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      With Deal Close on Border and Ukraine, Republican Rifts Threaten to Kill Both

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      A divided G.O.P. coalesced behind a bit of legislative extortion: No Ukraine aid without a border crackdown. Now they are split over how large a price to demand, imperiling both initiatives.Senator James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican and staunch conservative, this week trumpeted the immigration compromise he has been negotiating with Senate Democrats and White House officials as one shaping up to be “by far, the most conservative border security bill in four decades.”Speaker Mike Johnson, in contrast, sent out a fund-raising message on Friday denouncing the forthcoming deal as a Democratic con. “My answer is NO. Absolutely NOT,” his message said, adding, “This is the hill I’ll die on.”The Republican disconnect explains why, with an elusive bipartisan bargain on immigration seemingly as close as it has been in years on Capitol Hill, the prospects for enactment are grim. It is also why hopes for breaking the logjam over sending more U.S. aid to Ukraine are likely to be dashed by hard-line House Republicans.The situation encapsulates the divide cleaving the Republican Party. On one side are the right-wing MAGA allies of former President Donald J. Trump, an America First isolationist who instituted draconian immigration policies while in office. On the other is a dwindling group of more mainstream traditionalists who believe the United States should play an assertive role defending democracy on the world stage.The two wings coalesced last fall around a bit of legislative extortion: They would only agree to President Biden’s request to send about $60 billion more to Ukraine for its fight against Russian aggression if he agreed to their demands to clamp down on migration at the United States border with Mexico. But now, they are at odds about how large of a price to demand.Hard-right House Republicans, who are far more dug in against aid to Ukraine, have argued that the bipartisan border compromise brokered by their counterparts in the Senate is unacceptable. And they bluntly say they do not want to give Mr. Biden the opportunity in an election year to claim credit for cracking down on unauthorized immigration.Instead, with Mr. Trump agitating against the deal from the campaign trail, they are demanding a return to more severe immigration policies that he imposed, which stand no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate. Those include a revival of the Remain in Mexico policy, under which migrants seeking to enter the United States were blocked and made to stay elsewhere while they waited to appear in immigration court to plead their cases.While Senate G.O.P. leaders have touted the emerging agreement as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a breakthrough on the border, hard-right House members have dismissed it as the work of establishment Republicans out of touch with the G.O.P. base.“Let’s talk about Mitch McConnell — he has a 6 percent approval rating,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said of the Senate minority leader. “He wouldn’t be the one to be listening to, making deals on the border.”She said that after Mr. Trump’s decisive win in the Iowa caucuses, “It’s time for all Republicans, Senate and the House, to get behind his policies.”As for the proposed aid to Ukraine, Ms. Greene is threatening to oust Mr. Johnson from the speakership if he brings it to the floor.“My red line is Ukraine,” she said, expressing confidence that the speaker would heed her threat. “I’m making it very clear to him. We will not see it on the House floor — that is my expectation.”House Republicans have opposed sending money to Ukraine without a deal on immigration.Emile Ducke for The New York TimesThe situation is particularly fraught for Mr. Johnson, the novice House speaker whose own sympathies lie with the far right but who is facing immense institutional pressures — from Mr. Biden, Democrats in Congress and his fellow Republicans in the Senate — to embrace a deal pairing border policy changes with aid to Ukraine.Mr. Johnson has positioned himself as a Trump loyalist, quickly endorsing the former president after winning the gavel, and said that he has spoken regularly to the former president about the Senate immigration deal and everything else. After infuriating hard-right Republicans on Thursday by pushing through a short-term government funding bill to avert a shutdown, the speaker has little incentive to enrage them again and defy the wishes of Mr. Trump, who has disparaged the Senate compromise.“I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media this week.Democrats already have agreed to substantial concessions in the talks, including making it more difficult for migrants to claim asylum; expanding detention and expulsion authorities; and shutting down the intake of migrants when attempted crossings reach a level that would overwhelm detention facilities — around 5,000 migrants a day.But far-right Republicans have dismissed the compromise out of hand, saying the changes would still allow many immigrants to enter the country each year without authorization.Election-year politics is playing a big role. Representative Bob Good, Republican of Virginia and the chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, said passing the Senate bill would give “political cover” to Mr. Biden for his failures at the border.“Democrats want to look like they care about the border, then run out the clock so Biden wins re-election,” Mr. Good said. “It would be terrible for the country to give political cover to the facilitators of the border invasion.”Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said that while Mr. Johnson broke with the right on federal spending because he feared a government shutdown, “I think on the immigration issue, there’s more unity.”Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican, warned that the immigration compromise was a “unique opportunity” that would not be available to Republicans next year, even if they were to win majorities in both chambers of Congress and win back the White House.“The Democrats will not give us anything close to this if we have to get 60 votes in the U.S. Senate in a Republican majority,” he said.Speaker Mike Johnson has positioned himself as a Trump loyalist. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMany mainstream House Republicans believe that Mr. Johnson would be making a terrible mistake if he heeded the advice of the most far-right voices and refused to embrace an immigration deal. They argue that doing so would squander an opportunity to win important policy changes and the political boost that would come with showing that Republicans can govern.“Big city mayors are talking about the same thing that Texas conservatives are talking about,” said Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, a close ally of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. “Take the moment, man. Take the policy win, bank it, and go back for more. That is always the goal.”But for some Republicans, taking the policy win is less important than continuing to have a political issue to rail against in an election year.“It’s worse than doing nothing to give political cover for a sham border security bill that does nothing to actually secure the border,” Mr. Good said.Mr. Burchett, one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy, rolled his eyes when asked about Mr. McHenry’s entreaties not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.“McHenry’s leaving,” he said of the congressman, who has announced he will not run for re-election next year. More

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      How Biden’s Immigration Fight Threatens His Biggest Foreign Policy Win

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      The debate over immigration in the United States is spilling over into other parts of President Biden’s agenda, particularly the war in Ukraine.The soaring number of people crossing into the United States from Mexico has been a political vulnerability for President Biden for the past three years, chipping away at his approval rating and opening him up to political attacks.But now, the crisis is threatening to upend America’s support for the war in Ukraine, throwing the centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s foreign policy into jeopardy.After a meeting with Mr. Biden at the White House on Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson insisted that the Republican-led House would not pass legislation to send aid to Ukraine unless Democrats agreed to sweeping new restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border.And even if the two sides do come to some sort of agreement, many Republicans, especially in the House, would be loath to give an election-year win to Mr. Biden on an issue that has given them a powerful line of criticism toward the White House. The issue is also at the center of the candidacy of Mr. Biden’s likely opponent this fall, former President Donald J. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      At Davos, War Is on the Agenda, but the Focus Is on A.I. and Elections

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      The leaders and executives gathering at the World Economic Forum are obsessed with elections and artificial intelligence, not Ukraine or Gaza.Each day this week has brought a new and fleeting reminder to the executives and politicians at the annual World Economic Forum meeting of the two wars threatening global security and clouding the economy. Ukraine’s president spoke on Tuesday. Israel’s spoke on Thursday.Neither was able to hold the collective attention of a gathering that this year has focused overwhelmingly on artificial intelligence and populist politics.Gaza and Ukraine have made daily appearances on the public agenda in Davos, along with climate change and economic inequality. But in the warm halls and slushy streets around town, conversations almost inevitably turn to the two accelerating trends that are destabilizing business models and democracies.Everyone wants to talk about how A.I. and this year’s elections, especially in the United States, could shake up the world. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel led by Hamas or the ensuing Israeli bombing of Gaza? Drowned out in comparison.“No one is talking about Israel,” said Rachel Goldberg, who came to Davos to urge action to free the more than 100 hostages who were taken on Oct. 7 and continue to be held by Hamas, including her 23-year-old son, Hersh.In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Goldberg said she was not surprised the war had taken a back seat here. “I think it’s complicated,” she said. “And I think it’s very polarizing.”Davos is many things layered on top of one another. It is a font of wealthy idealism, where the phrase “committed to improving the state of the world” frequently adorns the walls of the main meeting center.The forum is a networking event where chief executives, world leaders, celebrities, philanthropists and journalists speed-date through half-hour coffee meetings. It is a trade show for big ideas, with overlapping panel discussions on topics including gender equity, media misinformation and the transition to green energy.It is also a venue for top government officials to speak on grave issues, including war. That is where much of the Gaza and Ukraine discussion played out this week.