Trump Dangles $5,000 Payments if Republicans Win, and Deportees Are Stranded in Haiti

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, September 10th, here's what we're covering. If we lose, you're going to lose your butter, you're going to lose your tax cuts, you're going to lose your safety and security, you're going to lose your wealth. This night in Dallas, President Trump kicked off the GOP's first of its kind midterm convention, as his party stares down the possibility of major losses in November. "So I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot, I'm on the ballot." In a prime time made for TV speech, Trump repeatedly urged Republican voters to turn out the same way they have when he's been a candidate, and he also tossed out a new idea to try and get people to the polls. "If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000, it will be called the Trump dividend." Trump claimed he would send a $5,000 check to every American adult if Republicans keep control of Congress. "Now what we have to do, now what we have to do is win under my leadership." The president has made similar promises in the past to send out cash, which haven't actually happened. This plan would likely cost more than a trillion dollars and would need sign-off from Congress. In all, over the nearly two-hour speech, the president largely dismissed the issues that have been weighing down his party in the polls. He shrugged off concerns about affordability, high gas prices, the rising cost of groceries, et cetera, as "fake." And he said the U.S. is winning the war with Iran, which has been broadly unpopular with voters. In addition to Trump, a whole list of Republican candidates and lawmakers also took the stage. "This is an election between common sense and communism, between America loving patriots and hate America extremists." For the most part, they avoided talking about the war, instead going on the offensive. "We face the most dangerous, radical, and, frankly, weird, democratic candidates in American history." Overall, the messaging at the convention so far has not been directed at potentially undecided voters, who could ultimately end up making the difference in some very competitive races. Instead, it's been aimed at trying to boost enthusiasm among the MAGA voters, who have generally gone to the polls in presidential elections, but not in midterms. Now two quick updates on the Trump administration, from cash gifts for White House staff to a proposal that could upend the census. First, financial disclosure forms from the White House show the President gave $45,000 voters each to his executive assistant Natalie Harp and two other close aides. Each payment was recorded as a "cash gift for the holidays" last year, and is equal to about a third of the staffer's salaries. The disclosure raises questions about whether the gifts violate the federal government's policy against political appointees getting bonuses. That policy exists, one ethics expert told the Times, to prevent even the appearance that a federal employee would feel more beholden to the person giving them cash than to the public. In addition to Harp, the group who received cash gifts from Trump includes Chamberlain Harris, his former receptionist who he installed on a federal commission where she greenlit his ballroom project and pushed for a gold coin with his face on it. In a statement posted on social media, the White House said the gifts were allowed because they, quote, "have nothing to do with any of these individual's official government duties". And the Trump administration is proposing overhauling the census by no longer counting immigrants unless they have green cards. Historically, the census has counted all U.S. residents. The 14th amendment lays that out, calling for the counting of, quote, "the whole number of persons in each state." Those numbers get used to determine how many congressional seats states get and where billions of dollars of federal money are allocated. While the proposal is likely to face legal challenges, if it goes through for the 2030 census, areas with more immigrants, which tend to vote democratic, could lose representation and funding. The administration also wants to remove questions about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation from the census, which could have major implications for anti-discrimination policies and civil rights protections. The White House referred questions about the changes to the Commerce Department, which oversees the census, the department did not respond. In Haiti, deportation flights from the U.S. that used to land once a month are now landing once a week, as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to expel some of the 300,000 plus Haitians who, until recently, had temporary protected status. Since July, hundreds of people, some of them with criminal records, have been put on planes to the city of Cappation. I went to Cappation last week, the flights arrive on Thursdays, and after the people are processed at the airport, they go to the local police station for background checks. So I spent a few hours there talking to dozens of people who were just kind of in shock. My colleague Frances Robles covers Haiti, where she said violent gangs still control portions of the country, though the Trump administration has deemed it safe enough to send people back. She says some of the deportees told her they were scared for their safety. The others said they were upset because some of their belongings had disappeared in the chaos. Upon arrival in Haiti, the bags often were missing the most valuable items. So people's cell phones, their passports, jewelry, other people lost money. Like maybe they had cash on them when they were arrested by ICE, and it gets put on some kind of debit card, but then the debit card was not given to them, was not provided. So some people lost thousands of dollars. A lot of other people told me they were arrested with such little notice. They didn't get to go home. They didn't get to go home and pack their things. They didn't get to go to the bank. So they were kind of stranded with no money. And these people in their US government issued sweatpants and white t-shirts were basically sleeping on the floor. They said that they didn't even have a bathroom to use. And the Haitian government kind of acknowledged it. They acknowledged that they weren't ready. And they're really concerned that these people are going to wind up homeless in their city. The police official said to me, he said, go outside, you're going to find them outside the police station. They'd have nowhere to go. After interviewing the migrants, Francis says she asked Haitian immigration officials and the Department of Homeland Security about why some deportees' belongings had gone missing. The Haitian officials didn't respond to the request for comments, and the DHS said the migrants' property had been returned upon their arrival. And finally, this year in London, the hottest art show by Miles is the biotabstry at the British Museum, which opens today. And you wouldn't really expect a historical artifact to generate as much hype as this has, but here it seems like the entire nation has been gripped by a fever. All the tickets are sold out through the end of the year. It really is the one thing everyone wants to see. My colleague Alex Marshall covers culture for the times. He says people are losing their minds for a tapestry, it's a tapestry, because this one is nearly 1,000 years old and stretches more than 200 feet long. While a lot of surviving medieval tapestries are just faded fragments, this one is shockingly intact. In a series of scenes that seemed straight out of Game of Thrones, it shows William the conqueror rampaging through Britain, were talking arrows through eyeballs and heads getting chopped off, all delicately embroidered on the tapestry. Despite depicting a key moment in British history, it has been kept in Bayou, France, where it gets its name for centuries, and people thought it would never make it back to Britain. Alex says it took a huge feat of diplomacy to get it on loan to the British Museum, and an elaborate secretive effort to make sure that the very fragile artifact would survive the trip. Normally, when you move an artwork, you put it in the back of the truck and then you just drive it from one museum to the other. Maybe it has one person to accompany it, but for this it had an army of people involved. They first had to get it off display in France, which involved a hundred technicians lined up just a few centimetres apart, along the entire length of the tapestry, to gently lift it and put it into a foldable case specially built for this embroidery, so that it could be stored securely. And then that took hours. Once it was in this case, that was then put into the back of a truck. It was surrounded by all these vibration dampening springs that are usually used in earthquake zones. They then had to do it. test runs to work out where the biggest potholes would be and the biggest bumps so they could try and counter those. And then once they got it to Britain, they had to then do an equally delicate operation to get it out of all its casing and to get it onto a display table. Around the tapestry's loan, there's been this big split among conservators about whether this was a good thing. Lots of people were opposed to the loan, almost as a matter of principle. They say, "Well, Masterpieces should not be moved if there's any risk it could damage them. You're going to lessen the life of a part of world history." And because of that, you should just keep it where it is, almost under lock and key. But many people say the purpose of conservation is to ensure these artworks can be seen and in fact can be seen by the most people possible who will be excited by it. And in that case, doing this loan to a museum where it might be seen by over a million people in just a few months is the best thing that can happen to this tapestry. Those are the headlines. Today on the daily, a look at the contentious new question dividing courts and couples across the country. If you break up, who gets custody of your embryos? You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday news quiz.