Donald Trump refuses to say whether a six-week abortion ban goes too far – live

Unauthorized border crossings have fallen by about half since the United States ended pandemic-era restrictions known as Title 42 and replaced them last week with new, stringent rules, a top homeland security official said.

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“Over the last three days, we have seen approximately a 50% decrease in encounters compared to the days leading up to the end of Title 42,” the department’s assistant secretary for border and immigration policy Blas Nuñez-Neto told reporters.

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“It is important to note that while Title 42 has ended, the conditions that are causing hemispheric migration at unprecedented levels have not changed. We continue to see more displaced people in the hemisphere than we have in decades.”

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First imposed by Donald Trump as the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, Title 42 allowed the United States to turn away many asylum seekers. The rule expired at midnight last Friday, raising fears of a new surge in migrants across the southern border. Under Joe Biden, authorities announced new restrictions on migrants, including banning asylum seekers who passed through another country on their way to the United States but did not seek refuge there.

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“Since Friday, individuals who crossed the border unlawfully to enter the United States without using the lawful pathways that we have significantly expanded over the last two years now face tougher consequences at the border, including a minimum five-year bar on reentry and the potential to be criminally prosecuted if they try again,” Nuñez-Neto said.

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He noted that since Friday, US authorities returned hundreds of people including Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Cubans to Mexico, and sent thousands of others from Peru, Colombia and Honduras to their home countries.

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Despite encouraging signs from the White House over the weekend, the Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, gave a gloomy assessment of talks on raising the debt ceiling when CNN caught up with him today:

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Speaker McCarthy offered a reality check this morning on debt limit talks, insisting they are still "far apart," while the administration paints a rosier picture. pic.twitter.com/v3hLWjkdnz

— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotcnn) May 15, 2023

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The US government earlier this year hit the legal limit on how much debt it can accrue, and around 1 June is expected to exhaust its cash on hand and potentially default on its obligations for the first time in history. McCarthy has demanded Democrats agree to spending cuts and other conservative priorities in exchange for the GOP voting to raise the limit.

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Joe Biden and Senate Democrats, meanwhile, say the limit must be raised without preconditions. The two sides met last week and continued talking, and over the weekend, Biden administration officials signaled some progress was being made.

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“I’m hopeful. I think the negotiations are very active. I’m told they have found some areas of agreement,” Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Saturday.

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In his interview with the Messenger, Donald Trump stuck to his guns when it came to his 2020 election lies and dislike of Florida governor Ron DeSantis. But in a sign of the former president’s reported unease over Roe v Wade’s end last year, he stayed evasive on just how far he would go in cracking down on abortion.

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“He has to do what he has to do,” Trump said when asked if he supported the ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy DeSantis signed into Florida law. “He signed six weeks, and many people within the pro-life movement feel that that was too harsh.”

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Pushed further by interviewer Marc Caputo on whether he thought the law was “too harsh”, Trump said, “I’m looking at many alternatives. But I was able to get us to the table by terminating Roe v. Wade. That’s the most important thing that’s ever happened for the pro-life movement.” Again, Caputo pressed, asking him to say definitively whether or not he’d sign such a bill into law. “I’m looking at all [options].” Trump said.

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That evasiveness is in line with how he reacted when questioned about the subject at the CNN town hall last week. Last year, the New York Times reported the former president worried Roe v Wade’s end could hurt Republicans, and indeed, the party performed worse than expected in the midterm elections held later in 2022.

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For all his waffling, the former president’s was much more definitive in how he feels about DeSantis, who has used his governorship of Florida over the past few years to position himself to succeed Trump as the GOP standard bearer.

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“He’s got no personality. And I don’t think he’s got a lot of political skill,” Trump said.

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Those who watched the CNN town hall last week will notice just how closely Trump stuck to his guns when it came to repeating his debunked theories that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Caputo unearths one potential reason why.

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The interviewer asks Trump is he doesn’t worry that the constant election fraud talk might pose a liability. “No. Because if you look at the polls, almost 80% in our party think the election was rigged,” he replies, adding that if he stopped talking about it, “I think if I didn’t I would actually be rebuked by a large portion of the Republican party.”

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Good morning, US politics blog readers. Days after participating in a contentious and criticized town hall with CNN, Donald Trump continued what appears to be a mainstream media blitz by granting an interview to online startup The Messenger. Journalist Marc Caputo is not successful in getting the former president to clarify his stance on abortion, including the six-week ban now in place in Florida, but Trump does hold forth on potential primary foe Ron DeSantis, and shines some light on why he remains so adamant with his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

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Here’s a rundown of what we expect to happen today:

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n

• Debt limit talks continue and comments from Joe Biden and his top officials over the weekend indicate progress may actually be being made ahead of the 1 June deadline for a potential US government default.

n

• There’s no White House press briefing today, and Biden is spending it flying from Delaware to Philadelphia and finally back to Washington DC.

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• Kamala Harris is having a similarly quiet one, at least when it comes to interactions with the masses. She has no public events scheduled.

n

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A pair of Republican lawmakers is circulating a letter that calls on Congress’s leadership to include measures intended to strengthen border security in the ongoing negotiations over the debt ceiling.

House Republicans last week passed the Secure Our Border Act, a conservative measure that would limit migrants’ ability to seek asylum, bolster border security funding and force the construction to restart on Donald Trump’s border wall, which Joe Biden cancelled when he took office. Democrats controlling the Senate have shown no interest in considering the bill and Biden said he would veto it, so Kevin Hern, chair of the influential Republican Study Committee, and Ben Cline are circulating a letter calling on its measures to be included in the debt ceiling talks.

“American taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for the rapidly growing illegal immigration crisis. Thus, we support the inclusion of common-sense border security and immigration reforms in negotiations to raise the debt ceiling,” the pair write in a text of the letter obtained by the Guardian.

“Negotiators should also consider other common-sense policies, such as ensuring taxpayer funded welfare programs and tax credits are not available to illegal immigrants, restoring the Trump Administration’s public charge rule, and preventing relevant federal funding from flowing to sanctuary cities that harbor illegal aliens, among others.”

A source familiar with the letter said it is being circulated among members of the Republican Study Committee, which is the largest ideological caucus in Congress. It is expected to be sent to congressional leadership and the White House on Wednesday.

The early months of the GOP’s nomination process often bring candidates out of the woodwork, as (occasionally surprising) old names look for another shot at the White House. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that former Texas governor and energy secretary Rick Perry is considering a third run for president:

The former Texas governor Rick Perry’s announcement on Sunday that he could mount a third run for the Republican presidential nomination encountered widespread mockery over a famous debate stage gaffe in which he forgot the name of a government department he said he would abolish.

But Perry, 73, also ran into stormier waters, being accused of lying regarding his alleged involvement in Donald Trump’s election subversion.

Perry is the longest-serving Texas governor, in office between 2000 and 2015. A telegenic ex-air force pilot, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 and 2016.

Both campaigns flopped but, speaking to CNN on Sunday, he said a third run was “something that I haven’t taken off the table”.

In response, many observers pointed to Perry’s debate stage nightmare in Rochester, Michigan, in November 2011.

Perry said then: “It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, education, and the uh … what’s the third one, there? Let’s see … Commerce, education and the, uh, um uh … The third agency of government I would do away with, uh, education, commerce, and, let’s see … I can’t. The third one. I can’t.

“Oops.”

Iowa’s Republican senator Joni Ernst had the following to say about Ron DeSantis’s visit to the state this weekend.

She spoke to the conservative Newsmax channel: