Today's recap
House Republicans are moving ahead with an impeachment inquiry into homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and have scheduled a hearing for next Wednesday. They blame him for the surge in migrants crossing the US border with Mexico, which speaker Mike Johnson addressed today in a speech on the Texas frontier alongside dozens of GOP lawmakers.
Negotiations are continuing behind the scenes on a border security compromise that can win both parties’ approval. Rightwing lawmakers have threatened to vote against government funding if the US border with Mexico isn’t “shut”. Johnson insisted that Joe Biden and the Democrats agree to change immigration policy in exchange for their votes for new military assistance to Israel and Ukraine.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Mayorkas said he would cooperate with the impeachment investigation into his alleged dereliction of duty.
The White House said Republicans have an “anti-border security record” for not taking up Joe Biden’s proposals on the issue.
Republican presidential candidates have extreme and potentially illegal ideas for cracking down on border crossers.
Robert F Kennedy Jr has collected enough signatures to qualify for the Utah presidential ballot, making it the first state to give the independent candidate ballot access.
– Chris Stein
Last week, my colleague Lauren Gambino analyzed how the 2024 elections are putting new pressures on Joe Biden and his border policies.
Major changes to US immigration policy that would toughen border enforcement and address an issue that has emerged as one of the president’s biggest political vulnerabilities ahead of a likely rematch against his anti-immigration rival Donald Trump.
But it is also a risk for Biden, who entered the White House in 2021 promising to “restore humanity and American values to our immigration system” after Trump’s four-year crackdown on immigration.
Shortly after being sworn in, Biden set to work unwinding his Republican predecessor’s immigration policies and, at the same time, sent Congress a sprawling legislative proposal that included pathways to citizenship for millions of immigrants living in the US.
That aspirational legislation landed with a resounding thud on Capitol Hill, where Democratic leaders had little appetite for a political scrap over the perennially thorny issue of immigration reform. But the politics of immigration have shifted sharply to the right since then, leaving Democrats – and the president – in a political bind as they negotiate with Republicans over border measures they once denounced.
Exceptionally high levels of migration at the southern border with Mexico – and withering Republican attacks on the president’s response – have vaulted immigration to the fore. A bipartisan group of Senate lawmakers have been engaged in talks with the White House over a border deal that would unlock aid to Ukraine and Israel.
“We all know there’s a problem at the border – the president does, Democrats do,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said before sending senators home for their holiday recess. “Our goal is to get something done as soon as we get back.”
Johnson doubles down on demands for immigration policy changes in exchange for military assistance
Speaking on Texas’s frontier with Mexico, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson insisted that Joe Biden and the Democrats agree to change immigration policy in exchange for their votes for new military assistance to Israel and Ukraine.
“If President Biden wants a supplemental spending bill focused on national security, it better begin by defending America’s national security,” Johnson said.
Biden has proposed legislation to pay for improved border security and miltiary aid, but the GOP opposes passing it without changes to immigration laws, including forcing asylum seekers to wait outside the country while their cases are considered.
“Under President Biden, America has laid out a welcome mat to illegal immigrants, smugglers and cartels. He is responsible for the grave threat to our national security and our nation’s sovereignty that these policies have created. But instead of taking responsibility and providing leadership, this administration has done nothing but attack elected officials who are trying to fix this catastrophe,” Johnson said.
The White House has supported negotiations between Democratic and Republican senators to find agreement on some changes to immigration laws in response to the surge in migrants arriving from Mexico. However, House Republicans have said they will probably want changes to any compromise that emerges, and it’s unclear if they will support further aid to Kyiv, which many conservatives oppose. Some Democrats are also hesitant to provide military aid to Israel, citing civilian deaths caused by its invasion of Gaza.
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is now giving remarks after touring Texas’s border with Mexico.
Let’s see what he has today about his demands for changes to immigration policy.
We’ll hear from Republican House speaker Mike Johnson in a few minutes from Texas’s border with Mexico.
He toured the frontier alongside law enforcement and national guard earlier today, together with around 60 fellow Republican lawmakers:
Photographers on the scene said migrants were visible to the representatives during their tour:
White House spokeswoman accuses House Republicans of 'obstructing' border security
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lobbed another verbal salvo at House Republicans during her briefing this afternoon, saying they were “obstructing” border security improvements by not acting on his proposed legislation.
Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass a bill that would give military assistance to Ukraine and Israel and also pay for more security at the southern border, but that legislation has been tied up by Republican opposition to aiding Kyiv, and demands for changes to immigration policy to deter migrants.
“He put border security in there, right, because he believes in order to get the work done at the border, we need more resources. (The department of homeland secuirty) needs more resources. Our border patrol agents need more resources. We need more immigration judges. We need more resources to get this done. We need the technology at the border to deal with what’s going on with migrants at the border,” Jean-Pierre said.
“House Republicans keep getting in the way of doing the work to deal with what we’re seeing at the border, so, they’re obstructing.”
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is going to talk immigration policy in Texas at 3:30pm, but most of the negotiating over actually changing the rules at the border is happening in the Senate.
Punchbowl News reports that the chamber’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer threw shade at his counterpart in the House while talking to reporters earlier today:
Schumer just gaggled outside the Senate chamber. Some highlights.
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) January 3, 2024
Schumer dinged Johnson for his border trip: “It’s very nice that you go to the border. But the way to get something done is work, as we are in the Senate, on a bipartisan solution to the border crisis.”
Earlier today, Punchbowl reprorted that House Republicans are likely to demand significant changes to any immigration policy compromise senators reach, which could further complicate its passage.
As the Guardian’s David Smith reports, the Biden campaign plans to try to convince voters that Donald Trump poses a historic threat to American democracy. Expect to hear much more about this from the president in the months to come:
Ailing in opinion polls, Joe Biden will aim to jump-start his re-election campaign in the coming week with events designed to symbolise the fight for democracy and racial justice against Donald Trump.
The Biden-Harris campaign announced the plans in a conference call with reporters that mentioned Trump by name 28 times in just 24 minutes, a sign of its determination to draw a sharp contrast between the US president and his likely Republican challenger.
On Saturday Biden will deliver a major address laying out the stakes of the election at Valley Forge, near Philadelphia, the site of a 1777-1778 winter encampment of the Continental Army led by George Washington during the American revolutionary war.
It was at Valley Forge that a disorganised alliance of colonial militias was transformed into a cohesive coalition united in the battle for democracy, the Biden-Harris campaign told reporters, noting that Washington became president but then relinquished power.
“There the president will make the case directly that democracy and freedom – two powerful ideas that united the 13 colonies and that generations throughout our nation’s history have fought and died for a stone’s throw from where he’ll be Saturday – remain central to the fight we’re in today,” said the principal deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks.
Then, on Monday, Biden will speak at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, where in 2015 nine African American worshippers were killed by a white supremacist while they were praying at the end of Bible study.
The White House announced that Joe Biden had unscheduled guests at lunch today, which offer a hint as to one of the main focuses of his re-election campaign.
“This afternoon, President Biden had lunch with a group of scholars and historians to discuss the ongoing threats to democracy and democratic institutions both here in America and around the world, as well as the opportunities we face as a nation,” his administration announced.
They did not give the names of the scholars and historians who attended.
RFK Jr qualifies for Utah presidential ballot
Robert F Kennedy Jr has collected enough signatures to qualify for the Utah presidential ballot, making it the first state to give the independent candidate ballot access.
State elections director Ryan Cowley said Kennedy has met the 1,000-signature requirement needed to get on the 2024 presidential ballot before a 5 March deadline, according to AP.
Kennedy, a prominent conspiracy theorist and vaccination opponent, announced he would run as an independent in October after initially saying he would run against Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.
Utah is the first state where Kennedy’s campaign submitted signatures and qualified for ballot access, campaign spokesperson Stefanie Spear said.
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Multiple state capitols received bomb threats on Wednesday morning that led to brief evacuations or lockdowns, but no evidence of explosives was found.
Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi and Montana were among the states that evacuated statehouse offices or buildings, AP reported.
Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, posted to social media that the Kentucky state police was investigating a threat and had evacuated the state Capitol in Frankfort.
In Mississippi, the state Senate delayed its morning meeting after the state Capitol building was evacuated and bomb-sniffing dogs circled the building before an all-clear was given.