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, meeting on Tuesday.Laurent Gillieron/Keystone, via Associated PressPresident Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called for international aid — but not more weapons — in a packed-house address on Tuesday to hundreds of people. He also took questions from reporters afterward.Without more assistance from the United States and others, Mr. Zelensky said, “a huge crisis will happen.” He added: “We have a war now, and we will have a huge crisis — a crisis for the whole of Europe.”Several leaders spoke about Gaza and the broader conflict it has spawned in the Middle East, though typically to smaller crowds. In a room of about 60 attendees on Wednesday, Mohammad Mustafa, the chairman of Palestine Investment Fund and the former deputy prime minister of Palestine, called for additional international aid for the people in Gaza and for an end to the war.“The military action has got to stop very quickly,” Mr. Mustafa said. “There is no need for anyone to build their political careers at the expense of more Palestinian people.”Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the foreign minister of Iran, blamed Israel for raising tensions in the Middle East in the past several months. “If the genocide in Gaza stops, then it will lead to the end of the other crises and attacks in the region,” he said.In his Thursday speech, President Isaac Herzog of Israel called Iran the center of an “empire of evil” destabilizing the Middle East and displayed a photograph of Kfir Bibas, a 1-year-old hostage being held in Gaza. “We have a very cruel, sadistic enemy who has taken a decision to try to torture the Israeli national psyche as well as the hostages themselves,” Mr. Herzog said.But those speeches rarely dominated the conversations on the sidelines of the event, at the nightly private dinners after the day’s agenda concluded or in most of the storefronts that large corporations paid to transform into branded event spaces along the main promenade in town.President Isaac Herzog of Israel with a picture of Kfir Bibas, a child who was taken hostage by Hamas, on Thursday.Denis Balibouse/ReutersOne possible explanation: Attendees and leaders here do not view either war as a significant threat at the moment to the global economy. Neither Gaza nor Ukraine cracked the Top 10 near-term concerns in the Global Risk Report — a survey of 1,500 global leaders — that the forum released on the eve of the gathering. A World Economic Forum chief economists’ report released this week suggested that growth forecasts for the Middle East had “slightly weakened” amid uncertainties about the war between Israel and Hamas. It did not mention Ukraine.In private conversations around Davos this week, corporate leaders acknowledged the wars in Gaza and Ukraine as one of many concerns. But they grew much more animated about other topics that they said they expected to affect their businesses in the near term — potentially enormously, for good or ill.A.I. topped that list. In interviews, executives expounded, usually with significant enthusiasm, on the benefits and drawbacks of the technology. They also talked politics, exhaustively. Over dinner, they and other attendees debated whether former President Donald J. Trump would win back the White House in November — and how his populist, protectionist policy could roil markets and upend their business models.Some executives explicitly ranked Gaza and Ukraine lower than the American elections on their list of geopolitical concerns. Many attendees lamented that there was not more energy behind war discussions, or recognition of the risks the wars pose to the economy and global security. Last year, concerns about Ukraine shared the spotlight at the gathering, along with a surge of A.I. interest.This year, “everyone is focusing on other subjects,” Pascal Cagni, France’s ambassador for international exports, said in an interview. Economically and politically, he added, Ukraine is “a critical issue.”There were a few exceptions. Supporters of Ukraine opened their own storefront space on the main promenade and staged several events each day to draw attention to the conflict. The technology company Palantir and its chief executive, Alex Karp, hosted Ms. Goldberg and other parents of hostages for events and interviews.Waiting for the arrival of Mr. Zelensky at the Ukraine House in Davos on Tuesday.Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA, via ShutterstockSeveral governments sent leaders to Davos in an attempt to quietly advance back-channel diplomacy in Ukraine or Gaza. That was true of the Biden administration, which sent Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the White House’s national security adviser, to Davos for a flurry of meetings centered on Gaza.In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Goldberg said she was grateful for all efforts to bring her son and the other hostages home. She wore “103” taped to her sweater, which represented the number of days since her son had been taken.In Davos, Ms. Goldberg was sharing a house with other parents of hostages. “I walked out this morning and here, you know, you have these, like, gorgeous views and beautiful mountains,” she said. She said she had turned to another mother and said: “It’s so beautiful. It’s perverse.”But, she added a moment later: “I’m very grateful that I’m here. Because I am having access to people that I would never have access to. And the goal is to save Hersh’s life, and everyone who is there, their lives. I can only do that if we have access to people who have power. And that’s people who are here.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      Neo-Nazis in the US no longer see backing Ukraine as a worthy cause

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      Two years into the war in Ukraine, once a destination for American extremists, many within the underground far-right movement in the US are avidly disavowing it and advising followers to stay away. Extremists now see the upcoming election year as tailor-made for activism on the home front.At the outset of the war, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an intelligence bulletin that far-right American extremists were heading to the conflict and could use it to hone terrorist skills to bring back stateside.After an open call for international volunteers, the Ukrainian military attracted nearly 20,000 fighters from around the world. Within weeks, there were already so-called American “Boogaloo Bois” flying out.In a November 2023 audio message on Telegram, the ex-Marine Christopher Pohlhaus – the leader of neo-Nazi network the Blood Tribe known for its racist and homophobic protests across the US – recently told followers he was not allowing his “guys” to join in the conflict.“I will still continue to support the struggle of the people there,” said Pohlhaus before explaining how a disagreement with his personal ally and Russian militia leader fighting for Ukraine, Denis Nikitin (whom Pohlhaus infamously pledged allegiance to over the summer), caused the group to cut ties.“I’m not going to allow our guys, my guys’ efforts and blood to go towards [the war],” he said.According to him, though several of his members had been “super stoked and preparing to go to Ukraine”, they would pivot all of their money and resources to focusing on domestic activism, particularly their hate rallies, seeing no benefit to fighting in the war. In the same message, Pohlhaus, who confirmed the recording to the Guardian via text message, acknowledged that he was one of the last public-facing neo-Nazi leaders in the US to support the war in Ukraine.For its part, the DHS did not respond to multiple emails from the Guardian on whether it was continuing to track rightwing extremists traveling to Ukraine.Whether or not Pohlhaus was serious about the war is another question. Some within the broader US neo-Nazi movement have used the war in Ukraine as a sort of live-action role-playing scheme to build their militant credibility, even if tales of their exploits aren’t true. Kent McLellan, a Floridian who worked with Pohlhaus and is known by the alias “Boneface”, was outed for lying about his Ukraine war bonafides over the summer.For its part, the Kremlin has been a relentless recruiter of neo-Nazis to its cause; the co-founder of the mercenary Wagner Group, Dmitry Utkin, not only named his organization after the Third Reich’s favorite composer but had the logo for the Waffen-SS tattooed on both sides of his neck.The war is also at a crisis point for Ukraine as the mainstream Republican party blocks aid to Kyiv in Congress over demands to first reinforce the southern border with Mexico and make draconian changes to the US’s asylum system.Within the wider web of neo-Nazi militancy, Ukraine chatter has all but evaporated with the conflict in Gaza and domestic issues outshining what was once a well-followed world event. Seeing no value in sending men to gain combat experience on the frontline, with too high a risk of death or arrest upon return, US rightwing extremists see Ukraine as a conflict with little upside.In September, a prominent far-right publication, linked to the disbanded American neo-Nazi terror group Atomwaffen Division, boldly declared that the war not only “doesn’t matter anymore to us”, but it would “like to refocus” on American issues.“Posting about a war half a world away while we have more pressing matters at home is frankly just not in our interests.”It’s a sentiment that recalls statements from the Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy – who have all characterized the war as a faraway problem.But only five years ago, Ukraine was seen as a fertile training ground for far-right extremists.Rinaldo Nazzaro, the Russia-based former Pentagon contractor turned founder of international neo-Nazi organization the Base, told his group in a secret meeting that he saw the war as an opportunity for a potential training pipeline. And one former member of the Base, Ryan Burchfield (a Marine Corps dropout), made the trip to Ukraine in 2019 looking to join an ultranationalist militia. Not long after his arrival, Ukrainian intelligence deported Burchfield and another American for terrorist activities.In texts to the Guardian, Nazzaro explained his view of the conflict.“I think our guys can find adequate training elsewhere without risking their lives in Ukraine,” he said, adding that the war wasn’t being led by forces that had “our best interests in mind”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJoshua Fisher-Birch, an analyst of the extreme right for the Counter Extremism Project, has kept tabs on rightwing extremists and their fascination with Ukraine.