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      US lawmakers present bill to fund government and avert shutdown

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      US congressional negotiators on Sunday revealed a bill to fund key parts of the government through the rest of the fiscal year that began in October, as lawmakers faced yet another threat of a partial shutdown if they fail to act by Friday.The legislation sets a discretionary spending level of $1.66tn for fiscal 2024, a spokesperson for Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said. It fills in the details of an agreement that Schumer and Republican House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson set in early January.Lawmakers last week passed the fourth stopgap measure since 1 October to keep the government funded, and set themselves two quick deadlines to act, with funding for a part of the government including the Department of Transportation and the Food and Drug Administration running out on 8 March and most other federal agencies partially shutting down on 22 March.The 1,050-page bill lays out in detail funding for six of the dozen segments of the government that Congress is charged with allocating money for, with the next six due by later in the month.The bill “maintains the aggressive investments Democrats secured for American families, American workers, and America’s national defense”, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.Johnson in a statement said “House Republicans secured key conservative policy victories, rejected left-wing proposals, and imposed sharp cuts to agencies and programs critical to the President Biden’s agenda.”While the top leaders of Congress have agreed on the deal, it still faces some challenges, notably opposition by hardline Republicans in the House, who have repeatedly called for sharp spending cuts and typically do not vote for spending bills.That hardline energy, which led to the ouster of Johnson’s predecessor Kevin McCarthy, has also gained steam in the traditionally more staid Senate, leading to top Republican Mitch McConnell’s decision last week to step down from his leadership role at the end of this year.House Republicans were touting the bill as a win, although with a deeply divided caucus they had little negotiating power. The bill includes a 10% cut in funding to the Environmental Protection Agency, 7% to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and 6% to the FBI.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchumer meanwhile emphasized that the bill fully funds a health program for low-income families, “makes critical investments in our infrastructure, and strengthens programs that benefit services for our veterans”.The ongoing brinkmanship and the nation’s $34tn debt has unnerved credit agencies. Moody’s downgraded its financial outlook on the United States from “stable” to “negative” in November, citing large fiscal deficits and increasing political polarization, though Fitch on Friday affirmed a “stable” outlook.The House will have to vote on the bill first before the Senate can take up the package before Friday, Schumer said. The House is due to return to Washington on Tuesday. More

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      Barbara Lee’s idealism inspires loyalty in her district. Can it carry her to the Senate?

