy Height, "we are here to light under the feet of this country and say, 'not on our watch."

"Black women, we're going to do our part," Arline-Bradley continued. "Black women, we're going to do our part to save democracy again. We're going to have women on the ballot, again. We're going to organize the voters again."

Arline-Bradley later adding, "And Black women we will never be silenced ever, ever, ever again.">

<Former President Donald Trump enjoyed a major legal victory when, on Monday, July 15, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed special counsel Jack Smith's Mar-a-Lago documents charges against him.

The Trump appointee made her decision on the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump received his party's presidential nomination for the third time. Trump, who had survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Western Pennsylvania only days earlier, appeared on stage with a bandaged ear.

Cannon's ruling has drawn vehement condemnation from Trump's critics, who are arguing that she was oblivious to legal precedent when she agreed with Trump's legal team that Smith's appointment as special counsel was illegitimate. The former president's attorneys claimed that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland had no business appointing Smith without him being confirmed in a U.S. Senate vote.

In a scathing editorial published by Albany, New York's Times Union on July 17, the publication's editorial board argues that Cannon's ruling "had nothing to do with the merits of the case."

"It is an unusual legal argument, to be sure, and one that overturns several decades of precedent, including a unanimous 1974 Supreme Court decision holding that President Richard Nixon was required to respond to a subpoena from a special prosecutor," the Times Union board explains. "The use of such counsels has been common in the decades since. But in a 93-page order, Ms. Cannon argues that no specific federal statute authorizes the appointment of special counsels or gives them prosecutorial power."

The board continues, "She also contends that allowing special counsels to operate under the control of the attorney general is a violation of the Constitution's separation of powers."

The Times Union writers note, however, that the point of appointing a special counsel is avoiding conflicts of interest.

"It is not the role of a district court judge — Ms. Cannon sits in Fort Pierce, Fla. — to overturn precedent set by higher courts, or to write laws," the Times Union board writes. "After all, if Congress disagreed with how special prosecutors are being used, it could respond with laws clarifying precisely when and how they should be deployed. That Congress has not done so over a period stretching back decades suggests it has no such objections."

The board adds, "Ms. Cannon, then, is engaging in an aggressive form of judicial activism and displaying the very overreach that conservatives have long decried, at least when they find the outcome displeasing. Her decision is likely to be overturned on appeal, but whether the case goes forward will almost certainly depend on the result of the November presidential election.">

<The Republican Party's quadrennial convention is underway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this week, but once journalist covering the event observed that one high-profile Republican is "conspicuously" absent: Former Vice President Mike Pence.

In a Tuesday article for Mother Jones, reporter Tim Murphy wrote that former President Donald Trump's second-in-command not attending this year's Republican National Convention (RNC) didn't go unnoticed by other attendees, either. While he was waiting for Trump's official announcement of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his 2024 running mate, Murphy asked several delegates at Milwaukee's Fiserv Forum what they thought of Trump's first running mate refusing to endorse his former boss in his third bid for the White House.

"He was a great vice president until he wasn’t," Nevada Republican Mike Bassett told Murphy. He added that "loyalty to Trump" was one of his own main criterion [sic] in the former president's search for a new running mate.

Florida Republican Rose Roque, who was attending the convention with her daughter, Rose Rodriguez, told Murphy that she didn't "even want to say" what she thought about Pence when he asked her. But her daughter was more outspoken about the former vice president who declined to intervene in Congress' certification of the 2020 Electoral College vote count on January 6, 2021.

"He betrayed his country," Rodriguez said. "Although he thought he was doing the correct thing, according to him, he let himself be poisoned. And I think he already was poisoned—he came in already being that way."

Before Vance was announced as Trump's pick for vice president, Murphy reported that other delegates ruminated about other options. Those favored by delegates include disgraced former two-star General Michael Flynn (Trump's former National Security Adviser) and others that would help the GOP shore up support from key voting blocs, like women and people of color.

"I did talk to delegates who wanted governing or managerial experience, strong communication skills, and even a bit of gender or racial diversity from their VP. Republicans floated Byron Donalds and Tulsi Gabbard. More than one person pined for Glenn Youngkin," Murphy wrote. "But Pence had cast a shadow over the search."

New Jersey Republican Michael Rosen opined that Pence "seemed to be trying to do a balancing act and it never really worked," culminating in the January 6 insurrection in which a mob of Trump supporters roamed the halls of the U.S. Capitol chanting "hang Mike Pence." He said Trump needed "someone who’s gonna work with him and not gonna leave him in a lurch at the end."

"[Pence] should have worked with Trump when he was going through all that stuff instead of throwing his hands up and saying ‘I’ve got no control,'" Rosen said. "We were kind of left with nothing.">

<Even before Teamsters President Sean O'Brien made a historic move on Monday by being the first president of the union to speak at the Republican National Convention, fellow members were upset by him getting cozy with Donald Trump.

In a scathing op-ed published July 10, Teamsters Vice President at Large John Palmer said O'Brien's appearance "regardless of the message, only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and President I've seen in my lifetime seem palatable."

And in January, when O'Brien met with Trump, James Curbeam, the national chairman of the Teamsters National Black Caucus, called the former president a "scab masquerading as a pro-union advocate," The New York Times reported.

Amid scrutiny from his union members and some right-wing anti-union groups at the RNC, O'Brien made it clear his goal of speaking at the convention was to invite bipartisan cooperation in achieving the labor movement's goals.

"The Teamsters are here to say we are not beholden to anyone or any party," O'Brien declared onstage in front of hundreds of delegates and the former president himself.

Although O'Brien may have had good intentions in trying to uphold his union's interests, nationally syndicated radio host and Teamster member Rick Smith said O'Brien was the Republican Party's "dancing show pony that they're gonna ride to the election."

Smith told Business Insider that he agreed with much of what O'Brien said onstage: In a room full of conservatives, the union boss railed against the US Chamber of Commerce and The Business Roundtable, "corporatists," and "greedy employers." But O'Brien also applauded Trump, calling the former president "a candidate who is not afraid of hearing from new, loud and often critical voices."

"The problem is none of those people in that room care," Smith said. "They knew why O'Brien was there. He was there to legitimize Trump's horrible record."

Smith said O'Brien also sent a message that "both sides suck for workers," which Smith said is untrue. He pointed out, for example, Biden putting billions toward bailing out the Teamster's pension fund in 2022.

"Going into the RNC and saying 'everybody sucks and it's all bad' was of kind of a slap in the face, considering Joe Biden bailed out the Teamsters pension fund, considering that Donald Trump's record was so bad, and Joe Biden's has been very good," Smith said.

O'Brien and the Teamsters have continued to defend his decision to speak at the right-wing convention.

"The Teamsters have never been afraid of democracy, but self-interested ideologues — on the left and the right, within and outside the union — are terrified of democracy," Teamsters spokeswoman Kara Deniz previously told the Times.

Smith said that in the case of bipartisanship, "every time we have some bipartisanship, it's working people who take it on the chin." Instead, he said, O'Brien's appeal to the Republican Party will divide workers.

"In a time when we have unprecedented interest in people joining and forming unions, this kind of division in the labor movement, I don't think it's helpful. This kind of platforming of someone destructive is not helpful," Smith said.

