Greg Abbott Promises to Keep Using Migrants as Political Pawn at RNC

Texas’s border battle with the Biden administration is apparently not going to end anytime soon, at least according to its governor.

Speaking at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, Governor Greg Abbott bragged about the contentious back-and-forth he had with federal border agents earlier this year. That spat ended with the Supreme Court siding in favor of the Biden administration. In a 5–4 decision, the high court ruled that Texas had overstepped its authority by placing razor wire along the Rio Grande section of the U.S.-Mexico border. It also gave the green light to the federal government to snip and move sections of the wire that had prevented federal border agents from doing their job.

But all of that was in the rearview mirror for Abbott, who insisted Wednesday that not only had he brought the “border crisis” to President Joe Biden but that the job was far from over.

“We have continued busing migrants to sanctuary cities all across the country,” Abbott said, accusing the undocumented immigrants of being “rapists,” “murderers,” and “terrorists” while attendees waved signs calling for “mass deportations now.”

“Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border,” he added.

Before the Supreme Court ruling, Abbott’s signature Operation Lone Star had bused more than 100,000 migrants from Texas detention centers to cities across the country. That included sending more than 37,000 undocumented people to New York, 30,000 people to Chicago, and 12,500 people to Washington, D.C., according to the governor’s office.

But continuing the highly controversial and extraordinarily cruel program could prove to be legally dubious, economically unsound, and possibly ineffective. In a May report, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas found that the state had spent $11 billion on increased border security funding, including the busing program, with the intent to “detect and repel illegal crossings, arrest human smugglers and cartel gang members, and stop the flow of deadly drugs like fentanyl.”

But the massive expenditure doesn’t seem to have paid off. The majority (43 percent) of those caught and arrested were charged with misdemeanors, while less than 3 percent of the individuals arrested actually went before a judge for drug offenses. Even fewer (2 percent) went to court on weapons charges.

“Texas has no business trying to run its own immigration enforcement program,” Sarah Cruz, policy and advocacy strategist for border and immigrants’ rights at the ACLU of Texas, told Texas Public Radio at the time. “Governor Abbott and other state politicians conflating immigration with drugs and crime is as false as it is inflammatory and dangerous to our communities.”

To top it off, some political operatives have accused Abbott—and Governor Ron DeSantis, who operated a similar program in Florida—of engaging in human trafficking, while legal experts have roundly criticized the program as unconstitutional.

Four Republican senators went ballistic as they chased Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle out of the Republican National Convention, demanding her resignation if she would not answer their questions about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

Senators John Barrasso, Marsha Blackburn, James Lankford, and Kevin Cramer surrounded Cheatle in a suite at the convention Wednesday night. Blackburn posted a video of their furious encounter on X, which Fox News was able to caption.

Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, said he was “very disappointed” after a dual congressional phone briefing earlier that day, during which Cheatle had failed to address all of his questions about the shooting at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. “Every one of us have questions that we wanted to ask, we felt we didn’t get any of the responses that were necessary from you,” Barrasso said.

Cheatle reportedly acknowledged that there had been “mistakes and gaffes” that allowed for the attempted assassin to get his shot at the former president, one person familiar with the briefing told Politico. But, it appeared that her responses earlier Wednesday had not satisfied the concerns of these senators.

Barrasso insisted that Cheatle had allowed Trump to take the stage after the Secret Service had already identified the possible threat. “Very disappointed in your leadership,” Barrasso continued, saying that he blamed Cheatle for putting the former president “within less than an inch of his life.”

“So, resignation, or full explanation to us right now,” he said.

Blackburn echoed Barrasso’s demands for answers. “Can you give us an explanation? Why would anyone allow the president to go on stage when you know you’ve got a potential threat and you’ve got snipers that are trained on him?” she asked.

“I don’t think that this is the forum to have this discussion,” Cheatle said, invoking cries of outrage from both senators.

“Oh, yes ma’am, it is the forum!” Blackburn retorted.

“But wait, you hung up on us!” Barrasso cried.

“Let me just say the hospitality suite is actually to thank the partners who have helped secure the Republican National Convention. I would not want to take away from their evening,” Cheatle said. “I am happy to answer questions, we will do it in the appropriate forum.”

Still, Blackburn insisted, “This is appropriate!”

