USA01 August, 20263 min read
Donald Trump Uses Ceuta Migratory Crisis to Rally Ahead of U.S. Midterms on November 3
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
Three months before the midterms, the United States shifts into election mode. Democrats are close to regaining control of the House, but face a harder Senate.
Camp David midterm push
Three months before the midterm elections, Donald Trump held an unusual televised cabinet meeting at Camp David in Frederick County, Maryland, delivering a speech that resembled a campaign rally. Trump used the migratory crisis experienced this week in Ceuta as an electoral wedge and warned, "The same thing will happen to us if the Republicans are not elected; only it will be worse, on a larger scale and with far easier access." The El País account says there are barely three months left until the midterm elections held on November 3, and it frames the vote as a referendum on the management of the White House occupant.
“Surrounded by his entire administration, the U.S. president delivered a speech that looked like a campaign rally.”
El País also says the elections put all 435 members of the House of Representatives and a third of the 100 Senate seats up for election, while the latest CNN poll gives Democrats an eight-point lead over Republicans. The same El País piece says polling experts estimate progressives have to win by more than 3.5 points to wrest control of the House from conservatives, with gerrymandering expected to yield around nine seats to conservatives.
Threats, polling, and funding
El País reports that Trump has been warning for months about the risk of losing the midterms and that he still remembers the end of his first term when Congress opened impeachment proceedings. The article says Trump has launched a campaign to sow doubt about the reliability of the elections and insists the 2020 elections, which he lost to Joe Biden, were rigged despite two parliamentary commissions finding no irregularities and all judges dismissing cases for lack of evidence. El País adds that Trump wields that argument to push the Save Law, with which he intends to limit the voting rights of thousands of citizens, mostly Democratic-leaning.
In a separate account, ladepeche.fr says a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and published on July 29 found Trump’s overall popularity at 34%, his lowest level since returning to power. ladepeche.fr reports that half of Americans say they strongly disapprove of his actions, a record since the start of his terms, while only 15% say they strongly approve.
FIFA subpoena threat in play
As the midterms approach, Cadena SER reports that a Democratic congressman, Jamie Raskin, is leading a petition for FIFA president Gianni Infantino to appear before the House of Representatives to explain his relationship with Donald Trump. Cadena SER says Raskin asks FIFA to hand over to the House documents about possible Trump-favoring deals with Infantino, including whether FIFA used during the World Cup facilities at Trump Tower in New York below market price. The outlet quotes Raskin saying, "We see a flood of corruption and scandals — Jamie Raskin," and it adds that the suit currently has no chance of prospering because Democrats do not have a sufficient majority to push through subpoenas.
Cadena SER also says Raskin hopes a shift in the majority will allow him to subpoena Infantino and that Raskin would become chair of the Judiciary Committee and thus in charge of organizing the House of Representatives' subpoenas. The same Cadena SER piece states that neither FIFA nor Trump has responded to Raskin's demands, while it notes that the Department of Justice ended a related investigation by closing it this year.