The legislative effort represents one of the most coordinated state-level resistance campaigns in modern American history, with Democratic lawmakers using their power in state capitals to create barriers between federal immigration enforcement and immigrant communities within their borders. The scale and scope of the campaign reflects the deep partisan divide over immigration policy that has defined American politics for the past decade.

A review by the left-wing State Futures organization discovered 242 pieces of legislation in 32 states, with about a fifth already passed into law, according to OregonLive.

The bills have drawn enthusiastic support from state Democrats, but many now face legal action from the federal government. In some blue states, Democrat governors have even vetoed the measures, fearing they go too far.

The governors’ reluctance to sign some of the more aggressive bills highlights the legal complexity of state attempts to interfere with federal immigration enforcement. Under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, federal law generally takes precedence over state law in areas where the federal government has clear authority, including immigration and border control. Even some Democrats have expressed concern that pushing too far could result in costly legal defeats that ultimately weaken their position.

The legislation seeks to handcuff federal immigration enforcement at every turn.

Measures ban ICE officers from wearing masks during operations — a move President Trump has blasted as unconstitutional. Others deny federal agents undercover license plates, prompting the administration to sue four states. Additional bills aim to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement from using government property and prevent federal officials from opening new detention facilities.

These restrictions target the practical mechanics of immigration enforcement operations. The mask bans, for instance, would potentially expose federal officers to identification and retaliation, while the undercover license plate restrictions could compromise surveillance operations and officer safety during arrests. The denial of government property access could force ICE to conduct operations in more public settings or abandon enforcement activities in certain jurisdictions altogether.

The progressive organization noted that 53 bills have now passed in 17 states aimed at putting curbs on federal immigration actions and policies.

Most face legal review and lawsuits.

Many of these bills are championed by activist law firms in what critics call lawfare against Trump.

The term “lawfare” refers to the strategic use of legal systems and institutions to achieve political or military objectives. Critics argue that the coordinated legal campaign against Trump’s immigration enforcement constitutes an abuse of the judicial system to circumvent the democratic process and the executive branch’s constitutional authority over immigration policy. Supporters, however, maintain they are using legitimate legal channels to protect immigrant rights and check executive overreach.

Pro-amnesty groups have flooded the legal system with 20,000 lawsuits aimed at blocking the president’s immigration enforcement, Breitbart News recently reported.

The growing wave of lawfare cases are facilitated by activist judges appointed by Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The judicial appointments made during previous administrations have emerged as a critical factor in immigration enforcement battles. Federal judges serve lifetime appointments, meaning that presidents continue to influence policy long after leaving office through the judges they place on the bench. The data on judicial rulings reveals a stark partisan pattern in how different judges approach immigration detention cases.

Biden’s judges ruled against ICE’s detentions in 92 percent of 5,914 cases.

Obama’s judges ruled against ICE in 95 percent of 4,360 cases.

George W. Bush’s deputies ruled against ICE in 90 percent of 3,072 cases.

In contrast, Trump-nominated judges backed ICE in 34 percent of 3,946 cases. Reagan’s remaining judges backed ICE’s detention in 36 percent of 352 cases.

The left is using liberal judges to obstruct the president’s mandate, says James Percival, General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security.

“They know if they can just get enough crazy district judges to do enough crazy things, they can run out the clock.”

“That’s the strategy,” he added.

Percival’s comments reflect the Trump administration’s frustration with what it views as judicial activism designed to delay enforcement actions until a potentially different administration takes office. District court rulings, even when eventually overturned on appeal, can tie up enforcement for months or years, effectively achieving the policy outcome sought by enforcement opponents regardless of the legal merits.

The federal government isn’t backing down. The Justice Department has already sued multiple states over the undercover license plate bans, and more legal battles are expected as Trump’s administration fights to enforce immigration law against the Democrat obstruction machine.