“I’m going to leave because I want these people to be able to enjoy their evening,” Cheatle said.

As she began to walk out of the suite, Barrasso and Blackburn insisted on following her out. “No, no, no, we’re going with you,” they said.

As the group made its way quickly through the hallways of the arena, the senators would not relent in their efforts to shame Cheatle.

“It was an assassination attempt!” Blackburn cried. “Just say it’s an assassination attempt.”

“There’s no shame, no concern,” Barrasso scolded. “You’re supposed to protect the president of the United States.”

Senator Kevin Cramer also piped up. “Do you answer to anyone? I’m going to tell you who you answer to, you answer to us,” he cried.

“Stonewalling! You do nothing,” Barrasso fumed.

As the senators were forced to break into a light jog, they continued to yell angrily at Cheatle. “You cannot run away from your responsibility to the people of the United States,” Barrasso shouted.

“You can keep running, but you can’t hide from us!” Blackburn yelled.

Cheatle has given no indication that she intends to hide, and has agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee next week, after receiving a subpoena from Representative James Comer.

Senator J.D. Vance’s speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night thoroughly underwhelmed the viewing audience, including Donald Trump.

The newly anointed vice presidential nominee reportedly bored the convention audience in Milwaukee, with his small fist pumps and stories about rural Appalachia failing to win over a friendly crowd. Trump even appeared to be dozing off at times.

The speech didn’t receive much praise outside of die-hard MAGA Republicans on social media, with the consensus being that it was dull and fell flat.

But that may have been by design, according to one observer, as Trump never likes to be overshadowed or have too much attention taken away from him.

And Trump may not have chosen Vance for his speaking skills but rather for his connections to right-wing Silicon Valley bigwigs like Peter Thiel and David Sacks.

Watch the full speech below to see for yourself.

On Thursday, Axios reported that top Democrats are convinced Biden will soon relent on calls for him to bow out of the 2024 presidential race.

According to several unnamed Democrats, including Biden aides, “the rising pressure of party congressional leaders and close friends will persuade President Biden to decide to drop out of the presidential race, as soon as this weekend,” Axios reported.

The report comes as calls for Biden to drop out have reached a fever pitch. On Wednesday, Representative Adam Schiff publicly urged him to step down, and reporting revealed that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have done the same in private conversations with the president. Now those close to Biden are admonishing him that remaining in the race could mar his legacy and deliver a “landslide” victory to Trump and the Republicans in November, Axios reported.

Over the past week, Biden’s intransigence regarding his presidential bid has reportedly softened. On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that he was growing “more receptive in the last several days to hearing arguments” against continuing his candidacy, and a senior Democratic adviser told CNN Biden has “gone from saying, ‘Kamala can’t win,’ to ‘Do you think Kamala can win?’”

A friend of Biden told Axios that Biden’s “choice is to be one of history’s heroes, or to be sure of the fact that there’ll never be a Biden presidential library,” adding, “I pray that he does the right thing. He’s headed that way.”

Conservatives are all in on Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” promise—and they’ve even produced some disturbing merchandise to pair with it.

Attendees at the Republican National Convention were seen Wednesday holding up and waving signs reading “Make America Strong Again” and “Mass Deportation Now.”

Speaking to the conference on its third night, Texas Governor Greg Abbott reiterated his support for Trump, promising that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee would “arrest the criminal, illegal immigrants” and either “put them behind bars” or “send them back.” That launched the crowd into a fiery chant, with hundreds of attendees shouting, “Send them back.”

But Abbott wasn’t the only Republican to stoke the anti-immigration flames during the convention. The night before, Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise and House Speaker Mike Johnson promoted a white supremacist, alt-right conspiracy known as the “great replacement theory.”

Texas Senator Ted Cruz—whose state overwhelmingly identifies as Hispanic—and Senate candidate Kari Lake, who’s running to represent 2.3 million voters in Arizona, both claimed that Democrats are letting undocumented immigrants vote. Of course, undocumented immigrants (and any other noncitizens) cannot vote in U.S. elections.

Trump has repeatedly promised to hold mass deportations should he be reelected in November. In June, he claimed there were “close to 20 million people” who are “gonna have to be gone.”

