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      The unprecedented situation at the US-Mexico border – visualized

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      Record levels of migration are straining an immigration system left nearly broken by decades of congressional inaction.Republicans have spent years amplifying scenes of turmoil and tragedy at the southern border, but Democratic leaders are also worried now, particularly big-city mayors and blue state governors who are demanding more federal resources to shelter and feed an influx of migrants.With many voters now saying immigration is a top priority, what exactly is happening at the US border to make so many people concerned?There has been a surge of encounters at the US borderSince the pandemic there has been a spike in global migration, coinciding with Joe Biden’s presidency. Across the globe, people are fleeing war, political insecurity, violence, poverty and natural disasters. Many of those in Latin America, in particular, travel to the US in search of safety.View image in fullscreenIn the last three years, the number of people attempting to cross the US’s southern border into the country has risen to unprecedented levels.In the month of December 2023 alone, border patrol agents recorded 302,000 encounters (these include apprehensions and immediate expulsions), a new high. The monthly average from 2013 to 2019 was 39,000.Arrivals are coming from more countriesThe collapse of Venezuela, political instability in Haiti, violence in Ecuador, a crackdown in Nicaragua, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, repression in China and other conflicts have fueled a historic shift in migration patterns.Mexico was the single most common origin country for US border encounters in 2023, but Mexican nationals made up less than 30% of the total share, compared with more than 60% a decade ago.Their journey is more perilousNearly 9,000 people attempting to reach the US from the south have been recorded missing or dead in the Americas in the past 10 years, according to the Missing Migrants Project.Some never make it through the notorious Darién Gap at the southern end of Central America, where a US deal with Panama and Colombia to stop migrants in their tracks has caused an outcry.The vast majority of recorded fatalities (5,145), however, occur at the US-Mexico border crossing, according to the project’s data.Many of the deaths occurred in southern Arizona when people attempted to cross open desert, miles from any roads.Fatalities are also concentrated along the treacherous stretch of south-western Texas where the Rio Grande river becomes the borderline. Further inland, hundreds of deaths have been recorded in the sparse, humid scrubland around Falfurrias.View image in fullscreenTheir cases languish in courtsThe border rules are complicated: some people apprehended at the border will face expedited deportation, but others will enter formal deportation proceedings and qualify for temporary release into the US, with a date to appear before a judge.Resolving those immigration cases and asylum claims can take years. The backlog of immigration cases has grown steadily – there were an astounding 3.3m cases pending as of December 2023, but just 682 immigration judges. That means the average caseload is more than 4,500 per judge.In the meantime …People arriving often find themselves in unofficial camps all along the US border. Some are waiting to cross, others have been met by US border patrol, yet others have been turned away. Some border states such as Texas have put tens of thousands of people awaiting their asylum claims on buses and sent them to other states, including California and New York, without their knowledge or permission.As for Congress, it continues to argue over clamping down on unlawful border crossings and alleviating the deepening humanitarian crisis – an increasingly irreconcilable divide between those who want to expand the immigration system and those who want to restrict it.View image in fullscreen More

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      Biden blames Trump for imminent death of immigration bill – as it happened

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      In his speech at the White House, Joe Biden accused Republicans of caving to Donald Trump’s wishes and opposing a bill to tighten immigration policy that the party had demanded.“All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor,” the president said.“Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump.”He continued:
      Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically, therefore … even if it helps the country, he’s not for it. He’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it. So for the last 24 hours, he’s done nothing, I’m told, than reach out to Republicans in the House and the Senate and threaten them and try to intimidate them to vote against this proposal. It looks like they’re caving. Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right.
      Donald Trump’s strategy to get out of the charges brought against him for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election suffered a blow when a federal appeals court turned down his argument that he is immune from prosecution because he was acting in his capacity as president. Trump’s campaign vowed to appeal the three-judge panel’s unanimous decision. Meanwhile, the bipartisan bill to approve military aid to Israel and Ukraine and also impose hardline immigration policies is on the verge of death. Republicans in the House and Senate are assailing the legislation, even though the party demanded it as their price to approve the military aid. In a speech at the White House, Joe Biden accused the GOP of “caving” to Trump, and vowed to campaign on the bill’s failure.Here’s what else happened:
      Republicans senators are reportedly interested in approving aid to Israel and Ukraine without changing immigration policy. Democrats tried to do that months ago, but were blocked by the GOP.