The Teamsters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.>

F***ing sellout.

<A new kind of Republican Party is revealing itself at its national convention.

All the markers of a MAGA jamboree are on display, from hulking Donald Trump iconography inside the convention hall to rhinestone Trump cowboy hats and red Trump-Vance placards.

But look closer and the party is changing — increasingly embracing economic populism at home and isolationism abroad, shifting its decades-long position on abortion and not only leery of, but hostile to, certain business interests.

Trump’s newly-announced running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, has said that the GOP is in a "late Republican period," and the party needs to "get pretty wild, and pretty far out there.”

And that’s exactly what’s unfolding in Milwaukee. It wasn’t just Trump’s selection of Vance, the opponent of Ukraine aid who once said “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” It was also the party’s adoption of a slimmed down abortion platform and the criticisms of corporations it heard on the RNC floor.

It’s the result of a confluence of economic, demographic and cultural changes — including a newly ascendant labor movement, which the GOP finds itself increasingly attracted to, at least nominally. Together, those forces have only accelerated the GOP’s flirtation with a renovation of the party.

“I think what we're witnessing now is a full on frontal assault on conservatism,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence from 2019 to 2021, who is so estranged from this new version of the party that he was advised to skip the convention. “And you can look at the platform walking away from issues like life and traditional marriage, embracing tariffs across the board, but I feel like yesterday and last night went a step further when you have speakers that are basically saying NATO was at fault for Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and referring to job creators as ‘corporate pigs’ and announcing national right to work.”

He said, “That’s an enormous departure from where our party has been and I don't think it's a prescription for success.”

Perhaps most shocking to some more traditionalist Republicans was the fiery speech from International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien — the first Teamster to speak at an RNC in its 121-year history. In his remarks, he trespassed on traditional economic conservatism, decrying the “corporate elite,” outlining the harm of Right to Work laws, which make it harder to organize and have been passed mostly in GOP-run states, and called the Chamber of Commerce "unions for big business.”

David Urban, the former 2016 Trump campaign adviser, told POLITICO he looked at his CNN co-host David Axelrod, the former Barack Obama adviser, and asked him while off air: “Am I at the right convention?”

O’Brien’s remarks left some watching — in the hall and from afar — nearly physically uncomfortable, even as they slowly began to embrace a new brand of Republican base voter.

“I was starting to squirm a little bit on some of that stuff, but I also know how you blend that, and that's what makes up my support,” said Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana, who is running for governor and is one of the wealthiest members of Congress. “And that doesn't mean you take the most outrageous stuff that he might have said, but you don't dismiss some of the rest of it, and you find a new coalition.”

Or, as Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio put it: “I think President Trump has made our party what it always should have been, which is a populist party rooted in conservative principles.”

For years, the GOP has been undergoing a sea change as a working class party — all revolving around the organizing principle of America First. At times during his presidency, Trump reverted to more traditionalist GOP ideology on issues including tax cuts, which he cut in 2017. But it was his selection of Vance that could ultimately cement the party’s trajectory toward a different point on the horizon.

“Vance was the most distinctive choice he could make, in part to send a signal: I think coverage has rightly captured what we are certainly hearing which is that the business community and Wall Street and so forth, are, are deeply dismayed and concerned — as they should be,” said Oren Cass, a former economic adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, and a close associate of Vance’s who spoke with him last week.

In the coming years, Cass, the founder of the conservative think tank American Compass, a group aimed at developing a new center-right consensus on policy, predicted “a multi-ethnic, working-class conservatism as the foundation of an actual Republican Party that could achieve a durable governing majority.”....>

<....In Milwaukee, there have been vestiges of the old party in view, too. Nikki Haley, who championed a Reaganesque policy agenda during her presidential campaign received a smattering of boos as she strode on stage to speak on Tuesday night, even as Trump himself applauded.

"We must not only be a unified party, we must also expand our party," Haley said. "We are so much better when we are bigger. We are stronger when we welcome people into our party, when we have different backgrounds and experiences."

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who ran to Trump’s right in the primary, also received boos. The reaction to both Haley and DeSantis showed that, even though both candidates critiqued Trump from different vantage points on policy, it’s Trump’s personality — not his policies — that most endears him to the base. And Trump and his allies are coaxing the Republican Party away from the old party orthodoxy even more than during his first term — at least, quite literally, on paper.

The new GOP platform is the best example of this. The platform is now missing any mention of marriage being between one man and one woman, a longtime staple of party principles. Instead, it talks about promoting “a culture that values the sanctity of marriage” and “the foundational role of families,” in what has been largely hailed as a victory for pro-LGBTQ+ Republicans but a blow to the party’s socially conservative wing.

“This is a British Tory platform,” said former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. “This is not a conservative platform. Trump is aiming right down the middle.”

And then there is the matter of abortion. A contingent of anti-abortion delegates, citing the need to come together in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump, dropped their fight against changes to the party platform that they argued backtracks on decades of GOP progress on the issue.

And most anti-abortion organizations have lined up behind the platform — largely because it mentions the 14th Amendment, which conservatives have long argued protects life beginning at conception. Still, the document reflects Trump’s leave-abortion-to-the-states approach in the post-Roe era, a position that leaves abortion broadly accessible in many states.

Delegates to the convention are largely embracing the former president’s view. Kip Christianson, a delegate from Minnesota who sat on the platform committee, described himself as “pro-life” but acknowledges that’s not the position of his state, where abortion is legal until a fetus is viable.

“This platform is a platform that is responsive and supportive of where America is actually at and where states like Minnesota are actually at. That’s all this is,” Christianson said.

He was milling outside of the convention center Tuesday, where the evening programming was just kicking off.

“We’re a big tent party,” he said.>

<Republicans wrapped up day two of the Republican National Convention by attacking President Joe Biden's record on immigration and border security, and uniting around former President Donald Trump.

Speakers on the second day of the RNC made several bold claims on immigration. Among the most eye-catching was the suggestion that 11.5 million people have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally during Biden's watch. Newsweek has fact-checked this and four other claims made about immigration to the U.S.

Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican Senator, told those gathered: "There's an invasion on our southern border. A literal invasion: 11.5 million people have crossed our border illegally under Joe Biden."

The remark appears to be misleading, as U.S. Customs and Border Protection have reported about 8.1 million encounters with migrants at the southern border since Biden's inauguration. Official figures show about 10 million "migrant encounters" nationwide.

The picture is further complicated by the difference between "encounters" and individual migrants some migrants cross the border multiple times, encountering authorities on each occasion.

Biden has partially shut down asylum processing along the border, and he has embraced restrictive border policies amid a growing appetite for migration controls among both Democrat and Republican voters.

Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana said: "On the border, Biden and Harris opened it up to the entire world."

The reality is more nuanced. The Biden administration recently implemented sweeping restrictions on asylum at the US-Mexico border, with legislation to prohibit migrants from entering the country illegally and to stop border posts becoming overwhelmed. The administration also kept in place a key Trump policy that gave border agents the power to turn back migrants quickly.

