Supreme court’s decision seems to spell end for Republican-drawn congressional maps in Missouri – US politics live

James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, has accused his rival Ken Paxton of “ignoring” survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse, as Democrats seek to increase pressure on Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.

Speaking in Dallas, where Republicans are holding a midterm convention this week, Talarico appeared alongside one of Epstein’s victims at an exhibit which featured about three million pages of Department of Justice files related to Epstein.

“When did pedophilia become a partisan issue? When did holding sexual abusers accountable become controversial?” Talarico said. He said survivors of Epstein’s abuse had requested to meet with Paxton, the Texas attorney general, but he had refused.

“Our attorney general here in Texas has the power to get justice for these survivors, and he’s refusing to do so,” Talarico said.

He added: “Ken Paxton has two choices: he can stand with these survivors and get justice, or he can continue to cover up Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse. The choice is entirely his.”

On Wednesday Gina Hinojosa, the Democrat running against Texas Governor Greg Abbott, visited the same exhibit and met with Epstein’s victims, in a sign Democrats plan to highlight Trump’s relationship with the convicted sex offender.

“It’s really incredible that we live in a country where the justice system is so broken at every level that there has not been accountability of what we know was extensive sexual abuse, exploitation that happened for decades,” Hinojosa said, according to Associated press. “And that powerful people who run this country are still living their lives without having been held to account.”

JD Vance is currently speaking on the Charlie Kirk Show as today marks the one year anniversary of Kirk’s assassination during an event at a university in Utah.

A year removed from Kirk’s killing, Vance eulogized him as an irreplaceable leader of the conservative movement and as a close personal friend and ally.

“There’s no way to replace Charlie Kirk,” Vance said.

Kirk was an early supporter of Vance during his ۲۰۲۲ run for Senate in Ohio, and later advocated for his selection as Trump’s running mate in ۲۰۲۴. Since his death, Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, who has taken over running her late husband’s political organization, Turning Point USA, has voiced support for Vance to succeed Trump as president.

Beto O’Rourke, a former US congressman and presidential candidate, has dismissed Donald Trump’s offer of $۵,۰۰۰ to US citizens if Republicans win Congress as “the stink of desperation.”

“I think people will take it for what it is: it’s a gimmick, it’s a bribe,” O’Rourke said on Thursday at a roundtable hosted by Bloomberg News in Dallas. “It’s another promise that the president will be unable to fulfill. He’s promised these kinds of dividends before. I think we were supposed to get one from all of the money we were making off of tariffs. It’s never materialised.”

O’Rourke, founder of Powered by People, a Texas-based progressive organisation focused on turning out voters, continued: “It adds to the stink of desperation. That is emanating from that convention centre and every action that we’ve seen over the last ۱۲ months: gerrymandering five congressional districts, screwing with vote by mail, shutting down ۹۲ polling places, more than a million Texans on the suspense list.

“This is a party that cannot compete on the power of its ideas or on its accomplishments while in office and so they’re trying to stop people literally from voting or bribe those who they think can be persuaded. I just don’t think that’s going to be effective.”

O’Rourke, who lost a Texas Senate race to Ted Cruz in ۲۰۱۸, struck an optimistic note about Democrat James Talarico’s chances against Republican Ken Paxton. He suggested that Trump is even more unpopular now than he was then and that Talarico will be boosted by Democrats competing in every down ballot election this time.

“If you had to dream up the perfect opponent in the Senate race, if you’re a Democrat, you could not do better than Ken Paxton. Zero charisma, no connection, no money. The president is openly mocking him at every single turn. Those are all totally different from what we saw in ۲۰۱۸.”

The Supreme Court has blocked a federal judge’s ruling that would’ve restored Republican-drawn congressional districts in Missouri.

The decision, issued by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, appeared to sound a death knell for efforts by the Missouri GOP to extract an additional Republican-leaning congressional seat for their party ahead of the midterm elections.

The latest decision is the second time the nation’s highest court has weighed in on the matter in the last several days. It follows a winding legal saga that has seen the exact boundaries of Missouri’s congressional districts for the ۲۰۲۶ election kept in protracted limbo, with election day less than two months out.