      House Republicans may not have enough support to impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. A vote on the charges is expected later this afternoon.
      Trump’s allies in Congress are not pleased by the appeals court’s ruling against him.
      The judges who rejected Trump’s immunity claim said the former president was arguing to make it impossible to hold presidents to account.
      Will Trump and Biden debate? It’s not looking likely right now.
      The House has kicked off debate over impeaching homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, beginning with a procedural vote that succeeded:However, it remains unclear if the GOP has enough support to succeed in formally leveling charges against Mayorkas for his handling of the surge in migrants crossing the southern border during Joe Biden’s presidency. Two Republicans say they won’t vote for the articles, while others are reportedly on the fence, saying impeaching a cabinet secretary, which is already an exceedingly rare step, for policy issues rather than breaking the law is inappropriate.Speaker Mike Johnson has vowed that the chamber will vote on the articles later today. If they pass, they’ll go to the Senate, whose Democratic leaders are certain to reject them.With the immigration deal all but dead, the question becomes: can Congress pass aid to Ukraine and Israel?We may find out the answer to the latter question sometime this afternoon, when the House takes a vote on a standalone bill to fund Israel’s counterattack against Hamas. The legislation will need a two-thirds majority to pass, and seems unlikely to achieve that – Democrats are furious at the GOP for killing the immigration policy compromise, and their leader Hakeem Jeffries, whip Katherine Clark and caucus chair Pete Aguilar earlier today announced they’d vote against the Israel aid bill. Here’s what they said:
      We are prepared to support any serious, bipartisan effort in connection with the special relationship between the United States and Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the standalone legislation introduced by House Republicans over the weekend, at the eleventh hour without notice or consultation, is not being offered in good faith. Rather, it is a nakedly obvious and cynical attempt by MAGA extremists to undermine the possibility of a comprehensive, bipartisan funding package that addresses America’s national security challenges in the Middle East, Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific region and throughout the world.
      And even if it were to pass, the White House says Joe Biden would veto it.As for Ukraine, funds for its defense against Russia face an even steeper hill to climb. Goaded on by Donald Trump, an increasing number of Republican lawmakers, particularly in the House, oppose assistance to Kyiv. However, Bloomberg News reports some Republicans senators are open to the idea – which is what Democrats called for months ago:
      Hawkish Republicans on Tuesday began discussing moving ahead on a Ukraine aid package without the border restrictions. Pairing the two had once been considered a way to sweeten the deal for House conservatives but has since proven divisive.
      Texas Republican John Cornyn, who has pushed for new border restrictions but opposes the latest deal, said he’d support moving forward with funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and that such a bill would pass the Senate.
      South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent Republican hawk, said he would vote for an aid package without US border provisions.
      “If we fail on the border, we put our country at risk. There is no use letting the world fall apart,” he said.
      The Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell told reporters this afternoon that he believes the immigration policy bill will fail to advance in tomorrow’s vote:McConnell had endorsed the legislation after its release this evening, but acknowledged his lawmakers won’t get behind it.Will Donald Trump, should he win the Republican presidential nomination, debate Joe Biden? The Guardian’s Jessica Glenza reports that the chances are not looking great:Joe Biden has dismissed calls from his White House predecessor Donald Trump to “immediately” schedule a presidential debate.Trump skipped every debate this primary season. He continues to refuse to debate his former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, a long-shot contender for the GOP’s nomination.“Well, if I were him, I’d want to debate me, too,” Biden told reporters when asked about Trump’s challenge while the president was at a small Las Vegas boba tea shop during a campaign stop. With a bubble tea in hand, Biden added: “He’s got nothing else to do.”Although the primary season is not yet over, both Biden and Trump are considered their parties’ presumptive nominees and have a clear desire to turn their attention to the general election.Biden, who is technically also still in the primary season, has also refused to debate several distant rivals for the Democratic nomination.Trump made his debate challenge on The Dan Bongino Show, NBC reported. Bongino is a conservative talkshow host who for years has boosted Trump as well as Republican conspiracy theories – all widely discredited – that the 2020 election was “rigged”.Also happening today is Nevada’s presidential primary, though its outcome is not expected to be a surprise, and its significance is not particularly big, as the Guardian’s Maanvi Singh reports:The first presidential primary election contest in the western US is underway in Nevada.Although Nevada has backed Democrats in every presidential election since 2008, it recently elected a Republican governor and remains a key swing state where slight changes in turnout could flip outcomes.After Joe Biden secured a