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Supreme court to weigh Trump's power to limit asylum processing
The US supreme court is set on Tuesday to hear a defense by president Donald Trump’s administration of the government’s authority to turn away asylum seekers when officials deem US-Mexico border crossings too overburdened to handle more claims, Reuters reports.
The legal dispute centers on a policy called “metering” that the Republican president’s administration may seek to revive after it was dropped by Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden.
The policy allowed US immigration officials to stop asylum seekers at the border and indefinitely decline to process their claims.
The Trump administration has appealed a lower court’s finding that the policy violated federal law.
This policy is separate from the sweeping ban on asylum at the border that Trump announced after returning to the presidency last year. That policy also faces an ongoing legal challenge.
Under US law, a migrant who “arrives in the United States” may apply for asylum and must be inspected by a federal immigration official.
The narrow legal issue in the current case is whether asylum seekers who are stopped on the Mexican side of the border have arrived in the United States.
US democracy has settled into diminished state, experts find
Lauren Gambino
The health of American democracy, as measured by those who study it most closely, has settled into a diminished state – stabilizing after a sharp decline last year, but still well below the levels recorded at any point before the start of Donald Trump’s second term, according to a new survey released on Tuesday.
The findings, by the nonpartisan democracy-tracking project Bright Line Watch, which surveys hundreds of US scholars at American colleges and universities, suggest that the erosion of norms detected after Trump’s return to the White House last year has hardened into a new baseline.
The public also holds a dim view of American democracy, the most recent survey found, but are sharply divided along partisan lines over how well the system is functioning.
The report draws on two waves of surveys. The first was conducted in late December and early January, a volatile period in which the Trump administration ramped up its immigration crackdown in Minnesota and US military forces bombed Venezuela and captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro.
Given the gravity of both events, the researchers opted to field a second survey in February and early March to account for any shifts in perceptions, rather than release potentially outdated findings.
In the initial findings, experts’ views of US democracy rose to 60 on a scale of 100, up from a record-low of 53 in the early months of Trump’s second term.
The researchers suggest the uptick may be attributed to Democrats’ success in a string of off-year elections – a sign that “the playing field had not been tilted against the opposition and that free and fair elections were still possible”, the report states.
Following the toppling of Maduro, experts’ ratings slipped back to prior levels – 56 – and remained consistent in the second survey at 57.
Rubio to testify in ex-congressman's Venezuela foreign agent case
Secretary of state Marco Rubio is expected to testify on Tuesday in former congressman David Rivera’s criminal trial on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s government.
Rubio’s testimony will briefly take him out of Washington, where he has been engaged in high-level diplomacy around president Donald Trump’s war in Iran, and into the federal courthouse in downtown Miami, his hometown and where his political career began, Reuters reported.
Prosecutors say Rivera, who represented southern Florida in the House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013, lobbied politicians in 2017 to relax pressure on Maduro without disclosing that he was paid $20 million by a subsidiary of a Venezuelan state-owned company, a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Among the politicians both prosecutors and Rivera’s defense lawyers say he met with at the time was Rubio, his onetime roommate and then a senator for Florida.
Rubio and Rivera are both Cuban-American Republicans who have been outspoken critics of left-wing governments in Cuba and Venezuela throughout their careers.
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon says ICE agents at airports is 'test run' for polling station rollout
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
The former White House strategist and podcaster Steve Bannon has suggested the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers at airports is a “test run” for using them at polling stations in the midterms later this year.
Speaking to conservative lawyer Mike Davis on his ‘War Room’ podcast, Bannon asked:
We can use what’s happening with these ICE [officers] helping out at the airports, we can use this as a test run, as a test case to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections, sir?
Davis replied:
Yeah, I think we should have ICE agents at the polling places, because if you’re an illegal alien you can’t vote, right? It’s against the law, it’s a federal crime for you to vote in federal elections.
And so, if you’re an American citizen, you should be happy that ICE is there, because you’re not going to have illegal aliens canceling out your vote.
“Pick ‘em out of line starting today, and maybe the lines will get shorter,” Bannon added, as reported last night by The Hill.
Security lines stretched for hours on Monday at US airports where unpaid Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) screening agents refused to report for duty and ICE agents deployed by Donald Trump were reportedly seen in a dozen cities.
ICE agents were seen at airports such as Atlanta, Newark, New Orleans and New York’s John F Kennedy. CNN reported nine other airports where ICE agents were seen.
In other developments:
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The US Senate confirmed Markwayne Mullin to serve as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, elevating the Republican senator to a role where he will be among the public faces of Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. The Republican controlled chamber confirmed Mullin largely along party lines, with a vote of 54-45. More here.
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Donald Trump has claimed there have been talks between the US and Iran over the past day in which the two sides had “major points of agreement”, appearing to avert a potentially severe escalation of the conflict. Tehran has denied the claim, in which Trump also speculated that a deal could soon be done to end the war. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said no talks had been held with the US since the bombing campaign began 24 days ago. More here.
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The US supreme court appeared poised to curtail how mail-in ballots can be counted if they arrive after election day, which would affect laws in more than a dozen states during a midterm election year. The justices are considering Watson v Republican National Committee, a challenge over a Mississippi state law that was brought in 2024 by the Republican party. More here.
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California attorney general Rob Bonta said he has sued the US energy department to stop it from using a cold-war era law to restart the long-disputed Sable Offshore pipeline system linking the Santa Ynez offshore platform to California refineries. US energy secretary Chris Wright earlier this month restarted the pipelines using powers granted to him by Donald Trump through an executive order that invoked the Defense Production Act to supersede state laws. More here.
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Prediction markets are facing fresh bipartisan scrutiny in the US Senate as companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket continue to battle state-led efforts to regulate online betting. A bill was introduced in the US Senate on Monday that would ban federally regulated platforms from allowing wagers on sporting events, what would be a huge blow to marketplaces where billions of dollars have been traded on major events like the Super Bowl and the NCAA’s March Madness. More here.
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