“After Speaker Mike Johnson rejected the Senate-passed national security supplemental, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers unveiled a new proposal late last week to provide defense-only aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and funds for the U.S. southern border — however, it’s not yet clear if GOP leadership will consider it,” ABC News reports.
Immigration Is Biggest Issue for Biden’s Detractors
Gallup: “As President Joe Biden starts his reelection year with more Americans disapproving than approving of how he is handling his job, Gallup finds his detractors mainly focused on issues when explaining their view, with immigration the single most often-mentioned factor.”
“Meanwhile, those who approve largely offer general, positive statements about his performance, such as, ‘he’s doing a good job.'”
Democrats Sense Pivot on Immigration Politics
“A victory in a New York special election on Tuesday injected Democrats with fresh optimism that the party might have found some of the basic ingredients to neutralize immigration and the border as political issues, which party officials have privately seen as among their deepest areas of vulnerability in 2024,” the New York Times reports.
How Democrats Flipped the Border Issue on Republicans
New York Times: “The possibility that Republicans would bolt from their own deal had occurred to Mr. Schumer from the start, given his previous experience.”
Said Schumer: “We knew it way back then.”
“But Mr. Schumer saw a political upside should that occur: Democrats would be able to say they tried and point to the Republican opposition for failing to halt a surge of migrants illegally crossing the U.S. border with Mexico.”
He added: “It’s a win if Republicans abandon us at the last minute, because if Democrats could put together a tough, bipartisan bill on border, it would not take border away as an issue for the Republicans, but it would give us a 50-50 chance to combat it.”
GOP Lawmaker Blames Biden Using Photo Taken in 2018
Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) posted a photo of a road filled with a large crowd of people, implied to be seeking asylum in the U.S. because President Biden was not tough on border security, the HuffPost reports.
Overlaid on the photo was a little image of Biden seemingly exclaiming “I Did That!”
Unfortunately, Edwards was using a photo taken in 2018, when Donald Trump was president.
Chris Murphy Urges Democrats to Go On Offense on Border
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) urged Democrats to go on offense on the border and immigration in a memo to party members, citing Tom Suozzi’s victory in the special election for former Rep. George Santos’ seat on Long Island, NBC News reports.
Said Murphy: “Suozzi messaged aggressively on the issue, running ads that highlighted his support for a secure border and legal pathways to citizenship. He flipped the script on his Republican opponent, successfully painting her as unserious about border security because of her opposition to the bipartisan border bill, and turned what could have been a devastating political liability into an advantage.”
Inside Trump’s Plans to Deport Millions
“Donald Trump’s plan to crack down on immigration includes using a range of tools to deport millions of people in the U.S. each year — from obscure laws to military funds to law enforcement officers from all levels of government,” Axios reports.
“History tells us such an effort would dramatically disrupt local communities and economies across the U.S. — and sow fear among the millions of people without legal status.”
NBC News: Migrants in Chicago are on edge as evictions from temporary shelters loom.
Inside White House Infighting Over the Border
“Aboard Air Force One en route to tour the southern border in January 2023, President Biden sat at the head of his conference table and exploded with fury,” Axios reports.
“The president lit into his team, which included then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O’Malley Dillon, Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall and other immigration officials. He demanded obscure immigration data points — and vented when his staff didn’t have them handy.”
“The previously unreported meeting is emblematic of the Biden administration’s struggle with the border crisis during the past three years — infighting, blame-shifting and indecision.”
Biden’s No-Win Immigration Problem
“President Biden’s struggles with the chaos at the border are partly of his own doing. But no president in recent history — including Donald Trump — has faced an immigration crisis of the scale that Biden has,” Axios reports.
“The reality at the U.S.-Mexico border over the last three years is unprecedented — back-to-back-to-back records for migrant encounters by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.”
New York Democrats Get Aggressive in Border Fight
“Democrats in New York are finally going on the attack over border security and crime — just in time to test the strategy in the first House election of the year,” Politico reports.