victory in South Carolina’s Democratic primary over the weekend, he’s looking to build on his momentum in Nevada. More than 151,000 voters submitted early ballots, ahead of election day on Tuesday.Both Democrats and Republicans are holding presidential primaries on Tuesday, but the Republican competition will hold little meaning. The state’s GOP, which is led by a recently indicted fake Trump elector, will be allocating its delegates based on a separate caucus it is holding on Thursday, in which Donald Trump is the only major contender. Nikki Haley, who is running in the Republican primary but not in the caucus, is expected to grab a symbolic victory in the primaries, which her party is begrudgingly holding to comply with a state mandate.The two-track nomination scheme has been widely criticised as a confusing and cynical scheme to benefit the former president.Donald Trump’s strategy to get out of the charges brought against him for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election was dealt a blow when a federal appeals court turned down his argument that he is immune from prosecution because he was acting in his capacity as president. Trump’s campaign vowed to appeal the three-judge panel’s unanimous decision. Meanwhile, the bipartisan bill to approve military aid to Israel and Ukraine and also impose hardline immigration policies is on the verge of death. Republicans in the House and Senate are assailing the legislation, even though the party demanded it as their price to approve the military aid. In a speech at the White House, Joe Biden accused the GOP of “caving” to Trump, and vowed to campaign on the bill’s failure.Here’s what else is going on:
      House Republicans may not have the votes to impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. A vote on the charges is expected later this afternoon.
      Trump’s allies in Congress are not pleased by the appeals court’s ruling against him.
      The judges who rejected Trump’s immunity claim said the former president was essentially arguing to make it impossible to hold presidents to account.
      Joe Biden closed his speech by again making his point that Republicans are undermining border security simply to benefit Donald Trump.“I understand the former president is desperately trying to stop this bill, because he’s not interested in solving the border problem. He wants a political issue to run against me on. They’ve all but said that, across the board, no one really denies that, that I’m aware of,” Biden said.He then vowed to turn the immigration bill’s fate into a campaign issue:
      I’m calling on Congress to pass this bill, get it to my desk immediately. But if the bill fails, I want to be absolutely clear about something: the American people are going to know why it fails.
      I’ll be taking this issue to the country. And the voters are going to know that it’s just at the moment we’re going to secure the border and fund these other programs, Trump and the Maga Republicans said no. Because they’re afraid of Donald Trump. Afraid of Donald Trump.
      Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his Maga Republican friends. It’s time for Republicans in the Congress to show a little courage, to show a little spine, to make it clear to the American people that you work for them, not for anyone else.
      Republicans demanded passage of immigration policy reforms in exchange for their votes to fund Ukraine’s military. But now the GOP is rejecting the immigration bill and there’s no apparent path for another round of funding for Kyiv, even amid reports that its military is rationing ammunition it needs to defend against Russia’s invasion.“If we don’t stop Putin’s appetite for power and control in Ukraine, he won’t limit himself to just Ukraine, and the costs for America and our allies and partners will rise,” Joe Biden warned in his speech.“For those Republicans in Congress who think they can oppose funding for Ukraine and not be held accountable: history is watching. History is watching. A failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.”After going through the immigration bill’s provisions, Joe Biden noted that he still wants to pursue historic Democratic priorities such as resolving the status of undocumented migrants already living in the United States, and people brought to the country as children.“Now, it doesn’t address everything that I want. For example, we still need a path of documentation for those who are already here. And we’re not walking away from true immigration reform, including permanent protections and a pathway to citizenship for young Dreamers who came here when they were children and who have been good citizens that contribute so much to our country,” the president said. “But the reforms of this bill are essential for making our border more orderly, more humane and more secure.”Most of the immigration bill’s provisions are hardline reforms demanded by Republicans, which have attracted opposition from immigrant rights groups. Nonetheless, the GOP has largely rejected the legislation.In his speech at the White House, Joe Biden accused Republicans of caving to Donald Trump’s wishes and opposing a bill to tighten immigration policy that the party had demanded.“All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor,” the president said.“Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump.”He continued:
      Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically, therefore … even if it helps the country, he’s not for it. He’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it. So for the last 24 hours, he’s done nothing, I’m told, than reach out to Republicans in the House and the Senate and threaten them and try to intimidate them to vote against this proposal. It looks like they’re caving. Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right.
