Trump signs executive order renaming Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’

(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump might not have been in attendance at the Atlanta Press Club Republican primary debate for U.S. Senate last month, but his presence filled the room.

“I am running for the United States Senate so that I can go to the Senate and be a warrior for Donald Trump and his ‘America First’ policies,” said U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter in his opening statement.

When Carter’s House colleague and opponent in the Senate primary, U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, was asked about the direction in which the Republican Party should go once President Trump is no longer in office, Collins told the moderator “we need to continue Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda,” adding, “it’s one of the reasons that I ran.”

In a midterm cycle where Trump’s endorsement power has taken down incumbents, plucked winners out of crowded special elections, and fueled intra-party spending wars, the president has not yet backed a candidate in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Georgia.

The absence of a Trump endorsement in the race has led both Carter and Collins to focus their campaigns around winning over Trump’s base – and maybe even Trump himself – as they both vie for the president’s backing in what is expected to be one of the most competitive states on the map this year, one that could decide the balance of power in Congress.

Incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2026, and Tuesday’s primary could decide who goes head-to-head with the rising star in the Democratic Party in November.

Brian Kemp, the two-term Republican governor of Georgia who turned down calls to run for the Senate seat himself this year, is supporting neither congressman. Kemp has instead thrown his political weight behind former college football coach Derek Dooley, the son of legendary University of Georgia football coach Vince Dooley.

Kemp has made calls to donors to rally support for Dooley, a Kemp advisor told ABC News. Kemp’s PAC, Hardworking Americans Inc., has also poured millions in the race to help support Dooley, who calls himself a “political outsider.”

Kemp has had a rocky relationship with the president himself, after contesting Trump’s claims of election fraud in the 2020 election. However, Kemp remains popular among Georgians, winning reelection against a Trump-endorsed primary challenger in 2022.

Tuesday’s primary races in Georgia will be a test of Kemp’s own political power in the state; the outgoing Georgia governor has not ruled out a potential 2028 presidential run.

The real test of Trump’s influence in Georgia will come in the Republican primary to replace term-limited Kemp as governor, where the president’s early endorsement of current Lt. Governor Burt Jones failed to clear the field and instead set the stage for a competitive primary battle against billionaire businessman Rick Jackson, who is neck and neck with Jones in the polls.  

But unlike Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr – who are also running in the Republican primary for governor but are making appeals to more traditional GOP voters – Jackson is not shying away from running in the “Make America Great Again” lane, even without Trump’s backing.

“I’m a conservative outsider and a businessman that wants to bring business solutions to Georgia, just like President Trump did,” Jackson said at the primary debate for governor.

Trump hosted a tele-rally for Jones earlier this month, where he reiterated his endorsement for the longtime Trump loyalist.

“There’s a lot of confusion. Everyone’s saying I endorsed them. I didn’t. I endorsed a man named Burt Jones,” Trump told supporters on the call.

On the other side of the aisle, the Democratic candidates for governor are also talking about Trump – in how best to fight his policies.

“Unlike some people, I’m not running for governor to be Donald Trump; I’m running to stand up to him,” said former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in the latest ad from her campaign, which calls out Jackson and Jones over their courting of Trump’s favor.

Bottoms is endorsed by former President Joe Biden and is widely considered the frontrunner in the Democratic primary race, but it is unclear whether she will meet the vote threshold to avoid a runoff. Democratic opponents that Bottoms could face in a potential runoff include former DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, and former Georgia state Sen. Jason Esteves.

In Georgia, if one candidate does not receive 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will advance to a runoff election on June 16. And with so many well-known contenders for office this year, runoffs may be more likely on both sides of the aisle, up and down the ballot.

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(NEW YORK) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday is considering whether the Trump administration unlawfully ordered hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the U.S. from Haiti and Syria to return home, abruptly cancelling their legal status out of alleged racial animus and without proper consideration of risks to their safety and the nation’s economy.

The outcome in the pair of cases being argued before the court will directly affect the futures of roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals and about 6,000 Syrians.

The Trump administration contends in court documents that the immigrants were never intended to be permanent residents and that cancellation of their temporary status is “critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States.”

Those immigrants were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) under separate government declarations first issued more than a decade ago and later renewed multiple times, most recently by the Biden administration.

