Category: Politics

LONDON — A police cover-up after a 1989 football stadium tragedy was seminal in shaping soon-to-be new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s political outlook.

Burnham used his first speech upon returning to the House of Commons this evening as a member of parliament to hail a proposed new Hillsborough law — named after the Sheffield football stadium where 97 Liverpool fans lost their lives in a crush — which imposes a duty of candor on public officials.

Burnham faced raw anger and heckles of “justice” and “truth” in 2009, when he was culture secretary, at a memorial service at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the disaster.

Days before he moves into No. 10 Downing Street, Burnham pledged to end the U.K.’s “cover-up culture” and put “decency back at the heart of the British state.”

Burnham said the law will “change the way this country thinks and works about justice,” as it “truly is a rewiring of the state and a passing of power from the authorities to the hands of ordinary people.” MPs approved the legislation Tuesday evening, and it will now go to the House of Lords for further scrutiny.

​Politics

DALLAS, Texas — The World Cup was supposed to be Dallas’s moment to shine. The city is famously image-conscious, and the powers-that-be trumpeted the fact that more Cup matches were scheduled here than any other host city. It seemed like a coup for a town whose football team (the other kind of football) bills itself as “America’s team.”

But off the pitch, Dallas leaders have spent the spring and summer fighting a series of political fights, many of them centered around sports. It’s a cautionary tale to the many European tourists who have marveled at America’s glittering sporting venues, but are unaware of the complex economic and political forces that have shaped them, for better and for worse.

Before the soccer tournament even started, the city’s pro basketball team had announced it was leaving its downtown arena. Then the hockey team decamped for a new arena in the suburbs.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson was booed when he attended a World Cup Fan Fest. Along the way, the city was forced to furlough non-essential workers because of a budget shortfall, so the public libraries were closed for a day last week.

“There’s a lot of — the only word I can think of is — drama,” City Councilmember Paula Blackmon said.

To be clear, the World Cup matches aren’t being played in Dallas. They’re 15 miles west, in Arlington, Texas. The Texas Rangers play baseball a few blocks away.

But Dallas proper could still stake a claim as a professional sports hub. The Dallas Mavericks (basketball) and the Dallas Stars (hockey) have spent the last 25 years at American Airlines Center, a retro-styled arena just north of the central business district, which is served by its dedicated light rail stop. That arena’s future has been at the heart of the fighting.

Last fall, the city began discussing the idea of tearing down its City Hall to make way for a new sports arena. The building is showing its age — or its neglect — and city officials estimate it’ll take hundreds of millions of dollars to repair it.

Some in Dallas questioned whether the teams need a new arena, since the American Airlines Center — which is 1.6 miles from City Hall — seems to work just fine. Others objected to tearing down the building since its architect, I.M. Pei, is kind of a big deal.

The conflict divided the city council into two factions — the majority in favor of tearing down the building, the minority trying to preserve it. Blackmon and another council member, both of whom favor preserving the old City Hall, sued the city in June trying to block a vote on tearing down the building.

To some extent, the fight has been a proxy for the broader fight over how to preserve downtown Dallas. AT&T, the telecom giant which has had its corporate headquarters in Dallas since 2008, announced this spring it’s moving to the suburbs, citing rising crime, homelessness and government dysfunction. Even the luxury retailer Neiman Marcus, the most Dallas of institutions, is closing its downtown store.

Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, who got into politics after a career as an investigative reporter, said the fracas over the sports arena is a symptom of the city’s dysfunctional government. Dallas has a weak mayor and its city council has been divided for decades, which gives developers — and sports teams — the upper hand in negotiating with the city.

Miller is famous locally for turning down the Dallas Cowboys when team owner Jerry Jones asked for a publicly-financed stadium inside the city in the early 2000s.

The Cowboys — like the Mavericks and Stars before them — promised to help redevelop neglected parts of the city. Miller argued that the city was better off putting its funds into basic services like public safety and infrastructure — and pointed to a string of broken promises from the sports teams and other big developers.

“It’s kind of Dallas’ Achilles heel, because Dallas will just do anything to quote unquote ‘save the teams,’ even though all the teams are all within a 30-minute drive of all of our homes,” she said.

Dallas’s local organizing committee for the World Cup declined to comment for this story, as did a spokesperson for the Mavericks. A spokesperson for the Stars didn’t respond to requests for comment. Johnson, the Dallas mayor, also declined several interview requests.