      Joe Biden is expected to at any moment speak from the White House about the Senate’s bipartisan proposal to approve military aid to Ukraine and Israel while also enacting hardline immigration policies Republicans have demanded.All signs point to the president giving the bill its eulogy. The GOP is in open revolt against the legislation, and CNN reports that John Thune, the second-highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, expects it to be voted down on Wednesday:In an interview with MSNBC, Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator who was his party’s lead negotiator on the bill, seemed resigned to the bill’s imminent death:Elise Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair who is widely viewed as a contender to be Donald Trump’s running mate, echoed his campaign’s talking points as she condemned the failure of his immunity claim.“The precedent set today by the DC Circuit’s decision means that future presidents who leave office will likely face politicized prosecutions by the opposing party,” Stefanik said in a statement.“The President of the United States must have immunity, like Members of Congress and federal judges, which is necessary for any presidency to function properly. I fully support President Trump’s efforts to appeal this unconstitutional ruling to the Supreme Court, where I expect a thoughtful decision to overturn this dangerous precedent.”Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump’s allies in Congress are attacking the unanimous appeals court decision denying him immunity from the federal charges brought against him for trying to overturn the 2020 election.Here’s Jim Jordan, the House judiciary committee chair and one of Trump’s best-known defenders:Without commenting on the decision, House speaker Mike Johnson condemned the prosecution as “lawfare”:As we await Joe Biden’s speech on the immigration and foreign aid bill, here’s the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell with a rundown of what we know about the appeals court’s decision in the foreign aid case, and how it may affect the start of his trial on election subversion charges:A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune from criminal prosecution on charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election results because it involved actions he took while president, declining to endorse such an expansive interpretation of executive power.The decision by a three-judge panel at the US court of appeals for the DC circuit took particular issue with Trump’s position that he could only be prosecuted if he had been convicted in a Senate impeachment trial first.“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a president has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power,” the unsigned but unanimous opinion from the three-judge panel said.“At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three branches,” the opinion said. “We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”The defeat for Trump technically returns the case and jurisdiction to the trial court. But the adverse ruling paves the way for Trump to seek further appeals that could delay for weeks or months the start of the 4 March trial date set by US district judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington. More

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      House to vote on impeaching Biden’s homeland security secretary

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      House Republicans cleared the way on Tuesday for a vote to impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, as Democrats denounced the move as a purely partisan exercise meant to boost the electoral prospects of Donald Trump.The historic vote, scheduled for early evening, would mark the first time since 1876 that the House has impeached a cabinet official, but with hours to go before a scheduled evening vote its prospects were unclear. But Democrats have retorted that Republicans were abusing the impeachment process to attack one of Joe Biden’s cabinet members during a crucial election year, in which immigration may play a key role.With Republicans in control of the House by a whisker-thin margin, and Democrats uniformly opposed, they can afford only a few defections. Two Republicans have already announced their opposition and a handful more appeared undecided as the House proceeded to debate the charges against Mayorkas.Congressman Ken Buck, a Republican of Colorado who declared himself solidly opposed to the impeachment effort, said the accusations leveled against Mayorkas amounted to a “policy difference”, not an impeachable offense.“If we start going down this path of impeachment with a cabinet official, we are opening a door as Republicans that we don’t want to open,” Buck said on MSNBC shortly before the afternoon vote.Republicans are seeking to impeach Mayorkas on charges that he willfully refused to enforce immigration law and breached the public trust, overriding the objections of legal experts, including some prominent conservatives, who say they have failed to produce compelling evidence that the cabinet secretary had committed high crimes and misdemeanors.“I respect everybody’s view on it,” House speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “I understand the heavy weight that impeachment is.”He described impeachment as an “extreme measure”, but said that “extreme times call for extreme measures.”During the floor debate on Tuesday, Republicans leveled broad accusations that Mayorkas had mismanaged oversight of the US-Mexico border, where arrests for illegal crossings have reached record highs.