Closing summary
Joe Biden met with Congress’s leaders in the Oval Office to find a way to avoid a government shutdown that is set to start on Saturday and would “damage the economy significantly”, in the president’s words. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the negotiations were “making good progress”, and noted that the group pressed Republican House speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, leading to “intense” discussions. Johnson was noncommittal after the meeting on if or when he’d do that.
Here’s what else happened today:
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre criticized Johnson’s demands for tougher border security, saying, “I don’t even think he knows what he wants.”
Senate Democrats will tomorrow try to pass a bill to protect IVF care, following the Alabama supreme court’s ruling against the procedure.
Rightwing House Republicans accused Johnson and his deputies of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” the Democrats over government spending.
Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature has pulled a “fetal personhood” bill after the Alabama ruling on IVF.
Rashida Tlaib, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, said she was voting “uncommitted” in her state’s primary tonight in protest of Biden’s policy towards Israel.
'I don't even think he knows what he wants': White House spokeswoman criticizes House speaker Johnson over border policy
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson has long pressed the Biden administration to take actions to crack down on undocumented migrants crossing the southern border. Yet he also helped kill a bipartisan compromise that would have tightened border security while also approving aid to Ukraine and Israel.
Nonetheless, Johnson reiterated his demand that Biden get tougher on immigration today after meeting at the White House with the president. At her press briefing later in the day, Biden’s spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre was asked what exactly Johnson wants.
“I appreciate the question. I don’t even think he knows what he wants,” Jean-Pierre replied.
The press secretary continued:
You had a bipartisan group of senators coming out of the Senate, working for four months with the White House to put forward a bipartisan piece of legislation that dealt with a … important challenge that we see at the border in immigration. And then so we did that, we’ve moved that forward, we presented it. And we were told no no, we don’t want the border security, we want just the national security supplemental without border security.
Then, the Senate goes back and they pass the national security supplemental without border security, 70-29 … and the speaker refuses to put that to the floor. So what is it that he really wants here? If you look at the border security deal, that proposal, it has components of what the speaker has been talking about for years. So the question is really for him.
Updated
