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Handout file photo dated July 3, 2024 shows Boeing's Starliner spacecraft that launched NASA's Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station is pictured docked to the Harmony module's forward port.
Hard Numbers: Stranded in space, Mexico’s shenanigans, Harris’ big haul, Rohingya remember their roots, Deadly ID checks
8: American astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams were expecting to spend just 8 days in space when they blasted off in July — but they’ll now be stuck aboard the International Space Station for 8 months thanks to severe problems with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Starliner will return to Earth uncrewed, and Wilmore and Williams will have to catch a ride home on the next SpaceX rocket, which will arrive in February.
73: Mexico’s governing coalition is set to receive 73% of the seats in Mexico’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, despite receiving just 60% of the vote at the ballot box in June. Mexico’s proportional representation system has historically served to give smaller parties a voice in Congress. But outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador worked the system to his advantage by “lending” delegates from his Morena Party to smaller members of his coalition, thereby qualifying to take some of the proportional representation seats.
540 million: Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has raised over $540 million since she replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket in July, with a third of donations coming from first-time contributors — and two-thirds from women. The Trump campaign has not yet released fundraising figures for August, but Harris outraised him by a 4:1 ratio in July and currently leads by 3 percentage points in the New York Times’ national polling average.
7: Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees attended a ceremony in the pouring rain in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on Sunday, marking the seventh anniversary of their exodus from Myanmar. Having fled genocide, roughly 700,000 Rohingya, a visible Muslim minority in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar, are currently sheltering in Bangladesh, where they are not particularly welcome. Recently ousted Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina tried twice to force the refugees’ repatriation, despite the ongoing civil war in Myanmar and the enduring threat to their lives.
22: The militant Baloch Liberation Army has claimed responsibility for the deaths of at least 22 people at a vehicle checkpoint in southwest Pakistan — part of a wave of militant separatist attacks over the weekend. Armed men stopped cars on a highway in Balochistan province, where security forces have been fighting the separatists, demanded identification, and singled out those from Punjab to be shot.
FILE PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at one of his properties after attending a hearing in his criminal court case on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star in New York City, U.S., March 25, 2024.
Trump’s money problems
Bible salesman and former US President Donald Trump on Monday posted a $175 million bond in his New York civil fraud case, wriggling himself out of a tricky financial situation — for now, at least.
But with Trump’s legal woes far from over, a big question looms over his 2024 campaign: Where is he going to find more money? Recent polling shows Trump with a narrow lead over President Joe Biden. But when it comes to campaign fundraising, Biden is leaving Trump in the dust in terms of both large contributions and small individual donations under $200. At the end of February, Biden’s campaign boasted $71 million cash on hand, while Trump’s campaign had $33.5 million. Last Thursday, Biden raked in $25 million with a single event, more than Trump raised in all of February.
Meanwhile, Trump has used tens of millions of dollars of donations from his supporters to pay for his legal fees, largely through the Save America PAC. But these accounts are running dry. In February, Save America spent more on Trump’s legal costs than it raised.
What’s Trump to do? Trump’s allies are hoping to raise over $33 million for his campaign and the RNC at an April 6 fundraiser in Florida. But given Trump has a fundraising deal with the RNC that will see a portion of donations directed to Save America, wealthy Republican donors may be reluctant to cough up money that could end up going toward his legal costs — and not the GOP’s success come November.