“The constituents I represent do not understand why Texas has had to endure basically an invasion during the tenure of the secretary of Homeland Security,” Congressman Michael Burgess, Republican of Texas, said in floor remarks ahead of the procedural vote. “What are we left to do?”A Harvard-Harris survey conducted this month showed that immigration is now an important concern for voters, with 35% of respondents citing the issue as their top priority. But Democrats say that the Republican impeachment effort is a political stunt rather than meaningful reform.“Do we have a problem at the border? Absolutely,” said Democratic congressman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. But, he said: “It’s clear that this is not about Secretary Mayorkas or a high crime and misdemeanor. It is about a policy disagreement with President Biden.”Trump has made the “crisis” at the border a focus of his presidential campaign and celebrated Republicans for impeaching Mayorkas on very shaky grounds.Meanwhile, Republicans barreled toward a vote as a border deal recently brokered by the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of senators appeared to be on the brink of collapse. After months of painstaking negotiations, Senate Republicans appear ready to oppose the agreement, all but ensuring it will fall short of the 60 votes needed to pass legislation in the chamber.In the event it does pass the Senate, Johnson has described it as an inadequate response to the situation at the border and has declared the deal will be “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber.House Republicans’ opposition to the bipartisan proposal and their support of Mayorkas’s impeachment sparked accusations of hypocrisy among Democrats, who argued their colleagues were uninterested in substantive changes to immigration policy even as they expressed outrage over the situation at the border.The impeachment of Mayorkas has attracted notable criticism from conservatives, including in an op-ed by the Wall Street Journal editorial board that was frequently cited by Democrats on Tuesday.“As much as we share the frustration with the Biden border mess, impeaching Mr Mayorkas won’t change enforcement policy and is a bad precedent that will open the gates to more cabinet impeachments by both parties,” the board wrote in an editorial published on Tuesday. “Grandstanding is easier than governing, and Republicans have to decide whether to accomplish anything other than impeaching Democrats.” More

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      ‘Show a little courage’: Biden attacks Republicans for ‘caving’ to Trump on US-Mexico border security bill

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      Joe Biden urged Congress to pass the bipartisan border bill in a pointed speech on Tuesday, accusing Republicans of “caving” in to Donald Trump’s demands to block the legislation from advancing.“All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically,” Biden said at the White House. “He’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it.”With an eye toward the presidential race, Trump has attacked the bipartisan deal on Truth Social as “nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border, just in time for our most important EVER Election”.As of Tuesday afternoon, it appeared that more than 20 Republican senators were prepared to oppose the border bill, raising serious doubts about its passage.In his speech, Biden pledged he would make sure that Republicans received the blame if the bill does not pass, indicating he would spotlight the issue on the campaign trail.“The American people are going to know why it failed. I’ll be taking this issue to the country,” Biden said. “Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his Maga [‘Make America Great Again’] Republican friends. It’s time for Republicans in the Congress to show a little courage, to show a little spine, to make it clear to the American people that you work for them – not for anyone else.”Biden’s remarks came one day before the Senate is expected to hold a procedural vote on advancing the border bill, which will require 60 “yes” votes to receive approval. But even the bill’s greatest proponents have expressed doubts that it can advance.“I would anticipate Wednesday, the cloture vote does not pass,” Senator James Lankford, a Republican of Oklahoma who helped broker the deal, told reporters after a conference meeting on Monday. “People are saying, ‘Hey, I need a lot more time to be able to go through this.’”A number of senators have already indicated they will not support the bill. Hard-right Republicans argue that it does not go far enough to address the situation at the US-Mexican border, where arrests for illegal crossings have hit record highs.“The border deal is even worse than we thought,” Senator Mike Lee, a Republican of Utah, said on Sunday. “No one who cares about our border security should support it. It is a betrayal of the American people.”But progressive Democrats insist the bill, which has been described as the most severe set of changes to border policy in decades, is far too restrictive. Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat of California and chair of the Senate judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, said on Monday that the bill amounted to “dismantling our asylum system while ultimately failing to alleviate the challenges at our border”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe $118bn bill would grant the president a new power to shut down the border when daily crossings pass a certain limit while also expediting the asylum review process, which could lead to a quicker deportation for many migrants. The bill would also provide $60bn in military assistance for Ukraine, $14bn in security assistance for Israel, and $10bn in humanitarian assistance for civilians affected by war in Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank.Supporters of the bill have framed the legislation as vital for those US allies abroad, warning colleagues that inaction could trigger disastrous consequences around the world.