As the race for the U.S. presidential election officially begins on Monday, January 15 with the Iowa caucus, certain topics are already at the heart of the speeches of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is widely favored on the Republican side, and current President Joe Biden, who is expected to be the Democratic candidate. From illegal immigration to gun violence, Le Figaro looks back at the eight key themes that will punctuate the campaign between now and the election on 5 November.
The fight against immigration
In this aerial view, a group of more than 1000,18 immigrants make their way to a U.S. Border Patrol processing center after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico, Dec. 2023, <>, in Eagle Pass, Texas. JOHN MOORE / AFP
Immigration is already a key issue in the presidential campaign: in 2023, 2.5 million migrants crossed the border into the United States, including a record 300,000 in December. President Biden is facing mounting pressure from congressional Republicans who want to see concrete measures put in place to curb the influx.
For more than a year, Republicans have reiterated their desire to initiate impeachment proceedings against Biden's Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who is accused of willfully failing to tighten immigration restrictions. On January 3, Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, and about <> Republicans traveled to Eagle Pass in Texas, a notorious migrant transit point on the border with Mexico, to pressure Biden and the need for stricter border security policies.
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At the heart of the debate is the question of a profound overhaul of the immigration system: any asylum procedure in the United States allows asylum seekers to remain in the country while the courts decide, which can take years. A debate on which the favorite Republican candidate did not fail to capitalize, declaring that illegal immigrants "poison and destroy the blood of our country" during a campaign event on December 19. In response, Joe Biden's campaign team compared Trump's remarks in an email to those of Adolf Hitler or Mussolini. "I haven't read Mein Kampf!" the former president defended himself, without ceasing to vilify immigrants.
Aid to Ukraine's and Israel's war efforts
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky answers a question during a joint press conference with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, Dec. 12, 2023. MANDEL NGAN / AFP
The issue of immigration is inextricably linked to that of U.S. aid to Ukraine: congressional Republicans announced in early January that they would not approve the new package of more than $60 billion in aid that the White House wants to grant to Kiev and the $14 billion planned to finance the arming of Israel until the government implements a policy of tighter security restrictions on the border.
The geopolitical context, marked by the war in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022 and the conflict between Israel and Hamas since the attack by the Palestinian terror group on October 7, 2023, is particularly murky. After establishing himself as a key ally of Kiev, Joe Biden is struggling to convince Congress to grant new aid to the country, which has been bogged down in conflict with Russia since the failure of its counteroffensive. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's repeated visits and calls have not changed anything, especially as American public support for the war in Ukraine is decreasing: 55% of Americans are now reluctant to see Congress grant new aid to Ukraine and 51% consider that the United States "has already done enough", according to a CNN poll published in August 2023.
After a recess of a few weeks during the holiday season, negotiations have resumed in Congress with a view to the next two deadlines on January 19 and February 2 to reach an agreement on a dozen budget bills, which include aid to the two war-torn countries.
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Donald Trump's legal woes
Financial fraud, defamation, concealment of documents, riots at the Capitol on January 6... Former U.S. President Donald Trump faces 91 criminal charges in four different jurisdictions. The dates of some of the ongoing proceedings coincide with the electoral calendar, even if the numerous appeals of the Republican candidate are currently delaying two major cases: the question of his ineligibility to run for election under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, referred to the Supreme Court after the landmark decisions in Colorado and Maine, and his role in the assault on the Capitol by militants on January 6, 2021, which has been pending since his request for absolute immunity.
For the time being, Donald Trump's legal woes seem far from penalizing his campaign: on the one hand because the main strategy of his defense is to slow down the ongoing proceedings, on the other hand because the Supreme Court itself seems reluctant to rule on questions of immunity and eligibility, for fear of being accused of bias. In his latest court appearances for his civil trial for financial fraud, the former president did not hesitate to denounce the "political bias" of the judge and the prosecutor of the State of New York and the "witch hunt" to which he is subjected.
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Joe Biden's age
U.S. President Joe Biden is helped to his feet after falling during the graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy, just north of Colorado Springs in El Paso County, June 1, 2023. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP
The current president and Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who turned 81 last November, is facing increasing criticism about his age. This is due to a tendency to stutter, look confused or lose his balance during public appearances, the most famous being undoubtedly the official visit to Vietnam which almost turned into a disaster when the president described the country as a "third world", before indicating that he wanted to "go to bed".
Mistakes that his 77-year-old opponent does not fail to mock or parody. In a campaign video posted on his social network Truth in November, Donald Trump drew parallels between his meetings with powerful international counterparts during his term in office and the current president's falls, against a background of mocking music and a common thread: "We've gone from that... to that."
Biden's strategy to deal with it? His unstoppable sense of humor: "I know I look like I'm 30, but I've been doing this for quite a while," he reportedly blurted out at a charity event in September. Asked the same month about his election to the Senate in 1972, the president said he "remembers when I was young... That was 827 years ago."