“It took cinematic levels of dysfunction in Washington — from the scuttled impeachment inquiry into the homeland security secretary to failed attempts at a border deal — for Democrats to get mobilized around the politically volatile issues after years of playing defense.”
Trump’s Immigration Plan Is Even More Aggressive Now
Ron Brownstein: “Trump has repeatedly promised that, if reelected, he will pursue ‘the Largest Domestic Deportation Operation in History,’ as he put it last month on social media. Inherently, such an effort would be politically explosive. That’s because any mass-deportation program would naturally focus on the largely minority areas of big Democratic-leaning cities where many undocumented immigrants have settled, such as Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, New York, and Phoenix.”
“How Trump and his advisers intend to staff such a program would make a prospective Trump deportation campaign even more volatile. Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration adviser, has publicly declared that they would pursue such an enormous effort partly by creating a private red-state army under the president’s command. Miller says a reelected Trump intends to requisition National Guard troops from sympathetic Republican-controlled states and then deploy them into Democratic-run states whose governors refuse to cooperate with their deportation drive.”
Republicans Admit in Private They Killed a Good Deal
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) told the New Republic that his Republican colleagues have privately confessed that the now-dead immigration deal was the toughest one they’d ever get.
Biden Mulls Executive Action on Border Security
“The Biden administration is considering taking executive action to deter illegal migration across the southern border,” NBC News reports.
“As passing legislation on border security in Congress appears unlikely, the plans under consideration signal that the White House wants to take action before numbers at the border, which have dropped in the past month, rise again as expected.”
Biden and Trump Jockey Amid Rubble of Border Deal
“President Biden and his aides say the swift collapse of a bipartisan border security bill has reshaped the political dynamics of the immigration issue, setting the stage for them to finally take the offensive in an area that has long been one of Biden’s biggest liabilities,” the Washington Post reports.
“Former president Donald Trump and his Republican allies, though, insist that the bill’s rise and fall has changed little about the 2024 race, and they are making it clear Trump will continue pummeling Biden over his handling of the border.”
“After Senate Republicans killed a procedural move Wednesday to advance the compromise bill, it is clear U.S. immigration policy will remain unchanged for now. But as the two sides’ rapid responses show, the battle for the aftermath is just beginning.”
Another Bonus Quote of the Day
“I had a popular commentator that told me flat out, before they knew any of the contents of the bill, if you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election. By the way, they have been faithful to their promise and have done everything they can to destroy me in the past several weeks.”
— Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), on the Senate floor.
‘Donald Trump Needs Chaos to Win’
The Lincoln Project is out with a new ad that flips the narrative on border security.
Rick Wilson: “The next ad in this series is in production… and makes this one look like a love tap.”
Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
“After all those trips to the desert, after all those press conferences, it turns out this crisis isn’t much of a crisis after all. Sunday morning, it’s a real crisis. Monday morning it magically disappeared.”
— Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), quoted by the HuffPost, on Republicans walking away from the border security deal.
The GOP Owns the Border Now
Michael Tomasky: “The GOP killed the border deal. The party that has been caterwauling for months—years—about the porous border dispatched one of its most conservative members, James Lankford of Oklahoma, to negotiate a bill. They had Democrats over a political barrel. President Biden was willing to sign a bill that included plenty of stuff that’s hard for many Democrats to swallow, but it’s an election year, and there’s Arizona to think about. They had a bill the likes of which they won’t see for another 15 years.”
“And they killed it. Because Trump wants to say ‘open borders.’ Forget policy, forget human beings, forget all that. Politics is politics, and lots of things happen for, duh, political reasons. But this was on a whole ’nother level. When we think their behavior can’t get more shocking, it always, always does.”
“So how can the Democrats be sure that voters get the message that the Republicans now own this chaos? Obviously, for starters, just say it and say it and say it.”
New York Times: Trump’s border intervention gives Biden a chance to shift from defense to offense.
Earlier for members: Biden Flips the Script on the Border
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