“If we fail the Ukrainian people, then Vladimir Putin will likely succeed in his invasion of Ukraine. Putin will be emboldened, and western democracy will face the greatest threat it has seen in decades,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York, said on Monday.But that argument has failed to sway the bill’s Republican critics, many of whom already oppose sending more money to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana, is moving forward on Tuesday with a planned vote on a standalone bill to provide aid to Israel, but Biden has already threatened to veto that proposal.“It’s time to stop playing games with the world waiting and watching. And by the way, the world is waiting. The world is watching,” Biden said on Tuesday. “They are waiting to watch what we’re going to do. We cannot we can’t continue to let petty partisan politics get in the way of responsibility. More

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      Joe Biden blames Trump for expected blocking of immigration bill – video

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      President Joe Biden accused Republicans of giving in to Trump’s ‘threats’ and opposing a bill to tighten immigration policy, which the party had demanded. The $118bn package would pair federal enforcement policy on the US-Mexico border with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and others, overhauling the asylum system with tougher enforcement and giving presidents new powers to expel migrants if border authorities deem themselves overwhelmed by the number of people requesting asylum. In his speech at the White House, Biden said the bill would help the country, but because it would not aid Trump’s bid for presidency, it wold not make it to the Senate floor to be debated More

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      Biden would veto standalone Israel aid bill backed by GOP, says White House

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      Joe Biden’s administration said on Monday he would veto a standalone bill backed by House of Representatives Republicans that would provide aid to Israel, as it backs a broader bill providing assistance to Ukraine and Israel and providing new funds for border security.“The Administration strongly encourages both chambers of the Congress to reject this political ploy and instead quickly send the bipartisan Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act to the President’s desk,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.Officials from the Democratic president’s administration have been working for months with Senate Democrats and Republicans on a $118bn legislation package revealed on Sunday combining billions of dollars in emergency aid for Ukraine, Israel and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, with an overhaul of US immigration policy.The bill includes $60bn in aid to Ukraine, $14.1bn for Israel in its war in Gaza, and about $20bn for new enforcement efforts along the US-Mexico border.Republican House leaders said days before its release on Sunday night that they would reject the bipartisan Senate bill, and instead vote on a bill providing aid only to Israel.The bill represented a rightward tilt in Senate negotiations over border measures, yet the backlash was intense from conservatives. They savaged the border policy proposal as insufficient, with Donald Trump leading the charge.“This is a gift to the Democrats. And this sort of is a shifting of the worst border in history onto the shoulders of Republicans,” the former president and likely Republican presidential nominee said Monday on The Dan Bongino Show. “That’s really what they want. They want this for the presidential election so they can now blame the Republicans for the worst border in history.”Many Senate Republicans – even those who have expressed support for Ukraine aid and the contours of the border policy changes – raised doubts Monday they would support the package. A private Republican meeting was scheduled in the evening to discuss it.Still, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer moved toward a key test vote on Wednesday.“The actions here in the next few days are an inflection point in history,” the New York Democrat said in a floor speech Monday afternoon. “The security of our nation and of the world hangs in the balance.”Schumer worked closely with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on the border security package after the Kentucky Republican had insisted on the pairing as a way to win support for Ukraine aid. The Democratic leader urged his colleagues across the aisle to “tune out the political noise” and vote yes.“For years, years our Republican colleagues have demanded we fix the border. And all along they said it should be done through legislation. Only recently did they change that when it looks like we might actually produce legislation,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBoth Schumer and McConnell have emphasized for months the urgency of approving tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine’s fight, saying that the US’s ability to buttress democracies around the world was at stake. Yet with the funding stuck in Congress, the defense department has halted shipments of ammunition and missiles to Kyiv.The Republican-majority House passed an Israel-only bill in November, but it was never taken up in the Democratic-led Senate, as members worked on Biden’s request for Congress to approve the broader emergency security package.The statement from House speaker Mike Johnson and representatives Steve Scalise, Tom Emmer and Elise Stefanik pointed to a provision in the bill that would grant work authorizations to people who qualify to enter the asylum system. They also argued that it would endorse a “catch and release” policy by placing people who enter the asylum system in a monitoring program while they await the final decision on their asylum claim.Under the proposal, people who seek asylum, which provides protection for people facing persecution in their home countries, would face a tougher and faster process to having their claim evaluated. The standard in initial interviews would be raised, and many would receive those interviews within days of arriving at the border.Final decisions on their asylum claims would happen within months, rather than the often years-long wait that happens now.But the House Republican leaders said: “Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time.”Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Republican congressmen are now talking about throwing migrants from helicopters | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      Three years ago, the Intercept published an illuminating article about the rise of the “Hoppean snake” among far-right extremists, a meme which the Intercept labelled especially “disturbing for its frightening historical reference”. For the uninitiated, the Hoppean Snake in its various forms usually depicts a serpent wearing the military hat of the American-backed Chilean dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet in the foreground while figures are dropping out of helicopters to their death in the background.The meme specifically refers to Pinochet’s known strategy of kidnapping, torturing, killing, and – here’s the point – throwing his political opponents out of helicopters and into the ocean to dispose of them. The Intercept noted that many groups and individuals on the far right, such as the “Boogaloo Bois, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, armed Trumpists, and the like wear T-shirts that offer ‘free helicopter rides’.” and when they do so, “they are referencing a program of extermination.”It’s alarming to see such rhetoric from the far-right fringes; imagine seeing this kind of political violence being advocated by a sitting politician or someone seeking the highest office in the land.Well, you don’t have to imagine it any more. Last week, the Republican congressman Mike Collins of Georgia did just that. On Twitter/X,, Collins commented on a widely circulated picture of Jhoan Boada, a man who was recently arrested for allegedly assaulting two police officers in New York City outside a migrant shelter.Boada was one of seven men arrested, and multiple reports refer to him as a “migrant”. After leaving court, Boada was photographed raising his two middle fingers to reporters as he walked away. The picture prompted Republican congressman Anthony D’Esposito of New York to offer the racist riposte: “We feel the same way about you. Holla at the cartels and have them escort you back.”Collins then joined in. “Or we could buy him a ticket on Pinochet Air for a free helicopter ride back,” he wrote.As HuffPost’s Christopher Mathias, who covers the far right, put it on X: “So we have a congressman joking or not joking about extrajudicially executing a migrant arrested for a crime (allegedly assaulting a cop) that tons of non-migrant citizens get arrested for too.” Mathias also notes that the “free helicopter ride” meme has been popular with white supremacists and neo-fascists for about the last seven years.That such rhetoric is dangerous to human life and damaging to our political culture is hardly difficult to fathom. Collins was even briefly suspended from X for violating its rules against violent speech, which considering the bevy of white supremacists and neofascists on that site is quite an accomplishment. (“Never delete. Never surrender,” he posted, after his account was reinstated.) But Collins was hardly the only American political figure recently promoting political assassination.Lawyers for Donald Trump told a federal appeals court last month that a president would basically be immune from prosecution if the president ordered “Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival”, as a judge asked. Trump’s legal team argued that the president “would have to be impeached and convicted” before any prosecution could proceed. The New York Times called the argument “jaw-dropping”. The New Yorker wrote that we should all be worried, not because of Trump but because of how unsettled the law actually is.Rightwing disdain for everyone but themselves fuels this authoritarian thinking, and it is readily found in the writing of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the German American academic to whom the Hoppean snake refers. (When contacted by the Intercept in 2021 about the meme, Hoppe said: “What do I know? There are lots of crazy people out there!”) In his 2001 book Democracy: The God That Failed, the libertarian Hoppe writes that: “there can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society.”Expulsion is also necessary, Hoppe argues, for “the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism”.Meanwhile, far-right groups assembled this past weekend in a convoy for a “Take Back Our Border” rally in Eagle Pass, Texas. Near this border town is the standoff between the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and the federal government, after Abbott installed razor wire along the border and denied federal border patrol agents access to the area. Three people, a woman and two children, drowned after the razor wire was installed, and the supreme court ruled recently that the federal government could remove the razor wire. After the ruling was issued, Representative Mike Collins introduced legislation banning the government from removing the