The constitutional showdown between federal authority and state resistance promises to produce landmark legal precedents that will shape immigration enforcement for years to come. As the battles move through the court system, both sides are preparing for what could be a prolonged war of attrition, with the ultimate resolution potentially reaching the Supreme Court.

it is a bit crazy how overwhelmingly democratic BigLaw is. like there is not a single super prestigious firm where even a significant percent of donors are republicans. pic.twitter.com/DmGySst4Ul

— kicole nidman (@ferald_gord) August 15, 2026

.@DHSGenCounsel on activist judges: “What’s going on with some of these District Judges is absolutely ABSURD…what these judges are doing is engaging in naked politics and then they’re shrouding it in the thin veneer of legalese.” https://t.co/75hxmGcMaL pic.twitter.com/UxAFOknoX0

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) July 30, 2026

The Trump administration’s tariff and America First trade policies are delivering the manufacturing renaissance patriots were promised.

July alone brought 18,000 new durable goods factory jobs, the best single month of the year. Motor vehicles and parts accounted for 7,900 of those gains. Machinery added 2,600, fabricated metals 2,500, and computers and electronics 2,900 — including 1,700 semiconductor jobs.

The pace is accelerating. During the first four months of 2026, durable goods added 28,000 jobs, averaging 7,000 a month. May, June, and July produced 44,000 jobs — an average of nearly 15,000 a month. The hiring pace has more than doubled.

Year-over-year employment turned positive in June and widened to 35,000 in July — the first positive readings after 30 consecutive months of decline.

That drought is over. Prior to July, the last three-month gain of this size came in December 2022. The next 42 monthly reports passed without another strong three-month period.

The Bush-Obama Manufacturing Collapse

This comeback stands in sharp contrast to the manufacturing jobs drought that ran from July 2000 through May 2010 — covering the presidency of George W. Bush, the China shock, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the housing bubble, and the financial crisis.

Over the first decade of the 2000s, durable goods manufacturing lost 3.84 million jobs — an average decline of 32,000 a month for an entire decade.

The Obama-era recovery was thin. From January 2010 through January 2017, durable goods added 694,000 jobs, but 518,000 of that came during the first three years bouncing off the crisis floor. The last two years of the Obama administration went in reverse, shedding 55,000 durable goods jobs.

Across 2015 and 2016, there was not a single three-month gain matching what Trump is delivering now.

Trump Revival 1.0 — The 18-Month Streak

Beginning in August 2017, durable goods employment rose for 18 consecutive months, adding 340,000 jobs through January 2019. The economy was already more than eight years removed from the recession trough — this was no traditional rebound. The economy was responding to the new priorities of the Trump administration.

From December 2017 through January 2019, the sector strung together 15 consecutive three-month gains of at least 40,000 — the longest such stretch of the 21st century. By January 2019, durable goods employment had reached 8,025,000, its highest level since December 2008.

Capital-Intensive Production — The Tariff Effect

The current gains are concentrated in durable goods. Nondurable manufacturers lost 13,000 jobs in July and are down 49,000 over the year. That points toward a shift into capital-intensive production — the sort of shift one would expect when labor is scarce and tariffs tilt demand toward domestic production.

Output confirms it. The Federal Reserve’s index of durable manufacturing production rose 3.2 percent in the year through June and 5.8 percent since January 2025. May’s reading was the highest since December 2018. Output per worker is up 5.9 percent.

Compare that with the first Trump term. From January 2017 to the September 2018 peak, durable output rose 4.7 percent while employment rose 3.7 percent. Output per worker gained less than a point. That expansion ran on headcount at a time when the workforce was still growing rapidly. This one is running on capital, reflecting the slowdown in workforce growth.

Production workers in durable goods logged 42.3 hours a week in July — up from 41.3 a year ago. Overtime rose to 4.1 hours from 3.7.

Manufacturers are adding workers and working the ones they already have longer.

Manufacturing Workers Get Real Raises

And this is paying off for manufacturing workers. Average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees in durable goods rose 4.7 percent over the year, against 3.2 percent for all private workers.