It is true that migrants have crossed the border at record levels under Biden's leadership; however, in recent months, the numbers have fallen. About 84,000 migrants crossed the southern border unlawfully in June, according to official data. That is the lowest monthly level since Biden assumed the presidency in January 2021.

Eric Hovde, the Republican running for Senate in Wisconsin, claimed Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris "opened" the southern border to "criminals and terrorists."

There have been high-profile cases of illegal migrants who have been charged with serious crimes, including the murder of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray and the high-profile killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.

However, Biden has never supported an open border policy

While he has reversed some immigration policies from the Trump administration, such as a policy that forced migrants to await their asylum hearings in Mexico, he has enforced other restrictive border policies that limit asylum processing and mirror some legislation enacted by Trump.

The Biden administration has conducted over 4 million deportations and expulsions since 2021, according to data gathered by the Department of Homeland Security.

In the same speech the Wisconsin Senate candidate further claimed that Biden's "open border" policy has "emboldened drug cartels to flood our streets with fentanyl, killing over 100,000 Americans every year."

Eric Hovde's statement appears to be inaccurate. While US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in May that an estimated 107,500 people in the US died from an overdose, this figure covered all types of drugs. The number of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids in 2023, including fentanyl, was approximately 75,000, according to official data.

Kari Lake said Tuesday that Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, her likely opponent in the state's US Senate race this fall, voted last week to let undocumented immigrants "illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election."

Lake said: "Just last week, Ruben Gallego voted to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election." It has been illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections since 1996.

Gallego did vote against a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. However, when Gallego voted against the bill, he said "only U.S. citizens should vote."

Gallego argued the bill would create obstacles for Arizonans to vote because of the requirements to provide proof of citizenship.>

<After former President Donald Trump tapped Sen. JD Vance as his running mate on Monday, all eyes turned to the 39-year-old Ohio Republican who was elected to office less than two years ago.

In 2022, Vance was mostly known for his best-selling memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy." But after Trump backed him in the GOP primary that year, the first-time candidate surged in the contest and went on to face then-Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan in the general election.

Many Republicans saw Vance as a candidate who would be able to easily connect with the blue-collar workers who generally decide election results in Ohio, the onetime quintessential Midwestern battleground that in recent years has taken on a redder tint.

But the race between Vance and Ryan remained extremely competitive until the end, even as other statewide Republicans had easy victories that year.

That race may be a distant memory to some Republicans, but it shows that Vance's candidacy presents some notable risks for the party as it looks to retake the White House this fall.

In 2022, Ryan, who hails from the blue-collar Mahoning Valley, ran an aggressive campaign in which he hammered Republicans over the economy and sought to claim dominance over Vance on the issue.

Ryan's focus was centered squarely on Ohio. He eschewed national Democrats, preferring to campaign alongside his fellow Ohioan Sen. Sherrod Brown instead of traveling the state with President Joe Biden. And he courted Republicans and conservative-leaning Independents, arguing that he wouldn't be beholden to his party.

It was the sort of populist mantle that Vance, in many ways, was also looking to capture.

But Vance's populism was largely tied to Trump's "America First" policies, especially as they related to the economy and foreign policy. Trump handily won Ohio in both 2016 and 2020, but Vance in his Senate race struggled to break away from Ryan, despite Biden's unpopularity in the Buckeye State and the state's GOP lean.

While Vance won the race that November, the extent of his struggles was on full display on election night.

Vance defeated Ryan by 6 points.

But Republican Gov. Mike DeWine defeated his Democratic opponent, former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, by 25 points. And both Attorney General Dave Yost and Secretary of State Frank LaRose were reelected by roughly 20 points.

Ryan was undoubtedly a strong candidate, but Vance's underperformance relative to other Ohio Republicans was quite stark. One might even argue that DeWine's coattails helped carry Vance over the finish line as Ryan clearly won over many voters who also backed statewide Republican officeholders.

What does the result say about Vance's broader appeal?

This fall, Republicans are hoping to make inroads with suburban voters despite their past aversion to Trump and the more socially conservative candidates who have embraced his views.

Trump is hoping that economic concerns will bring some Independents and Democratic-leaning swing voters to his side.

And Republicans believe Vance's presence on the GOP ticket will make a difference in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — especially in exurban and rural areas — and boost the ex-president.

But in urban and suburban communities across Ohio, Vance was swamped by Ryan in the Senate race.

In the Cincinnati area, where Vance lives, Ryan won populous Hamilton County by nearly 16 points.

In Franklin County, anchored by Columbus, Ryan won by 32 points.

And in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland and its inner-ring suburbs, Ryan emerged victorious by nearly 36 points.

On several issues — including abortion rights and aid for Ukraine — Vance has taken positions that are well to the right of those held by many suburbanites.

Vance hailed the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade — a problematic position for many moderates — and he has praised Trump's decision to leave the issue of abortion to the states.

The Ohio senator has also been a staunch opponent of providing aid to Ukraine, a position that has endeared him to Trumpworld but is a far departure from the position of GOP leaders such as Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Thune of South Dakota.

While Vance is poised be a big asset to Trump in rural Rust Belt locales, the senator has so far not shown much strength in suburban areas, where Democrats are aiming to run up their margins.

Republicans aren't going to give up on the suburbs this year. But Vance's Senate underperformance in Ohio gives Democrats hope that they can stave off the GOP ticket as they look to November.>

<There's an old adage in business that goes something like, "Anybody can manage people. The best managers know how to manage egos."

One's mileage may vary on that sentiment, but one thing that's apparently undeniable: The employees of left-leaning news network MSNBC are increasingly thinking that their managers are unable to manage neither people nor egos.

A blistering report from The Daily Beast chronicled the aftermath of the network's curious decision to abruptly upend its "Morning Joe" program on Monday, less than 48 hours after a failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

MSNBC reportedly felt that the chances of something truly incendiary being uttered on the program -- hosted by well-documented husband-and-wife Trump critics Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski -- wasn't worth the risk.

According to The Daily Beast's reporting, that risk calculation wasn't quite calculating enough because employees are none too happy with how any of the ensuing fallout played out.

The report noted that employees are grappling with "intense frustration," with much of it aimed at the very top of the company.

NBC News Group President Cesar Conde and MSNBC President Rashida Jones have been the prime recipients of this ire.

Even sans the Beast's reporting, it wasn't exactly a secret that Scarborough and Brzezinski weren't happy with this decision from Conde and Jones.

As CNN and other outlets chronicled, Scarborough blasted MSNBC leadership for the decision.

“We don’t know why that was that didn’t happen. Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn’t happen,” Scarborough said upon returning to his regularly-scheduled slot on Tuesday. “But it didn’t happen.”

“We were also told it was going to happen throughout the day, and I guess, after there was such a strong blowback about yesterday morning, I guess they changed their plans,” Scarborough continued.

He added: “We were very surprised. We were very disappointed.”

Scarborough also threw in a thinly-veiled threat about quitting if this ever happened again.

“Let me just say, next time we’re told there’s going to be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs,” Scarborough said defiantly. “The news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show.”

According to The Daily Beast, that little monologue helped lead to "a crescendo Tuesday, with people inside the network and close to the situation dumbfounded as to how executives could have created a situation that allowed its top stars to go scorched earth on them for the second time in four months."

The off-the-record quotes collected in the report buttressed that "crescendo."

"The buck stops with Cesar,” one source said.

"There is a level of disappointment and disillusion in our leadership in a way that is unlike anything before," one MSNBC staffer told The Daily Beast.

One MSNBC staffer suggested that MSNBC was already trying to warm up to a possible Trump administration.

“There’s no world in which any of this makes sense unless Comcast is attempting to curry favor,” one MSNBC employee said.>

<Columnists Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria were in Milwaukee and break down the big events on Day 2 of the RNC.

Chabria: The theme for the convention Tuesday night was "make America safe again," with lots of talk about how the "woke, Marxist left" loves crime and criminals (that's from Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana).

The calls for unity were sprinkled like confetti over every speech, but the substance changed little from what we've been hearing from MAGA for years: America is in a Democrat-induced spiral. Johnson framed it as a choice between, "the party of self-destruction," and the party of "peace and prosperity."

At one point, one speaker suggested that Washington, D.C., was too dangerous to visit. I'm not sure when this particular delusion gained ground (though it certainly started during Black Lives Matter protests), but it's a popular one.

The big chants of the night were "back the blue," in support of giving police more power, and "build the wall."

They really, really want a wall — in no small part to stop the heartbreaking devastation that addiction is inflicting on families in every state. That's where a lot of the Harris-bashing came in, since Biden charged her with handling the border.

Who's going to tell them that most fentanyl isn't walked across the border?

What struck you from Tuesday night, Mark?

Barabak: The collective amnesia that suffused the red, white and blue convention hall.

Trump’s felony conviction in the New York City hush money/election interference case was mentioned once, fleetingly, by reality TV’s Savannah Chrisley.

“Donald J. Trump has only one conviction that matters and that is his conviction to make American great again,” Chrisley said.

Others alluded to Trump’s alleged persecution, to the supposed politicization of the Justice Department and to the ex-president’s “illegal impeachment,” as New York GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik put it, making absolutely no sense. (Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. presided over Trump’s Senate trial and presumably would have said something if the House vote to impeach wasn’t legally kosher.)

But that’s not terribly surprising, and just wait: Democrats will be more than happy to discuss Trump’s criminal record at length at next month’s convention.

What was rather more glaring were attacks on Biden, Harris and those woke Democrats for their refusal to stand with police, not “criminals and rioters.”

Jan. 6? What’s that?

Amid all the signage and back-the-blue exhortations, there was zero mention of the insurrectionists — or “political prisoners,” as Trump describes them — who overran the Capitol and battered and bloodied police, killing one officer, in a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Chabria: But one thing they haven't forgotten about is false claims of election fraud. While there is a clear sense from attendees that Trump is on his way to victory, they are also still laying the groundwork to contest a Biden win — so much for law and order.

Trump didn't speak Tuesday night, but he made a video appearance in addition to his dance mash-up. This one alluded to the well-worn conspiracy that Democrats are allowing undocumented people to enter the country so that they can illegally vote for Biden.

This has been debunked as meritless more times than I can count, but it is considered fact in Trump World — and is the justification for why Jan. 6 was a valid protest. The lack of any proof of pervasive cheating is simply viewed as how sneaky and dangerous the Democrats are.

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz claimed Democrats had "cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children."

And in his video, Trump promised to return the United States to paper ballots if elected (though election experts have repeatedly warned that paper ballots are more prone to error and tampering). He also sent out a call for Republicans to be on the lookout for wrongdoing.

"Keep your eyes open," Trump said. "Because these people want to cheat. And they do cheat, and frankly it's the only thing they do well."

What else did you take away, Mark?

Barabak: Speakers tried, they really did, to stick to that whole be-nicer thing following Saturday’s attempt on Trump’s life.

But old habits die hard.

Eric Hovde, who’s running for Senate in Wisconsin, issued a plea for the country to come together and rise above partisan politics — so as to heal the divisions created by the awful, radical left.

Ben Carson, who served as Trump’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, allowed as how we have a president, who, “Well,” he caught himself, “if you can’t saying anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”....>

<....Others weren’t so constrained.

Cruz echoed that lax-border conspiracy talk, saying Democrats wanted “votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children,” hence killers, rapists and sex traffickers are free to waltz into the country.

Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott said Republicans are fighting every day to keep the radical Democrats “from destroying our country.”

And then, suddenly, the tone shifted as soon as the major TV networks tuned in for their one-hour of live coverage.

Florida’s other Republican senator, Marco Rubio, delivered a speech filled with sweetness and light.

Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law-and handpicked choice for party co-chair, followed with a rhapsody on how there is more that unites Americans than divides us.

“We all want the country to be great,” she earnestly stated. We just differ on how to make that happen.

Anita, my neck hurts. Did you experience the same kind of whiplash?

Chabria: Yes, there is no doubt much of what happened — especially in the prime time hour, as you point out — was more for the television audience than for those in the room.

There was a clear, forceful push for those undecided voters who may have reservations about a party whose platform centers on dismantling government and bringing religion into law.

So instead of focusing on that, as early speakers did, late night was a lot of talk about how inclusive the Republican Party is (though the delegates are predominately white and old from what I've seen).

Nowhere was that push for wobbling voters, especially people of color, more evident to me than in the insane Forgiato Blow/Amber Rose rap video set to the "Ice Ice Baby" beat, played to a stunned audience. No one in the room wanted to see that.

For those of you unfamiliar with Blow, he's a self-proclaimed MAGA rapper out of Florida. Rose is the ex-wife of rapper Wiz Khalifa and ex-girlfriend of Kanye West. She had a MAGA conversion a few months ago and has now become an outspoken Trump fan.

Rose gave a speech Monday night at the convention in which she claimed, "Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re Black, white, gay or straight; it’s all love. And that’s when it hit me. These are my people, this is where I belong.”

Of course, many Trump supporters do care about those attributes — especially LGBTQ+ issues. Which makes it all the more baffling and wondrous that this video played.

The original Vanilla Ice song steals a beat from the Queen-David Bowie song "Under Pressure." Both Queen front man Freddie Mercury and Bowie were queer.

I love that somehow despite the intense push against rights for queer Americans, the Republicans managed to slip the Village People (whose "Y.M.C.A." is Trump's favorite dance jam), Bowie and Queen into their lineup.

Maybe it's a secret message.

Barabak: That's not the only thing that got weird.

Conventions are often scripted as a getting-to-know-you way to introduce the presidential nominee. But for someone like Trump, who’s been in the public eye for decades, that’s a rather pointless exercise.

Still, for all his familiarity, polls show the real-estate-developer-turned-reality-TV-star-tur- ned-president-turned-comeback-candidate has never been well-liked. So portions of the convention programming have been dedicated to the proposition that, yes, you may know Trump. But you don’t really know him.

Lara Trump used her prime-time slot to extol the nominee as a doting grandfather and loving father-in-law and mentor, doing a not-bad impression of the ex-president calling to offer his encouragement.

Other anecdotes were rather more strange — and strained.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice spoke of being on an outdoor adventure with Trump’s son, Eric, when his 4x4 blew a tire out in the wilderness. And who changed that blown tire? Eric Trump!

