Protestors rally against Avelo deportation flights at Tweed Airport
Connecticut leaders react as Avelo announces they will be flying deportation flights out of Arizona
The organization running the rally is New Haven Immigrants. They say that they are not happy with Avelo's decision to help the Trump Administration deport migrants.
Avelo is a Texas-based company that has agreed to use three of their Boeing 737 planes to assist the Department of Homeland Security with deportation efforts.
'I'm disgusted,' one protestor said at the rally. 'Our taxpaying dollars should not go to support deportation of anyone. We're all entitled, and anyone who steps foot on this country is entitled to due process.'
Some other people at the airport disagreed.
'If people are here illegally and they're not supposed to be here and they came here illegally, then they should be brought back to where they came from,' another man said.
Avelo Airlines Founder and CEO Andrew Levy released a statement saying:
'We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic. Charter flying will provide us with stability to continue expanding our core scheduled passenger service and keep more than 11,100 crew members employed for years to come.'
Avelo is expected to start running these flights May 12.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Texas' Republican-controlled House approves new maps to create more winnable GOP congressional seats
AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas House on Wednesday approved redrawn congressional maps that would give Republicans a bigger edge in 2026, muscling through a partisan gerrymander that launched weeks of protests by Democrats and a widening national battle over redistricting. The approval came at the urging of President Donald Trump, who pushed for the extraordinary mid-decade revision of congressional maps to give his party a better chance at holding onto the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. The maps need to be approved by the GOP-controlled state Senate and signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott before they become official. But the Texas House vote had presented the best chance for Democrats to derail the redraw. Democratic legislators delayed the vote by two weeks by fleeing Texas earlier this month in protest, and they were assigned round-the-clock police monitoring upon their return to ensure they attended Wednesday's session. The approval of the Texas maps on an 88-52 party-line vote is likely to prompt California's Democratic-controlled state Legislature this week to approve of a new House map creating five new Democratic-leaning districts. But the California map would require voter approval in November. Democrats have also vowed to challenge the new Texas map in court and complained that Republicans made the political power move before passing legislation responding to deadly floods that swept the state last month. Texas maps openly made to help GOP Texas Republicans openly said they were acting in their party's interest. State Rep. Todd Hunter, who wrote the legislation formally creating the new map, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed politicians to redraw districts for nakedly partisan purposes. 'The underlying goal of this plan is straight forward: improve Republican political performance,' Hunter, a Republican, said on the floor. After nearly eight hours of debate, Hunter took the floor again to sum up the entire dispute as nothing more than a partisan fight. 'What's the difference, to the whole world listening? Republicans like it, and Democrats do not.' Democrats said the disagreement was about more than partisanship. 'In a democracy, people choose their representatives,' State Rep. Chris Turner said. 'This bill flips that on its head and lets politicians in Washington, D.C., choose their voters.' State Rep. John H. Bucy blamed the president. 'This is Donald Trump's map,' Bucy said. 'It clearly and deliberately manufactures five more Republican seats in Congress because Trump himself knows that the voters are rejecting his agenda.' Redistricting becomes tool nationwide in battle for US House The Republican power play has already triggered a national tit-for-tat battle as Democratic state lawmakers prepared to gather in California on Thursday to revise that state's map to create five new Democratic seats. 'This is a new Democratic Party, this is a new day, this is new energy out there all across this country,' California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. 'And we're going to fight fire with fire.' A new California map would need to be approved by voters in a special election in November because that state normally operates with a nonpartisan commission drawing the map to avoid the very sort of political brawl that is playing out. Newsom himself backed the 2008 ballot measure to create that process, as did former President Barack Obama. But in a sign of Democrats' stiffening resolve, Obama Tuesday night backed Newsom's bid to redraw the California map, saying it was a necessary step to stave off the GOP's Texas move. 'I think that approach is a smart, measured approach,' Obama said during a fundraiser for the Democratic Party's main redistricting arm. The incumbent president's party usually loses seats in the midterm election, and the GOP currently controls the House of Representatives by a mere three votes. Trump is going beyond Texas in his push to remake the map. He's pushed Republican leaders in conservative states like Indiana and Missouri to also try to create new Republican seats. Ohio Republicans were already revising their map before Texas moved. Democrats, meanwhile, are mulling reopening Maryland's and New York's maps as well. However, more Democratic-run states have commission systems like California's or other redistricting limits than Republican ones do, leaving the GOP with a freer hand to swiftly redraw maps. New York, for example, can't draw new maps until 2028, and even then, only with voter approval. Texas Democrats decry the new maps In Texas, there was little that outnumbered Democrats could do other than fume and threaten a lawsuit to block the map. 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Los Angeles Times
29 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Fox News hosts were determined to help Trump stay in office after 2020 election, legal filing says
