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Texas attorney general refuses to grant federal agents full access to border park: “Your request is hereby denied”
Eagle Pass, Texas — Texas’ attorney general on Thursday forcefully rejected a request from the Biden administration to grant federal immigration officials full access to a park along the southern border that the state National Guard has sealed off with razor wire, fencing and soldiers.
For three weeks, the federal government and Texas have clashed over Shelby Park, a city-owned public park in the border town of Eagle Pass that was once a busy area for illegal crossings by migrants. Texas National Guard soldiers deployed by Gov. Greg Abbott took control of Shelby Park earlier in January and have since prevented Border Patrol agents from processing migrants in the area, which once served as a makeshift migrant holding site for the federal agency.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Border Patrol, had given Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton until Friday to say the state would relent and allow federal agents inside Shelby Park. On Friday, however, Paxton rebuffed that demand, saying Texas state officials would not allow DHS to turn the area into an “unofficial and unlawful port of entry.”
“Your request is hereby denied,” Paxton wrote in his letter.
Paxton pledged to continue “Texas’s efforts to protect its southern border against every effort by the Biden Administration to undermine the State’s constitutional right of self-defense.”
Inside Shelby Park, Texas guardsmen have been setting barriers to impede the passage of migrants hoping to cross into the U.S. illegally, and instructing them to return to Mexico across the Rio Grande. The Texas Department of Public Safety also recently started arresting some adult migrants who enter the park on state criminal trespassing charges.
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Abbott and other Texas officials have argued the state’s actions are designed to discourage migrants from entering the country illegally, faulting the federal government for not doing enough to deter unauthorized crossings. But the Biden administration said Texas is preventing Border Patrol agents from patrolling the Rio Grande, processing migrants and helping those who may be in distress.
Immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility. Texas state officials are not legally authorized nor trained to screen migrants for asylum, arrest them for immigration violations or deport them to a foreign country. However, Abbott signed a law last month that he hopes will allow Texas officials to arrest migrants on illegal entry state-level charges and force them to return to Mexico. The Justice Department is seeking to block that law before it takes effect in March.
The Supreme Court earlier this week allowed Border Patrol to cut the razor wire Texas has assembled near the riverbanks of the Rio Grande, pausing a lower court order that had barred the agency from doing so. The razor wire in Shelby Park has remained in place, however, since federal officials have not been granted full access to the area.
While the Supreme Court has not ruled on Texas’ seizure of Shelby Park, that dispute could also end up being litigated in federal court if the Biden administration sues the state over the matter.
While the White House has called his policies inhumane and counterproductive, Abbott has argued he is defending his state from an “invasion,” and his actions in Eagle Pass have received the support of other Republican governors across the country.
U.S. officials processed more than 302,000 migrants at and in between ports of entry along the southern border last month, an all-time high that shattered all previous records, according to official government data published Friday. Illegal border crossings have since plummeted, a trend U.S. officials have attributed to increased Mexican immigration enforcement and a historical lull after the holidays.
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Donald Trump Media posts earnings as DJT stock halts on Election Day. Here are the details.
Donald Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group had an eventful Election Day 2024, with its DJT stock halted three times after the shares suddenly plunged. At the end of the trading day, the Truth Social owner released its third-quarter earnings, showing a continued decline in revenue.
The company’s third-quarter results, disclosed in a U.S. Securities & Exchange filing, shows that the fledgling social media business continues to lose money, while its revenue slipped 5.6% compared with a year earlier. Still, that marks an improvement from the prior quarter, when Trump Media’s sales tumbled 30%.
Donald Trump’s stake in DJT
DJT stock has been on a rollercoaster since going public in March, with the shares surging or falling in line with news about Trump, its largest shareholder, with about 57% of the company’s shares. The erratic fluctuations of the shares have prompted comparisons with so-called meme stocks, which trade on social media buzz rather than the fundamentals that investors prefer, such as revenue and profitability growth.
“This has been an extraordinary quarter for the company, for Truth Social users, and for our legion of retail investors who support our mission to serve as a beachhead for free speech on the internet,” Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes said in a statement.
The company said it lost $19.2 million in the quarter ended September 30, compared with a loss of $26 million in the year-earlier period. Sales fell 5.6% to $1.01 million.
How DJT stock performed on Election Day
DJT stock initially surged almost 19% on Election Day before giving up those gains and closing down 1%. Trading in the stock was also halted three times on Tuesday by the New York Stock Exchange due to sudden drops in its price.
The shares have been on a wild ride since going public in March, initially surging and giving former president’s 57% stake a value of $5.2 billion. But the shares tumbled after Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race, eventually hitting a low of $11.75 per share in September and shaving Trump’s stake to $1.4 billion.
But after hitting that low, the shares more than quadrupled after Trump was predicted to win the presidential race by betting markets like Polymarket.
Yet in recent days, DJT stock has lost much of those gains, shedding 34% of its value since its most recent high of $51.51 per share on October 29.
Senate elections live balance of power for 2024
There are 34 Senate seats up for election in 2024, and Democrats are facing strong headwinds as they seek to defend their narrow 51-49 majority. Heading into Election Day, Republicans appeared to have an edge in several races that could determine control of the Senate.
Senate elections live results map for 2024
Democrats are facing a particularly difficult map this cycle, fighting to hold seats in two states Trump won in 2020. In another six states, Democratic incumbents are in tight races, while only two Republican-held seats are considered possible pickup opportunities for Democrats.
If history is any guide, one stock market gauge suggests that Vice President Kamala Harris will defeat former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race.
In all but two elections since 1944, the party in the White House has retained power when the U.S. stock market advances before Election Day, or the period between the end of July and Halloween, according to an election predictor devised by Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, based out of Allentown, Pennsylvania.
In 2020, the S&P 500 fell 0.04% from July 31 to October 31, with then-President Donald Trump losing the election to President Joe Biden. While the outcome in the 2024 election is not yet known, the S&P 500 rose 3.3% during that three-month span this year.
To be sure, many other factors can influence a presidential race, and Wall Street is no stranger to making wrong predictions, ranging from the direction of the stock market to election outcomes. And betting markets that allow average investors to place wagers on the election outcome have in recent weeks favored Trump.
“You can say there is sort of an overlap — the market usually goes up on an annual basis and voters tend to give the incumbent the benefit of the doubt, so it makes sense if the market goes up most of the time and the incumbent gets re-elected most of the time,” Stovall told CBS MoneyWatch.
Even more reliable are periods when the stock market falls during the period from July 31 to October 31, in which case the incumbent has been replaced 89% of the time. That predictor failed only once, in 1956, according to Stovall, pointing to the year when incumbent President Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson, despite the S&P 500 tumbling 7.7% in the period ahead of the election.
Still, Stovall notes a mathematician might scoff at basing a model on such a limited sample, in this case the 21 presidential elections held in the U.S. since World War II.
“Is this really statistically significant? I think the answer is no, but it makes for interesting copy,” the strategist said. “You can have data tell whatever story you want.”
Limited or not, Stovall is sticking with his presidential predictor.
“I believe we will see a Harris victory ultimately, because I’m a very big believer in history and rules-based investing,” Stovall told CBS News.