The warnings came after a spate of false reports of shootings at the homes of public officials in recent days.
In November, a resolution to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas was blocked, and referred to the committee, when eight Republicans sided with Democrats against a measure introduced by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Conditions at the border with Mexico have worsened and Biden officials acknowledge a backlog of 3m asylum cases. Seeking draconian reforms, Republicans have made the issue central to talks over federal government funding and aid to Ukraine.
On Wednesday, the House Republican spokesperson told CNN impeachment would “ensure that the public is aware of the scope of Secretary Mayorkas’s egregious misconduct and refusal to enforce the law”.
In return, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson accused Republicans of “wasting valuable time and taxpayer dollars pursuing a baseless political exercise that has been rejected by members of both parties and already failed on a bipartisan vote.
“There is no valid basis to impeach Secretary Mayorkas, as senior members of the House majority have attested, and this extreme impeachment push is a harmful distraction from our critical national security priorities.”
The day so far
House Republicans are moving ahead with an impeachment inquiry into homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and have scheduled a hearing for next Wednesday. They blame him for the surge in migrants crossing the US border with Mexico, which speaker Mike Johnson plans to address later today in a speech on the Texas frontier alongside dozens of GOP lawmakers. Separately, negotiations are continuing behind the scenes on a border security compromise that can win both parties’ approval, while rightwing lawmakers have threatened to vote against government funding if the US border with Mexico isn’t “shut”.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Mayorkas said he would cooperate with the impeachment investigation into his alleged dereliction of duty.
The White House said Republicans have an “anti-border security record” for not taking up Joe Biden’s proposals on the issue.
Republican presidential candidates have extreme and potentially illegal ideas for cracking down on border crossers.
Rightwing House lawmakers threaten government shutdown over border security
Fox News reports that a group of rightwing House Republican lawmakers visiting Texas’s frontier with Mexico today are threatening to spark a government shutdown unless the border is “shut”:
NEW: GOP Congressmen @RepAndyBiggsAZ @RepMattGaetz @RepEliCrane @RepBobGood @RepRosendale here in Eagle Pass, TX now, ahead of delegation of nearly 60 others today w/ @SpeakerJohnson . They tell me “shut the border down, or we’ll shut the government down. We control the money.” pic.twitter.com/mdiCaUWnfa
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) January 3, 2024
House and Senate negotiators are currently trying to find agreement on long-term government funding measures, with a 19 January deadline before a partial shutdown of federal departments occurs. It’s unclear how significant the conservative lawmakers’ opposition will be to that effort, as it is likely whatever compromise emerges will pass with votes from both Democrats and Republicans.
Their statement nonetheless provoked a response from the White House, where spokesman Andrew Bates criticized the group for refusing to take up Joe Biden’s own proposals for more border security. “Today’s statements are just House Republicans’ latest admission that as President Biden and both parties in the Senate seek common ground to address the needs of the American people, their conference is instead choosing extreme politics that would subject American families to needless pain,” he said.
As successive presidents and congresses have learned, it is extremely difficult to find consensus in Washington DC on immigration policy.
Proposals made and deals mulled during George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s presidencies have all failed to pass, and there’s no telling if the bipartisan negotiations currently happening in the Senate will produce a compromise that can make it through both chambers and win Joe Biden’s approval.
Helping the case that things are different now for both parties is the fact that migrant arrivals on the border with Mexico have increased throughout Biden’s term. As this data from Customs and Border Protection shows, they risen steadily higher since October 2021, and the current peak was hit last September with 269,735 arrivals recorded.
In addition to feuding with the GOP in Congress over border security, the Biden administration has been squabbling with Texas’s Republican governor Greg Abbott over the razor wire he installed at the state’s frontier with Mexico, and now wants the supreme court to decide the matter, the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reports:
The Biden administration has asked the US supreme court to allow border patrol agents to cut through razor-wire fencing that Texas placed along the US-Mexico border.
In an emergency appeal by the justice department, the solicitor general said that fencing installed by Texas’s Republican governor had actually prevented border agents from detaining migrants at the border, and said federal law allows the government to remove it.