Add the longer workweek and weekly earnings for those workers climbed 7.2 percent — beating the rate of inflation by 3.7 percent.

That is what capital deepening looks like from the shop floor. Fewer hands, more machines, more output per hand, and a raise that beats the rest of the economy by a wide margin.

Trump promised a Golden Age for American manufacturing. The July data confirms the dawn of that era has arrived.

The controversy centers on one of the most ambitious White House construction projects in modern history, raising fundamental questions about presidential authority and the separation of powers. At stake is not just a building project, but the question of whether a sitting president has the constitutional authority to make major alterations to the executive mansion without explicit congressional approval.

A divided federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Trump administration must halt construction of the $400 million White House ballroom because Congress never authorized the project. The court claimed the president doesn’t have unilateral authority to replace the East Wing with the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

The ruling represents a significant check on executive power, with the majority opinion focusing on the principle that major capital projects require congressional appropriation. The decision hinged on whether the president’s general authority to maintain and operate the White House extends to undertaking massive construction projects that fundamentally alter the building’s footprint and purpose. Legal scholars have noted that while presidents routinely make renovations and improvements, projects of this scale and cost have historically involved congressional consultation or authorization.

Trump fired back on Truth Social, arguing that presidents have every right to renovate, improve, and secure the White House — because they’re elected by the American people, not Congress.

“Two Judges, one appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, the other by Sleepy Joe Biden, said in a ruling on the desperately needed SECURE Ballroom/Military Complex, including a major DronePort on the roof, that ‘Each President is a temporary tenant … of the White House.'”

Trump didn’t stop there. In the same Truth Social post, he reminded the judges that presidents are NOT tenants.

“We are not tenants, who pay rent and do all other things that a tenant must do, we are PRESIDENTS, elected by the people of the United States of America, and have many rights, including the right to fix, renovate, secure, protect, and beautify the White House grounds, which has been built and rebuilt, renovated and rerenovated, repaired and, simply, MADE BETTER, many times since 1792, and never needing the permission of Congress.”

The president’s response highlights a longstanding tension in American government between the executive branch’s operational independence and Congress’s power of the purse. His invocation of popular election as a source of authority reflects a broader constitutional debate about whether the president’s democratic mandate grants inherent powers beyond those explicitly enumerated in Article II of the Constitution.

Trump called the court’s decision a threat to national security — pointing out that the judges just halted a project that was already largely built and funded.

The national security argument adds another dimension to the legal battle. If the complex indeed includes security-critical infrastructure like the drone detection and defense systems Trump has described, halting construction could potentially leave those systems incomplete and the White House vulnerable. This raises questions about whether courts should defer to executive determinations of national security needs, or whether such claims require independent judicial scrutiny to prevent executive overreach.

Before the ruling, Trump shared an aerial photo showing construction underway at the White House’s East Wing. He said the project was on budget and ahead of schedule.

The military complex under construction includes a drone port on the roof — though Trump noted in a Tuesday Truth Social post that the steel for the structure had already been fabricated and would be installed soon.

The timing of the court’s intervention, coming after substantial construction has already occurred and materials have been fabricated, creates additional complications. Halting the project now could result in wasted taxpayer dollars if the work must be undone or materials scrapped. This practical consideration may factor into any appeals or requests for stays of the court’s order.

The White House has been renovated, expanded, and rebuilt multiple times since 1792. Trump’s argument: every president before him had the authority to make the People’s House better. Why would he need Congress’s permission now?

Historical precedent does support Trump’s claim that the White House has undergone repeated transformations. However, the scale and cost of this particular project may distinguish it from past renovations. The legal question ultimately turns on where to draw the line between routine presidential maintenance authority and major construction projects that require legislative approval — a boundary that this court decision attempts to define more clearly than ever before.