Most of the fighting has been invisible to World Cup fans, who will flock to town Tuesday for the region’s final World Cup match, which is the semi-final between France and Spain. But the outcome of the city council fight could affect Dallas for decades to come.

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Darline Graham Nordone, Lindsey Graham’s younger sister and close confidant, will serve the remainder of the late senator’s term in Washington.

“It’s my honor to ask his little sister Darline Graham to finish his work for him now,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said Monday, formally appointing Nordone after recounting stories of Graham’s legacy.

President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune both publicly expressed support for McMaster choosing Nordone as a tribute to Graham.

Her appointment as an interim caretaker triggers a wide-open race ahead of the Aug. 11 primary. Several Republicans are already weighing bids to take over Graham’s place as the GOP Senate nominee.

“It is such a privilege to get to finish some of his important work, and I promise to work hard over the next several months to support the president and carry forward the efforts of my brother on behalf of the citizens of South Carolina and the United States,” Nordone said at the press conference alongside McMaster. She added that the decision is one that “Lindsey would have wanted.”

Graham helped raise Nordone after their parents passed away early in her childhood. The siblings had shared a close relationship since, and she appeared alongside the late senator on the campaign trail on several occasions — including at his presidential campaign launch in the summer of 2015.

Nordone’s appointment came together quickly over the last 36 hours, according to McMaster’s top political adviser and former chief of staff Trey Walker.

McMaster was notified of Graham’s death around 11 p.m. Saturday, hours before the late senator’s office publicly shared the news, Walker told POLITICO.

The first thing the governor did on Sunday morning was call Nordone to express his condolences. Then, as the day progressed and he fielded calls about next steps, he rang her again around 10 a.m. with a question: Would she like to serve out the remainder of her brother’s term in Washington?

Nordone and McMaster know each other well. Nordone helms the state’s Commission for the Blind, is “very familiar at the state house” and interfaces “a lot” with the governor’s office, Walker said.

With Nordone’s buy-in, the next call the governor placed was to the White House.

“How fitting a tribute to Lindsey would it be … to appoint Darline, his sister, to finish Lindsey’s work this time and to put that beautiful bookend on the story of his service?” Walker said, describing how McMaster laid out his thinking to Trump. The president, whose blessing is key in deeply conservative South Carolina, was “very receptive” to the idea, Walker noted.

Trump then made that approval clear on Truth Social on Monday morning when he said her appointment would be a “fabulous tribute” to the late senator.

The White House and McMaster’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

South Carolina Republicans expect Nordone to only serve as a caretaker to finish Graham’s term, though Nordone hasn’t signaled herself whether she will or will not mount her own bid to serve a full six-year term in Washington.

The jockeying for the Aug. 11 primary has already begun in the deep-red state where an open Senate seat is a rare opportunity for up-and-coming politicians to come across.

Republicans both in South Carolina and Washington point to Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.) as a possible top contender, as someone who has deep ties to Columbia and to Trump’s White House. Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, who unsuccessfully ran for governor earlier this year, is also seen as a top contender because of her high name recognition and her ability to reengage her statewide campaign infrastructure.

Others, like Mace and Norman have more clearly signaled their intent to mount their own bids for Graham’s seat, but no candidates have officially announced a formalized run.

Trump, who could have an outsized role in boosting Graham’s elected successor, has yet to make any public statements about his preferences for a candidate to fill the full term.

​Politics

President Donald Trump said Monday he wants South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to appoint Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to serve the remainder of the late senator’s term.

One Republican familiar with McMaster’s plans said the governor intends to appoint Nordone to serve in the Senate for the rest of the year. This person was granted anonymity to discuss the decision.

McMaster is expected to announce his decision about who will replace Graham during a press conference later Monday afternoon.

“I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator from the Great State of South Carolina,” Trump said in a post on social media. “This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!”

Even if she’s appointed, it’s unclear if Nordone would want to run for the full term. A number of South Carolina Republicans have already expressed interest in taking over Graham’s seat since his death Sunday, including Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.).

Trump’s word carries significant weight in deeply conservative South Carolina, and his preference for a caretaker appointment triggers a wide-open primary to take Graham’s place as the Republican nominee for Senate.

In an interview on CNN on Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he spoke to both McMaster and Nordone on Sunday, and her appointment would make “a lot of sense.”

“I’ll let the governor make an announcement,” he said, but “I think in many respects it would be a way of extending Lindsey’s legacy here and certainly something that — if that’s what they decide to end up doing — I think there’d be a lot of support for it.”

