Texas governor threatens Democrats who fled state to prevent congressional map vote – US politics live | US news

Donald Trump has said he will dispatch his special envoy to Moscow this week before his Friday deadline for progress to be made on ending the war in Ukraine.

Trump said Steve Witkoff would visit Moscow on Wednesday or Thursday. When asked on Sunday what message Witkoff would take to Russia and what Vladimir Putin could do to avoid new sanctions, the US president answered: “Yeah, get a deal where people stop getting killed.”

In Kyiv, there is little expectation that Witkoff will make a breakthrough with Putin, but a hope that Trump’s changed rhetoric and tougher stance on Moscow may lead to a real change in US support for Ukraine.

Trump came into office convinced he could do a deal with Putin, but in recent weeks appears to have become increasingly frustrated with Russian actions. On Thursday he described Russia’s continued attacks on civilian areas in Ukraine as “disgusting” and on Sunday said that two nuclear submarines that he ordered to be deployed after online threats from the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev were now “in the region”, without giving further details.

Trump had initially announced in July a 50-day deadline for Russia and Ukraine to end the war, but said last week he said he no longer believed Russia was serious about ending the war and shortened it to “10 or 12” days, later clarified as this Friday, 8 August.

Trump has previously said the new measures he has in mind if the deadline is not met could involve “secondary tariffs” targeting Russia’s remaining trade partners, such as China and India.

President Donald Trump on Sunday said some Americans could get some kind of dividend or distribution of money as a result of tariffs being imposed on US trading partners.

“There could be a distribution or a dividend to the people of our country, I would say for people that would be middle income people and lower income people, we could do a dividend,” Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One after leaving his golf club in New Jersey.

President Donald Trump on Sunday lashed out at radio host Charlamagne Tha God, saying in a social media post that the popular broadcaster “knows nothing about me or what I have done.”

Trump’s comments came a day after Charlamagne, whose real name is Lenard McKelvey, criticized Trump on the Fox News show “My View with Lara Trump.” The show is hosted by the president’s daughter-in-law, a former co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

Asked how he would rate Trump’s presidency, the radio host said, “I wouldn’t give it a good rating simply because the least of us are still being impacted the worst.”

Trump said on Truth Social that Charlamagne was a “dope” who voted for Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris.

Charlamagne said he personally will benefit from tax breaks approved in Trump’s tax-and-spending law, but said, “There’s going to be so many people that’s hurt by that bill.”

“Anything that takes away Medicaid from people and will put people in a worse financial situation than they were previously in, I’m not for,” he added.

Charlamagne also predicted that “traditional conservatives” are going to take back the Republican Party from Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, citing controversy over Trump’s refusal to release files related to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I am Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.

We start with the news that Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott has said he will begin trying to remove Democratic lawmakers from office on Monday if they don’t return after dozens of them left the state in a last-resort attempt to block redrawn US House maps that president Donald Trump wants before the 2026 midterm elections.

The revolt by the state House Democrats, many of whom went to Illinois or New York on Sunday, and Abbott giving them less than 24 hours to come home ratcheted up a widening fight over congressional maps, Associated Press reported.

The planned vote on Monday could see five new Republican-leaning seats created in the House of Representatives. The move by the Democrats threatens 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 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 governor 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.”

Read our full story here:

In other developments:

• US trade representative Jamieson Greer has defended the firing of labor statistics chief Erika McEntarfer. “The president is the president. He can choose who works in the executive branch,” he said on Face the Nation. Greer was among a host of Trump administration officials who were deployed to defend Trump after a week of bruising economic numbers.

• The US Senate left Washington DC on Saturday night for its month-long August recess without a deal to advance dozens of Donald Trump’s nomineescalling it quits after days of contentious bipartisan negotiations and the president taking to social media to tell Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to “GO TO HELL!”

• In a new court filing, attorneys for the Trump administration denied the existence of a daily quota for immigration arrests, despite reports and prior statements from White House officials about pursuing a goal of at least 3,000 deportations or deportation arrests per day. Lawyers representing the US justice department said that the Department of Homeland Security had confirmed that “neither Ice leadership nor its field offices have been directed to meet any numerical quota or target for arrests, detentions, removals, field encounters, or any other operational activities that Ice or its components undertake in the course of enforcing federal immigration law.”

• The US Senate has confirmed Jeanine Pirro – a former Fox News host and staunch Donald Trump ally who boosted lies that he lost the 2020 presidential race because of electoral fraudsters – as the top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital. Pirro – a former New York state district attorney and county judge who joined Fox News in 2011 – was confirmed on Saturday in a 50-45 vote along party lines.

• The Smithsonian says it will restore Trump impeachment exhibits in “coming weeks”.