It’s not Joever til it’s Joever, but after nearly three weeks of mounting pleas from within his own party, President Joe Biden might actually be considering the calls to drop out of the presidential race.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported Wednesday that a senior Democratic adviser said Biden had grown “more receptive to these calls of concern.” Zeleny, quoting the source, said that Biden is “being receptive, not as defiant as he is publicly,” and said that the private conversations about his candidacy were continuing on Capitol Hill. 

While Biden has given no indication that he plans to leave the race, he has reportedly begun asking questions about whether his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, stands a chance of winning the White House in November.

One person close to the president told The New York Times Wednesday that it would be wrong to consider Biden more completely receptive to the idea of withdrawing, but that he “is willing to listen.”

Biden’s change in tune comes after a particularly tough day for the embattled president. 

Earlier Wednesday, news broke that the two highest-ranking democrats in Congress, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, had made direct appeals for Biden to drop out of the race for the good of the party. 

Schumer met with Biden Saturday to talk about “recent polling, the Democratic Party, and where it’s headed,” one anonymous source close to both congressional lawmakers told Politico. The discussion was “predicated on the recent troubles facing the president.” 

A few days earlier, Jeffries had a similar conversation with Biden, telling the president that his presence at the top of the ticket imperiled the Democrats running down the ballot, according to another source who was also granted anonymity. 

Both men were also reportedly part of a quiet push to delay the Democratic National Committee’s  attempts to fast-track Biden’s nomination, through a virtual roll call at the beginning of next month. 

In another damaging leak, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also reportedly showed Biden recent polling that indicated he will lose to Trump in November, four sources who were behind the call told CNN. Biden reportedly responded defensively, and Pelosi requested that one of Biden’s advisers join the call to discuss the data.

As if that wasn’t enough, Biden also tested positive for Covid-19, an announcement that comes just after the president said he would drop out of the race if he was “diagnosed with a medical condition.” While it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t the kind of diagnosis he was talking about, it’s possible that his latest illness will significantly stall his ability to campaign, and convince the president he’d rather not work through the pain. 

The past week has seen an outpouring of hate from the far right over the wife of Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance. The unremarkable fact that Vance is married to Usha Vance, a woman of Indian heritage, has become a fixation for white nationalists online.

Following Monday’s announcement of Vance as Trump’s running mate, white nationalist “groyper” Nick Fuentes seemed to enter a meltdown on his broadcast, saying, “What kind of man marries somebody that isn’t a Christian? What kind of man marries somebody named Usha? Clearly, he doesn’t value his racial identity, his heritage. Clearly, he doesn’t value his religion. He doesn’t marry a woman that professes Jesus Christ? What does that say about him?”

Jaden McNeil, another white nationalist activist, posted a picture of Vance, his wife, and their newborn with the caption, “I’m sure this guy is going to be great on immigration.” Other prominent far-right accounts have similarly bemoaned Vance’s multiracial family, with replies awash in bigotry. “There is an obvious Indian coup taking place in the US right before our eyes,” whined far-right conspiracy theorist Stew Peters.

Considering the flagrant racism of the far right, this reaction may not shock, but it certainly appalls. It’s a reminder that there are factions of Trump’s base that view diversity in their party, and the country, with horror. (Recall Ann Coulter telling Vivek Ramaswamy that she would not vote for him because he is Indian.)

Commenting on the vitriol against Usha Vance on Substack, progressive activist and writer Qasim Rashid wrote, “Since Donald Trump launched his political career on the racist birtherism attacks on President Obama, racism and white supremacy have defined the MAGA movement. That racism has had violent consequences.… Perhaps this is why JD Vance himself condemned Donald Trump when he said in a now deleted tweet, ‘Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.’”

The Republican National Convention chose to elevate a clip of some eyebrow-raising frat boy behavior on Wednesday.

The original viral clip, filmed in early May, emerged from a collision between a Palestine solidarity protest and a group of counterprotesters at the University of Mississippi. One fraternity brother, dressed in a blue shirt and cheered on by a crowd of white men, harassed a Black woman in the pro-Palestine group by dancing and screaming at her like a monkey.

“Not all college students have gone woke,” the RNC announcer praised over a shot of the video. “They should be celebrated.”

While that level of racism was apparently perfect for the Republican convention, it was too extreme even for the fraternity and the school. The behavior sparked an investigation by the University of Mississippi, and led University Chancellor Glenn Boyce to issue a statement describing the counterprotesters’ chants and actions as containing “hostility and racist overtones.”