State law stipulates that Republicans will have to run in a snap primary election on Aug. 11 –– but the significantly truncated runway ahead of the election benefits candidates who have recently run statewide campaigns, including Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Norman who both ran unsuccessfully for governor this cycle.

Cheyanne M. Daniels contributed to this report.

​Politics

Benny Melendez voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. But since Trump returned to the White House, it has been increasingly difficult for Melendez to run his small construction company in south Texas. He says immigration officers have detained workers at his job sites and while driving his company trucks. Since the beginning of 2025, more than 10 of those workers have been deported.

The chaos of the past year-and-a-half has convinced Melendez to abandon his support for Trump and Republicans, and instead back the Democrat in this year’s U.S. Senate election, state Rep. James Talarico.

“How can we continue voting for someone that is targeting our community?” Melendez said. “There’s no way possible we’re going to support that. No way.”

Melendez is not alone. One in five Hispanic business owners in Texas say they’ve had an employee deported in the past year, according to a new survey commissioned by the U.S. Hispanic Business Council and shared first with POLITICO. Seven in ten said their businesses had been impacted by Trump’s tariffs. Among those surveyed, Talarico holds a seven-point lead over Attorney General Ken Paxton, the GOP nominee, even though a plurality of the over 1,000 respondents self-identify as Republican. Almost one quarter who supported Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary now say they’ll back Talarico, while over half say they’ll back Paxton.

The survey is the clearest sign yet of Paxton’s vulnerability among Texas’ robust Hispanic business community amidst broader signs that Hispanic voters around the country are swinging hard against him, thanks to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and the shaky economy. The survey was conducted from June 2 to 15 and included 1,012 Texas-based USHBC members. Respondents included business owners in construction, food services, retail, manufacturing and other industries.

Those business owners pointed to the fear the deportation push created in the community, as well as their bottom lines, for why they were turning on Trump and toward Talarico.

“The fear factor that it creates, the disruption that it creates, the environment that it creates, is debilitating,” said Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of USHBC. “If you’ve got a small business of 10 people or so, and you get even one person deported, you can imagine what that does to the morale of that business unit and to the fear of the business owner.”

Meanwhile, Paxton, long an immigration hardliner, has doubled down, touting his support for a controversial Texas immigration law and suing to stop publicly funded legal defense for undocumented immigrants.

The Texas Senate race will be one of the nation’s most watched — and most expensive — this cycle. Early polling shows it in a dead heat: A New York Times/Siena poll released last month showed Paxton and Talarico tied. Among Hispanic voters, Talarico led by 32 points. In 2024, Trump won Texas Latinos by 10 points.

In a statement, Paxton spokesperson Madison Cercy said Hispanic voters want “lower taxes, less regulation, affordable energy, and a strong economy.”

“Ken Paxton has a proven record of fighting for those priorities, while James Talarico has consistently opposed the tax-cutting policies that help Texans thrive, declares that ‘God is non-binary,’ and said that there are ‘six biological sexes,’” Cercy said. “Texans deserve to hear the truth about Talarico’s radical record and the damage his agenda would do to families and businesses across our state. Once they do, it will kill Talacreepo’s campaign for their vote.”

In a statement, Talarico offered an olive branch to Hispanic voters: “We should be supporting Hispanic small businesses — not crushing them under the weight of high costs and failed immigration policies,” he said. “Here’s my message to Hispanic communities across Texas: if you feel like you’ve been conned, if you feel like you’ve been let down by both political parties, if you feel like politicians aren’t doing anything to lower your costs or fix this broken immigration system — you’ve got a place in this campaign.”

Across south Texas, business owners say immigration enforcement is a major reason why they’re turning on the GOP. In 2024, Trump rode concerns over former President Joe Biden’s border policy to victory in the heavily Latino communities along the U.S.-Mexico border, a massive shift in the historically deep-blue region. Trump won 14 of those 18 border counties, including Starr County, a 90-percent Latino county that Hillary Clinton won with 79 percent of the vote in 2016 and hadn’t gone for a Republican since the 1890s.

But now, many feel the Trump administration’s interior enforcement policy has gone too far. 70 percent of those surveyed in the USHBC poll had a negative view of the immigration raids on the workforce, and that impact on families and businesses risks kneebuckling Republicans running in those same border districts.

“I didn’t like what Biden was doing here on the border,” Melendez said. “But now with Trump, it’s all the opposite, 180 degree change. He doesn’t let us work. He’s taking the best we have.”