“He taught his kids the right values,” Justice said of the Trump offspring’s prowess with a lug wrench and jack. “Sure sounds like a leader to me.”

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served a spell as White House press secretary under Trump, recollected one day bringing her 4-year-old son to work and the way he spurned a presidential hug in favor of being in his mother’s arms.

“Because he’s the amazing man he is,” Huckabee said, “he didn’t mind at all.”

That’s some fortitude! If you let a 4-year-old push you around, how will you deal with Vladimir Putin?

Wait. Never mind.>

<Former President Donald Trump's campaign said it will not confirm a date for a vice presidential debate, citing its uncertainty surrounding the Democratic nominee for running mate.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for reelection alongside President Joe Biden, has accepted potential dates and times for a debate hosted by CBS News. The Associated Press (AP) reported that Harris spoke to Trump's vice presidential nominee, Ohio Senator JD Vance, on Tuesday, but that the two did not settle on terms for the event.

In a statement obtained by Newsweek on Wednesday, Brian Hughes, senior adviser for the Trump campaign, responded to questions on the debate plans, saying, "We don't know who the Democrat nominee for Vice President is going to be, so we can't lock in a date before the [Democratic National] Convention (DNC)."

Hughes continued by saying that reaching terms on a vice presidential debate at the moment would be "unfair" to "whoever Kamala Harris picks as her running mate." He specifically named California Governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as potential options.

Newsweek has reached out to Biden's campaign via email for comment on Wednesday.

More than 20 sitting Democrats have called for Biden to step aside as the party's nominee after the president's rocky first debate against Trump on June 27. Biden's campaign, however, has stood defiant, and Democrats still plan to hold a virtual roll call vote ahead of the DNC next month to formally nominate the president.

Harris has been touted as the favorite to replace Biden on the 2024 ticket should the president exit the race. A recent poll from YouGov also found that Harris is more popular among American voters than Vance, whom Trump announced as his vice presidential choice on Monday.

Harris has agreed to participate in a debate hosted by CBS News on either July 23, August 12 or August 13. Trump, on the other hand, agreed on behalf of his running mate over two months ago that his campaign would participate in a vice presidential debate hosted by Fox News.

AP reported that Biden's campaign has indicated that it would reject Fox News' invitation to host. Sources familiar with the matter also told AP that both campaigns have yet to make progress on "bridging the disagreements" over which network should host the debate and how the event should be formatted.

Harris reportedly left Vance a voicemail on Monday, congratulating him on being selected as Trump's running mate and urged him to accept the CBS invitation, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke with AP. Vance returned Harris' call on Tuesday, and told Newsmax later that day that the vice president was "was very gracious, very cordial" during the call.

Biden and Harris' team responded to Hughes' statement Wednesday night, accusing Vance of backing out of the debate because of his views on abortion.

"Donald Trump is the one whose campaign said he would debate 'anytime, anyplace' and who picked JD Vance specifically for his debating skills," read the statement, which was shared to the Biden-Harris HQ account on X, formerly Twitter.

"Now suddenly right after a damning new leak showing his support for a nationwide abortion ban, Vance is backing off a debate against Vice President Harris, who has spent the last two years prosecuting the case on behalf of reproductive freedom," the campaign continued. "This debate has been discussed for two months now. If JD Vance is unwilling to defend the Trump-Vance record on the debate stage, he should just say so."

Vance has previously said that he would support a national ban on abortion at the 15-week mark of pregnancy, a policy for which some conservatives have pushed following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Trump, however, has argued on the campaign trail that the issue of abortion should be left to voters to decide at the state level. In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity on Tuesday, Vance said that he sees Trump's policy on the issue as "reasonable."

While the vice presidential debate remains up in the air, Trump and Biden are scheduled to face off in a second presidential debate on September 10. ABC News anchors David Muir and Lindsey Davis will moderate. Details regarding the rules, venue and format have yet to be released.>

<Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the popular Libs of TikTok social media accounts, has complained in the past about the efforts to "cancel and silence" her. It appears she is taking a page from the playbook she supposedly hates.

Raichik's online operation reposts TikTok videos of left-leaning content creators saying things that often border on the absurd. She has recently upped the ante, amplifying Facebook posts from random people making crass comments about the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, blasting them to her 3.2 million followers on X, and tagging their employers in hopes they are rendered jobless.

In some cases, it has paid off. "To [sic] bad they weren't a better shooter!!!!!" Darcy Waldron Pinckney posted on Facebook. You probably don't recognize her name because she is not a public figure. She is not a lawmaker or a bureaucrat or someone in any position of power. She worked at Home Depot.

The past tense here is key. On Sunday, Raichik posted a screenshot of Pinckney's comment, along with a video of someone confronting her at the store and an admonition to her employer: "Hi @HomeDepot!" Raichik wrote. "Are you aware that you employ people who call for political violence and the ass*ss*nat*on of Presidents? Any comment?" The company promptly terminated her.

Whatever your feelings on the former president, cheering on his assassination attempt is, in fact, wrong. It is also wrong to weaponize your millions of followers to turn a random woman into a national pariah, siccing a mob on her and rendering her unable to support herself—and possibly her family—because she made a tasteless comment on social media. These two things are true at the same time.

Cancel culture comes in different forms. But this is arguably its purest. We're not talking about someone who wielded considerable influence over society, whether in Hollywood or on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. We aren't even talking about a public school teacher who said this to a classroom full of students. We are talking about a woman who worked at a big box retail store, whose ability to pay for housing and food is potentially now up in the air for saying something gross on the internet.

It's ironic that the people leading this mob are some of the same individuals who have repeatedly—and rightly—decried mob justice over the last several years. In some cases, their careers and fame are grounded, at least in part, in that very concept. "Cancel cancel culture," Riley Gaines, the swimmer and activist who has pushed back on biological men competing in women's sports, said in August of last year. Gaines, who has been the target of some illiberalism herself, was singing a different song this week, celebrating the termination of a man whose firing also came at the behest of Raichik.

"Too bad it didn't hit him square," Tony Bendele, formerly a small-town firefighter, posted on his personal Facebook page with a popcorn emoji. Raichik got ahold of it and, again, posted a screenshot to her Libs of TikTok account, with a rallying cry to her following on X (where Bendele does not have a footprint). It didn't take long for him, too, to become a national story. As of this writing, Raichik's initial post excoriating Bendele has been seen 11.7 million times.

"Please accept this as my resignation from the firehouse. I can't do this," Bendele, whose department also received a bomb threat, later posted on Facebook. "I have been threatened. My family has been threatened. My friends have been threatened. I have never felt so unsafe in my life….It's one thing to ruin my life, I accept that. But to put everyone else in danger around me, to shut down everyone's daily life, this is not ok."

Gaines counted that as a victory on Monday. "This wouldn't have happened without @elonmusk purchasing X and @libsoftiktok exposing it," she posted on X. Is this what winning looks like?....>

<....The online defenses of these firings fell mostly into two camps. The first: People like Pinckney and Bendele aren't actually victims of cancel culture because what they said is bad. I take no issue with the latter—what they said is bad. But using that as justification to gleefully destroy their lives is as classic a definition of cancel culture as any. Past victims of cancel culture, after all, weren't always angels; such backlash often comes after legitimately unsavory or cringeworthy remarks. To take these random people's personal Facebook posts and exile them from society is to invoke a mantra from some left-leaning activists: "It's accountability culture, actually."