“Chatter among the American online extreme right regarding travel to Ukraine to fight against the Russian invasion has decreased in the last year,” he said, pointing out that in some cases talk about venturing to the war was “either never serious” or a blatant “attempt to raise money through crowdfunding, or was abandoned due to the brutal reality of the conflict or no longer seeing a goal for the American movement”.The threat of law enforcement has also acted as a major deterrent to rightwing extremists trying to join the Ukrainian war effort.“It’s also highly likely that efforts from both the US and Ukrainian governments made travel for these individuals more difficult,” he said.For European neo-Nazis, on the other hand, the conflict is on their doorstep. Unchecked Russian imperialism is still regarded as very much a close proximity threat by nationalist movements all over the continent. They see Americans and English speakers within their movement as ignorant to the reality of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.“We do our best to be understanding of the fact that in the Anglosphere there is a different kind of echo chamber where mostly Kremlin propaganda dominates and that you have probably never even heard the truth,” said one prominent European neo-Nazi account on Telegram in March last year, already noticing the slide away from the conflict among English speakers.“With that said, there is still a limit to how much ignorance we can tolerate,” the post continues. “Note that a lot of our guys have been on the frontlines themselves, and everybody here at least knows somebody who has.”European right nationalists from Scandinavia, Poland, Belarus and Russia, among other places, have served on the frontlines. But for many American extremists, the actual prospect of joining the conflict carries practical and logistical difficulties as well as involving a large degree of risk to life and limb.“We mistake fascination with the conflict or for certain units among the far right online with their actual presence in Ukraine fighting,” said Kacper Rekawek, a senior research fellow and programme lead at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism and an expert on foreign fighters in Ukraine.Rekawek said one of the major inhibitors for Americans joining the war, versus Europeans, is distance and language.“It’s far,” he said, “it’s in a very unknown language and it’s cold out there … It’s lonely out there.” More

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      Russia arrests US man on drug trafficking charges

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      A US national has been arrested on drug trafficking charges in Russia, the latter nation said on Tuesday, bringing the number of Americans detained by authorities in Moscow to at least three as tensions rise over the Ukraine war.Robert Romanov Woodland, 32, was arrested on 5 January, Reuters reported, citing the Russian news website Mash, which said Woodland faced a 20-year prison sentence if convicted.A district court in the northern Moscow suburb of Ostankino ruled on Saturday to keep Woodland in custody until 5 March on charges of attempted large-scale production and sale of illegal drugs.No other details were immediately available. Neither the US state department nor US the embassy in Moscow has commented, and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, did not address it at a press conference later on Tuesday in Tel Aviv.Russian media said that the name of the accused matches that of a US citizen interviewed by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020, who said he was born in the Perm region of Russia’s Ural mountains in 1991 and adopted by an American couple at the age of two.The man said he later traveled to Russia to find his birth mother, and after locating her he decided to stay in the town of Dolgoprudny, 15 miles north of central Moscow. He said he worked as an English teacher at a local school.Woodland’s arrest comes as relations between the US and Russia grow increasingly strained as the war in Ukraine continues. Efforts by the Biden administration to secure the release of two other Americans jailed in Russia – the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and the former marine Paul Whelan – were rejected last month, and Woodland’s detention will fuel analysts’ fears that they are being held as bargaining chips.Russia freed the American basketball star Brittney Griner, who spent almost 10 months in jail on drug charges, in December 2022 in exchange for the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, the so-called “Merchant of Death” who was held in a US prison for 12 years.At the time, Joe Biden expressed regret the deal did not include Whelan, 53, a corporate security executive from Michigan who was jailed in 2018 on espionage charges his family and US officials say are false.“While we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up,” the president said, although in an interview last month Whelan, who is serving a 16-year sentence, said he felt “abandoned and betrayed” by the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRussia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said last month his government had talked with the US over the two detainees and hoped to “find a solution”.Gershkovich, 32, is the first American journalist to be held in Russia on spying charges since the end of the cold war. He was arrested in the Urals city of Ekaterinburg on a reporting trip in March 2023 and has been held behind bars since. Like Woodland, he faces a 20-year prison term if convicted.No trial date has been set, and the US government has declared him to be wrongfully detained.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      in Elections

      ¿Qué le espera a la economía global en 2024?

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      Con dos guerras persistentes y la incertidumbre de 50 elecciones nacionales, la inestabilidad financiera podría agravarse en todo el mundo.Los ataques al tráfico marítimo indispensable en los estrechos del mar Rojo por parte de una decidida banda de militantes en Yemen —una repercusión de la guerra entre Israel y Hamás en la franja de Gaza— le está inyectando otra dosis de inestabilidad a una economía mundial que está batallando con las tensiones geopolíticas en aumento.El riesgo de escalada del conflicto en Medio Oriente es la última de una serie de crisis impredecibles, como la pandemia del COVID-19 y la guerra en Ucrania, que han ocasionado profundas heridas a la economía mundial, la han desviado de su curso y le han dejado cicatrices.Por si fuera poco, hay más inestabilidad en el horizonte debido a la oleada de elecciones nacionales cuyas repercusiones podrían ser profundas y prolongadas. Más de dos mil millones de personas en unos 50 países —entre ellos India, Indonesia, México, Sudáfrica, Estados Unidos y los 27 países del Parlamento Europeo— acudirán a las urnas el año entrante. En total, los participantes en la olimpiada electoral de 2024 dan cuenta del 60 por ciento de la producción económica mundial.En las democracias sólidas, los comicios se están llevando a cabo en un momento en que va en aumento la desconfianza en el gobierno, los electores están muy divididos y hay una ansiedad profunda y constante por las perspectivas económicasUn barco cruza el canal de Suez en dirección al mar Rojo. Los ataques en el mar Rojo han hecho subir los fletes y los seguros.Mohamed Hossam/EPA, vía ShutterstockUna valla publicitaria anunciando las elecciones presidenciales en Rusia, que tendrán lugar en marzo.Dmitri Lovetsky/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      With immigration tied to Ukraine, Biden will upset one set of Democrats in 2024

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      Joe Biden has been left with only bad and worse options in his flagging campaign to send more aid to Ukraine amid its war with Russia and has now found that its fate is tied to one of the thorniest issues in US politics: immigration.In addition to the implications for Ukraine’s fate in its fight against invasion, it could be a serious hit for Biden in a crucial election year. Biden’s progressive base is already in uproar over his unwavering support for Israel in its war in Gaza, and if he is forced to adopt a hardline immigration policy, then that faction will probably be even more angered.Yet, despite the White House’s warnings that the US is “out of money and nearly out of time” to assist Kyiv, Congress failed to approve another aid package before the end of the year as Republicans tied approving any deal to immigration policy changes.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, kept the chamber in session for another week to try to reach a deal with Republicans on a supplemental funding bill, but he acknowledged on Tuesday that the negotiations would stretch into 2024.“As negotiators work through remaining issues, it is our hope that their efforts will allow the Senate to take swift action on the national security supplemental early in the new year,” Schumer said in a joint statement with the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.But the negotiations hinge on Republicans’ efforts to substantially overhaul the US immigration system. Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, say they will not approve more funding for Ukraine without significant concessions on border security.Specifically, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has insisted that a supplemental funding bill must reflect the policies outlined in HR2, the Secure the Border Act. That bill, which passed the House with only Republican votes in May, called for severely restricting asylum eligibility, restarting construction of Donald Trump’s border wall and limiting migrants’ parole options.The bill is a non-starter for many Democrats, and Biden has made clear that Republicans should not expect to have all of their demands met.“This has to be a negotiation,” Biden said in a speech earlier this month. “Republicans think they can get everything they want without any bipartisan compromise. That’s not the answer.”But Biden also noted that he was willing and ready to make “significant compromises on the border” to get a funding package through Congress, and his secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has been actively engaged in the Senate negotiations this month.“I support real solutions at the border,” Biden said in his speech. “I’ve made it clear that we need Congress to make changes to fix what is a broken immigration system.”That language has alarmed immigrant rights groups, who fear that the president they helped get elected may choose to “sacrifice vulnerable people” for the sake of continuing aid to Ukraine.“We call on congressional champions to stand up and do the right thing,” Kica Matos, the president of the National Immigration Law Center, said earlier this month. “Senate Democrats must reject these extreme anti-immigrant proposals, and instead work toward sensible solutions that live up to our legal and moral commitments to welcome those seeking safety.”Many Democrats on Capitol Hill are listening to that message. Last week, Senator Alex Padilla, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, and congresswoman Nanette Barragán, the Democratic chair of the Congressional Hispanic caucus, issued a joint statement expressing alarm over Republicans’ proposals.“We are deeply concerned that the President would consider advancing Trump-era immigration policies that Democrats fought so hard against – and that he himself campaigned against – in exchange for aid to our allies that Republicans already support,” the two lawmakers said. “Caving to demands for these permanent damaging policy changes as a ‘price to be paid’ for an unrelated one-time spending package would set a dangerous precedent.”Speaking to the NPR affiliate KQED on Wednesday, Barragán went as far as to suggest she would vote against any supplemental funding bill that reflects Republicans’ immigration agenda.“Will I have to vote against a package that has Ukraine dollars because of these draconian immigration policy changes? Yes,” Barragán said. “But again, this is why we shouldn’t be linking them together. I completely support Ukraine aid.”Meanwhile, Biden is also facing pressure from the more conservative wing of his party to pursue a more severe approach to managing the southern border, as a record-setting number of people attempt to enter the US. Americans are taking note of the situation at the border; a Pew Research Center poll conducted in June found that 47% of Americans consider illegal immigration to be a very big problem in the country, up from 38% last year.“We are facing a turning point in history – a sold-out southern border that is facing an unprecedented number of migrants flowing through every day and two of our most important allies are fighting for their lives to protect their democracies,” Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat, said on Wednesday. “The reality is that we need major, structural reforms to dramatically limit the number of illegal crossings at our southern border and regain operational control.”Whatever strategy Biden chooses to pursue in the immigration negotiations appears destined to alienate at least one wing of his party. It’s shaping up to be a rather dour January for the president. More

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      Senate eyes vote on Ukraine aid and border security as House adjourns – as it happened

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      The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said yesterday that negotiators had made “good progress” in their talks regarding a supplemental funding package aimed at providing aid to Ukraine and reforming immigration policy.“The plan is for the Senate to act as soon as we are ready to move forward on the supplemental,” Schumer said yesterday.“We hope to come to an agreement. But no matter what, members should be aware that we will vote on a supplemental proposal next week.”The timeline will force senators to delay their planned holiday recess, although Schumer did not provide a specific schedule for next week.Even if the Senate can get a funding bill passed, it would still need to pass the House, which adjourned yesterday for its own holiday recess and is not expected to return to session until the new year.Despite the apparent progress in the Senate, the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, has indicated he will not call members back from their recess even if a supplemental funding bill passes the upper chamber.Johnson said yesterday, “While that work should continue, the House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”Here’s what else is happening today:
      Hungary blocked the EU from approving a €50bn aid package to Ukraine. The move came hours after EU leaders agreed to open membership talks with Ukraine.
      Republicans named Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip as their nominee to replace George Santos in the House. The special election has been scheduled for 13 February.
      A federal appeals court will consider a request from Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, to move his case from state to federal court. Meadows has been charged by Fulton county prosecutors over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
      That’s it from me today. Here’s what happened in US politics on this relatively sleepy Friday:
      The Senate is continuing to negotiate over a supplemental funding package to provide aid to Ukraine and money for border security. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, met with senators on Capitol Hill today as the talks continue. However, the House has already adjourned for its holiday recess, so it is unclear how a spending package could pass both chambers of Congress before the end of the year.
      Negotiators are reportedly hoping to reach a deal on the package as early as Sunday, but it will likely take more time to draft text of a bill. That text will then be closely scrutinized by lawmakers of both parties as well as immigrant rights groups.
      The jury in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial resumed its deliberations today, but jurors have not yet reached a decision on what damages the former Trump lawyer should pay to the former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. Freeman and Moss’s lawyer argued that Giuliani substantially damaged their reputations by spreading lies about them related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
      The New York Times reported that the supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to sign off on Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v Wade in 2022. The Times reports: “Justice Alito appeared to have pregamed it among some of the conservative justices, out of view from other colleagues, to safeguard a coalition more fragile than it looked.”
      The blog will be back on Monday for more updates from Washington.Following a 90-minute meeting with the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, this morning, one of the Democratic negotiators in the immigration talks, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, expressed optimism about the direction of the negotiations.“It’s a very aggressive goal to get this on the floor next week, but there’s a lot of good faith in that room,” Murphy said, per Punchbowl News. “There are still disagreements. We continue to work at it.”Meetings are expected to continue this afternoon and into the weekend, as the Senate hopes to hold a vote next week on a supplemental funding package.Congress has taken steps to restrict public access to records related to UFOs, the Guardian’s Richard Liscombe reports:If the truth about UFOs is out there, the American government doesn’t want you to see it yet.Just months after US space agency Nasa appointed a research director of unidentified anomalous phenomena, and promised more transparency about what it knows, the US Congress has acted to throttle the flow of information that ultimately reaches the public.Measures to create a presidential commission to review UFO records, and to order the Department of Defense to declassify certain “records relating to publicly known sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)”, were stripped from the sweeping defense policy bill that passed Congress on Thursday with bipartisan support.What was left were provisions ordering the National Archives to collect reports of “unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin and nonhuman intelligence”, but giving various government departments broad authority to keep the records secret.Read the Guardian’s full report:While many hard-right Republicans remain staunchly opposed to sending more money to Ukraine, one prominent Democrat warned that their rhetoric risked empowering dictators.In response to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Washington earlier this week, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican of Georgia, accused the Ukrainian president of “begging for your money”.“How much money will Washington spend to slaughter an entire generation of young Ukrainian men as Washington fights it’s proxy war with Russia?” Greene said Tuesday. “Shame!”Congressman Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland and the former House majority leader, responded to the comment today, attacking Greene for promoting the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin.“No sweeter Christmas gift to Vladimir Putin than statements like this,” Hoyer said. “Our inaction warms the heart of dictators and despots across the globe.”Joe Biden will “have an LBJ moment” and decide not to run for re-election next year, the leftwing academic and independent presidential candidate Cornel West has predicted.“I’m not even sure whether I’ll be running against Biden,” West told Politico. “Biden – I think he’s going to have an LBJ moment [and] pull back.”West was referring to the moment on 31 March 1968 when Lyndon B Johnson, in office since the assassination of John F Kennedy in November 1963, announced that he would not seek re-election.Already the oldest president ever sworn in, Biden is 81 and would be 86 at the end of a second term. In polling, clear majorities say he is too old.Read the Guardian’s full report:In a moment of levity before the holidays, comedian Conan O’Brien visited the White House press briefing room and chatted with reporters.“They won’t let me take questions,” O’Brien joked. “But, boy, I have the answers to everything.”O’Brien explained that he was visiting the White House because he is a “huge history buff slash nerd” who has toured the building a number of times.Watch the full clip:A Senate deal to overhaul border policies could be unveiled as early as Sunday, sources told Semafor. But it remains unclear how quickly senators can compile the text of a bill, which will be closely scrutinized by immigration groups.One of the chief negotiators, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, told reporters that they were “making progress” in their talks and would hold more meetings this afternoon and over the weekend.The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, has already indicated he wants to hold a vote on a supplemental funding package next week, and he has delayed the chamber’s holiday recess to accommodate a potential vote.Congressman Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland and the former House majority leader, is imploring the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to call the chamber back to session if the Senate passes a supplemental funding package.In a letter sent to Johnson today, Hoyer argued the House must act swiftly if the Senate reaches a deal on Ukraine aid and border policy changes.“As Members return to their districts for the holidays and the people of Ukraine and Israel continue to wait anxiously for supplemental aid, I write to urge you to call the House back within 72 hours of the Senate passing legislation to provide additional assistance to our allies,” Hoyer wrote.“We ought to have secured these vital resources for our allies months ago. There is no cause that demands the attention of this Congress more than the preservation of democracy, freedom, and our national defense.”So far, Johnson has shown little interest in calling members back from their holiday recess, saying yesterday: “The House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”The US supreme court has refused to overturn an Illinois ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, Michael Sainato reports:The court rejected the request, made by a gun shop and a national gun rights group in an appeal of a lower court’s decision not to allow a preliminary injunction to block the law.A previous injunction request was also denied by the supreme court in May 2023. As is customary, the justices did not comment on their denial of the injunction.The latest request came from a firearms retailer owned by Robert Bevis in Naperville and the National Association for Gun Rights.In November 2023, a US appeals court upheld the Illinois assault weapons ban, rejecting appeals that challenged the law by claiming it violated the second amendment of the US constitution.Read the Guardian’s full report:Here’s where the day stands so far:
      The Senate is continuing to negotiate over a supplemental funding package to provide aid to Ukraine and money for border security. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, was spotted on Capitol Hill today as the talks continue. However, the House has already adjourned for its holiday recess, so it is unclear how a spending package could pass both chambers of Congress before the end of the year.
      The jury in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial resumed its deliberations today, as jurors weigh what damages the former Trump lawyer should pay to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. Freeman and Moss’ lawyer argued that Giuliani substantially damaged their reputations by spreading lies about them related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
      The New York Times reported that supreme court Justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to sign off on Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v Wade in 2022. The Times reports: “Justice Alito appeared to have pregamed it among some of the conservative justices, out of view from other colleagues, to safeguard a coalition more fragile than it looked.”
      The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, was seen leaving Capitol Hill after meeting with senators to continue talks over a potential deal on border policy changes.The cabinet secretary did not answer reporters’ questions as he left the Capitol, per Punchbowl News, so it is unclear what (if any) progress was made in the negotiations.The conservative supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to approve without changes a 98-page draft of the opinion that would remove the federal right to abortion that had been guaranteed for nearly 50 years, the New York Times reported.According to the paper, Samuel Alito, the author of the opinion in Dobbs v Jackson, the case that struck down Roe v Wade, from 1973, circulated his draft at 11.16am on 10 February 2022.Citing two people who saw communications between the justices, the Times said: “After a justice shares an opinion inside the court, other members scrutinise it. Those in the majority can request revisions, sometimes as the price of their votes, sweating sentences or even words.“But this time, despite the document’s length, Justice Neil M Gorsuch wrote back just 10 minutes later to say that he would sign on to the opinion and had no changes.”Three other conservatives – Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh – signed on in the following days.Read the Guardian’s full report: More