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      Barbara Lee has never lost an election.That is quite a feat, given that she has built a career championing unpopular, even radical causes.Two decades ago, she was famously the only member of Congress to vote against giving the president broad, open-ended war powers following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She received hate mail and death threats from all over the country in response. Before joining Congress, she was one of the only members of the state legislature to challenge California’s “three strikes” law, which escalated sentences for people with prior felonies. She got death threats then, too.Through it all, her congressional district in Oakland and Berkeley, which Lee calls “the wokest district in the country”, has remained loyal to her, repeatedly re-electing her with more than 80% of the vote. In more than two decades in the House, Lee, 77, has become the highest-ranking Black woman in the chamber. As her aspirations turn to the US Senate, however, she may be poised to lose an election for the first time.Lee’s campaign has consistently lagged behind those of two House Democratic colleagues – Katie Porter of Orange county, and Adam Schiff of Los Angeles. More recent polls have also found her trailing the Republican Steve Garvey, a former baseball star of the LA Dodgers. Schiff entered 2024 with $35m in campaign funds and Porter had $13m – Lee has lagged, with just $816,000 in the bank as of January. In the state’s no-partisan primary system, only the top two candidates will advance to the general election in November.As millions of Californians start filling out their primary ballots, Lee said she has given “no thought at all” to the possibility that she might lose.“I have a record of being on the right side of issues – and fighting for that,” she said. And that, she said, “resonates with the majority of Californians”.While Schiff and Porter both made a name for themselves during the Trump presidency – the former is famous for leading the first impeachment effort against Donald Trump, while the latter became nationally known for wielding a whiteboard against hapless conservative appointees – Lee has spent her decades in the House assiduously forwarding progressive policies.View image in fullscreen“She didn’t come on MSNBC every other day,” Ro Khanna, the Silicon Valley congressman who is co-chairing Lee’s campaign, told the Guardian soon after she launched her campaign last year. Lee doesn’t have the same name recognition, or the funds her opponents have, he said. “But she has a record of being an iconic progressive champion.”In an election where the leading Democratic candidates have nearly identical voting records, Lee’s political idealism could be what distinguishes her campaign, or what dooms it.Notably, she was the first to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. On 8 October – as Israel’s military prepared to lay siege to the Gaza Strip following the 7 October attack by Hamas – she called on the world to come together to “try to stop the escalation”.Porter initially declined to take the stance, before eventually coming out in favour of a “bilateral ceasefire”; Schiff still opposes one.“I don’t think you have to temper your message,” Lee said. “Because authenticity is extremely important for voters.”Her thought process now, she added, is very similar to what it was post-9/11, when she opposed the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that gave George W Bush sweeping anti-terrorism war powers, warning that military retaliation could spiral out of control.Back then, her views alienated her from members of her own party. Decades later, both Democrats and Republicans have expressed regret over the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “She was right. I was wrong,” Bernie Sanders said at a debate during his presidential run in 2019. “So was everybody else in the House.”Often, her ideas on domestic policy have been equally audacious – and prescient. She was an early proponent of Medicare for all in 2003, a position that has since gained momentum among Democrats and progressives. Last month, she made headlines discussing a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $50 per hour – seven times the current federal minimum wage of $7.25. She defended the idea, citing a United Way report funding that a yearly income of $127,000 was, as she said, “just barely enough” for a family in the Bay Area. Her fellow Democrats have backed a more modest (but perhaps equally improbable in Congress) proposal to increase the minimum to $20 0r $25.“I don’t think candidates should moderate their positions, because authenticity is extremely important for voters,” she said. “I’ve been consistent over the years even if I have to stand alone.”As much as her ideals may have isolated her on Capitol Hill, they have been embraced in Oakland and Berkeley. After her 2001 stand against the AUMF, she was re-elected to her office with 81% of the vote.“Here in the Bay Area, we have deep anti-war roots, spanning back to the Vietnam era,” said Aimee Allison, president and founder of the advocacy group She the People. A former combat medic, Allison left the military with an honourable discharge as a conscientious objector, during the Gulf War. “Barbara Lee is coming out of that grand tradition.”View image in fullscreenLee was born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in southern California. But it was in Oakland the the Bay Area, in the birthplace of the Black Panthers and the centre of the peace movement, that she came of political age. “We’re the heart and soul of the peace and justice movement,” Lee said. “And a lot of my understanding and clarity on issues around national security and the defence budget come directly from the Bay Area.”Lee landed there after leaving an abusive relationship, two young children in tow, and was for a stint unhoused, floating between motels. “I understand the housing crisis in a way that probably a lot of senators don’t,” she said.Eventually, she enrolled as a student at Oakland’s Mills college, and began volunteering at the Black Panthers’ Community Learning Center. Back then, she didn’t believe in the national political system, which had repeatedly harmed and failed Black and minority Americans.” I was an activist. I was a revolutionary,” she said in an interview with the Kennedy presidential library. “I was not going to register to vote; there was no way I was going to get involved in politics.”Then Lee met Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to Congress – and in 1972, the first woman of colour to run for president. And she found a politician who spoke to her. Lee signed on to work for Chisholm’s presidential campaign, and then started working for the congressman Ron Dellums – the firebrand anti-war activist and anti-apartheid campaigner.In 1990, she ran for office herself. “She was asking about the seat through the 12 years I was in it,” said Elihu Harris, a former California representative who has been friends with Lee since college. “Like ‘move over, move over.’ It was a joke but she wanted to be in elected office.” When Harris stepped down as a representative to serve as Oakland mayor, Lee took his place. “It wasn’t even a close election,” Harris chuckled.View image in fullscreenShe was elected to the state senate, and then succeeded her mentor Dellums as a US congresswoman – serving 25 years. Now the activist and revolutionary who once refused to register to vote said she’s seeking a “larger megaphone” in the Senate.If elected, she would be the third Black woman to serve in the chamber. Only nine Black people have ever served in the Senate, and only two – Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and now vice-president, Kamala Harris – were women. “I made the decision to run because I think my voice as an African American woman, and my perspective, is needed there,” Lee said. “We’re really at a crossroads. And Black women really understand these crossroads – and how to fight and how to lift up those voices that haven’t been heard.”Leftist and progressive groups have generally backed Lee over Porter, both of whom are members of the Congressional Progressive caucus, in large part due to her depth of experience.Lee, at 77, has brushed off concerns that she is too old to seek office. Indeed, even in an election cycle where the advanced years of the leading candidates for president – and their mental fitness to serve – has been at top of mind for voters, Lee’s experience has especially appealed to younger voters and progressives.“Even if she comes in third, or she comes in fourth, then I’m very happy to have voted for the only candidate who is actually working to stop a genocide,” said Jonah Gottlieb, a Democratic party delegate based in Berkeley. In early October, after Lee had called for a ceasefire, but before she had signed onto a ceasefire resolution put forth by other congressional progressives, Gottlieb joined more than two dozen Jewish constituents outside her Oakland office asking her to add her name to the bill.A few days later, her staff met with them as well as Palestinian activists. On 18 October, she signed on to the resolution.“I know that she has really good relationships with progressive organisations in California, and she will work really effectively with these grassroots movements, in a way that I haven’t seen from Katie Porter and certainly haven’t seen from Adam Schiff,” said Gottlieb.View image in fullscreenLee is also known to keep things copacetic in Congress – perhaps paradoxically, given tendency to take tough stands.“Everybody is okay with her,” said Julie Diaz Waters, a former intern and board member at Emerge California, a non-profit that recruits and trains Democratic women in politics. “Something I learned from her in terms of navigating relationships – is that you don’t try to make enemies in this game.” Lee has a habit of phoning her colleagues before a vote – to let them know that she won’t be supporting their legislation. “I call it stabbing in the front, not the back,” Waters said. “It’s a commitment to transparency. It’s a respectful way to operate.”Though Lee doesn’t hold the centrist fidelity for bipartisanship, she does have a record of working with Republicans. “She’s pragmatic and she understands the legislative process, the political process,” said Harris. “So Barbara is always someone who’s willing to seek and find common ground.”Less than two years after she dramatically rejected George W Bush’s request for legal authorization to use military force against the perpetrators of 9/11, Lee worked with him on the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) – the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in the world.Bush has since made the multi-billion dollar program one of his defining legacies.Lee kept working to improve the program, including to eliminate provisions pushing ineffective abstinence-only education and restricting outreach to sex workers. In the Senate, Lee said, she remains dedicated to fighting for reproductive rights and freedoms, against a tide of restrictive policies across the US.“I’ve lived this, so I know,” said Lee, who has been open about her own back-alley abortion in Mexico. She was 16 at the time, and the Roe v Wade case establishing a right to abortions had yet to be ruled.“As someone who comes from a community that has been discriminated against – historically we had to fight for all of our freedoms,” she said. “This is in my DNA.” More