Concertina wire fencing was installed on private property along the Rio Grande by the Texas national guard, as part of the state’s contentious efforts to target undocumented immigrants. Greg Abbott, the Republican Texas governor, has made harsh border policies a hallmark of his administration, and has also sent tens of thousands of migrants by bus to Democrat-run cities.
In October, Texas sued the federal government, alleging that border patrol agents had cut through the wire fencing. State officials placed the fencing on private land in areas typically used by migrants to cross into the US.
The federal government has argued that the agents have had to cut through or move fencing to enforce existing border laws or maintain safety. In December, the fifth US circuit court of appeals ruled in favor of Texas, saying agents could not cut or move the wire unless there was a medical emergency, NBC News reported, prompting the Biden administration to appeal to the supreme court.
Here’s more from homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s interview with MSNBC:
.@SecMayorkas discusses how @POTUS has fought for immigration reform since the first day and how he requested additional resources to address our broken immigration system.
— Angelo Fernández Hernández (@AFernandezH46) January 3, 2024
⬆️ Border Patrol agents
⬆️ Asylum Officers
⬆️ Immigration Judges
⬆️ Technology to catch fentanyl pic.twitter.com/Llds0AsSl6
Mayorkas says he 'most certainly will' cooperate with impeachment proceedings
In an interview today with MSNBC, homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said he would cooperate with the impeachment proceedings House Republicans will begin next week against him.
“I most certainly will, and I’m going to continue to do my work, as well,” Mayorkas said.
The secretary noted he had recently met with the Democratic and Republican senators who are trying to reach an agreement to change immigration policy in response to the increase in asylum seekers arriving from Mexico.
“I was on the Hill yesterday to provide technical advice in those ongoing negotiations. Before I headed to the Hill, I was in the office working on solutions. After my visit to the Hill, I was back in my office, working on solutions. That’s what we do in the Department of Homeland Security. That’s what this administration is focused on – solutions to problems,” Mayorkas said.
It’s unclear if the secretary will appear before the committee considering whether to impeach him, but he has frequently answered questions for House and Senate panels since taking the job in February 2021.
Updated
House committee to start impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas next week
A Republican-controlled House committee will next week begin impeachment proceedings against Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who the GOP blames for the surge in migrants crossing the southern border.
Republican homeland security committee chair Mark Green of Tennessee said in a statement the hearing would take place on Wednesday. In November, the House voted to refer articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the committee, which is investigating whether the secretary was derelict in his duties.
“For almost three years, the American people have demanded an end to the unprecedented crisis at the Southwest border, and they have also rightly called for Congress to hold accountable those responsible,” Green said. “That’s why the House Committee on Homeland Security led a comprehensive investigation into the causes, costs, and consequences of this crisis. Our investigation made clear that this crisis finds its foundation in Secretary Mayorkas’ decision-making and refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress, and that his failure to fulfill his oath of office demands accountability.”
Impeachments of cabinet secretaries are rare, and it is almost certain the Democratic-led Senate would reject convicting Mayorkas and removing him from office. House Republicans are also pursuing impeachment articles against Joe Biden over alleged corruption, though they have yet to publicize proof of their allegations.
Updated
Joe Biden, meanwhile, returned to Washington DC yesterday from taking a new year’s vacation in the US Virgin Islands, and has no public events scheduled today.
As he arrived at the White House on Tuesday evening, he was asked about his plans for the southern border. “We gotta do something, they ought to give me the money I need to protect the border,” the president replied.
Biden administration accuses Republicans of 'anti-border security record'
With their visit to Texas’s border with Mexico today, House Republicans and their leader Mike Johnson are trying to draw attention to the large numbers of migrants making their way into the United States. But in a statement released this morning, White House spokesman Andrew Bates argues it is the GOP, not the Democrats, who are harming security at the US frontier.
“Right now, instead of joining the Biden Administration and members of both parties in the Senate to find common ground, Speaker Johnson is continuing to block President Biden’s proposed funding to hire thousands of new Border Patrol agents, hire more asylum officers and immigration judges, provide local communities hosting migrants additional grant funding, and invest in cutting edge technology that is critical to stopping deadly fentanyl from entering our country,” Bates said.