The legal back-and-forth began last September, when Missouri Republicans redrew their state’s electoral maps to carve up a Democrat-controlled district around Kansas City, likely securing them one more of the state’s eight House seats. The decision came as President Trump urged Republican state leaders to gerrymander their congressional districts to help their party retain control of Congress, a move that prompted a retaliatory redistricting blitz by Democrats.

Last week, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the new maps weren’t valid until they were put to a public referendum. That meant the state’s congressional districts would revert to their ۲۰۲۲ borders ahead of the midterms. Missouri leaders appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which left the lower court’s ruling in place.

A federal judge in St. Louis, presiding over a different case, issued a conflicting ruling soon after, ordering the state to return to the Republican-favored maps. It was that ruling Kavanaugh blocked today, in a brief decision with no noted dissents.

Republican leaders in Missouri have argued that requiring the state to shift back to its earlier district boundaries so close to November could throw the state’s elections into chaos. The state held its primaries using the new, GOP-leaning maps, meaning that candidates have won party nominations to represent districts that may no longer exist.

After temporary protections were set to expire Wednesday for hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran migrants in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security said it would, at least for now, allow them to keep their protected status.

The department said in a statement that the temporary protected status that has permitted roughly ۲۰۰,۰۰۰ Salvadoran migrants to live in the US without fear of deportation would remain for the time being.

“An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection.”

Night one of Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas faced a major challenge in attracting viewers: it had to compete with the NFL’s season kickoff, a rematch of last year’s Super Bowl game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots.

The tug-of-war for viewership appeared to resonate with Trump, in any case, as the President was adamant Thursday morning that he’d won more attention that the NFL – even before any official ratings were in.

“It was really something, streaming all over the place, and really big numbers, despite going up against the NFL,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social, adding: “The overall numbers beat the NFL.”

Another interesting result from yesterday’s Democratic primaries in Rhode Island: David Morales, a democratic socialist candidate, unseated sitting Providence mayor Brett Smiley.

The win for Morales, a member of the Rhode Island legislature, notches a win for an insurgent progressive faction of the party that has vied to unseat establishment incumbents. That movement has found success in mayoral races around the country, notably ushering Zohran Mamdani into office as mayor of New York City.

Both before and during Republicans’ midterm convention yesterday, President Trump predicted that the war in Iran that he helped launch would end immediately after the midterm elections (assuming that his party held onto its majority in Congress).

But a new report from the Wall Street Journal, published Wednesday evening, indicates that, behind closed doors, Trump’s top advisors have given him less optimistic forecasts. The paper reports that top officials – including JD Vance, Trump’s vice president, and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state – have warned that Iran could very well hold out against US pressure through the remainder of Trump’s second term.

The unpopular and seemingly frozen conflict, as well as the surging energy prices it touched off, have become a sore spot for Republicans ahead of the midterms. Fighting has flared up again after negotiations between the US and Iran fell through, with both sides trading missile attacks on oil tankers.

The Trump administration’s latest step, a new sanctions regime aimed at strangling what remains of Iran’s economy, would punish nations that continue to trade with the regime.

Trump has cast his party’s victory in the midterms as the difference between US success and failure in Iran. He’s repeatedly dismissed economic pain downstream of the conflict as a temporary but worthwhile sacrifice to subdue Iran and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Vice-president JD Vance will give the keynote address tonight, though Donald Trump is scheduled to make closing remarks to bring the made-for-television RNC event in Dallas to ⁠an end.

“If the American people give Republicans another chance to govern, we’re going to create more prosperity,” Vance told Fox News after Trump’s speech last night.

“And we want the American people to share in that prosperity.”

Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel said his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico will not air on ABC tomorrow following threats from the FCC.

Kimmel said the FCC had threatened him, his show, ABC, its affiliates, and local stations over “simple traditional editorial decisions” and guest bookings.

He said the full interview will be shared on YouTube instead.

Democrat John Fetterman makes surprise appearance at Republican convention

Shrai Popat

Democratic senator John Fetterman made a surprise virtual appearance at the Republican midterm convention, delivering a video address supporting Dave McCormick, a Republican senator in Pennsylvania.

Fetterman, who has increasingly broken with his party since his election in ۲۰۲۲, said in the video that he would always reject “extremes and socialism”, repeating an oft-used Republican critique of the Democratic party’s increasingly popular left wing.

