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Trump claims Democrats 'probably won’t win an election for 50 years' if strict voter ID bill passes
Donald Trump laid out a set of restrictions for the Save America Act, which aims to change voting requirements ahead of the midterm elections, as he delivered remarks at a Republican event in Miami.
“All voters must show proof of citizenship in order to vote,” he says. “No mail-in ballots, except for illness, disability, military or travel.”
He claimed that, if the bill were to pass, Democrats “probably won’t win an election for 50 years and maybe longer.”
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President Donald Trump warned Iran against blocking the strait of Hormuz, a crucial artery for the world’s oil industry, as the US-Iran war has brought shipping disruptions in the strait.
“If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.
“Additionally, we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again — Death, Fire, and Fury will reign upon them — But I hope, and pray, that it does not happen!,” he added.
About 20 percent of global oil and gas passes through the narrow lane in the Gulf, but shipping traffic has been disrupted in the strait since the US and Israel’s coordinated military attacks against Iran started last month.
Two teen brothers who were members of a nationally recognized mariachi band in South Texas were released from immigration custody after a flurry of bipartisan criticism over their detainment.
Brothers Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Joshua, 14, were detained along with their 12-year-old brother and their parents on 25 February. They were held at a family detention center in Dilley, Texas, before their release on Monday.
The teenage boys were part of the McAllen High School Mariachi Oro band, which has visited the White House, performed at Carnegie Hall and won eight state championships.
Democratic representative Joaquin Castro visited the family at the detention center, marking his third visit to the detention center.
“The Gámez-Cuéllar family has been released. We are taking them now to reunite with their son Antonio,” Castro said in a post on X.
Javier Villalobos, McAllen’s Republican mayor, said he supported the family and said he continues to advocate for “responsible pathways for law abiding individuals who want to contribute to our economy, support their families, and become productive neighbors in McAllen.”
Rachel Leingang
Earlier, we reported that Donald Trump once again pushed for the Save America Act, a curtailment of voting access, during an event in Miami today. The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang brings us more details about the bill’s wider implications:
The president, fixated on unsubstantiated claims that noncitizens are stealing US elections ahead of midterm elections that are expected to be bruising for Republicans, said on Truth Social Sunday that the Save America Act “must be done immediately” and “supersedes everything else”.
“MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION – GO FOR THE GOLD,” he wrote.
He laid out a list of what he wanted in the bill, much of which is not currently in the proposal: showing voter ID and proof of citizenship, banning mail ballots except for a few instances, and, unrelated to voting, a ban on transgender people participating in women’s sports and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.
The White House previously confirmed that Trump was pushing for measures to be added to the voting bill on trans issues. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said last week that Trump “added on some priorities” for the bill, including a ban on “transgender transition surgeries for minors”.
“We are not gonna tolerate the mutilation of young children in this country. No men in women’s sports,” she said. “The president putting all of these priorities together speaks to how common sense they are.”
Read Rachel’s full report here:
A new survey shows that a majority of voters oppose US military action against Iran, while nearly three-quarters do not want to see US ground troops sent into Iran.
The Quinnipiac University poll, released on Monday, states that 55 percent of survey takers do not think Iran posed an imminent military threat to the US before the Trump administration started launching airstrikes against Iran. About 1,000 self-identified registered voters nationwide were surveyed from 6 March to 8 March.
Meanwhile, 20 percent of respondents support the US sending troops into Iran, while 74 percent oppose it.
In an interview with the New York Post, Donald Trump said today that he’s “nowhere near” deciding whether to send US troops into Iran to secure the stockpile of highly enriched uranium there.
Donald Trump was pressed by reporters on Monday about his claims blaming Iran for the recent bombing of an all-girls school in southern Iran that killed more than 160 people.
“But whether it’s Iran or somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk, a Tomahawk, is very generic. It’s sold to other countries, but that’s being investigated right now,” he said.
A reporter noted that no other US officials were making that claim, to which Trump replied: “Because I just don’t know enough about it. I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation.”
“Certainly, whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report,” he added.
Chris Stein
Democratic senators have filed a wave of new war powers resolutions as they call on Republicans to convene public hearings into the US hostilities with Iran or be forced to vote on continuing a conflict that polls show majorities of Americans do not support.