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      Wisconsin high court allows congressional maps in win for Republicans

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      The liberal-controlled Wisconsin supreme court on Friday rejected a Democratic lawsuit that sought to throw out the battleground state’s congressional maps, marking a victory for Republicans who argued against the court taking up the case.The decision not to hear the congressional challenge comes after the court in December ordered new legislative maps, saying the Republican-drawn ones were unconstitutional. The GOP-controlled state legislature, out of fear that the court would order maps even more unfavorable to Republicans, passed maps drawn by the Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Evers signed those into law on 19 February and urged the court to take up the congressional map challenge.The Elias Law Group, which filed the congressional challenge on behalf of Democratic voters, said the court’s decision on the legislative maps opened the door to them revisiting the other maps.But the court declined to take up the case.The court faced a tight deadline to act. Wisconsin’s elections commission has said district boundaries must be set by mid-March to meet deadlines for elections officials and candidates. Candidates can start circulating nomination papers on 15 April for the 13 August primary.In the legislative maps ruling, the state supreme court said the earlier conservative-controlled court had been wrong in 2021 to say that maps drawn that year should have as little change as possible from the maps that had been in place at the time. The lawsuit argued that decision warranted replacing the congressional district maps that were drawn under the “least change” requirement.Six of the state’s eight congressional seats are held by Republicans. In 2010, the year before Republicans redrew the maps, Democrats held five seats compared with three for Republicans.Only two of the state’s current congressional districts are seen as competitive.Western Wisconsin’s third district is represented by the Republican US congressman Derrick Van Orden, who won an open seat in 2022 after the longtime Democratic representative Ron Kind retired.And south-eastern Wisconsin’s first district, held by the Republican congressman Bryan Steil since 2019, was made more competitive under the latest maps but still favors the GOP.Both seats have been targeted by national Democrats.The current congressional maps in Wisconsin were drawn by Evers and approved by the state supreme court. The US supreme court in March 2022 declined to block them from taking effect. More

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      Biden calls for compromise while Trump goes full red meat at US-Mexico border

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      It might be seen as the first US presidential debate of 2024. Two candidates and two lecterns but 300 miles – and a political universe – apart.Joe Biden and Donald Trump spent Thursday at the US-Mexico border, a vivid display of how central the immigration issue has become to the election campaign. Since it is far from certain whether official presidential debates will happen this year, the duelling visits might be as close as it gets.And it was as clarifying about the choice facing voters as any verbal clash on the debate stage. Biden came to push legislation and appeal to the head. Trump came to push fear and appeal to the gut. It is sure to be a close-run thing.That they were at the border at all represented a win for Republicans, who have forced Democrats to play on their territory as the debate over immigration in Washington shifts further to the right.Border crossings have been at or close to record highs since Biden took office in January 2021, though they have dropped so far this year, a trend that officials attribute to increased Mexican enforcement and seasonal trends. Democrats have become increasingly eager to embrace restrictions as they are confronted by migrants sleeping in police stations and airplane hangars.Where the presidents went on Thursday, and who went with them, told its own story. Biden headed to the Rio Grande Valley city of Brownsville which, for nine years, was the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. He was accompanied by the homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Republicans earlier this month narrowly voted to impeach over his handling of the border.Trump, who has echoed Adolf Hitler by arguing that immigrants entering the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country”, travelled to Eagle Pass in the corridor currently witnessing the highest number of crossings – though they have fallen in recent months.The former president was joined by Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican who deployed thousands of national guard troops and laid concertina wire and river buoys to deter illegal immigration through a programme called Operation Lone Star – sparking legal and political standoffs with the White House.It was also Abbott who vowed to “take the border to President Biden” by busing thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities, a move of diabolical genius that nationalised an issue which has, polls show, overtaken inflation as voters’ number one concern.In public remarks, Trump went full red meat, appealing to racist instincts in ways that offered a sobering reminder of the stakes of the election. “This is a Joe Biden invasion,” he said, insisting that “men of a certain age” were coming from countries including China, Iran, Yemen, DR Congo and Syria. “They look like warriors to me.”The former president – who favours travel bans and “ideological screening” for migrants – plucked assertions out of the air: “It could be 15 million, it could be 18 million by the time he gets out of office … A very big population coming in from jails in the Congo … We have languages coming into our country that nobody even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages.”View image in fullscreenTrump went on to describe the alleged crimes of illegal immigrants and claimed that Biden has “the blood of countless innocent victims” on his hands. It is safe to assume that, at this summer’s Republican national convention, a series of gratuitous and lurid stories will be told along with a parade of victims’ families.Biden, who has been on the defensive on the issue in recent months, had a very different objective. He wanted to shame congressional Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan effort to toughen immigration policies after Trump told them not to pass it and give Biden a policy victory.“Join me – or I’ll join you – in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill,” he said, attempting to turn the tables on Trump. “We can do it together. It’s the toughest most efficient, most effective border security bill the country has ever seen. So instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done?”That’ll be the day. But in truth any president would have struggled with this escalating crisis. Congress has been paralysed on the issue for decades. Trump left vital agencies in disarray. Climate change, war and unrest in other nations, along with cartels that see migration as a cash cow, have conjured a perfect storm for Trump’s nativist-populist message to frame the conversation.Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice-president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, says: “It seems most people are hearing about the issue of immigration from Republicans rather than from Democrats. That means you are allowing your opponents to define what your position is and that would be political malpractice for any candidate or elected leader.”Last week a Marquette Law School Poll national survey found 53% of voters say Trump is better on immigration and border security, while only 25% favour Biden on the issue. And for the first time a majority (53%) said they support building a wall along the entire southern border – a promise that Trump has been making since he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015.The dynamic leaves Biden caught between trying to please the right while not alienating the left. Republicans and Maga media are demanding draconian measures and pushing emotional buttons by highlighting cases such as the arrest of Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, over the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.Biden duly embraced immigration policies that he ran against as a candidate in 2020 such as restricting asylum laws and promising to “shut down the border” if given new authority. But such measures were condemned by progressives and could put his own coalition at risk in a crucial election year.De Castro adds: “If you go back to the early 2000s, there was similarly a lack of alignment on this issue. It took work to get there, but then, for many years, Democrats were seen as aligned as the party that believed in legal immigration and a path to legality for immigrants here and smart enforcement. In some ways they have lost their voice on this, and they need to recoup that.”If Biden and Trump do share a debate stage later this year, America can only hope for a substantial debate on immigration policy. But the four-year electoral cycle and soundbite age are the enemy of the long-term reform that is sorely needed. This knottiest of political problems goes way beyond America’s borders.Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a group focused on young voters, says: “Any immigration plan actually has to address the root causes. People are coming out of deep economic need and also fleeing very violent situations. Until you address that it doesn’t matter what kind of barriers they try and create physically at the border to make it more difficult. If they want real solutions, they have to address that.” More