Earlier this year, construction executives in south Texas sounded the alarm on immigration enforcement. Some trade association leaders met with officials in the White House and Congress to discuss concerns in February.

Immigration enforcement at worksites subsided for several months, executives said. But activity ticked up again last month. Now, Melendez says, immigration officers are again rounding up workers at construction sites and pulling over vehicles that have work equipment like ladders. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to request for comment on this characterization of enforcement.

“It just seems now more than ever, if you’re brown, they’re gonna stop you,” said Mario Guerrero, a three-time Trump voter who leads the South Texas Builders Association. “And I know that sounds really racist, but it’s what we’re facing, man.”

Across the state, story after story of the immigration crackdown consume local media: An undocumented man in Houston shot and killed by an ICE officer; a mariachi musician in San Antonio detained after playing at a birthday party; a Catholic nun in McAllen detained while walking to Sunday Mass.

Even some Republican officials have denounced the activity. “As I have repeatedly said, our immigration enforcement should target violent criminals,” GOP Rep. Monica de la Cruz, who represents a battleground district in the Rio Grande Valley, wrote on Facebook. “A Catholic nun on her way to church is not a threat to our community.”

One construction company owner in south Texas, granted anonymity to speak openly, said the nun’s arrest — which was plastered all over local news last month — was “the final nail in the coffin” for many Hispanics in the community who had voted for Republicans.

“We’re pissed off at the current administration. Everybody’s pissed off down here in south Texas,” the construction executive said, noting that most Hispanics in the area are Catholic. “Remember, we’re conservative, we’re not far left. We’re in the middle, conservative Latinos in south Texas. It doesn’t make sense.”

Guerrero, who leads a trade group with over 160 members across south Texas, said the idea that deportations will create jobs for American workers is ill-informed. “When people say, ‘Why don’t you hire American citizens to do foundation or to do concrete?’ I’m like, ‘Dude, tell me what f—ing United States citizen is gonna want to go and pour concrete at 103 degrees down here in the valley,’” Guerrero said.

Palomarez echoed that sentiment.

“This notion that these immigrants are taking American jobs is bullshit,” said Palomarez. “The districts in South Texas that swung decidedly Republican are paying the price, because that fear-mongering has come home to roost. And now you don’t have employees, or enough employees, to get that project done.”

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North Carolina Republicans have a message for Washington: The cavalry needs to come.

Their Senate nominee, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley, is lagging far behind Roy Cooper, the prized Democratic recruit and popular former governor, in polls and cash.

Republicans believe Whatley still has time to turn around those steep deficits — but only if the national GOP opens its deep pockets sooner than later, according to interviews with nearly a dozen North Carolina Republicans and national strategists.

A massive infusion of cash ahead of the typical late summer and early fall spending spree, they say, would combat Whatley’s biggest problem: a lack of name ID.

In a typical midterm year, the state’s Senate race would be a marquee battle. But the Cooper-Whatley matchup has been drowned out by other more high-profile contests in Texas, Maine and Michigan, leaving some in North Carolina anxious for more money and ways to push the national party publicly further into the fight.

“He has an uphill climb,” said Tuesday Sauer, chair of the Bertie County GOP. “Even though he was the RNC chair, a lot of people who aren’t politically involved really don’t know who Michael Whatley is.”

So far the race has been sleepy, focused on bread-and-butter affordability issues that are defining contests across the country. But the low-key nature of the race is hiding just how critical North Carolina is in November. The state, which President Donald Trump carried three times, is a must-win for Democrats frothing at the possibility of flipping the Senate. And in Cooper, Democrats have found a strong candidate to give them a chance at their first Senate win in the state since 2008, thanks to his status as a household name from a political career spanning four decades.

Some Republicans think Whatley, a former state party chair and close Trump ally who is a first-time candidate in his own right, is running a generic campaign that won’t cut it given his blue-chip opponent and the tough national environment.

“Michael Whatley has to give them a reason to talk about North Carolina, and so far he hasn’t. That’s the challenge,” said one GOP state official, granted anonymity to speak freely about the race. “There’s a lot of other races right now that give solid headlines, and right now the headline in North Carolina is: ‘Republican Party plays possum.’”

Cooper raised $13.8 million to Whatley’s $5 million in the first quarter of the year, and the Democrat entered the second quarter with $18.5 million in cash on hand, while Whatley reported having more than $2.5 million in the bank. Some public polling shows Cooper with as much as a 14-point lead over Whatley.

