Environmentalists' lawsuit to halt Alligator Alcatraz filed in wrong court, Florida official says
Even though the property is owned by Miami-Dade County, Florida's southern district is the wrong venue for the lawsuit since the detention center is located in neighboring Collier County, which is in the state's middle district. Decisions about the facility also were made in Tallahassee and Washington, Kevin Guthrie, executive director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in a court filing.
'And all the detention facilities, all the buildings, and all the paving at issue are sited in Collier County, not Miami-Dade,' Guthrie said.
Environmental groups
filed a lawsuit
in Florida's southern district last month, asking for the project being built on an airstrip in the
heart of the Florida Everglades
to be halted because the process didn't follow state and federal environmental laws. A virtual hearing was being held Monday on the lawsuit.
Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane threat to the ecologically sensitive wetlands, while Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials have defended it as part of the
state's aggressive push
to support President Donald Trump's
crackdown on illegal immigration
.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem
has praised Florida
for coming forward with the idea, as the department looks to significantly expand its immigration detention capacity.
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The Hill
20 minutes ago
- The Hill
Democrats seek to leverage Trump's low approval ratings
Democrats must center their political arguments around rising costs since President Trump took office so their struggling party can capitalize on his dismal polling numbers, political strategists tell The Hill. Relatable messaging on affordability is how Democrats can criticize Trump effectively and show voters that they represent the interests of working-class Americans, many of whom supported the president during the 2024 presidential election. They must shift from the usual broad-stroke statements that have previously fallen flat with voters. Instead, the message should be tailored to the price of specific items — like beef or timber — that have spiked during the early months of the Trump administration. 'Talk about the price of beef,' said Republican strategist Susan Del Percio, who doesn't support Trump, adding that the approach mirrors a strategy the president took during the campaign last year to defeat then-Vice President Kamala Harris. 'Just like Donald Trump talked about eggs, it's more than talking about the economy. It's making it relatable, and nothing is more relatable than hamburgers and a barbecue.' As fall inches closer, Democrats need to telegraph that message in town halls, in interviews and on social media to reach mass audiences in purple and even red districts, strategists say. 'Every minute of every day should be spent talking about rising costs,' said one Democratic strategist who has been in conversations where affordability has been the central topic of how Democrats find their way out of the wilderness. 'Every second that's not spent on talking about affordability, we're losing the argument.' Democrats say they are trying to seize upon the opportunity now, when Republicans are divided on the controversy surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, which has dominated the headlines this month, putting Trump and Republican lawmakers on defense. But some strategists are weary of how much Democrats need to emphasize messaging, even with 2026 midterms on the horizon. 'Messaging is not necessarily the determining factor in midterm elections ever by the party out of power,' seasoned Democratic strategist Garry South said. 'It is a referendum on the party in power.' Trump has stumbled on issues including tariffs and immigration, weakening his position from when he entered office more than six months ago. This week, a Silver Bulletin poll conducted by pollster Nate Silver showed that Trump's approval ratings steadily decreased from 52 percent to 44 percent during his first four months in office. And in recent months, the same poll revealed that Trump's approval ratings have hovered in the mid-40s, some of their lowest levels across his two terms. In the past two weeks, separate CNN-SSRS polling and Quinnipiac University polling have shown Trump's approval ratings as low as 42 percent and 40 percent, respectively. In recent days, some Republican lawmakers have sought to cocoon themselves until the Epstein storm passes, further inviting Democrats to fill the void. '[Republicans] are scared of their voters. They're scared of the president,' Democratic strategist Basil Smikle said. 'Go in areas where Republicans won't go, in areas where Republicans are. But countermessage. You may not win every day, but you may get a few voters to pay attention.' 'There are a lot of independents that are souring on the president and on the administration, and I think that's where there's opportunity,' Smikle added, referring to voters who can move the needle for Democrats in future election cycles. 