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      Trump attacks Biden immigration policies in Texas speech as both visit US-Mexico border – live

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      Donald Trump has begun delivering remarks during his visit to the US-Mexico border. He begins by commending the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on his efforts at the border.Trump moves on to say that the US is being “overrun” by “Biden migrant crime”, which he claims is a “new form of vicious violation” to the country.He accuses Biden of being the most incompetent president the US has ever had, and of transporting “entire columns of fighting-aged men” who “look like warriors” to the US.Trump’s comments are the latest example of his campaign rhetoric that seems to be going beyond the lies and exaggerations that are a trademark of his stump speeches and instead are going into the territory of outright extremism or racism.Joe Biden is now delivering remarks in Brownsville in South Texas.Biden begins by speaking about the devastating wildfires in the Texas Panhandle that has crossed into Oklahoma. He says he stands with everyone affected by these wildfires. “When disaster strikes, there’s no red state or blue state,” he says.He then moves on to his visit to the US-Mexico border. He says he has been briefed from officials from the border patrol, immigration enforcement and asylum officers, who he says are all doing “incredible work under really tough conditions”. They desperately need more resources, he says.Trump also speaks about the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was out on her morning run at the University of Georgia when authorities say a stranger dragged her into a secluded area and killed her.A Venezuelan man, identified as Jose Antonio Ibarra, has been arrested for the death of Riley. Ibarra is an immigrant who entered the US illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.Trump has blamed Joe Biden and his border policies for the Augusta University student’s fatal beating.Donald Trump has begun delivering remarks during his visit to the US-Mexico border. He begins by commending the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on his efforts at the border.Trump moves on to say that the US is being “overrun” by “Biden migrant crime”, which he claims is a “new form of vicious violation” to the country.He accuses Biden of being the most incompetent president the US has ever had, and of transporting “entire columns of fighting-aged men” who “look like warriors” to the US.Trump’s comments are the latest example of his campaign rhetoric that seems to be going beyond the lies and exaggerations that are a trademark of his stump speeches and instead are going into the territory of outright extremism or racism.Donald Trump has been meeting with officials from the national guard and the department of public safety as he tours Eagle Pass alongside Texas governor Greg Abbott.The lower house of Alabama’s legislature has passed a law to protect providers of in vitro fertilization care, the Montgomery Advertiser reports, after the state supreme court earlier this month ruled embryos used in the procedure were “children”.The court’s decisions raised the possibility that practices providing the care, which is typically used by people who struggle to have children, could face civil suits or criminal prosecution. The bill, backed by the legislature’s Republican majority, would prevent that by protecting providers from those consequences.Here’s more, from the Advertiser:
      The Alabama state House passed overwhelmingly passed legislation Thursday granting civil and criminal immunity to in vitro fertilization patients and medical professionals.
      The bill passed by a vote of 94-6.
      Filed by Terri Collins, R-Morgan County, HB237 reaffirms Attorney General Steve Marshall’s statement that the state has ‘no intention of using the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision as a basis for prosecuting IVF families or providers.’
      ‘This would at least keep the clinics open and the families moving forward,’ Collins said.
      The state Supreme Court in February ruled that frozen embryos are legally protected as children, a controversial decision that thrust the state into the national spotlight. The ruling has been condemned by both Democrats and Republicans.
      In the wake of the court’s ruling, multiple clinics that offer IVF care in the state halted all appointments indefinitely, including Alabama Fertility and the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System.
      In Brownsville, Joe Biden is meeting with members of the border patrol on what looks to be the banks of the Rio Grande, which forms the border between Texas and Mexico:Joe Biden has arrived in Brownsville, Texas, before his meetings with federal officials and a speech about border security.According to the White House, he’s expected to meet with officers from US customs and border protection, immigration and customs enforcement and other federal agencies. He will deliver remarks at 4.30pm ET, where he will likely press Congress to act on a border security compromise that Republicans are presently blocking.Donald Trump has arrived in Texas, where he’ll be visiting the border with Mexico in the town of Eagle Pass:Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, will probably outline hard-line measures he would take to stop people from entering the country without permission, if elected. Such crossings have surged since Joe Biden took office, for a variety of reasons. Here’s more about that:The House of Representatives has just approved a measure that will push back government funding deadlines and ward off a shutdown that would have begun after Friday:It’s now up to the Senate to approve the bill, and Congress will then shift to considering full-year appropriations bills. Here’s more on that:Donald Trump’s latest ballot headache is in Illinois, where a judge ordered his name removed yesterday on 14th amendment grounds. The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports that he is appealing the ruling:Donald Trump has appealed a decision from an Illinois state judge who decided he should be removed from that state’s ballot because of the 14th amendment, an ongoing issue for Trump in the courts.Tracie Porter, the Cook county circuit judge, made the decision on Wednesday, reversing the previous decision by the Illinois state board of elections, which said Trump could stay on the ballot. The order was put on hold pending an appeal from Trump, which came swiftly on Thursday.The Illinois decision came after the Colorado supreme court ruled similarly, saying Trump couldn’t hold office again because he had participated in an insurrection while an officer of the United States. Another decision in Maine, by the state’s