The former vice president appeared Friday at the National Urban League Conference in Nashville, where NUL President Marc Morial asked her to name the most effective presidents in American history. Harris rattled off four names: Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Barack Obama.

The one name she didn’t mention? Joe Biden — the man who picked her as his running mate and later handed her the 2024 nomination.

“Oh Marc, don’t make me do that,” Harris told Morial before launching into her answer.

The question itself wasn’t unusual for a political forum. Presidential candidates and former office-holders are routinely asked to identify leaders they admire or consider most successful. It’s a chance to signal values, align with historical legacies, and hint at governing philosophy. Harris had every opportunity to include Biden among her picks, especially given their shared administration and his role in elevating her national profile. Instead, she chose a list that conspicuously ended with Obama — Biden’s own former boss.

Harris praised FDR for building Social Security and defending government’s role during hard times. She credited him with understanding government’s three essential functions: public health, public safety, and public education.

She added JFK and LBJ to round out her top three, then brought up Barack Obama — drawing a burst of applause from the crowd. Harris praised Obama’s push for the Affordable Care Act.

Each name on Harris’s list carried symbolic weight. Roosevelt represented the New Deal coalition and activist government. Kennedy embodied youthful optimism and Cold War leadership. Johnson advanced civil rights and Medicare. Obama broke racial barriers and expanded health coverage. All are Democratic icons with signature legislative achievements and clear historical narratives. Biden, by contrast, was left out of that pantheon entirely — a pointed exclusion given that Harris served directly under him and could have easily praised his infrastructure spending, COVID relief efforts, or judicial appointments.

Kamala Harris snubs Biden when asked to name ‘most effective’ US presidents at Nashville event https://t.co/6NjSdVatgMpic.twitter.com/4bRkbW77ah

— New York Post (@nypost) August 1, 2026

Biden was nowhere in the answer. The omission comes as the two have feuded openly since Harris’s loss to President Donald Trump in November.

The rift between Harris and Biden has been one of the Democratic Party’s most uncomfortable open secrets since the 2024 defeat. What began as a partnership meant to unite the party’s establishment and progressive wings has deteriorated into mutual recrimination. Biden’s allies have suggested Harris ran a poor campaign. Harris’s camp has countered that Biden’s unpopularity and delayed exit doomed her from the start. The Nashville moment offered Harris a low-cost chance to mend fences or at least project unity. She declined.

Biden abandoned his reelection bid 107 days before Election Day and endorsed Harris on his way out. After she lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote to Trump, Harris blamed Biden’s White House in her book “107 Days” — writing that his communications team left her to absorb blame over the border crisis.

That book became a flashpoint in the ongoing blame game. By titling it after the compressed timeline she was given, Harris made clear she felt set up to fail. The border criticism was especially pointed, since Biden had assigned her a role in addressing root causes of migration — a portfolio that brought political risk but little control over actual policy. Her willingness to air those grievances in print signaled that any pretense of loyalty had evaporated.

The Nashville appearance doubled as an early look at a possible 2028 platform. Harris backed reforms she avoided during her 2024 run, telling attendees the country should scrap the Electoral College, grow the Supreme Court to 13 seats, and grant statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

These proposals represent a significant shift leftward from the cautious centrism Harris adopted as Biden’s heir apparent in 2024. Electoral College abolition and court expansion have long been progressive demands that mainstream Democratic candidates typically avoid in general elections. By embracing them now, Harris appears to be repositioning herself for a primary electorate still hungry for structural reform after back-to-back losses in the popular vote to Trump — the second of which she herself suffered.

“I have not made a decision,” Harris said of another White House bid, according to Fox News. “I am fully, sincerely, focused on these midterms.”

Democratic strategists still peg Harris as the party’s leading 2028 contender. She tops Gavin Newsom by 11 points and Pete Buttigieg by 17 points in the RealClearPolitics average, while courting the progressive wing through recent outreach to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The snub in Nashville makes clear where Harris stands — and Biden isn’t standing with her.