Wokism
Harvard University President Claudine Gay testifies before the House of Representatives during a hearing titled "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism" at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 5, 2023. KEN CEDENO / REUTERS
American society is more divided than ever on issues of "wokeness": in January, the resignation of Claudine Gay, president of the prestigious Harvard University, after a controversy over anti-Semitism within the institution, revealed the extent of the American divide. From the censorship of textbooks deemed too "woke" to backpedaling on affirmative action measures in American universities, debates are legion and polarize the opposition between the two political camps.
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This is evidenced by the question of gender, which is radioactive in American society. As the number of children and adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria tripled in the United States between 2017 and 2021, Democrats and Republicans are clashing over this thorny debate. While the most left-wing of the Democrats makes it a priority to raise children's awareness of "integration," which involves recognizing the difference between biological sex and sexual identity as a social construct, the "Grand Old Party" criticizes such an approach, which it considers to be an indoctrination of American children. Former President Donald Trump announced a busy agenda on the issue in July, if he were to be re-elected, saying he would crack down on "pink-haired communists" and doctors offering transitional care to transgender minors.
The Abortion Debate
Abortion rights activists and counter-protesters protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court on the one-year anniversary of the Court's decision in Dobbs v. Women's Health Organization, which overturned the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade, Washington, D.C., June 24, 2023. ELIZABETH FRANTZ / REUTERS
The U.S. is torn apart over abortion rights. More than a year and a half after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade of 1973, some twenty states have banned or strictly restricted access to abortion: in Texas, Kate Cox, a young woman of about 31 years old, was forced to leave the state to be able to have an abortion, even though her pregnancy presented serious risks to her health. However, she had gone to court to obtain permission to have an abortion because of her particular situation: it was the first time since 1973 that an emergency abortion request has been required from a court. Other states with Democratic majorities, on the other hand, have taken the opposite approach by passing decrees guaranteeing women's free access to abortion, allowing the Democratic Party to restore its popularity rating.
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Of the six referendums held since then to protect abortion or the fetus, pro-abortionists have been a hit, including in conservative states such as Kansas, Kentucky, Montana and Ohio on Tuesday. While this thorny debate is still electrifying American society, the Supreme Court recently announced that it would rule by the end of 2024 on the issue of the use of the abortion pill, thus coinciding with the deadlines of the elections.
The Opioid Crisis
This synthetic powder, the leading cause of death among 18-49 year olds, is responsible for two-thirds of the 110,000 overdose deaths in the federal state in 2022 oasisamuel / stock.adobe.com
While it remains below the peak reached in 2017, the number of deaths due to the opioid crisis in the United States has started to rise again in 2023, in particular due to the proliferation of a new type of drug fifty times more powerful than heroin and a hundred times stronger than morphine: fentanyl has become the bête noire of public authorities, supplanting all other drugs produced by drug traffickers in just a few years. This synthetic powder, the leading cause of death among 18-49 year olds, is responsible for two-thirds of the 110,000 overdose deaths in the federal state in 2022. That same year, authorities seized enough fentanyl to kill the entire U.S. population. A total of 150,000 Americans died from fentanyl-related overdoses, leading Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley to declare that the drug "killed more Americans than the wars in Iraq, Vietnam and Afghanistan" (a correct statement, since the three wars combined caused the deaths of 65,000 Americans, according to the New York Times).
The topic is likely to come up again on the sidelines of the election, as more than a quarter of Americans consider opioids and fentanyl to be the biggest threat to public health, ahead of obesity and guns, according to an August 2023 Axios-Ipsos poll. Joe Biden has announced that he wants to tackle the problem head-on by promising to tackle the entire production chain while encouraging the sale of Narcan, a nasal spray that helps prevent overdoses. For his part, Donald Trump has so far said little on the subject, a blind spot that his Republican opponents still in the race point out. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida running against Trump in the Republican primary, has repeatedly promised that he will send the U.S. military to Mexico to fight cartels.
Gun Violence
Students at Miguel Contreras Learning Center High School in Los Angeles protest in front of City Hall after leaving school to protest gun violence in the United States, May 31, 2022. LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS
The year 2023 marked a new record for gun violence in the United States with 656 shootings, despite a decline in the total number of gun deaths (nearly 19,000, compared to more than 20,000 the previous year, according to the census site Gun Violence Archives). The subject of gun ownership is once again likely to occupy a central place in political debates. At the state level, legislative reforms are multiplying, but are struggling to penetrate federal policy, which, in the face of a powerful arms industry lobby, is still resisting the adoption of measures that would apply to the whole country.
On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden has come out in favor of tightening gun safety measures, the so-called "red flag" laws, which temporarily confiscate a person's gun deemed threatening. His main opponent Donald Trump has claimed to be the "most pro-gun and second-amendment" president of the U.S. Constitution, which enshrines the right to bear arms, a position seconded by Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who has rejected the current administration's position on the matter.