Late last week, Democrats Cory Booker of New Jersey, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Adam Schiff of California, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Chris Murphy of Connecticut filed resolutions under the War Powers Act that would force the US military to withdraw from the war with Iran unless Congress votes to authorize the engagement.
The GOP-controlled Senate and House of Representatives blocked similar resolutions last week, largely along party lines, as Republican leaders argued that Donald Trump was acting within his authority when the United States attacked Iran alongside Israel at the end of February.
Aides to the Democratic senators say the goal of these latest resolutions is to push the Senate majority leader John Thune into convening public hearings with cabinet secretaries involved in the war effort, or the chamber will be forced to debate and vote on the resolutions in the following weeks.
Read the full story:
Donald Trump said he would like to help people in Iran, but he claimed they cannot “behave.”
“I’d like to, if they can behave, but they’ve been very menacing,” he alleged. “They’re great people. They have an amazing population. It’s amazing, smart, brilliant, energetic.”
“I’d love to help them, but they have to be in a system that allows them to be helped, and right now they’re in a system that only allows failure, and I don’t want that,” he added. “We want a system that can lead to many years of peace, and if we can’t have that, we might as well get it over with right now.”
Donald Trump said he was “disappointed” that Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his slain father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the supreme leader of the country.
“We think it’s going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country,” Trump told reporters at a press conference in Miami.
Donald Trump said Iran would “never be able to recover, ever” from potential US strikes.
“We’re putting an end to all of this threat once and for all, and the result will be lower oil prices, oil and gas prices for American families,” Trump said. “We’ve done that. We’ve done it. We’ve brought it very low. This was just an excursion into something that had to be done.”
His remarks come as oil prices have soared past $100 a barrel as a result of the US-Iran war.
“We’re looking to keep the oil prices down. We went artificially up because there’s excursion into a very positive thing,” Trump said. “This was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn’t have done. I knew oil prices would go up if I did this, and they’ve gone up probably less than I thought they’d go up.”
Trump touts Iran operation: 'we wiped every single force'
At a press conference on Monday, Donald Trump said that the US government has “carried out some of the most powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers the world has ever seen.”
“We wiped every single force in Iran,” he said. “Most of Iran’s naval power has been sunk. It’s on the bottom of the sea.” Trump noted that the US military has so far destroyed 51 ships.
“We’ve struck over 5,000 targets to date, some of them very major targets, and we’ve left some of the most important targets for later,” he said.
“We think they should put a president in, or the head of the country, and that’s going to be able to do something peacefully for a change,” he added.
Trump claims Democrats 'probably won’t win an election for 50 years' if strict voter ID bill passes
Donald Trump laid out a set of restrictions for the Save America Act, which aims to change voting requirements ahead of the midterm elections, as he delivered remarks at a Republican event in Miami.
“All voters must show proof of citizenship in order to vote,” he says. “No mail-in ballots, except for illness, disability, military or travel.”
He claimed that, if the bill were to pass, Democrats “probably won’t win an election for 50 years and maybe longer.”
During an event in Florida, Donald Trump said Iran was “looking to take over the Middle East.”
“We have pretty good proof,” Trump said. “They were going to attack us, 100% they were ready. They had all these missiles, far more than anyone thought, and they were going to attack us, they were going to attack all the Middle East and Israel.”
“They had all of those missile sites and all those launches that we got rid of,” he added.
Donald Trump is delivering remarks at his golf resort in Miami for the House Republicans’ annual retreat.
“The representatives in this room provided the pivotal votes in securing a record $1 trillion for the United States military this year,” Trump said. “Now the world is witnessing the importance of that investment with one of the most complex and stunning operations ever conducted. That’s Operation Epic Fury.”
“The world respects us right now more than they have ever respected us before,” he added. “We’re the strongest military anywhere in the Earth, and now everybody understands it.”
“Together with our Israeli partners, we’re crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force. Iran’s drone and missile capability is being utterly demolished,” Trump said.
Donald Trump told CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang that the war against Iran could be over soon.
“I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” Trump said, according to a post on X by Jiang, senior White House correspondent at CBS.
“They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no Air Force,” Trump said, according to Jiang.
She also asked the US president about Iran’s new Supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whom Trump has criticized before.
“I have no message for him. None, whatsoever,” he said, according to Jiang. Trump said he has someone in mind to replace Khamenei, but he did not elaborate.