Ayers is the former leader of the Weather Underground, an anti-American domestic terrorist group with ties to former President Barack Obama.

Ayers told an audience during the event at the National Public Housing Museum that the Declaration of Independence is a “mixed and contradictory document” and recalled the 200th anniversary in 1976 when his group printed a poster for the event that read, “200 Years Is Enough.”

“Now it’s 250 years and I feel similarly. I feel like there’s nothing more appropriate than having a conversation tonight about 250 years of resistance,” he added.

“Now it’s 250 years and I feel similarly. I feel like there’s nothing more appropriate than having a conversation tonight about 250 years of resistance.”

The Weather Underground took credit for 25 bombings, including one at the U.S. Capitol building and an attempted bombing at a military induction center in California, as well as bombings inside a women’s restroom in the Pentagon, at the California Attorney General’s office, and at a police station in New York City.

Ayers helped form the Weather Underground together with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. The group splintered from the anti-war Students for a Democratic Society, complaining the SDS was not violent or radical enough.

Ayers turned himself in to the police in 1980 but the charges needed to be dropped due to the use of illegal federal wiretaps.

While he stopped violence, Ayers’s revolution to fundamentally transform America continued full speed ahead through his next incarnation as an education reform activist. He became a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

During a question-and-answer session at the event, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor in the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University, said, “This audience is all like, ‘Fuck the USA,'” to which those gathered laughed.

“This audience is all like, ‘Fuck the USA.'”

Taylor also said, “We have to reject the idea of loving a nation state, right? Which is what patriotism is at the end of the day… the nation state itself is destructive.”

She then claimed that “borders are deadly” and “borders kill people.”

Manhattan Institute investigative analyst Stu Smith said, “As you celebrate Independence Day, remember that there is an entire class of activists, including many embedded in higher education, who spend their days trying to dismantle the country.”

He added that Taylor was “advancing a worldview that would dismantle the United States as a sovereign country. No nation-state means no real borders. No real borders means no meaningful sovereignty. No sovereignty means the people have no country left to govern.”

“This is the old Marxist fantasy of a world where workers are not bound by nations, borders, or citizenship, but are free to move wherever they want. In practice, it means dissolving the country out from under its own people,” Smith concluded.

On the eve of America’s 250th anniversary, radical leftist Bill Ayers and Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor led a symposium called “250 Years of Resistance.”

At the event, Taylor said, “Fuck the USA!”

Here’s what they said pic.twitter.com/example

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) July 5, 2026

Trump shared photos on Truth Social Sunday showing the iconic pool stretching toward the Washington Monument under blue skies, the water so clean that the monument’s reflection is sharp and vivid. The images show a dramatic turnaround from the murky, algae-choked water that plagued previous administrations.

“Advanced nanobubbler technology” killed the algae that has plagued every Lincoln Reflecting Pool reopening since 1922, according to Interior Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Greg Wischer.

“The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool — just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”

Wischer didn’t hold back in his memo to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Trump, crediting the nanobubbler tech with succeeding where past administrations failed.

The Trump administration took a direct shot at former President Barack Obama’s handling of the pool.

“Previous administrations — most notably under Obama — failed to maintain the Reflecting Pool, and after refilling the pool, the water would quickly become murky and thick with massive clumps of algae floating on the surface,” Wischer wrote.

The memo went further, mocking the media stakeout that had been waiting for the pool to fail: “As our National Park Service team noted, the Reflecting Pool is now so ‘blue’ that the Fake News Media, which has been staked out at the Reflecting Pool for weeks, has fled!”

The restored pool features an American Flag Blue coating on the bottom that’s now visible through the crystal-clear water. National Park Service crews are vacuuming up the dead algae in the final maintenance step, with the section closest to the Lincoln Memorial already complete.

But the victory tour came with a call for justice.

Trump also shared a “Wanted” poster on Truth Social calling for the arrest of vandals who damaged the pool.