'There are not going to be many Republicans that Democrats are going to get, so this is really about independents.' Even in the first six months of the Trump presidency, Republicans have given Democrats a gift in terms of strategy and messaging, Democratic operatives say. And while Democrats had traditionally gone after Trump himself in recent cycles, operatives say they should take aim at the Republican Party as a whole. 'They should talk about how Republicans are focused on protecting the president while the dangers of the big ugly bill are looming,' Smikle said. 'That, I think, is probably the most salient message here, that some of the most wealthy and powerful in this country are not just hoarding the money, they are also protecting themselves' with tax cuts in the 'big, beautiful bill.' Smikle added that Democrats need to follow that up with alternatives to Republican policies. '[Democrats] have got to offer something in return. They've got to give voters an opportunity to vote for something as opposed to just against something.' Other strategists say that right now, the best thing Democrats can do is not interfere and let Trump continue driving his approval ratings into the ground. 'Based on the Napoleonic principle that one should never interfere with an enemy when he's in the process of destroying himself, I'm not sure there's a lot Democrats proactively need to do,' South said. He added that midterms have historically been 'throw-the-bums out' elections that reflect exclusively the party in power. 'Republicans have that trifecta, the White House, the Senate, the House, and they're going to pay a price for it in 2026 no matter what Democrats do.'
The Hill
20 minutes ago
- The Hill
Why is Trump struggling in the polls?
President Trump is struggling with his approval rating even as he has largely followed through on much of what he called for on the campaign trail. Through legislation in Congress and executive action, Trump has been able to mold the federal government to fit his vision, laying off thousands of federal workers with help from the Supreme Court, instituting widespread tariffs that have led to trade deals with various countries and getting his first major legislative achievement passed with the 'big, beautiful bill.' All of these were proposals Trump made on the campaign trail as he became the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years. But Trump has regularly been underwater in approval rating polls, raising questions about whether much of the country is pleased with his job performance and what he's delivered. Experts pointed to multiple reasons for Trump's struggles, including the complexities of governing compared to campaigning for votes. 'A lot of those things … he said he would get done on Day 1, and that's not happened,' said Jonathan Hanson, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. Hanson noted unfulfilled promises by Trump to lower prices and to end conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. He also said Trump is sometimes not winning when he is getting things done. 'On top of that, where he's had momentum and success in terms of implementing things, generally those policies haven't been very popular,' Hanson said. An underwater approval rating has been a rule for Trump, rather than an exception, throughout his political career. He's the only president to never have an average approval rating of at least 50 percent in Gallup's tracker, though that didn't stop him from being highly competitive in the 2020 race and winning the 2024 race with a sweep of the battleground states. Trump won't be on the ballot again as a candidate, but his poor ratings could hurt Republicans in next year's midterm elections. Trump's net approval rating fell to its lowest point yet last week in the Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) average, accompanied by polls showing vulnerabilities with specific groups like independents and on certain key issues like the economy and immigration, though he has somewhat rebounded over the weekend. He's generally oscillated in the mid-to-low 40s for months in opinion polls after starting out his second term slightly above water for the first month and a half of his term. While the changes from week to week have generally been no more than a couple points, he's consistently receiving less support in his approval rating than the percentage of voters who backed him in November, which was just under 50 percent. Scott Tranter, the director of data science for DDHQ, said a president's approval rating being poor has been the 'new normal' for administrations dating back at least to the start of Trump's first term. Former President Biden had a honeymoon period for the first few months of his presidency, but his approval rating dropped by August and never recovered, staying in the high-30s to low-40s range. 'There's a reason why populism is becoming big in the United States,' Tranter said. 'In America, it's just easy to hate the government.' He said people's motivations for why they don't approve of a certain president may vary greatly depending on their political beliefs, but it's resulting in no president being that widely liked in the modern era. 'It's kind of like someone saying, 'I don't like McDonald's,' and one person doesn't like McDonald's because they're vegan, and the other person doesn't like McDonald's because it's high in fat,' he said. 'It's due to completely different reasons, but they both hate McDonald's.' What is thermostatic opinion? Hanson said some of Trump's declining numbers can be explained by 'thermostatic opinion, a term in political science that describes opinions changing as a result of government action. 'People start to change their minds once they see the policy changes at the national level, and they react against it,' he said. 'If they were on the fence before, if they were a little bit uncertain, they now have new information, and they turn against what they're seeing,' he said. One of the issues where this effect has been arguably more pronounced recently has been immigration, which has consistently been one of Trump's strongest areas in public opinion. Several polls have found public approval of Trump's handling of immigration dropping. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research recorded a 6-point drop on the issue from March to a poll this month, while a Reuters/Ipsos poll placed his approval on it at 41 percent. Hanson pointed to the 'visceral' images of raids from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on television as turning some off who previously supported Trump's calls for deportations, which during the campaign focused mostly on those who have committed crimes while in the country. While Trump has railed against those in the country illegally who have been accused of committing violence, many who have been rounded up in ICE raids and facing deportation haven't been accused of committing violent crimes. 'His focus was we need to get these criminals off the streets, and that's where we're going to focus,' he said. 'But that's not really been the focus. So a little bit of difference from what people thought they were getting versus what they're actually getting, even though he is being aggressive on those issues.' Tariffs are a theme Some of Trump's proposals also haven't played out as straightforwardly as he presented them throughout 2024, such as tariffs. While campaigning, Trump argued that other countries were taking advantage of the U.S., and the tariffs would help ensure the country gets a better deal. But a regular back-and-forth between Trump announcing tariffs and delaying them has defined much of the past six months, which Hanson called 'chaotic.' Trump has notched victories with several trading partners in securing deals, including one with the European Union on Sunday, but the public's view of his handling of tariffs has consistently been a drag on his overall approval rating. Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll, noted that some of the fears of tariffs causing a wider economic downturn haven't happened — at least yet — potentially helping to keep up Trump's support among Republicans, with up to 90 percent regularly saying they approve of him. But Franklin added that the polls may show a segment of the population that supported Trump in November but whose votes were more about voting against the Democrats and an unpopular incumbent at the time. 'There is one other thing that is easy to ignore, and that is how negative voters were towards Joe Biden in 2024, and I think that needs a lot more credit for explaining the problems with independents voting for Trump,' he said. Trump has improved slightly among independents in recent days too in the DDHQ tracker, but he's been under 40 percent approval with them for almost two months. 'There's also this question about how negatively people viewed the Biden administration, and that didn't go away when Harris became the nominee,' Franklin said. 'It may have moderated, not much, and it's easy to forget that when we're focused now on everything that Trump does is some of the blame for 2024 among Democrats is they had a very unpopular president.'
The Hill
20 minutes ago
- The Hill
Democratic coalition has a crack that is getting bigger
The good news for Democrats in the latest comprehensive survey of Americans' partisan identities is that among young voters, the party has regained a lead, a 6-point advantage among those ages 18 to 29. The bad news: Four years ago, the advantage was 32 points. Every year, the Pew Research Center publishes its National Public Opinion Reference Survey, the big kahuna for tracking the trends of partisanship among the major voting blocs. It's one thing for a voter to make a snap decision about one candidate in one election, but something different if he or she changes jerseys. That's the difference between a wave and a realignment. And in the year after a presidential election and before midterms get hot and heavy, Pew gives us a chance to see what the longer-lasting implications of 2024's wild and wooly presidential election may be. The overall trend of this decade is unmistakable: America has been getting more Republican, something you didn't need an exhaustive survey of 5,022 adults to tell you. In 2020, 49 percent of Americans identified as Democrats, compared to 43 percent