The video message will do little to dampen speculation that the renegade senator, who is now more popular among Republican voters in Pennsylvania than the Democrats who helped elect him, is preparing to switch political parties. Fetterman has repeatedly said that is not his plan, though he recently suggested he would be forced to formally break with the Democratic party if it ever became “the anti-Israel party”.

Democrats currently hold ۴۷ seats in the US Senate. Despite the long odds, Democrats believe discontent with the economy and Trump’s low approval ratings have given them a rare opportunity to retake control of the upper chamber. A defection would jeopardize their already narrow path to a majority.

Yet if Fetterman remains a Democrat, he would hold outsized influence, effectively wielding veto power in a ۵۱-۴۹ majority.

Marc Goldwein, the senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank in Washington, said Donald Trump has no authority send money to Americans without approval from Congress.

Goldwein added that dividends are something that companies pay when there’s a surplus, but the US is running $۲tn annual deficits and has $۴۰tn in debt.

“The idea that we’ve had fiscal success is backwards and bordering on laughable,” he said. “We don’t have surpluses to give away.”

Congress would need to approve or otherwise acquiesce to the payment. The sum would far exceed US tariff revenues even before the Supreme Court tossed much of the president’s tariff program last year.

The move was reminiscent of billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to buy votes in last year’s Wisconsin state Supreme Court race, where he handed out million-dollar checks to voters to try to boost a candidate who ultimately lost.

Trump’s proposal would be legal because the payment would go to everyone regardless of how they voted, or whether they voted at all, said New Mexico-based attorney John Day.

“This is a campaign promise,” Day said. “It’s not a payment to individuals to try to get them to vote in a particular way.”

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Vice-president JD Vance appeared to partially row back on Donald Trump’s outlandish claims that every adult citizen in the US would receive $۵,۰۰۰ if the Republicans retain the House and Senate in the midterm elections.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $۵,۰۰۰,” Trump told a roaring crowd, during a nearly two-hour long speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas in which he also urged voters to “pretend that I’m on the ballot”.

But Vance, speaking after the president, suggested the so-called dividend payments would not go to the wealthy and that it could be paid for by US tariff revenues – though the suggested payment dwarfs what the US has taken in through the protectionist measures.

Congress would need to approve or otherwise acquiesce to the payment. The sum would far exceed US tariff revenues even before the Supreme Court tossed much of the president’s tariff program last year.

The White House has yet to release details on Trump’s announcement.

Surrounded by supporters waving American flag placards, Trump claimed, without evidence, that his second term had been “the most successful two years, financially and every other way, in the history of the presidency”, but devoted much of his speech to fearmongering about what would happen should Democrats win the House or the Senate for the final two years of his presidency.

“There is a crazy little sick cloud over our country,” Trump said. “We will defeat communism in America.”

The president and Republicans are gambling that throwing a midterm convention – the first the GOP has ever held – can buoy the party, which is predicted to lose control of the House. Yet, Trump’s deep unpopularity among Americans – his approval rating is hovering at about ۳۸% – meant many Republican candidates running in competitive races skipped the two-day confab entirely.

Read the full story here:

In other developments:

• In a nearly two-hour speech, Donald Trump capped off his first night remarks at the GOP midterm convention by pleading with Republicans to “pretend that I’m running”. The president centered himself in the battle to control Congress, and acknowledged that candidates are more successful when he is on the ballot. He offered an ominous outlook if Republicans fail to retain power.

• Throughout his remarks, Trump also tried to campaign on behalf of Republicans in competitive midterm races. While he made fun of Ken Paxton’s clothing choices and the way he speaks, he praised the Republican nominee for US Senate in Texas as “the single greatest attorney general” in the state’s history, while also branding his opponent James Talarico as a “disaster”.

• Earlier, Democratic senator John Fetterman made a surprise virtual appearance at the Republican midterm convention, delivering a video address supporting Dave McCormick, a Republican senator in Pennsylvania. Fetterman, who has increasingly broken with his party since his election in ۲۰۲۲, said in the video that he would always reject “extremes and socialism”, repeating an oft-used Republican critique of the Democratic party’s increasingly popular left wing.

• Meanwhile, several Republicans who are facing tough races have chosen not to attend the convention in Dallas. This include Susan Collins, the five-term incumbent senator from Maine, and Dan Sullivan – the Republican senator from Alaska who is facing a tough contest against former Democratic congresswoman Mary Peltola.