Redistricting debate shifts to South Carolina as Republicans seek clean sweep of House seats
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
An effort to reshape South Carolina’s congressional districts will get its first full airing Monday in the state House.
Lawmakers will launch a lengthy – and potentially testy discussion – over whether to accede to president Donald Trump’s calls for a US House map that could yield a clean sweep for Republicans, AP reports.
Debates already have played out in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana as Republicans push to leverage a recent Supreme Court ruling that weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minority districts.
The ruling has opened the way for Republicans to redraw districts with large black populations that have elected Democrats. In South Carolina, that means targeting a seat long held by representative Jim Clyburn, the only Democrat among the state’s seven representatives in the House.
Clyburn has said he has no intention of retiring, even if his district gets changed. He told reporters last week in Washington that he has addresses in Columbia, Charleston and Santee, adding:
I live in three districts. I’ll decide which one to run in.
“It ain’t about Jim Clyburn’s district,” he added. “This isn’t about voting. This is about turning the clock back to Jim Crow 2.0.”
Early voting is scheduled to begin on 26 May for South Carolina’s statewide primaries on 9 June. In addition to redrawing congressional districts, legislation pending in the state House would move the House primaries to August. If it clears the House, the legislation then must go to the Senate.
In other developments:
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A US Senate official on Saturday removed security funding that could be used for Donald Trump’s planned $400m White House ballroom from a massive spending package, Democratic lawmakers said, imperilling Republican efforts to devote taxpayer money to the contentious project.
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The Republican senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary on Saturday, as voters in Louisiana opted instead to advance two challengers to a runoff election after an extraordinary intervention by Trump to oust the incumbent.
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With two days to go before the next big test of Trump’s iron grip over his party, the president went head-to-head on Sunday with his nemesis, Thomas Massie the Kentucky congressman who is in a fight for his political life in Tuesday’s Republican primary.
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Workers renovating one of Washington DC’s most historically symbolic sites in a project ordered by Trump may be risking their safety as they race to finish on time for the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations, a union monitoring the site has warned.
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The FBI director, Kash Patel, is facing new scrutiny following reports that he participated in a snorkelling excursion around the USS Arizona during a trip to Hawaii last summer.
Key events
Dozens of state anti-vaccine bills backed by Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) supporters have failed after public health groups won over Republican state lawmakers, marking a series of defeats for the backers of health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.
The failures show a limit to the political power of the MAHA coalition groups that had set out this year to pass laws against mandatory vaccinations in at least 10 states, hoping to capitalize on a rise in anti-vaccine sentiment and their role in helping elect president Donald Trump.
Pro-vaccine groups and medical associations including American Families for Vaccines, the American Academy of Pediatrics and others lobbied in statehouses against bills seeking to end policies like school vaccine mandates, according to Reuters interviews with seven organizations.
Vaccine advocates used polling data and personal appeals to convince lawmakers in Republican-controlled states such as West Virginia, Louisiana and Florida that their constituents support vaccination and that the MAHA-backed bills posed a threat to public health.
Trump may have to wait for rate cuts until the Iran war is over, he tells Fortune
President Donald Trump conceded in an interview with Fortune magazine published on Monday that he may have to wait until the war with Iran was over for more interest rate cuts.
“You can’t really look at the figures until the war is over,” he said.
Trump said Iran was “dying to sign” a ceasefire deal with the US. “But they make a deal, and then they send you a paper that has no relationship to the deal you made.” he told Fortune.
The president also said he “should have asked for more” of a stake in Intel on behalf of the US government.
The Trump administration last year took a 10% stake in Intel and announced an investment of about $10 billion in the chipmaker for building or expanding factories in the U.S.
Eight months after the deal, the government’s Intel position has grown to be worth more than $50 billion.
Redistricting debate shifts to South Carolina as Republicans seek clean sweep of House seats
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
An effort to reshape South Carolina’s congressional districts will get its first full airing Monday in the state House.
Lawmakers will launch a lengthy – and potentially testy discussion – over whether to accede to president Donald Trump’s calls for a US House map that could yield a clean sweep for Republicans, AP reports.
Debates already have played out in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana as Republicans push to leverage a recent Supreme Court ruling that weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minority districts.
The ruling has opened the way for Republicans to redraw districts with large black populations that have elected Democrats. In South Carolina, that means targeting a seat long held by representative Jim Clyburn, the only Democrat among the state’s seven representatives in the House.
Clyburn has said he has no intention of retiring, even if his district gets changed. He told reporters last week in Washington that he has addresses in Columbia, Charleston and Santee, adding:
I live in three districts. I’ll decide which one to run in.
“It ain’t about Jim Clyburn’s district,” he added. “This isn’t about voting. This is about turning the clock back to Jim Crow 2.0.”
Early voting is scheduled to begin on 26 May for South Carolina’s statewide primaries on 9 June. In addition to redrawing congressional districts, legislation pending in the state House would move the House primaries to August. If it clears the House, the legislation then must go to the Senate.
In other developments:
-
A US Senate official on Saturday removed security funding that could be used for Donald Trump’s planned $400m White House ballroom from a massive spending package, Democratic lawmakers said, imperilling Republican efforts to devote taxpayer money to the contentious project.
-
The Republican senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary on Saturday, as voters in Louisiana opted instead to advance two challengers to a runoff election after an extraordinary intervention by Trump to oust the incumbent.
-
With two days to go before the next big test of Trump’s iron grip over his party, the president went head-to-head on Sunday with his nemesis, Thomas Massie the Kentucky congressman who is in a fight for his political life in Tuesday’s Republican primary.
-
Workers renovating one of Washington DC’s most historically symbolic sites in a project ordered by Trump may be risking their safety as they race to finish on time for the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations, a union monitoring the site has warned.
-
The FBI director, Kash Patel, is facing new scrutiny following reports that he participated in a snorkelling excursion around the USS Arizona during a trip to Hawaii last summer.