“The U.S. Park Police is seeking the public’s assistance in identifying the individual in the notice below in connection with a Destruction of Government Property investigation related to the Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote.

The 6.75 million-gallon pool has been targeted by Trump critics and leftist activists in recent weeks, with vandals cutting multiple gashes totaling 350 feet in the pool’s liner.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that the vandalism is repairable and may not require a full draining of the pool.

“The Reflecting Pool has been a big success. And we’ve got 340 million people in this country that are celebrating 250. We did have a few vandals, but all that’s going to be repairable, and that’ll all be fixed in the coming weeks as we go forward.”

Burgum explained that the cutting happened on the edge of the pool, which slopes from the sides, so crews may be able to partially drain it and complete repairs quickly.

“We weren’t expecting that we were going to have a small group of people that wanted to try to destroy effectively what is part of the Lincoln Memorial,” Burgum told ABC.

He pointed out that while cameras cover the Lincoln statue and memorial, the Reflecting Pool had gone decades without vandalism — until Trump critics targeted it during the lead-up to America’s 250th anniversary celebrations.

The charges remain allegations. The case has not been proven in court.

The crystal-clear pool now stands as a centerpiece for the Fourth of July festivities and America’s semiquincentennial celebration, with Trump crediting his administration’s technological approach and the National Park Service cleanup crews for the dramatic turnaround.

“There is no American freedom without American culture, and there is no American founding without the American people,” Trump said.

The speech marked a clear break from the progressive “creedal nation” theory pushed by former President Barack Obama and other left-wing politicians who claim America’s freedom culture can be replicated by any diverse migrant population that simply agrees to a few civic principles.

“There is no American freedom without American culture, and there is no American founding without the American people.”

Obama has repeatedly argued that migrants can be absorbed into American society if they accept the themes of the Declaration. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an ethnic Indian Muslim, goes even further — arguing the creed is so broad that migrants can rewrite it entirely.

Trump rejected that vision entirely.

Standing before the granite faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, Trump argued the Declaration’s principles could only emerge from the European settlers who built America from scratch.

“The identity of a nation is the destiny of a nation,” Trump said, “and America has a destiny like no other, because we are a people like no other.”

He continued: “Here, the old world sent its bravest, boldest, and most resilient, its fiercest, most faithful, and freedom-loving. These men and women brought values, traditions, and customs transmitted over the centuries in Britain, and stretching back even further to Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome.”

The United States became the greatest civilization in human history, Trump said, because European settlers “forged a uniquely American character, a new breed of citizen.”

“We can never forget that American liberty has not endured for 250 years merely because of words on paper; Liberty has prevailed here because of the culture and character of the people who declared it, defended it, and preserved it.”

Constitutions and creeds cannot survive without the right people to uphold them, Trump warned.

“Many nations have paper constitutions and legal systems, but the citizens live in fear and squalor,” he said. “A constitution is only as strong as the people and the culture responsible for upholding it.”

The argument explains Trump’s push to reduce economic immigration and block migrants hostile to American culture.

Obama, however, has spent years defending the opposite vision — claiming progressives can create a freedom society from diverse immigrant cultures fundamentally different from the European traditions Trump celebrated.

In a 2025 speech, Obama framed mass migration as an “experiment” — and admitted it might be failing.

“There’s never been an experiment like this, where you have people from every corner of the globe show up in one place,” Obama said.

He also conceded that his diversity project has made governing harder: “Bipartisanship worked pretty well in Washington when everybody looked the same. And it was harder to do when people started seeing that, ‘Hey, those folks are now here, too.'”

“Changes in demographics” are a problem, Obama admitted, along with economic and technological trends.

“The country right now is going through sort of a political crisis of the sort that we haven’t seen before,” he said.

Mamdani pushes the creedal theory even further. In a recent speech marking the 250th anniversary, he told an audience of legalized immigrants and illegal migrants: “You each hold a special power, the power to determine what America means.”

But Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech made clear: American freedom isn’t up for reinterpretation by global migrants with no connection to the culture that created it.

Patriots know the truth — a nation’s identity determines its destiny. And Obama’s mass-migration experiment is running out of time.

Anyone trying to redefine an American as an idea is explicitly saying that you, your fathers, and your children are not people. It’s dehumanizing by default.

— Andrew Torba (@BasedTorba) July 3, 2026

.@POTUS at Mount Rushmore:

On this anniversary, we must remember that American liberty has not endured for 250 years merely because of words on paper; liberty has prevailed here because of the culture and character of the people who declared it, defended it, and preserved it.… pic.twitter.com/aAQWSTynwh

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 4, 2026

Trump framed the move as reversing what he called “bad” regulatory overreach by the Obama and Biden administrations.

The directive opens access to waters that have been restricted for years — delivering millions of pounds of wild scallops to American families and revitalizing maritime jobs along the entire East Coast, according to the president.

“This is in addition to freeing up a massive area off the East Coast for our Great Lobster Fishermen, and others (An Environmental Monument declared by Barack Hussein Obama and Sleepy Joe Biden, that I terminated!), and a half a million square miles of the beautiful Pacific Ocean, where every country was allowed to fish except for our Great American Fishermen!”

Trump continued his Truth Social post with a direct shot at previous administrations.

“I have opened up the Oceans, Rivers, Lakes, and Seas to our Fishermen, and freed them from ridiculous Environmental restrictions that allowed other countries to take advantage of the United States’ Waters under Barack Hussein Obuma, Sleepy Joe Biden, and the Dumocrats. It is my Great Honor to have done so because I am the Fishermen’s Friend.”

The president tied the policy win directly to the upcoming November midterm elections.

“GO OUT AND VOTE REPUBLICAN IN THE MIDTERMS, BECAUSE IF THE COMMUNISTS GET IN, YOU’LL NEVER FISH AGAIN!”

Today I am declaring a National Scallops Day to celebrate an action taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that will open up the Northern Edge of Georges Bank to Scallops Fishing, fulfilling the dream to our Great Fishermen who were so badly treated… pic.twitter.com/pdzCRAaSqT

— Commentary Donald J. Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) July 2, 2026

Georges Bank is an elevated area off the sea floor between Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Cape Sable Island, dividing the Gulf of Maine and the Atlantic Ocean.

NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment program describes the bank as having “an extensive food web including high levels of fish production that have sustained commercial fisheries since the 16th century.”

In 2024, commercial landings of Atlantic sea scallop totaled 21.2 million pounds of meats and were valued at $332 million, according to NOAA’s fishing landings database.

Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey account for the majority of U.S. sea scallop harvests.

An area of the bank remains closed year-round for habitat research under existing NOAA restrictions. It is unclear whether those closures will also be lifted under the new directive.

Ashley Etienne, who served in the Obama White House and as a senior advisor to Harris, told Fox News that despite Talarico’s strong position in the Senate race, he faces one massive vulnerability.

“Black voters are feeling like they were betrayed by what happened to Jasmine Crockett.”

Talarico, a Texas state lawmaker and Presbyterian seminarian, defeated Black congresswoman Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary earlier this year. The loss has left a sour taste with Black voters — especially Black women.

Etienne explained the fallout: “Some voters, Black women in particular, are feeling as though the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates want our labor, but not our leadership.”

She pointed to two losses that crystalized the feeling: Kamala Harris’ 2024 defeat and Jasmine Crockett’s primary loss.

Etienne co-authored an opinion piece in the Houston Chronicle quoting one Black female voter who said, “We as Black women give 92 percent of our vote to the Democratic Party, and we get nothing out of the deal.”

“That’s one example of what I think is a larger sentiment across Black women,” Etienne said.

Why does this matter? According to Etienne, approximately 1.1 million registered Black voters in Texas are not voting. To flip the traditionally red state, Talarico will need to mobilize that untapped base — and Black women are the key.