“The strategy is simple. Remind North Carolinians that Roy Cooper is a pro-crime, pro-tax, career politician whose failed leadership made life less safe and less affordable,” Whatley campaign spokesperson DJ Griffin said in a statement. “The campaign is humming, our partners are aligned across the board, and every day from now until Election Day is about one thing: sending Roy Cooper into retirement.”

Republicans plan to continue hammering Cooper on two major issues: crime and pandemic restrictions. While serving as North Carolina’s top executive during the height of the pandemic, as the virus ripped through prisons, Cooper reached a settlement with civil rights groups to release about 3,500 inmates to reduce overcrowding and health risks. A number of those inmates went on to commit new crimes — and Republicans blame Cooper for being responsible.

Cooper’s team argues that Whatley holds blame for pushing for the prisoners to be released during the pandemic.

“Whatley and his allies have been caught lying time and again, but the truth is Roy Cooper spent his career locking up criminals while Whatley pushed for prisoners to be released during Covid,” said Cooper campaign spokesperson Kate Smart, in a statement.

The race will reveal how fresh those Covid-19 memories are in the minds of voters. Republicans remain angry at Cooper for his pandemic restrictions, like shutting down churches and restricting access to visitors of patients in hospitals.

“At the first chance during Covid, Roy Cooper shut down all the churches, that’s major, while he let the bars remain open,” said state GOP Sen. Steve Jarvis. “It’s been a while, so I think that’s being missed right now. We need to get that back in the news.”

While antsy for the cash to arrive, many Republicans are optimistic that Whatley’s relationships within the party will come in handy.

The GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund has committed $71 million to the race and so far has reserved more than $36 million in broadcast ads starting in early September, according to tracking service AdImpact. North Carolina, which contains several major media markets, is one of the more expensive states to run ads.

“If Dems think they have a layup in the only swing state that President Trump is 3-0, they’re out of their minds,” said a national Republican strategist working on the race, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape.

Other PACs, like Old North Action have also reserved a large chunk of ad space this fall. Americans For Prosperity has already doled out more than $8 million this spring, the bulk of which was spent on digital and streaming ads for Whatley. North Carolina Republicans are also optimistic that Whatley will be a major beneficiary of the recent Supreme Court decision allowing political parties to freely coordinate with candidates and spend without constraint, given his stint as RNC chair. Republicans have a massive cash edge over Democrats: The RNC has more than $125 million in the bank, while the DNC has more debt than cash on hand, $18.3 million to $14.8 million.

“The fall of coordinated spending limits means the NRSC can discuss spending decisions directly with our candidates and their campaigns,” said Joanna Rodriguez, communications director at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “The era of raising the curtain on strategy and press and the Democrats we’re looking to defeat is over.”

“President Trump and Republicans are united behind Michael Whatley, who will be North Carolina’s champion in the US Senate,” said RNC spokesperson Emma Hall, in a statement.

Cooper has his own national money in the pipeline, but so far it doesn’t match the Republican side. WinSenate PAC, affiliated with Schumer-backed Senate Majority PAC, has promised more than $27 million in fall reservations for him.

“The reality of all of it is that between Republican super PACs and the RNC, they just have way more money,” said Morgan Jackson, a longtime North Carolina Democratic strategist and a Cooper adviser. “There’s no white horse coming, the way that Republicans are waiting on their savior to come.”

Still, Republicans’ biggest asset — Trump’s PAC MAGA Inc. — remains tightlipped about its own plans to distribute its massive $350 million warchest.

“That money needs to be brought to North Carolina, so the people of North Carolina can be reminded of what a crappy Governor Roy Cooper was,” said GOP state Sen. Amy Galey.

“Getting his name, face recognition in 100 counties is tough, especially in North Carolina, with just plain geographics of going from Manteo to Murphy,” said GOP state Rep. Donnie Loftis, of Whatley. “It comes down to funding. That money drives your message, and if you don’t have the money, you can’t get your message out there.”

North Carolina Democrats have their own concerns about lagging investments from the national party. Some fear that Cooper’s strong current standing in the race at this juncture will cause party leaders to overlook the state in favor of other shiny objects — like Texas, where Democrat James Talarico appears competitive with Republican Ken Paxton.

“I believe in the Coach K theory,” said Democratic House Minority Leader Robert Rieves, referring to former Duke basketball coaching legend Mike Krzyzewski. “It doesn’t matter how far you are ahead, you keep playing just as hard as you did the first minute.”

Erin Doherty contributed reporting.

​Politics