"It's exactly how America should work," wrote Zach Dean for OutKick, the right-leaning publication typically dedicated to sports news. "Checks and balances, folks….Shoutout to the Home Depot for quickly nipping this ugly human in the bud." Perhaps it is unsurprising that the publication has repeatedly railed into cancel culture.

The second line of pushback doesn't appear to deny that this is cancel culture. Those on the left just deserve it, the thinking goes, because they've used these tactics for years. While I appreciate the honesty, there are a few issues here. For one, there is no proof that these specific individuals ever participated in online mob justice—once again, we are not talking about people who are public figures or who have even a semblance of a following. More importantly, that is plainly contradictory to the definition of a principle, which is not a principle at all if you decline to apply it when it's inconvenient. "They started it" is not a justification that has much currency past elementary school.

For now, Raichik is undeterred. She has turned her ire toward several others—a chef at a restaurant in Michigan, a program manager at Uber, and more—in hopes that she can claim their scalps, too. You don't need to endorse their repugnant political statements to hope she is unsuccessful.>

<On the second night of the Republican National Convention, a woman named Anne Fundner shared a heartbreaking story. A few years ago, she and her husband and their four children were living in Southern California, she told the crowd. She painted an idyllic picture of their family life. Her 15-year-old son, Weston, played hockey and football and loved to surf. The family had barbecues on the beach. Then Weston, succumbing to peer pressure, got high with friends — and died of fentanyl poisoning.

It’s an unspeakable tragedy, one felt by too many Americans in the relentless wave of an opioid epidemic that continues to claim more than 74,000 lives a year.

Unfortunately, Fundner’s story of personal loss is being used to promote a dangerous and false narrative about the state of crime under the current administration. In her speech, Fundner had no doubt about who was to blame. It happened, she said, because President Joe Biden “opened our borders.” And the solution, according to her and many speakers present in Milwaukee Tuesday night, is to re-elect Donald Trump, who will close them again and, she urged, classify Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. When she said this, Trump apparently leaned over to his running mate JD Vance and mouthed, “We should do it.”

Hour after hour, speakers hit the same themes. Biden had “opened the border.” Sen. Marco Rubio said when Trump was president “our border was secure and our laws were enforced” — but that those days are gone. Ben Carson said, “We have a wide open border.” Tom Cotton said, “Joe Biden thinks borders are racist.” The implication for all of them was that an open border is to blame for the country’s fentanyl crisis.

This narrative of course is complete nonsense. That doesn’t mean that the pain of parents like Fundner isn’t all too real. I myself know it is, having someone I cared about die of a fentanyl overdose three years ago. But the problem has absolutely nothing do with Biden “opening our border” because no such event has occurred.

The available statistics expose the RNC speeches about “open borders” as a dispatch from an alternate dimension. To start, the Department of Homeland Security’s total number of “encounters” with migrants (“encounters” is DHS speak for “arrests”) was far greater during Biden’s first two years in office than the corresponding years of the Trump administration. And greater percentage of those “encountered” under Biden have been deported than under Trump.

In fact, immigrants’ rights groups are furious at Biden for reasons anyone who believed what they saw at the RNC would have found incomprehensible. Biden championed a bipartisan bill that would have shredded many of the rights of asylum-seekers. People who in some cases have reason to be terrified that they’ll be tortured or killed if they returned to their home countries, are going to have their cases heard faster, not because the existing system would be expanded to deal with the backlog but because their cases would be moved from the Department of Justice to the DHS, where they’d get “a much faster review, often without attorneys or a deliberative process,” according to reporting from PBS....>

<....When that bill failed, after most Republicans followed Trump’s lead in opposing it, Biden acted unilaterally by executive order to curtail the rights of many asylum-seekers. He’s now being sued by several immigrants’ rights groups as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, which notes:

“These executive actions will effectively shut off any access to asylum protections for the vast majority of people arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, no matter how strong their claims. The proclamation echoes the Trump administration’s previous asylum entry ban, which immigrants’ rights advocates successfully challenged."

Ted Cruz said at the RNC that the influx of undocumented immigrants was an “invasion” — not, he clarified, a figurative invasion but a literal one. He named a number of Americans who were raped or killed by criminals who had entered the country illegally, claiming to “speak for” these individuals (it is unclear whether or not the individuals approved of Cruz and his politics).

The best available data shows that the undocumented migrant population is far less likely to commit crimes (beyond the initial illegal entry) than native-born Americans, likely because they’re afraid of being deported. American citizens who are the victims of violence are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, victims of other American citizens. And while we’re at it, a crushingly overwhelming majority of those arrested for smuggling fentanyl —86% — are American citizens, and more than nine out of 10 fentanyl seizures “occur at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes.” This stands to reason, given U.S. citizens crossing legally are far less likely to be seized and searched.

Fentanyl overdoses are aptly classed as “deaths of despair,” statistically concentrated in Rust Belt areas ravaged by deindustrialization. To actually tackle the fentanyl crisis, we’d need to start by devoting far more resources to treatment for addicts, but above all you’d need to do something about the despair, by moving toward a more economically equal society.

That is likely the last thing Trump and JD Vance plan to do should they be elected in November. The first Trump administration was a four-year orgy of tax cuts for rich people, deregulation and union-busting. He even went after Medicaid expansion. If Trump returns to office and gives us four more years of these policies, the result will be a society mired even more deeply in poverty, inequality and mass despair than it is right now. And that’s a recipe for a whole lot more grieving mothers looking for someone to blame.>

<Thus far, the Republican National Convention’s speakers have undermined some conservatives' claims that this year's event would focus on promoting national “unity.”

Remarkably, though, some of the most disturbing speeches from right-wingers this week have come not from the main stage, but rather from a few blocks away at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the group that coordinated the drafting of Project 2025, a far-right plan to increase Donald Trump's power and politicize federal agencies if he's elected in November.

The Heritage Foundation's Policy Fest, an extremist-fueled speaker series keynoted by fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson, unfolded just down the street from Fiserv Forum, where the RNC is taking place. The physical distance seems to have been strategic. Trump has tried to publicly distance himself from Project 2025, though several of its authors were members of his administration. So perhaps some Republicans thought holding a Heritage Foundation event that’s ostensibly separate from the RNC would help the GOP’s effort to appear less radical.

But Monday proved that plenty of GOP power brokers are all in on Project 2025 and the politics that inspired it. Heritage Foundation CEO Kevin Roberts doubled down on Project 2025, calling it “a plan among a unified movement to speak on behalf of the everyday American, the forgotten American.” In reality, it reads more like a plan to remake the government under Christian nationalist and far-right ideals that include defining heterosexual marriage as “biblically based,” supercharging religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws, withdrawing Food and Drug Administration approval of abortion medication and concentrating power in the presidency.