secretary of state, decided to keep Trump off the ballot there as well, though that is now on hold.The Colorado decision went before the US supreme court in February, which has yet to rule on the case, though the justices expressed a load of skepticism of the claims that Trump shouldn’t be allowed to run again.Expect Joe Biden and Donald Trump to outline very different visions for dealing with undocumented migration when they appear on Texas’s border with Mexico today, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:Joe Biden and his all-but-certain Republican challenger, Donald Trump, will make dueling visits to Texas border towns on Thursday, a rare overlap that sets the stage for an election season clash over immigration.In Brownsville, along the Rio Grande, Biden is expected to hammer Republicans for blocking a bipartisan border security deal after Trump expressed his vocal opposition to the measure. Hundreds of miles north-west, Trump will deliver remarks from a state park in Eagle Pass, which has become the epicenter of a showdown between the Biden administration and the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.Hours before the president and former president arrived on the 2,000-mile stretch of border, a federal judge sided with the Biden administration and blocked a new Texas law that would give police power to arrest people suspected of entering the US unlawfully.Trump, who Republicans appear poised to choose as their nominee for a third consecutive time, has once again made immigration a centerpiece of his presidential campaign by describing the United States under Biden as overrun by undocumented immigrants who “poisoning the blood of our country”, rhetoric that echoes white supremacists and Adolf Hitler. While in Texas, the former president is expected to lay out his plans for an immigration crackdown far beyond what he attempted in his first term.Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both will appear on Texas’s border with Mexico later today to discuss their approaches to handling undocumented immigrants. They are visiting border crossings in cities experiencing starkly different situations, and the president is expected to press Republicans to support a bipartisan proposal that would tighten immigration policy in exchange for approving military aid to Ukraine and Israel. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Texas blocked a law that would have allowed police to detain people who enter the state illegally, the latest skirmish in an ongoing fight between the Biden administration and Republicans who control Austin.Here’s what else is going on:
      Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, appeared before a House committee and acknowledged mistakes in how he had handled his hospitalization.
      Biden’s campaign will reach out to backers of a protest-vote effort in Michigan’s Democratic primary aimed at signaling discontent with the president’s support for Israel.
      Brian Fitzpatrick, a centrist House Republican, will try to force the chamber’s leaders to hold a vote on Ukraine aid and border security legislation.
      A federal judge has blocked a law enacted by Texas’s Republican-dominated government that would have allowed state police to arrest people who are suspected of entering from Mexico without authorization, the Associated Press reports.Here’s more:
      The preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge David Ezra pauses a law that was set to take effect March 5 and came as President Joe Biden and his likely Republican challenger in November, Donald Trump, were visiting Texas’ southern border to discuss immigration. Texas officials are expected to appeal.
      Opponents have called the Texas measure the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law that opponents rebuked as a “Show Me Your Papers” bill. The U.S. Supreme Court partially struck down the Arizona law, but some Texas Republican leaders, who often refer to the migrant influx as an “invasion,” want that ruling to get a second look.
      Ezra cited the Constitution’s supremacy clause and U.S. Supreme Court decisions as factors that contributed to his ruling. He said the Texas law would conflict with federal immigration law, and the nation’s foreign relations and treaty obligations.
      Allowing Texas to “permanently supersede federal directives” due to a so-called invasion would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority — a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War,” the judge wrote.
      Citing the Supreme Court’s decision on the Arizona law, Ezra wrote that the Texas law was preempted, and he struck down state officials’ claims that large numbers of illegal border crossings constituted an “invasion.”
      The lawsuit is among several legal battles between Texas and Biden’s administration over how far the state can go to try to prevent migrants from crossing the border.
      The measure would allow state law enforcement officers to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally. Once in custody, they could agree to a Texas judge’s order to leave the country or face a misdemeanor charge for entering the U.S. illegally. Migrants who don’t leave after being ordered to do so could be arrested again and charged with a more serious felony.
      After a write-in campaign in protest of Joe Biden’s support for Israel managed to win about 13% of the vote in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday, a top official on the president’s campaign said this morning that they’d be reaching out to the organizers.But the comments on NPR by Mitch Landrieu, the Biden re-election campaign’s co-chair, did not go over well with one of the groups involved in the effort, which did not prevent the president from winning the swing state’s Democratic primary overwhelmingly.Asked to respond to the “uncommitted” votes, here’s what Landrieu had to say:
      We’re going to continue to talk to them. We’re going to continue to listen to what it is that they have to say. When you’re the commander in chief and when, in fact, you are representing the United States’ interests, there are no issues that are easy. And this is obviously a very painful issue for them and for lots of other folks in the United States of America. We’re going to continue to talk to them and then ask them to think about the choices and what the consequences are about electing somebody who wants to have a Muslim ban, electing somebody who is going to be much, much worse than the difficult circumstances that we have right now. The president is going to reach out, we’re going to continue to listen, and he’s going to continue to work with them as we find an answer to this very difficult problem.
      Here’s what Listen to Michigan, one of the groups supporting the write-in campaign, had to say about that: More

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      US House passes temporary funding bill to avert government shutdown

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      The House has passed a short-term funding bill, narrowly averting a partial government shutdown that would have taken place this weekend.The bill passed with a 320-99 vote on Thursday afternoon. Among Republicans, 113 voted yes and 97 voted no. Meanwhile, 207 Democrats voted yes and 2 voted against it.The two Democrats who voted against the bill were Mike Quigley of Illinois and Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts.The bill’s passage comes after congressional leaders from both parties, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson; the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries; the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell; as well as leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees, announced the agreement on Wednesday.“To give the House and Senate appropriations committees adequate time to execute on this deal in principle, including drafting, preparing report language, scoring and other technical matters and to allow members 72 hours to review, a short-term continuing resolution to fund agencies through March 8 and the 22 will be necessary, and voted on by the House and Senate this week,” the statement said.With the House passing the temporary funding bill on Thursday, a congressional vote is now expected next week for six full-year appropriations bills that will extend funding for agencies under the departments of agriculture-FDA, commerce-justice and science, energy and water development, interior, military construction-veterans affairs and transportation-housing and urban development.“These bills will adhere to the Fiscal Responsibility Act discretionary spending limits and January’s topline spending agreement,” congressional leaders said on Wednesday.The remaining six appropriations bills set to be finalized and voted on by 22 March revolve around the departments of defense, financial services and general government, homeland security, labor-health and human services, as well as legislative branch and state and foreign operations.Following Thursday’s vote, Virginia’s Democratic representative Abigail Spanberger said that despite voting alongside colleagues who “understand our fundamental responsibility to keep our government functioning … Speaker Johnson’s leadership has our country yet again one week away from a partial government shutdown and within a month of the whole of the federal government shutting its doors.”“As our country remains on a collision course with a completely preventable potential shutdown, I will continue to press Speaker Johnson to bring bipartisan bills forward that would pass in the US House, pass in the US Senate, and get to the president’s desk,” she added.Before Thursday’s vote, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met with congressional leaders in attempts to help avert a partial government shutdown, which Biden said would “significantly” damage the economy.The bill will now head to the Senate, where the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said the chamber could vote as early as Thursday evening.“Once the House acts, I hope the Senate can pass the short-term CR [continuing resolution] as soon as tonight, but that will require all of us working together. There’s certainly no reason this should take a very long time. So, let’s cooperate and get it done quickly,” Schumer said. More

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      She’s famous for taking on CEOs. Can Katie Porter win the California senate race?