Biden in October proposed wide-ranging legislation to assist the militaries of Israel and Ukraine, as well as pay for more border security. In the months since, many House Republicans came out against further aid to Ukraine, while Johnson demanded budget cuts to the IRS tax authority in exchange for approving aid to Israel. The package’s fate now seems linked to Democrats agreeing to immigration policy changes intended to keep migrants out.
Bates argued that Biden has “proposed a comprehensive immigration reform plan and followed up by delivering record border security funding every single year of his term,” and attacked Republicans for not considering the legislation he proposed in October. “House Republicans’ anti-border security record is defined by attempting to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden’s record-breaking border security funding, and refusing to take up the President’s supplemental funding request,” he said.
As the Guardian’s David Smith reports, Donald Trump’s statement about immigrants are uniquely alarming, because they appear to draw from the words of Adolf Hitler:
Donald Trump has the tacit blessing of senior Republican figures as he seeks to put border security front and center of the 2024 election by deploying fascistic language to fire up his support base, political analysts warn.
The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 has called for a sharp crackdown on immigration and asserted at a weekend rally that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.
The comment drew on words similar to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his autobiography and manifesto Mein Kampf.
But, despite widespread condemnation of Trump’s remarks, some top Republicans have shied away from criticizing the former US president, who is the overwhelming favorite to win the party’s nod to face off against Joe Biden in the race for the White House.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right … I think the president has a way of talking sometimes I disagree with. But he actually delivered on the border.” Nicole Malliotakis, a New York congresswoman, told CNN: “He never said ‘immigrants are poisoning’, though … He didn’t say the word ‘immigrants’.”
And this week Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, signed a law that allows police to arrest migrants suspected of crossing the border illegally and permits judges to order them to leave the US. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said: “It is very much in line with what many Republicans like to do or tend to do, which is demonise immigrants and also dehumanise immigrants.”
Trump, DeSantis and Haley pledge dramatic, occasionally illegal, changes to border policy
On the campaign trail, the three leading contenders for the GOP’s presidential nomination have all pledged significant and draconian changes to US immigration policy if elected.
Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador who is polling at second place in recent surveys, pledged to “close the border”, send special forces to Mexico to fight cartels, and reinstitute a policy to force asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their applications are processed, which had been in effect during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has embraced similar policies, while also calling to end the automatic granting of citizenship to people born in the United States and authorize the summary execution of drug dealers crossing from Mexico, which is illegal:
If someone in the drug cartels is sneaking fentanyl across the border when I’m President, that’s going to be the last thing they do.
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) November 9, 2023
We’re going to shoot them stone cold dead. pic.twitter.com/8se9OE78m2
Some of the most alarming rhetoric has come from Trump, the frontrunner for the nomination, who said last month that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”. As president, he instituted policies to separate migrant children from their parents, which many consider a human rights abuse. His latest comment drew widespread condemnation – including from Haley, who called it “harmful and unnecessary,” according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
Updated
House Republicans head to US-Mexico border to push immigration crackdown
The GOP has made keeping immigrants out of the United States a key plank of their platform, and today, around 60 House Republicans, including speaker Mike Johnson, will visit the border in Texas to make the case for a crackdown. Such trips have become routine for Republican lawmakers throughout Joe Biden’s presidency, and for the party’s presidential contenders, who have been selling voters on various ways to bar asylum seekers and others from the country, but today’s trip comes at a significant moment. The GOP has made passing stricter rules to curb the large numbers of migrants crossing into the country from Mexico its price to support military assistance to Israel and Ukraine, though the latter faces far more opposition on the right than the former.
Immigration policy is a famously difficult issue to find agreement on in Washington, but a small bipartisan group of senators has been negotiating for weeks to try to find a deal that will be acceptable to both parties. We’ll see if there’s any news about that today, while we also expect to hear from Johnson at 3.30pm eastern time, when he is scheduled to hold a press conference.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Tom Emmer, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, endorsed Donald Trump for president, a day after his superior Steve Scalise did the same.
With less than two weeks remaining before the Iowa Republican caucuses, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said she raised $24m in the fourth quarter of 2023, more than double her previous quarterly record. Some polls have lately shown her in a distant second-place to Trump.
Karine Jean-Pierre will hold the first White House press briefing of the year at 2pm, alongside national security council spokesman John Kirby.
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