Carlson boosted these alarming ideas in his Policy Fest speech on Monday, telling the crowd the recent shooting at a Trump rally proved there is a “spiritual battle” underway and claimed liberals are motivated by an “anti-human” force that seeks to “eliminate” Christians. Carlson later decried the abundance of “weak men” unwilling to commit violence against school employees. He falsely claimed schools are trying to "indoctrinate" kids and turn them into “circus freaks” before he fantasized about harming school employees.

“In the country that I grew up in, the dad would just punch the counselor out. You know, ‘Put me in jail, I don’t care,’” Carlson said, before baselessly suggesting school counselors are engaging in “child molester stuff.”

He continued:

I just said I’m against violence, but that’s, like, a very basic — that’s the most basic requirement of fatherhood but also of leadership more broadly is to be willing to die for the people in your care, period. And if you’re not willing to do that, you’re contemptible.

Policy Fest featured several other speakers well-known among the MAGA faithful, including failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Tom Homan, acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration. Homan, whom Trump has said he would tap for a job if he’s elected again, tried to downplay Trump’s authoritarian goals related to immigration. Although Trump has publicly refused to rule out building camps for mass detention as part of his campaign’s vow to establish the most massive deportation effort in history, Homan claimed — without evidence — that a Trump immigration policy wouldn’t include any of the things reported in the media.

“People say, 'Trump’s threatening this historic deportation operation. He’s going to build concentration camps. He’s going to sweep neighborhoods,'" Homan said. "Let me be clear. None of that will happen."

He went on to issue a warning that seemed to apply not only to newly arriving immigrants but also to recipients of protections offered under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, too.

“No one’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, it’s not OK. If you’re in the country illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”>

<Since the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Western Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13, a recurring theme among far-right MAGA Republicans is that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) is somehow to blame for the attack.

Their argument is that U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was hired because of her gender and not because she was the best-qualified person for the job. On X, formerly Twitter, MAGA media figure Benny Johnson posted, "Absolute humiliation for this gaggle of female Secret Service Agents….. DEI Secret Service make Presidents LESS Safe." And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) attacked Cheatle as a "DEI hire."

But the Secret Service is pushing back and calling out such comments as sexist.

Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communication for the Secret Service, told NBC News, "We stand united against any attempt to discredit our personnel and their invaluable contributions to our mission and are appalled by the disparaging and disgusting comments against any of our personnel. As an elite law enforcement agency, all of our agents and officers are highly trained and fully capable of performing our missions."

Guglielmi continued, "It is an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender. Such baseless assertions undermine the professionalism, dedication and expertise of our workforce."

NBC News reporters David Ingram and Curtis Bunn note that "anti-DEI commentators" have "tried to create the impression that female agents were not only too short but somehow less prepared and responsive than their male counterparts."

"At least three female agents were among those protecting Trump in the moments after the shooting, according to videos, and in the days since, their actions have become popular targets of criticism and jokes among conservatives, with several posts on X receiving more than 10 million views," the journalists explain. "The criticisms follow a pattern from other recent news events where conservative pundits and lawmakers, without evidence, cite 'diversity, equity and inclusion' (DEI) programs as a contributing cause in disasters as disparate as the Boeing-made airplane problems or the Baltimore bridge collapse.">

Whaddaya think, <fredremf>? Is DEI to blame for every negative thing since the dawn of time?

Do tell.

<Politicians and national security professionals at an annual conference in the Rockies found themselves grappling with questions about political violence in the U.S. following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

In between the more typical concerns about cybersecurity and the rise of China, attendees at the Aspen Security Forum expressed worries about security lapses that allowed the shooting, the potential for further political instability and whether the reelection of the former president would drive him to adopt more hardline positions in response to Saturday’s attack.

Some speculated that a second-term Trump could use the assassination attempt as an excuse to impose security crackdowns on groups such as Muslims and immigrants on hyped grounds that they posed a threat.

If Trump were to take such actions, “the security and civil liberties consequences could be severe,” said a Democratic lawmaker who, like others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Foreign officials at the Aspen Security Forum and in Washington expressed similar concerns about how Trump could react.

During his presidency, Trump cut the number of refugees to historic lows and restricted legal immigration, with measures such as restrictions on visas for people from several majority Muslim nations, in the name, at least in part, of national security.

“If you’ve been shot at, it gives you a different perspective. But we have yet to see what that perspective might be,” said Mark Esper, who served as defense secretary under Trump until he was fired. The former president, he said, is “inclined to go to the military for tough problems — protests in the street, building a wall, Covid vaccine. I could go on and on.”

The 20-year-old man blamed for the shooting that wounded Trump and killed a bystander Saturday was a U.S. citizen, but some forum attendees said Trump may nonetheless point to the attempt on his life as further justification for curbing both illegal and legal migration. Such moves also would please many in his political base.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but calls to crack down on migration across the southern border are a regular feature of the former president’s rallies.

The lawmakers, diplomats and other national security professionals who gather at the Aspen conference each year can have significant influence on U.S. policies.

There were attendees who downplayed concerns about Trump’s possible reaction to the attempted assassination.

“If you go back and look at what Trump said versus what he did as president, his bark was always far nastier than what he did,” said John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Many national security professionals at Aspen were pondering the same key questions as the broader public about the security lapses that allowed a shooter to fire at Trump.

“You have an elevated shooting position, a little over 100 yards away from where the [former] president of the United States is standing,” a former Republican Senate aide said. “How is nobody on that building? It’s just odd.”

Several people warned against making assumptions about what happened before reviews were complete. But some also said that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle should be pushed out. She was supposed to be a panelist here but pulled out in the wake of the shooting.

“She should definitely resign,” said Michael Allen, a former White House and congressional aide who dealt with intelligence and other national security matters. “There needs to be accountability when there’s a manifestly obvious mistake that was made.”....>

<.... While many making those comments are former officials or lower level ones, it could be a harbinger of rising pressure from top players on Cheatle to step aside.

“Even though it may not have been necessarily her fault throughout the chain, she is the leader and it really gets into accountability for the institution,” a former U.S. law enforcement official said.

“It’s wild to me that she hasn’t been asked to leave yet,” one senior U.S. official back in Washington said.

But others also were thinking far beyond the investigation itself to the impact the shooting could have in the months ahead, perhaps making the political environment even more polarized and fomenting domestic unrest.

Given the increasingly bruising rhetoric partisans are throwing at each other in the United States, one attendee connected to a Washington think tank said of the shooting: “When I saw the news, I thought ‘yeah,’ that sounds about right.”

In a joint intelligence bulletin issued Monday, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned that extremists or others may attempt follow-on or retaliatory acts of violence in response to the attack on Trump.

The Aspen forum is being held this year at the same time as the Republican National Convention, so even without the shooting attack, politics would have loomed larger than usual.

Last year, many at Aspen refused to talk about Trump in particular, even though some see his isolationist views and fondness for authoritarian leaders abroad as undermining U.S. national security.

Several national security officials said it was critical that U.S. leaders, including Trump, avoid harsh rhetoric and seek to unite the American people in an effort to avoid future incidents.

Pavel Khodorkovsky, a U.S.-based son of Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance, a Republican senator who often caters to far-right elements in the GOP base, suggested that the former president wouldn’t be pursuing a message of national unity.

But he said he was open to being persuaded otherwise.

“I need to hear what he’s going to say at the convention,” Khodorkovsky said of Trump’s upcoming speech, expected Thursday.>

<I don’t know whether the folks who tried to sell “vegan barbecue” from a booth in the strip of concession tents outside the 2024 Republican National Convention got bad advice or simply took an ill-advised leap of faith. Either way, I’m almost surprised they were allowed to do it. Doesn’t vegan barbecue sound like exactly the sort of Obama-era DEI woke outrage that Donald Trump would like to outlaw or defund, or at least humiliate into nonexistence?

But the cognitive dissonance of this convention goes well beyond that forlorn, misbegotten entrepreneurial venture. (I was relieved to see, at last, a couple of actual customers approach the booth; definitely journalists.) Amid all the obvious headline drama of the 2024 presidential campaign, which has already seen one candidate survive an attempted assassination and the other still struggling to survive an attempted intra-party coup, the RNC has so far been a startlingly quiet, polite, low-energy event.

Famous last words, I know. Trump’s closing-night speech on Thursday — rumored to be a lengthy stemwinder on a 19th-century scale — will no doubt be intended to rouse and unite the GOP faithful and send them forth to victory over whatever forces they believe are oppressing them. That’s approximately what happened at the 2016 convention in Cleveland, largely a disorganized and dull affair before Trump’s “I alone can fix it” acceptance speech, which was genuinely traumatic to sit through as a supposedly dispassionate observer. (I described it at the time as a 7.8 on the Nuremberg scale.)

But the differences are much bigger than the similarities. Both inside the arena and out on the Cleveland streets, the 2016 convention had the chaotic, unhinged, angry energy of a can of Mountain Dew vigorously shaken by a malicious six-year-old and left out in the sun. There was a distinct sense that worlds were colliding — the world of so-called mainstream politics and the MAGA revolution, the old Republican Party and the new one, in its just-hatched larval form. History was clearly being made; it was marvelous or terrible or both at once, according to your taste.

History is not being made here, so it must be going on someplace else. This convention is underpopulated, overpoliced and entirely devoid of drama. For local businesses, the alleged economic benefits have been disastrous, which could be read as a larger metaphor. Many square blocks of downtown Milwaukee’s normally vibrant riverfront district have become a fenced-off or blockaded exclusion zone, reminiscent of Belfast in the 1980s. It feels like a ghost town, and the ghosts moving through it are the delegates and honored guests and media vultures like me, halfway pretending to take part in a political ritual that lost all possible meaning before most of us were born.

Even the MAGA hats, which in Cleveland sprouted everywhere like an army of joyous little red Pac-Men, ready to munch America into imagined homogeneity, have all but disappeared. Oh, there are the updated green and yellow versions, confusingly marked with “45-47,” but they haven’t really caught on. The originals are rarely seen and faintly embarrassing, like Guess jeans from the ‘90s worn without irony.

It’s difficult to characterize the collective mood of Republicans based on this convention. They seem listless and confused and mildly delusional, like the people at the vegan barbecue booth. But they also believe they are poised to win a national election, and that part seems plausible enough. Perhaps the source of the cognitive dissonance is that the people gathered in Milwaukee represent something, or part of something, but they haven’t figured out what.

It’s not quite accurate to say that they replaced the old Republican Party with a new one. They don’t have a political party at all, or at least not in the old-fashioned American sense. It has no clear or consistent principles, and no policies or goals that aren’t liable to be turned upside down at a moment’s notice.

Within the space of about three minutes on Wednesday night, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s newly-anointed running mate, suggested that the Iraq invasion launched by a Republican administration in 2003 was a huge mistake (true), blamed it on Joe Biden (mostly false, with an asterisk) and then brandished his own patriotic credentials for enlisting in the Marine Corps in — hang on, let’s look it up — 2003 and serving for six months in, um, Iraq.....>

<....I was on the floor of the convention at that moment, inches away from Turning Point USA founder and Vance booster Charlie Kirk, and for a few seconds you could feel the bafflement spread through the crowd: So was Senator Hillbilly Elegy a true American hero for risking his life in a stupid war that was started by the Republican president before the one to whom he’s hitched his wagon, or was he, as his boss might put it, a “sucker,” not to mention a shameless hypocrite? How's the vegan barbecue, anyway?

The Republican Party under Trump — and someday soon under Vance or some other heir or usurper — isn’t really a party and has no guiding ideology or sense of its own history. My colleague Amanda Marcotte observed this week that the conventional wisdom describing the new GOP as a cult of personality slightly misses the point. She meant that Donald Trump is the funnel through which MAGA energy flows and the wizard who conjured it forth, but he has never truly controlled it.

If Trump wins this election, he’ll be a lame-duck president in his 80s. More specifically, he’ll be the beloved but decrepit figurehead of the semi-normal popular front of a fascist movement whose darkest and most compelling energies lie elsewhere. Because that’s all the official, above-ground Republican Party is now. Their convention is a deliberately boring dumbshow, listless late-Soviet political theater meant to lull you and me — and most of its actual participants, for that matter — into believing that Trump 2.0 is nothing more than what it says on the box.

One of the mildly endearing things about Republican conventions of the pre-Trump era was the devotion to GOP kitsch. Ladies of uncertain age with hair the color of expensive brass candlesticks, who enjoyed being described as “kooky” in their Missouri or Alaska or Arizona hometowns, would show up in elaborate red-white-and-blue outfits bedecked with an impressive collection of buttons and pennants and bespoke garments from Republican campaigns gone by.

These were largely tributes to the party’s triumphant heroes — Ronald Reagan, first and foremost — but also to its pioneers and martyrs. Purists proudly flaunted 1964 Barry Goldwater gear; Richard Nixon was briefly exiled from the pantheon and then redeemed, in a distant early warning of the grievance politics that led us to Trump. At the legendary Houston “culture war” convention of 1992, the first one I attended as a journalist, I met an elderly delegate whose enormous felt hat sported campaign buttons for Thomas Dewey, Alf Landon and Herbert Hoover.

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None of those guys would have been a viable Republican candidate by that time, let alone now. But even as the Reagan revolution and Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove hardened the party’s edges and drove out the last of the old-line ruling-class liberals, that history still mattered to the grassroots Republican activists who ran county committees and came to conventions.

Those small-town postmistresses with their vintage Goldwater buttons have moved on to farther shores, and the GOP history they once cherished hasn’t just been forgotten or neglected in the Trump era, but utterly obliterated. Even Reagan, for good or ill a genuinely transformative Republican president, has been ghosted, and casts no visible shadow on the party of Trump and Vance. As mentioned above, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been erased from institutional memory, which is both understandable and borderline psychotic.

As for the other once-beloved and now-disappeared Republican president of postwar America, Dwight Eisenhower, his erasure makes sense in a different way. Republicans Liked Ike (as most Americans did, to be fair) until they dimly and gradually became aware that his bland, sunny optimism represented the path not taken, the sliding door to an alternate GOP reality now long out of reach. Ike is an unperson for today’s Republicans, un-celebrated at an un-convention by an un-party fueled by unquenchable, unfocused unhappiness. It’s tempting to call that un-American — but we are where we are, folks, eating vegan barbecue with JD Vance in a ghost town.>