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      In 2018, a political newcomer named Katie Porter defeated a two-term incumbent Republican to represent California’s 45th district in the US House of Representatives, turning the famously conservative Orange county blue.Porter, a 44-year-old law professor and Elizabeth Warren protege, had a refreshing message, vowing to stay laser-focused on addressing the ways America’s financial institutions prey on ordinary people.Over six years as the representative of Nixon’s birthplace and Reagan’s political stronghold, Porter has built a national political profile with viral videos of her confronting bank CEOs and Republican appointees with basic financial calculations, illustrating her numbers on a quickly iconic whiteboard.Now, she’s hoping her image as a fierce fighter, a savvy communicator and a champion of ordinary people against big corporations will propel her to the US Senate.Porter is one of three prominent Democrats running to fill the seat of the late US senator Dianne Feinstein come November.This time, Porter is not running as the most progressive candidate in the race. She is competing against Barbara Lee, a longtime Black congresswoman from Oakland whose sterling progressive record includes being the sole member of Congress to vote against authorizing George W Bush’s war in Afghanistan, and one of the first Democrats to call for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza last year.The campaign Porter wants to run for US Senate is one focused on her economic policy record, her willingness to break with the national Democratic establishment, and her comparative youth. At age 50, Porter is 13 years younger than the Democratic frontrunner in the race, Adam Schiff, and 27 years younger than Lee – a representative of a completely different generation than most of Washington’s bipartisan gerontocracy.View image in fullscreenBut the US Senate race Porter wants to run is looking very different from the race she’s actually competing in.As the civilian death toll of Israel’s war in Gaza divides Democrats and alienates younger and more progressive voters, Porter has become the centrist candidate in a three-Democrat race with an unexpected focus on foreign policy. While Schiff has maintained a staunchly pro-Israel stance, and Lee called for a ceasefire in Gaza on 8 October, Porter initially cast blame for the conflict on the US’s foreign policy towards Iran, and then, in mid-December, belatedly broke with the Biden administration and called for a “bilateral ceasefire”, in what was seen by some progressives as a much slower and less principled response than Lee’s.Current polling for the race shows Schiff in the lead, Porter coming in second among Democrats and Lee trailing relatively far behind. But Porter is also polling neck-and-neck with a late Republican entrant to California’s non-partisan Senate primary: Steve Garvey, an ageing LA Dodgers baseball star.Garvey – a 1970s pinup-boy candidate with a widely panned debate performance and a troubled family life – has no chance of winning the general election as a Republican in California. But the state’s Republican base is large enough that Garvey does have a chance of beating Porter and advancing to the runoff, and ensuring that Schiff, the most centrist of the California Democratic candidates, can cruise to victory in November.A Pac backed by cryptocurrency investors is already hammering Porter with millions of dollars in attack ads to push her out of the race.Some California progressives say that at another moment, it might have been easy for supporters of Lee to take the pragmatic stance and vote for Porter, to ensure that California voters at least get a choice between a progressive and a centrist Democrat in the general election. But this moment is different, they say, with widespread grief and outrage over the killings of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza making many want to cast a moral vote for Lee – whether it’s strategic or not.Then there are the Democrats who are furious with Porter for entering the Senate race at all. Her purple House district, which she held on to with a margin of only 9,000 votes in a fiercely fought 2022 election, is now one of the closely contested races that will determine whether Democrats can win control of the House of Representatives.Porter’s campaign argues that her House district is less vulnerable than it appears: “This district was carried by President Biden by over 10 points in 2020,” campaign spokesperson Lindsay Reilly said. “It was particularly competitive last November because of redistricting, which meant Katie had to introduce herself to 70% new voters during a tough election year for Democrats. But in a presidential year, Democrats in CA-47 [the 47th congressional district] have a clear path to victory.”But with Porter and Schiff, both prodigious Democratic fundraisers, focused on competing against each other, they’re taking up attention and cash that might otherwise be devoted to helping vulnerable candidates in races that will not inevitably be won by a Democrat, some California Democrats argue.A San Francisco Chronicle analysis found that in recent years, Porter, Schiff and Lee have voted the exact same way at least 94% of the time. With control of the House of Representatives up for grabs during a potential second Trump presidency, how much does the variety of Democratic senator that California elects even matter?For Porter’s staunch supporters, her battle to win a US Senate seat is a fight worth fighting, even in a troubled political landscape.In a more global context, the current California Senate race might not even be considered a fight between three members of the exact same party, said Alex Lee, a young progressive Democrat who represents the Bay Area in the state assembly.The US’s two-party system has made the Democratic party “so big of a tent” that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Biden are members of one party, even though, “In Europe, they’d be two political parties apart,” he said.California has the world’s fifth-largest economy, and is home to some of the biggest and most influential corporations on earth. If the state had a truly progressive senator who was able to challenge billionaire CEOs and hold Wall Street accountable it would mean a lot, Lee said, which is why he has endorsed Porter.View image in fullscreenLee said he had been impressed to hear Porter talk about housing affordability and the problems it caused for younger people and lower-income workers in every campaign speech, before every audience.That subject – not a typical one for a national candidate – seemed to resonate, he said: even people secure in their own housing situation, like wealthy Orange county homeowners, “are concerned about their kids, their grandkids. Are they going to be able to afford this?”One of Porter’s central pledges to voters is that she “doesn’t take a cent of corporate Pac or federal lobbyist money”, as her campaign website puts it. Though she has touted in some fundraising emails that she does not take donations from executives at big oil, big pharma or Wall Street banks, the Daily Beast found that some people with high-level jobs on Wall Street had donated to her, though it found that “overall she has relatively paltry support from corporate or special-interest linked entities”, compared with other members of Congress. (Nearly 200 corporate Pacs contributed $2m to Schiff between 1999 and 2022, CalMatters reported.)Schiff attacked Porter in the last debate for taking money from “Wall Street bankers”, but his campaign received donations from two of the same Wall Street donors highlighted in the Daily Beast’s report.While Schiff has channeled his professional expertise as a prosecutor into managing Trump’s first impeachment, and becoming a national spokesperson and bestselling author on America’s crisis of democracy, Porter’s backers say she attracts a different, and more fervent, kind of political support.Kari Helgeson, a 58-year-old healthcare worker and Porter “superfan”, said she owns socks with one of Porter’s favorite slogans, “No time for bullshit”, and a whiteboard autographed by the congresswoman herself.Though she lives in Eureka, at the north-west edge of California, Helgeson has been donating “for years” to Porter’s congressional campaigns nearly 700 miles to the south.“She really is for the people, she truly is,” Helgeson said. “She is a huge advocate for the working class and unions.”Helgeson praised Porter’s brilliance in grilling people like JPMorgan Chase’s CEO, her willingness to actually show up on union picket lines, and her relatable persona.“She really is a single mom that drives a minivan and is managing two households, somehow, across the country,” Helgeson said. “She’s not fancy with her dress, she is who she is, and she’ll speak her mind, and she’s not afraid.”The fact that Porter still drives a minivan is important because it means “she’s not bought,” Helgeson said. Though Porter holds a powerful position and is known for her confrontational moments, “She’s not a bully. She is powerful with facts.”Helgeson said she was excited, but not surprised, when a strong majority of her fellow members of the National United Healthcare Workers voted to endorse Porter in the Senate primary last fall.While Helgeson said she respected Lee’s record and thought she still seemed sharp, “I don’t want to put the age thing in here, but it does kind of matter. It is a six year term.”If Porter makes it to a two-person race against Schiff, being a woman may be an advantage in a state that used to have two female senators and that, if Schiff wins, may end up having two men.“Do we need more white men, more white straight men in politics? I would say, as a progressive, we don’t,” said Fatima Iqbal-Zubair, the chair of the Progressive Caucus of California’s Democratic Party.But the experience that Porter would bring to the senate as a white woman from Orange county, Iqbal-Zubair said, is very different from the experience Lee would bring, as a Black single mom from Oakland who has spoken publicly about experiencing homelessness and domestic violence.For progressives, the chance to elect a Black woman with that life experience and an uncompromising progressive record is “so unique” and a “once in a lifetime” opportunity, Iqbal-Zubair said.But arguments that Porter should not have run for senate to protect her House district reeked of misogyny. “Women are always told to ‘wait your turn’,” she said.“I think she saw Schiff, and she thought Schiff wasn’t it.” More

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      Michigan Democrats have sent Biden a flashing warning sign about the election | Ben Davis

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      The Michigan Democratic primary was the first test of the electoral strength of the movement for a ceasefire in Gaza. It exhibited strength beyond what any observer expected, showing the size and enthusiasm of the peace movement and the danger to President Biden of continuing his current policy of full support for Israel. Organizers of the Listen to Michigan campaign to vote uncommitted in the Michigan primary set the bar at 10,000 votes – the margin of victory in Michigan’s 2016 general election. “Uncommitted” had blown past that number before even 10% of the vote had been counted. Biden needs to heed this flashing warning sign and drastically change course: call for a ceasefire, halt arms shipments to Israel and exert maximal diplomatic pressure now. The call for a ceasefire now can no longer be written off as a demand of only leftwing activists or Arab and Muslim communities. A large swathe of the Democratic base demands it.Biden can win uncommitted voters in the general election. These are consistent Democratic voters who turn out to Democratic primaries and powered Biden’s win in the swing state in 2020. The uncommitted vote showed strength far beyond what both organizers and the Biden campaign expected. “Uncommitted” won outright on college campuses like the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University, dominating predominantly Arab east Dearborn with over 80% of the vote. But the strength wasn’t limited to progressive and Arab areas. “Uncommitted” captured 10% or more of the vote across the state, from affluent suburban areas to rural areas, and did even better in the working-class Black-majority core of the Michigan Democratic electorate of Detroit, winning 23% of the election day votes in the city.The results are clear: the movement for a ceasefire and the dissatisfaction with Biden’s policies among the Democratic base have real electoral strength and can’t be dismissed. Massive supermajorities of Democratic voters support a ceasefire, and the results in Michigan show this isn’t just a passive policy preference but a deeply felt moral stance among the core voters Biden needs to win the election. Rather than stay home, huge numbers of voters took time out of their day to cast a vote for no one just to register their protest and hopefully do their part to stop the killing. There were no other statewide elections on the ballot to drive turnout and no viable candidate against Biden. Yet enthusiasm for “uncommitted” was so high that precincts in Dearborn ran out of their usual allotment of registration sign-up sheets trying to keep up with demand.This campaign was announced only three weeks ago, a disadvantage in a state where most Democrats vote by mail well before the election. It was powered through organizing through Muslim and Arab community groups, on-the-ground voter contact from organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, and remarkable enthusiasm from volunteers. With almost no money, the message caught on like wildfire because it spoke to the deeply held feelings of Michigan Democrats, winning the endorsement of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and a handful of members of the state legislature and local elected officials. By election day, there was “panic” in the White House.Michigan Democratic politicians have warned of the strength of the ceasefire movement for months and been ignored by the White House. While Michigan Democratic politicians, even moderate ones, have felt the anger and disappointment on the ground and try to use empathic language to communicate with young, progressive, Arab and Muslim voters, the White House and the national Democratic party have been aloof and haranguing. The message that Donald Trump is worse and expressing concern or registering disapproval helps him does not work and is actively alienating voters. What would bring people back into the fold is, first, actually listening and expressing empathy and, second and most importantly, actually taking action to halt the bloodshed and stand up for Palestinian lives. This isn’t a niche issue. All people of conscience feel it.Biden can still win this election, but not with discontent with his base in crucial swing states. If morality will not push him to take action to halt Israel’s war crimes, perhaps politics will. The numbers don’t lie. We need a ceasefire now. More