Weekly Recap: Feb 24th - Mar 1st
A recap of the big political stories affecting the United States this past week.
The South Carolina Republican primary happened last Saturday. As expected, Trump beat out Nikki Haley despite the fact that she was formerly the governor of South Carolina. Trump continued to show signs of lowered support by failing to reach 60% of the vote.Â
Trump did finally exceed 60% in the Michigan primary where he achieved 68% of the vote. Polling has shown that 25% of Republicans say they will not vote for Trump if he is the Republican nominee, and exit polling has shown that independent voters are also avoiding Trump. Without the full support of Republican voters and a share of Independent voters, Trump’s path back to the White House will be incredibly difficult.
While President Biden continues to receive the vast majority of primary support against long shot challenger Dean Phillips, Biden did encounter a protest vote in Michigan. 13% of Democratic Primary voters voted uncommitted in the primary, totaling over 100,000 votes. While this is not unique or new to this year’s campaign, it does show the risk that the Israel/Gaza conflict presents for Biden’s reelection campaign. Michigan is a critical swing state in the 2024 Presidential election.
Although President Biden has taken measures to get aid to Gaza, to enact a temporary ceasefire that saw hostages released, and has criticized Netanyahu’s approach in the conflict, some Americans, particularly Arab and Muslim Americans, feel Biden has not done enough.
President Biden also announced a potential upcoming ceasefire that has been in the works and may be in place soon. This will make it difficult to see what effect the protest vote had on Biden’s plans to address the ongoing conflict. However, Biden has made multiple statements about Gaza since the vote, including announcing an upcoming US aid airdrop which comes on the heels of over 100 Palestinians being killed when attempting to receive aid from trucks this past week.
The details of this tragedy are still being sorted out. Witnesses claim that Israeli forces fired into the crowd killing several Palestinians which then triggered a stampede, including aid trucks attempting to flee, that caused dozens of additional deaths. Israel released a series of statements, adjusting their report each time. Their claim is that there were Gazans that were approaching the Israeli forces resulting in warning shots and shots at their feet to keep them back. Israel says that only 10 of the casualties were from their gunfire.
Immigration continues to be the largest issue regarding the 2024 elections. Both President Biden and Donald Trump made visits to the border this week.
Biden focused on the need to pass the bipartisan border bill in order to enact meaningful reform. Whereas Trump tried to politicize the death of an American who was murdered by a migrant. Trump was told by a local community member that Trump wasn’t welcome, nor was the attention he was bringing to their border town.
Recent polling has shown Republicans are beginning to take more blame for the border issues, even more so when the bipartisan border bill was included in the questioning. Immigration played a key role in the special election for NY-3 which saw Democrat Suozzi win and turn the previously red district to blue.
After returning from its 3rd recess in four months to a looming 2024 budget deadline, the House of Representatives and Senate worked out a short continuing resolution to extend the deadline a couple of more weeks.
The original budget deadline was October first of last year. The Democrat led Senate and Republican led House have failed to reach agreement for months, using multiple continuing resolutions to buy them time. A previous agreement will result in automatic budget cuts taking effect in April if a deal is not reached, putting extra pressure on the latest deadline to produce a solution.
