Trump Is Suddenly Very Worried About Protesters

The presidential candidate who stood and watched as scores of his supporters rampaged through the U.S. Capitol is being proactive about security for the Republican National Convention in July.

The Trump campaign has decided that the Secret Service’s current security plans don’t provide enough clearance between the GOP event and its liberal protesters. In a letter to Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle, the campaign described the current programmed distance between the Milwaukee event and its protesters as an “unacceptable” and “critical flaw.” Specifically, it requests that the agency add the inclusion of a nearby park—effectively an extra one-block cushion area—to the security perimeter in a preemptive effort to keep thousands of the event’s anticipated detractors far away from its attendees.

Trump is not the only politico to request the change, though he’s almost certainly the loudest. Some of the biggest GOP lawmakers in the country have already made the special request, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Senators Ron Johnson and Rick Scott.

“To date, the local USSS team has been unresponsive to the RNC’s reasonable proposal, as set out in my April 26 letter, to alleviate these safety risks through a very modest alteration of the Perimeter—namely, to expand a small portion of the Security Perimeter approximately one block to the East to encapsulate the Park,” wrote Republican National Committee counsel Todd Steggerda in the letter.

The city of Milwaukee did not agree with the Trump campaign’s assessment of the security perimeter. Milwaukee’s director of communications Jeff Fleming told ABC News that the city did not identify “any critical flaws” in the security plan and that it is coordinating with “multiple agencies” to ensure a safe event for everyone involved.

A border bill negotiated by Republicans and Democrats has died in the Senate—with the help of lots of opposition from Republicans, including the bill’s main author.

Senators voted 43–50 to take down the bill, an attempt to renew a border proposal that was tanked earlier this year thanks to Donald Trump.

In February, Republicans killed an attempt to pass a bill for border security, also a product of bipartisan negotiations. Back then, several Republicans called out Trump and the rest of their party for killing a bill that essentially gave the GOP what they wanted: rather draconian immigration restrictions. Back then, Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump were more afraid of handing the Democrats a win than they were of a supposedly insecure southern U.S. border. Months later, that again seems to be the case.

This time, even the bill’s authors, such as Senators James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, and Kyrsten Sinema, an independent for herself, voted against advancing the legislation. The GOP, hypocritically, also sees the vote as a political boost to President Biden.

​​“Today is not a bill, today is a prop,” said Lankford on the Senate floor before the vote. “Everyone sees it for what it is.” This is especially ironic, considering that Lankford was among those Republicans who called B.S. the last time a border deal failed.

Some Democrats also voted to kill the bill due to other issues. “It fails to address the root causes of migration or to establish more lawful pathways,” Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, told the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Republicans still use fearmongering and racist tropes whenever the issue of immigration comes up, especially when they are up for reelection. No matter how much danger they claim Americans are in from an unsecure southern border, they still would rather use it as a talking point against Democrats instead of actually doing something about it.

On Thursday, former Trump White House attorney Ty Cobb accused Judge Aileen Cannon, the federal judge overseeing his ex-boss’s classified documents case, of “incompetence,” insisting that there’s more than enough evidence—and time—to take the case to trial before Election Day.

“I don’t think this case will move at all,” Cobb said on CNN. “And I think the fact that she’s scheduling hearings, multiple hearings, sort of one or two motions at a time, is compelling evidence of that. Most federal judges would have long ago ruled on all the pending motions.”

“And frankly, this is a case that should’ve started trial yesterday or two days ago when the original trial date was set,” he continued. “This case could have easily gotten to trial. Only her incompetence and perceived bias has prevented that.”

Earlier this month, the Trump-appointed judge ordered a stay on the GOP presidential nominee’s legal requirement to give the government advance notice of which classified materials will be discussed—but offered no expiration date for the theoretically temporary reprieve. Legal analysts have worried that a strategy of continual delays could be the Trump-appointed judge’s way of surreptitiously dismissing the trial altogether.

Cobb also accused Cannon of simply failing to understand the case—or the determination of the serial fraudster being tried.

“Trump has a consistent record of lying about the judicial process, and his perception of that process is really odd,” Cobb said, pointing to Trump’s accusation that the Biden administration had authorized the FBI to shoot him during its search and seizure of Mar-a-Lago—a claim that was, in actuality, a wild, willful misread of a standard policy statement regarding the use of deadly force.

Louisiana Republicans have passed a draconian bill classifying abortion pills as schedule IV “controlled dangerous substances”—and threatening anyone in possession of the pill without a prescription with prison and thousands of dollars in fines. The legislation is expected to be signed by Republican Governor Jeff Landry.

The soon-to-be law will go after both mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly known simply as the abortion pill. Prior to its final passage in the state Senate on Thursday, health care providers warned the bill will make it more difficult to treat miscarriages, as the legislation requires special licensing and controlled distribution of abortion pills.

Under Louisiana law, possession of a schedule IV controlled dangerous substance includes a fine up to $5,000, jail time from one to five years, or both. Distribution or possession with intent to distribute carries a fine up to $15,000 and imprisonment up to 10 years.

Louisiana legislation has steadily restricted access to the abortion pill in recent years. Legislation passed in 2022 banned abortion pills by mail, required abortion pills to be administered by a physician—not a nurse or other health care worker—and mandated any administration to be reported to the state’s Department of Health. When that law took effect, two abortion providers in the state shut down.

Conservatives have been working to ban abortion pills, used to terminate pregnancy in its first 10 weeks, since the overturning of Roe. The two-part abortion pill was first developed in France in the 1980s, with the Food and Drug Administration finally approving its distribution in the U.S. in 2000. By 2023, chemically induced abortions accounted for 63 percent of abortions nationwide. Anti-abortion activists have falsely claimed the pills are dangerous and that their effects can be reversed, while health care professionals insist they are the safest way to terminate early term pregnancies, including miscarriage.

Handing a major win to a manufactured conservative campaign to dismantle safeguards for equality, the governing board of North Carolina’s 17 public university systems on Thursday banned its diversity, equity, and inclusion policy.

The move follows a last-minute plea from lawmakers, students, and business leaders who gathered at the state legislature on Wednesday to urge against the ban and extol the virtues of DEI programs.

“Our world has become so different, and it’s changing so rapidly, and North Carolina is evolving alongside these global changes,” state Representative Maria Cervania said during the last-minute meeting on Wednesday. “Our businesses know this. They’ve told us they want a workforce that can keep up with our new, globalized world. DEI is actually the best program that’s helping equip our students for that.”

The Board of Governors for the UNC system unanimously approved the university DEI policy in 2019, according to local news outlet WRAL. Following the anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests of 2020, conservatives have sharpened their knives to dismantle hallmarks of racial progress. Those attacks resulted in a manufactured crisis over critical race theory, arguing it’s bad to teach college students factual—but ugly—U.S. history. Soon after, the same people targeted DEI by arguing it’s “reverse discrimination,” a concept that does not exist.

UNC’s board—which initially approved its DEI policy unanimously—plans to replace DEI with a new policy that prohibits universities from “endorsing pro-diversity views—or any other social or political messaging,” WRAL reported Wednesday, an all-or-nothing claim that, if precedent is any indicator, will more than likely only be enforced in one direction.