“Black women aren’t just another constituency. We are a force multiplier effect when it comes to Black voters.”

Etienne explained that Black women have the proven ability to “bring the entire community to the polls” cycle after cycle. But if their mood is low, the entire Black turnout operation collapses.

“If the mood of Black women is low, then you lose an opportunity to really reach and mobilize and engage and energize the rest of the Black community,” she said.

“That’s the nut he’s going to have to crack.”

Dallas Jones, a Democratic strategist who served as Texas political director for the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign, echoed the warning. He criticized Talarico supporters for pressuring Crockett to campaign for him. Crockett has endorsed Talarico but has been notably absent from the trail.

“There’s rhetoric that’s being turned up that she has to come and support him, and a lot of that is coming from people that support him,” Jones said. “So, what it translates to is people basically telling this accomplished, decorated, Black female member of Congress what she ought to do.”

That pressure, Jones said, is backfiring. “All that does is stoke flames and fires for her supporters, who are saying, ‘She really doesn’t have to do anything. You won, you’re the nominee, you come earn our vote, she doesn’t have to help you do that.'”

“There are millions of Black Texans out there ready for the taking, ready to support the campaign,” Jones continued. “But every day that goes by there’s an erosion of that support.”

Jones said he doesn’t think Talarico’s controversial past statements — including saying he “hates Christianity,” calling God “nonbinary,” and claiming there are six sexes — will hurt him with Black voters “considering the alternative” is Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“Black Texans that show up in November are not voting for Ken Paxton,” Jones said. “The challenge is creating the enthusiasm to get enough of them to go and vote for him.”

“He himself has admitted that he cannot win the state without Black voters,” Jones added. “It’s not a persuasion game, it’s an enthusiasm game.”

Talarico faces Paxton in the general election. The race is being watched nationally as a potential flip opportunity in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in decades.

Bay City Councilman Ben Flores, the Democratic nominee for Texas Land Commissioner, took the stage to defend state Rep. James Talarico — and ended up embracing every attack line Republicans have used against him.

“When they say James is a gay, tofu-eating vegan, we’re all gay, tofu-eating vegans! And when they say James is going to hell, we’ll say we’re all going to hell!”

Flores went even further, declaring “we’re all trans” when critics call Talarico trans.

The moment was captured on video and quickly went viral on social media.

James Talarico receives a head-scratching defense against his critics from Democratic Texas Land Commissioner candidate Ben Flores:

“Next time they say that James is trans — we’re all trans!”

“When they say James is gay tofu eating vegan — we’re all gay tofu eating vegans!”… pic.twitter.com/iczS3jJue6

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 28, 2026

Talarico defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the March primary for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. John Cornyn.

The dietary controversy started when Talarico ordered potato, egg, and cheese tacos — no meat — while visiting a taco stand with former President Barack Obama in May. Talarico has denied being vegan, with a spokesperson posting a photo of him eating a turkey leg.

But the food fight is the least of Talarico’s problems with Texas voters.

Talarico has been a staunch defender of child sex-change procedures, claiming in 2022 that they were not child abuse. He argued that Republican policies like “blocking Medicaid expansion” and “separating families at the border” were the real child abuse.

In 2021, Talarico fiercely opposed legislation to restrict child sex-change operations, declaring “God is nonbinary” during a floor debate.

“The first two lines of Genesis use two different Hebrew words to describe God. One is the masculine Hebrew noun for divinity, the second is the feminine Hebrew noun for spirit,” Talarico claimed during the debate before voting against the measure. “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary.”

Talarico has since admitted he was being “provocative” with those comments.

The Senate race is shaping up to be one of the most closely watched contests of 2026, with Republicans defending a seat in a state that has trended increasingly red in recent cycles.

Official statement from @JamesTalarico on vegan accusations pic.twitter.com/pLwtlknBYj

— JT Ennis (@jt_ennis) March 18, 2026