The 2020 presidential election is history, but a legal dispute over Fox News' reporting on President Trump's false claims of voter fraud is heating up. A motion for summary judgment by voting equipment company Smartmatic filed Tuesday in New York Supreme Court laid out in detail how phony allegations that it manipulated votes to swing the election to Joe Biden were amplified on Fox News. The motion also described how the Fox News Media hosts who are defendants in the suit — the late Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business — were allegedly committed to helping Trump prove his fraud theories so he could remain in office. 'I work so hard for the President and the party,' Pirro wrote in a text to Ronna McDaniel, then chair of the Republican National Committee. Pirro left Fox News in May to become U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. 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Fox News has asserted that any problems Smartmatic has experienced in attracting new business are rooted not in its reporting but in the federal investigation into the company's activities with overseas governments. Last year, Smartmatic's founder, Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez, and two other company officials were indicted by the U.S. attorney's office and charged with bribing Philippine officials in order to get voting machine contracts in the country in 2016. While the Trump camp's assertions that the election was fixed were not believed throughout Fox News and parent company Fox Corp., the conservative-leaning network gave continued to give them oxygen to keep its audience tuned in, the motion alleged. The motion described a 'pivot' that occurred on Nov. 8, 2020, when then-Fox News Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan asked Fox News Media Chief Executive Suzanne Scott to address the decline in the network's ratings after Biden was declared the winner of the election. The network also looked at research to evaluate why viewers were leaving. 'The conclusion reached based on performance analytics: give the audience more election fraud,' the court document stated. Such thinking, the filing said, permeated the company, already in a panic over losing viewers to right-leaning network Newsmax. The upstart outlet saw a ratings surge after Biden's win due to its unwavering support of Trump's claims. 'Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL,' Fox News host Jesse Watters said in a text to his colleague Greg Gutfeld. 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Smartmatic's Tuesday court filing also included information that contradicted public statements Fox News made at the time. The document alleged that Fox News fired political analyst Chris Stirewalt and longtime Washington bureau executives Bill Sammon for their involvement in calling the state of Arizona for Biden on election night. The early call of the close result in the state upset the Trump camp and alienated his supporters. At the time, Fox News said Stirewalt departed as part of a reorganization and Sammon retired. But the motion said Rupert Murdoch himself signed off on the decision to sever Stirewalt and Sammon from the company in an effort to assuage angry viewers who defected. The motion cited a communication from Dana Perino, co-host of Fox News show 'The Five,' describing a phone call with Stirewalt after his dismissal. 'I explained to him — you were right, you didn't cave, and you got fired for doing the right thing,' Perino said. Both Sammon and Stirewalt now work in the Washington bureau of NewsNation, the cable news network owned by Nexstar Media Group.
Fox News
30 minutes ago
- Fox News
Texas Dem abruptly leaves call with Newsom, other party members after being told she's committing felony
Texas Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier had to abruptly leave a call with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic Party members after she claimed she was told she was committing a felony by participating in the meeting from a state Capitol bathroom. Collier was speaking on a call with Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, Newsom and several others while the Texas House of Representatives was simultaneously debating a redistricting bill backed by President Donald Trump. While speaking on the call, Collier claimed that the Texas redistricting bill violates the Voting Rights Act and "will prevent black and brown individuals from selecting the candidates of their choice because they're cracking and packing these districts." While Martin was speaking about 30 minutes into the call, Collier suddenly interrupted, saying, "Sorry, I have to leave. They said it's a felony for me to do this." "Apparently I can't be on the floor or in the bathroom," she continued, before turning to address someone off camera. "You told me I was only allowed to be here in the bathroom," she said to the person off camera, before turning back to the call and saying, "No, hang on, bye everybody, I've got to go." Both Newsom and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., immediately expressed outrage over Collier's sudden departure. "That is outrageous," said Booker, adding, "Let me tell you something, Rep. Collier in the bathroom has more dignity than Donald Trump in the Oval Office." "There you go," Newsom responded, nodding his head. "What they're trying to do right there is silence an American leader, silence a black woman, and that is outrageous," Booker went on. "What we just witnessed, them trying to shut her down and saying it's illegal for her to be in the bathroom and on this call, this is the lengths that they're going to in Texas." This comes after dozens of Democratic members of the Texas House fled the state and refused to return to the legislature for two weeks to hold up the redistricting bill by breaking quorum. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders ordered the rogue Democrats to be arrested and threatened to have them removed from office if they did not return to fulfill their duties. Following the Democrats' return to the legislature, members faced heightened security measures designed to ensure a quorum was maintained. Democratic lawmakers said Texas Department of Public Safety officers followed them around Monday at the state Capitol and either guarded their offices or stayed in them, and tailed them when they left. They said they had to sign "permission slips" and accept the surveillance to leave the building. Rather than comply with the measures, Collier stayed on the House floor in the Texas Capitol on Monday night and Tuesday. Despite the Democrats' standoff, the Texas House finally approved it on Wednesday. Newsom announced he would advance a redistricting map in California to counter the Texas redistricting bill. On Friday, California Democrats and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) released a new district map that would likely eliminate five GOP congressional seats, theoretically nullifying the five additional seats Republicans would gain if Texas' redistricting push is successful. Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of Burrows, Booker and Newsom but did not immediately receive a response. Collier's office declined to comment, citing the House still being in session.