The Phi Delta Theta fraternity that the student belonged to also opted to kick him out, noting in a statement shortly after the video was publicized that “the racist actions in the video were those of an individual and are antithetical to the values of Phi Delta Theta and the Mississippi Alpha chapter.”

“After reviewing the incident, it was determined that the individual’s behavior was unacceptable,” an updated version of the statement read. “The action in question was offensive, outside the bounds of this discourse, and contradictory to our values.”

Sounds like the RNC got a different message.

The gunman who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday reportedly had President Biden and the Democratic National Convention in his search history, in addition to Trump.

The FBI released new details about Thomas Matthew Crooks Wednesday to members of Congress, revealing that in addition to pictures of Biden and Trump, the 20-year-old also searched for FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and a member of the British royal family. The New York Times reported these details, citing anonymous sources.

What still isn’t known is Crooks’s motive. While he told fellow users of a gaming platform, Steam, that he planned to make a “premiere” on July 13, little else has been discovered. The FBI has searched through Crooks’s possessions, including two phones and at least one laptop, and hasn’t found any proof of strong political views in any particular direction.

Crooks received several packages over the past few months that were marked “hazardous material,” and federal law enforcement also found three explosive devices connected to him: two in his car and one in his house. The two in his car used a radio-controlled system normally used in commercial fireworks.

Investigators haven’t found any evidence of co-conspirators or ties to any organizations, and are reportedly puzzled by the lack of evidence on the two phones. One hypothesis is that Crooks may have been dealing with depression, as one of his phone searches was for “major depressive disorder,” but little has been discovered beyond that.

In the week following the shooting, Trump’s right-wing allies and supporters have spouted all kinds of conspiracy theories, including that it was a plot by the Democratic establishment and that the Secret Service was weakened by “DEI hires,” meaning women and minorities. But the revelations so far don’t show any kind of wider plot, or a political motive. So far, the limited discoveries only hint at a man looking up famous people near him.

Senator Bernie Sanders basically admitted that President Biden is declining, but said he will support him anyway.

In an interview with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, the Vermont senior senator confessed Biden “sometimes [gets] confused about names.”

“You’re right—sometimes he doesn’t put three sentences together. It is true,” Sanders told Chotiner, before adding a big caveat.

“But the reality of the moment is, in my view, he is the best candidate the Democrats have for a variety of reasons, and trying, in an unprecedented way, to take him off the ticket would do a lot more harm than good,” Sanders added.

Sanders spoke about how impressed he has been with Biden’s record in office, but didn’t entirely dismiss the question over whether Biden could serve as president for another four years.

“Look, I have concerns about everything, you know? And everybody should have concerns about everything. As a nation, we do a very poor job, both in Congress and in the media, of focusing on issues that impact the working class,” Sanders said, dodging the question. “So I would much prefer to have somebody who can’t put three sentences together who is setting forth an agenda that speaks to the needs of working-class people.”

When Chotiner described Biden as having “trouble completing a single sentence,” Sanders replied simply, “He does.”

Still, Sanders said that he’d prefer Biden stay despite showing signs of decline. It is a candid description of Biden that one would not hear from any of the president’s other supporters, and that is probably because of Sanders’s outsider reputation as an avowed socialist and independent in the Senate.

Unlike Biden’s other supporters, Sanders isn’t just offering warnings about the dangers of convicted felon Donald Trump returning to the White House, with Project 2025 in tow. He is steadfastly defending Biden’s record over his nearly four years as president, with some criticisms.

“My supporters are very upset, and justifiably so, at the President for his position on the war in Gaza. And I pointed that out in my op-ed. I think what’s going on there is a humanitarian horror show. I think Netanyahu should not get another nickel, but that is not the White House’s position,” Sanders said.

As the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party’s left wing, Sanders’s opinions likely are the same as many other progressives who profess their support for Biden staying on, including some members of the “Squad.” But they are being outflanked by a growing number of Democrats to their right who are calling for Biden to step down, who have renewed their efforts  in recent days. While intraparty tension is often a cliché, the fact is that in order for the Democrats to present a unified front against Trump and the Republicans, these tensions will have to be resolved and fast, with or without Biden.