of Republicans. The next year, in the wake of the Jan. 6 sacking of the Capitol and Donald Trump's effort to overturn the election results, Democrats widened their advantage to 10 points, 52 percent to 42 percent. But since then, it's been a steady retreat for the blue team. By 2024, Republicans actually enjoyed a 1-point advantage, 47 percent to 46 percent, a nearly perfect indicator of the results of the presidential election that fall. Now that the dust has settled, we find the parties in pretty much the same position, with Republicans holding that same 1-point advantage, but both parties a tick lower, 46 percent Republicans, 45 percent Democratic and 8 percent declaring themselves pure independents. These are historically good numbers for the GOP, which had traditionally been the smaller party for generations. The way Republicans won elections nationally was to harness the power of their high-propensity, affluent base in the suburbs to out-vote lower-income, working-class Democrats. If they could tip a majority of the true independents, Republicans could win substantial majorities, especially in midterms, despite starting from a smaller base. But the Trump era has turned a lot of that on its head, as Republicans emerge as the plurality party, but also the one that struggles to get its lower-income, lower-propensity voters to the polls. If you wanted one convincing argument for why Democrats are favored in midterms, this would be it — even more than the midterm curse, which has left the party in power with a record of three wins and 22 losses in the past 100 years' worth of midterms. After a century of being the bigger party, but the one with the turnout problem, Democrats find themselves in the other role: the smaller party with the more reliable voters. That's how Republicans fumbled their chance for a big win in 2022 but still won convincingly in 2024. It's also why the smart money is on Democrats in 2026. Then it's back to the bigger, presidential-year electorate in 2028, and advantage Republicans … and so on. Is that the future for American politics? Whole Foods Democrats versus Walmart Republicans, with the corresponding advantages and disadvantages? Another arrow pointing in that direction is that perennial bane of campaigns' get-out-the-vote efforts: younger voters. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won voters ages 18 to 29 by 25 points, 61 percent to 36 percent. In 2024, Democrat Kamala Harris won the same demographic group by just 4 points, 51 percent to 47 percent. Looking at the broader category of voters under the age of 45, we see women shifting away from Democrats by 7 points, dropping from 61 percent for Biden to 54 percent for Harris. Men dropped 7 points for Democrats, too, but slid into an outright minority, with just 45 percent for Harris, down from 52 points four years earlier. Compare that to the recent high-water mark for Democrats with young voters, when Barack Obama won 66 percent of voters under 30 in 2008. Many Democrats have concluded that this slide among younger voters, particularly men, is at the root of their problem these days. Operatives and donors are pouring tens of millions of dollars into youth outreach, including the very buzzy 'manosphere.' Bro pandering aside, what younger voters often have in common is that they aren't that well off, having just begun the game of life, and tend to vote at a fairly low propensity, typically accounting for just 15 percent or so of the national electorate. But as they age and begin voting at a higher frequency, they become more valuable members of a political coalition. Political habits and attitudes formed in one's 20s often persist through life. Voters have long tended to move rightward with age. A Republican majority with young voters now could be the bedrock of electoral dominance over the next two decades as the folks born in the 2000s enter prime voting age. So, how does the new Republican youth coalition look as we emerge from the shadow of 2024? The aforementioned good news for Democrats shouldn't be overlooked. The Pew numbers show a Democratic plurality at 49 percent. Yes, it's not the 63 percent of four years ago, but it does reverse a trend in partisan identification that saw Democratic declines for three straight years. Republicans dropped 4 points from last year. 2024 Election Coverage The gender gap for young voters remains massive, with young men split 52 percent Republican and 34 percent Democratic and young women going 58 percent Democratic and 37 percent Republican. Compare that to the 2024 election, when 59 percent of young women voted Democratic and 41 percent of young men did. Women under 30 are about as Democratic now as they were on Election Day, but young men are down considerably. No matter how much Democrats can juice their share among young women, there's no winning coalition for their party that can't get at least 40 percent of young men. One year's worth of data isn't sufficient to tell us about a radical realignment, and the Republican youth wave certainly seems to have ebbed since last fall, but Pew provides us with yet another blinking light on the dashboard for Democrats.
