‘We should see a change at the Federal Reserve,' says House Republican as Trump weighs firing Powell
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The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Texas Democrats flee state to prevent vote on redrawing congressional map
Texas Democrats are fleeing the state to prevent a vote on Monday that could see five new Republican-leaning seats created in the House of Representatives. About 30 Democrats said they planned to flee to Illinois, where they plan to stay for a week, to thwart Republican efforts by denying them a quorum, or the minimum number of members to validate the vote's proceedings. In a statement, Texas Democrats accused their counterparts, the Texas Republicans, of a 'cowardly' surrender to Donald Trump's call for a redrawing of the congressional map to 'continue pushing his disastrous policies'. 'Texas Democratic lawmakers are halting Trump's plan by denying his bootlickers a quorum,' the statement read. The scheme to flee the state is reported to have been put together by the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, who met with the Texas Democratic caucus late last month and has directed staff to provide logistical support for their stay. The Texas group has accused Texas governor Greg Abbott of withholding aid to victims of Guadalupe River flooding last month in a bid to force the redistricting vote through. 'We're leaving Texas to fight for Texans,' Gene Wu, the Texas House Democratic caucus chair, said in a statement. 'We will not allow disaster relief to be held hostage to a Trump gerrymander.' 'We're not walking out on our responsibilities; we're walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent,' Wu added. 'As of today, this corrupt special session is over.' Last week, Texas Republicans released a proposed new congressional map that would give the GOP a path to pick up five seats in next year's midterm elections, typically when the governing party loses representation in congress. The areas affected by the redistricting plane would target Democratic members of Congress in and around Austin, Dallas and Houston, and two districts in south Texas that are Republican but nudging closer toward Democrat control. The plan to flee the state is not without potential consequences. Members of the Texas Democrats face a $500-a-day fine and possible arrest, a measure that was introduced in 2023, two years after Democrats left the state for three weeks to block election legislation that included several restrictions on voting access. Ultimately, that bill passed but not before Democrats were able to claim something of a moral victory after stripping the measure of some of its provisions. The latest plan to leave the leave the state came after a House committee approved new congressional maps on Saturday. 'This map was politically based, and that's totally legal, totally allowed and totally fair,' Cody Vasut, a Republican state representative and committee member, told NBC News. Vasut pointed to disparities in other states, including California, New York and Illinois, where the weighting of seats to votes is strongly in Democrats favor. 'Texas is underperforming in that. And so it's totally prudent, totally right, for Texas to be able to respond and improve the political performance of its map,' he said. The political backdrop to the Texas redistricting fight colors Pritzker into the picture of a national fight. Pritzker, a billionaire member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, is seen as looking toward a bid for the 2028 Democrat presidential nomination. In June, he addressed Democrats in Oklahoma where he met privately in a 'robust' meeting to discuss about Texas redistricting, according to NBC News. He later met with Texas Democrats, where offered assurances he would find them hotels, meeting spaces and other logistical assistance. The absence of the Democrats on Monday threatens to derail other issues Abbott is tabling, including disaster relief after to the deadly central Texas floods last month. 'Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately,' Texas's attorney general, Ken Paxton, said in a post on X. 'We should use every tool at our disposal to hunt down those who think they are above the law.' Texas house speaker Dustin Burrows said that if, at 3pm on Monday, 'a quorum is not present then, to borrow the recent talking points from some of my Democrat colleagues, all options will be on the table'.
BBC News
7 hours ago
- BBC News
Democrats flee Texas to block Republican redistricting map backed by Trump
Democratic state lawmakers have fled Texas in an attempt to stop a vote on a new congressional map that would heavily favour map, unveiled by Texas Republicans earlier in the week and backed by President Donald Trump, contains redrawn districts that would help preserve the party's slim majority in the US House of Representatives of the 150-member Texas House must be present in order to hold a vote. Fifty-one Democratic lawmakers have fled to Chicago, denying Republicans the required said they plan to stay away for two weeks until the end of a special legislative session convened by Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott to hold the vote. Each of the 51 lawmakers could face a $500 (£380) fine for each day they are away, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, had previously threatened to arrest legislators who break quorum. In a statement to media, Texas Democrats defended the move."We're not walking out on our responsibilities," said Texas state legislator and chairman of the Democratic caucus Gene Wu. "We're walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent."The redrawn map could win Republicans five more congressional seats in areas where Trump had made gains during the 2024 presidential includes a redistricting of the Rio Grande Valley, as well as combining two Austin districts currently held by Democrats. In northern Texas, the new map would expand a district currently held by Democratic House representative Julie Johnson to include rural Republican strongholds. It would also redraw four Houston-area seats, including one held by Democratic congressman Al Green.
Daily Mail
8 hours ago
- Daily Mail
ALEX BRUMMER: Bank under populist siege
Running in parallel with Donald Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariff horror has been the President's furious and uncouth attacks on America's independent central bank. Trump makes little secret of his contempt for current chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jay Powell, even though he nominated him for the job in his first term. Powell has refused to be a White House cipher, standing firm against Trump's unrelenting campaign to cut the US's key federal funds interest rate from the current 4.25 per cent to 4.5 per cent range. The Fed chairman's obduracy remains intact despite last week's dissent by two Trumpian choices as Fed interest rate-setters. Events across the Atlantic appear to have little relevance to the UK, where Chancellor Rachel Reeves started her illustrious rise to the nation's top economic post at the Bank of England. Governor Andrew Bailey is a friend, even though the Chancellor and Governor are currently at odds over lifting the burden of City regulation. A more important clash between the Bank and the Government is on the horizon. Bailey is known to be dismissive of the short-lived administration of Liz Truss. In her memoir, Truss was unforgiving of the role that she claims Bailey played in her downfall. Dangerously for the Bank, critics on the Left and the Right are targeting its credibility and independence. The Leftist New Economics Foundation has consistently campaigned against the Bank's approach to 'quantitative tightening'. This process involves running down the £895billion of gilt holdings the Bank acquired between 2009 and 2021 as it injected cash into the banking system with the aim of averting recession and calming markets. The Treasury agreed to indemnify the Bank against losses at a potential cost of £130billion over the current decade. The UK approach is seen as meeting standards of fiscal probity but imposes an extraordinary burden on public finances at a time when the debt to national output (GDP) ratio is close to 100 per cent. The Fed, in contrast to the UK, decided to continue to hold Treasuries (the equivalent of gilts), bought in the post-financial crisis era, on its books and hold them to maturity. So there are no paper losses. Neil Collins (a former colleague) pointed to the daftness of Bank policy in a recent letter to The Spectator magazine. He noted that in May 2020 the Bank bought a long-gilt, dated 2061, for £101. It recently sold the very same stock at a price as low as £28! Few people pay much attention to 'Reform-onomics', even though Nigel Farage leads in the opinion polls. The main criticism of Reform is that the party's big-spending, populist policies are costly and could trigger a fresh Truss-like crisis. Less debated is the dispute between Reform apparatchik Richard Tice MP and Bailey over monetary policy. Tice suggests that the Bank's approach to quantitative tightening has enriched high street banks and is costing the taxpayer money. But Bailey points out the Bank booked an earlier £124billion profit on its gilt purchases and, for the moment, the Government is £34billion up. Details of the dispute are obscure. The more sinister point for Threadneedle Street is that Tice and Reform see Bank independence as potentially a soft target. Echoes of Donald Trump's attacks on the Fed can be heard loudly.