TPS status, established by the Immigration and Nationality Act, provides work authorization and protection from deportation – as long as the Homeland Security Secretary certifies that a foreign country is unsafe because of armed conflict, natural disaster, or “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”

Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake in 2010 and has since been hit by subsequent natural disasters, political unrest following a presidential assassination, and waves of rampant gang violence.

Syria devolved into civil war around 2011 and has been considered by the U.S. government a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades. A major earthquake in 2023 plunged the country into a deeper economic and humanitarian crisis.

“There is no functioning healthcare system for the disabled and elderly to return to, no reliable housing infrastructure, no legal framework that can guarantee anyone’s safety,” said Syrian TPS-holder and health care worker Adam, a pseudonym used to protect his identity.

Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, in separate acts last year, moved to terminate TPS status for Haiti and Syria by certifying that, in her estimation, conditions on the ground in those countries were sufficiently safe for immigrants to return.

Those decisions were blocked by lower courts, which concluded that Noem did not follow proper procedures for cancelling TPS and may have also unlawfully discriminated against the immigrants on the basis of race.

The Supreme Court is now reviewing those findings.

“If the government is correct, then they can terminate TPS without conducting any country conditions review at all,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “The statute requires, in our view, that there be consultation with the State Department.”

Immigrant advocates and some American business groups, particularly in the healthcare and senior caregiving sectors, say TPS holders play an indispensable role in the nation’s labor force and contribute billions of dollars in tax revenue to state and federal governments.

Immigrants make up 28% of the U.S. long-term care workforce – nearly double their share of the entire labor force, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

More than 113,000 Haitian TPS holders work in Florida alone, which is home to a high proportion of America’s seniors, according to the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

“The effects of [DHS’s] hasty TPS terminations are too serious to ignore,” a senior living community and ageing services provider jointly wrote the Court in an amicus brief. “The government has largely failed to address the impact that stripping thousands of caregivers of work authorization will have on elderly and medically vulnerable adults in U.S. communities.”

The Trump administration contends that courts have no authority to second-guess the DHS determinations on whether countries should qualify for TPS or not. They note that Congress, in creating the special status, put a time limit on it of 18-months, subject to extension.

“Congress, in short, prescribed substantive and procedural guardrails to keep TPS designations temporary,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote the Court in a brief, “but left further accountability to the political process, not federal courts.”

Sauer also disputed claims that the TPS cancellations rested on racial animus, calling it a “legal and factual nonstarter.”

The cases are the latest high court test of President Trump’s bold assertion of executive authority in his second term. The justices are already preparing to rule on his authority to redefine birthright citizenship, fire members of independent agencies, and remove a member of the Federal Reserve.

The Supreme Court last year handed the Trump administration a temporary win when it allowed them to terminate TPS for 350,000 Venezuelan nationals as litigation continues.

TPS status for Haitians and Syrians remains in place for now, but many immigrant advocates worry that if the Court allows the Trump administration to cancel the status, protections for immigrants of other countries may also end. The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to end protections for at least 11 countries since President Trump took office.

The Court is expected to hand down a decision by the end of June.

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(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump is set to deliver a primetime address Thursday evening, during which he is expected to detail information that he has recently received from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence related to the 2020 election, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Trump has long pushed debunked conspiracy theories to claim that his 2020 election loss was fraudulent. It’s not immediately clear what allegations he will make as part of his speech.

Sources caution Trump’s plans can always change, but at this point “election fraud” is the topic of his 9 p.m. address.

Despite Trump’s claims of voter fraud that contributed to his 2020 election loss, officials have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Asked about the speech, which he announced on his social media platform on Monday, Trump said it was “really big news,” mentioning the importance of “free and fair elections.”

“Thursday is, it doesn’t get bigger because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country. We’ll be discussing other things, too. But — but it’s going to be a very big announcement,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

Trump recently installed loyalist Bill Pulte, who has no previous national security experience, to lead DNI and has said that he wanted Pulte to declassify information and fire scores of experienced career staff.

Under the first Trump administration, officials already detailed efforts by Iran, China and Russia to influence the 2020 election, though officials later determined that none of their interference would have changed the election result. Initially Trump administration officials suggested China was also involved in influencing the election, a claim that was later determined by Trump’s intelligence community to be false.

The White House is remaining tight-lipped about the president’s Thursday night speech.

“The truth is, nobody knows yet what President Trump will ultimately say, which is why everyone should tune in,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement about the remarks.

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