Closing summary
Good afternoon. It’s been another lively day in Washington. Thanks for reading.
Here’s what we covered today:
Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, announced that the long-awaited text of a border deal to unlock aid to Ukraine and Israel could be released as early as tomorrow and said to expect a vote next week. Despite months of painstaking, bipartisan negotiations between senators and the White House, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has already declared it “dead on arrival” amid opposition from Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner who hopes to use immigration as a cudgel against Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, Biden announced that the US will place sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, via presidential executive order, citing “intolerable levels” of violence. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the action as “unnecessary.” The state department on Thursday released the names of four Israeli citizens targeted in a first round of sanctions under the new authority. For latest updates on the Middle East, you can follow our live coverage here.
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin, was contrite in a Pentagon press briefing this morning, his first since being rushed to the hospital with complications from prostate cancer surgery that he kept secret from the president and the public for several days. “I want to be crystal clear: we did not handle this right and I did not handle this right,” Austin told reporters.
Biden praised the Ukrainians people’s “incredible resolve and resilience against Putin’s aggression” and demanded afresh of Congress: “We must continue to help them.” The White House’s request to send nearly $110bn in additional security assistance and aid to Ukraine is on hold on Capitol Hill amid House Republican resistance.
The US House of Representatives last night passed a nearly $79bn tax package that would expand the child tax credit for millions and revive a trio of tax breaks for businesses.
Updated
Criticizing the policies included in the bipartisan border deal as “Republican light,” Democratic congressman Greg Casar lamented Joe Biden‘s recent statement indicating that he would move to “shut down the border” if the deal becomes law.
“I’m a supporter of the president, but I think that he made a big mistake with that statement. The president’s statement reflects not just bad policy but bad politics,” Casar said.
“‘Shutting down the border’ means that we’re further empowering cartels and criminal organizations to move people across the border. We need to be creating legal pathways for migration.”
Republican lawmakers have demanded that Biden sign off on severe border measures in exchange for approving additional aid for Ukraine, and Casar advised the president against accepting those terms.
“I do not think we should be playing into that kind of a hostage-taking situation. It’s bad policy,” Casar said. “And I don’t think that it will be good politics for the president either because these Republican policies are not going to create a more orderly situation at the border.”