wire.Appearing at the “Take Back Our Border” rally was the rightwing journalist Michael Yon, who offered a tirade about how the US border has become insecure because of the funders of immigration to the United States. Among his targets was HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which he described as “Jewish, right?” He continued: “This is quite interesting because [HIAS] are actually funding the people who are going to come to places like Fort Lauderdale, synagogues, and they’re going to scream ‘Allahu Akbar’ and they’re going to shoot the shit out of them. Right? And they’re coming across the border, and it’s being funded with Jewish money.”In reality, HIAS’s work aiding immigrant Muslims and Latinos so terrified the white supremacist Robert Bowers that he – not a Muslim yelling Allahu Akbar – subsequently shot and killed 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the deadliest attack on Jewish people in US history. But why let facts get in the way of a good racist screed?Jews, Muslims, immigrants – everything is a threat. Violence is the solution. Opponents should be assassinated. Fascists are role models. Welcome to the Republican party in the year 2024.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      US Senate releases draft bill to toughen border measures while securing aid to Ukraine and Israel

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      US senators on Sunday evening released the details of a highly anticipated $118bn package that pairs federal enforcement policy on the US-Mexico border with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and others, launching a long-shot effort to push the bill past sceptical, hard right House Republicans – whom Democrats accuse of politicizing immigration while being in thrall to Donald Trump.The proposal is the best chance for Joe Biden to bolster dwindling US wartime aid for Ukraine – a major foreign policy goal that is shared by both the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, and top Republican, Mitch McConnell. The Senate was expected this week to hold a key test vote on the legislation, but it faces a wall of opposition from conservatives.Joe Biden urged the US Congress to pass the legislation, for the sake of immigration reform and aid for US allies.The bill “includes the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades,” he said in a statement issued by the White House.He added: “Now, House Republicans have to decide. Do they want to solve the problem? Or do they want to keep playing politics with the border? I’ve made my decision. I’m ready to solve the problem.”Crucially, with Congress stalled on approving $60bn in Ukraine aid, the US has halted shipments of ammunition and missiles to Kyiv, leaving Ukrainian soldiers outgunned as they try to come out on top of a grinding stalemate with Russian troops.“The United States and our allies are facing multiple, complex and, in places, coordinated challenges from adversaries who seek to disrupt democracy and expand authoritarian influence around the globe,” Schumer said in a statement.In a bid to overcome opposition from House Republicans, McConnell had insisted last year that border policy changes be included in the national security funding package.The bill would overhaul the asylum system at the border with faster and tougher enforcement, as well as give presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities deemed themselves overwhelmed with the number of undocumented people requesting asylum at the international boundary.The tough new measures discussed among select senators for months include a new federal requirement to “shut down” the US-Mexico border if more than 5,000 undocumented people cross into the US daily and plans to swiftly throw out economic migrants.Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who broke from the Democratic party in 2022 to become an independent, told CBS’s Face the Nation earlier on Sunday some of what she and other Senate negotiators have been working on.When the number of migrants crossing without an appointment with the US authorities approaches 4,000 people a day, the US government would be granted the power to voluntarily turn away all people presenting at border stations, to give time for the asylum application processing to catch up, she said.At other times, migrants would be taken into short-term detention as their claims for asylum were rapidly assessed. Anyone failing to meet the standards for a claim would be “swiftly returned to their home country”, Sinema said.“We believe that by quickly implementing this system, individuals who come for economic reasons will learn very quickly that this is not a path to enter our country and will not take the sometimes dangerous or treacherous trek to our border,” she told the Sunday morning TV show.Alongside the faster deportation provisions, the draft bill would also speed up the time needed to process successful asylum applications. “Folks who do qualify for asylum will be on a rapid path, six months or less, to start a new life in America,” Sinema said.The draft Senate bill meets several of the demands that have been raised by Republicans who have accused the Biden administration of failing to secure the US border. In particular, it proposes an end to the system of allowing people to remain in the US while their asylum applications are processed – a procedure Republicans dismissively call “catch and release”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs many as 10,000 migrants a day have been encountered crossing the US-Mexico border without necessary immigration papers or an appointment with the US authorities.But the Senate bill is likely to be blocked by Republican leaders in the US House who are following Donald Trump’s lead and opposing the deal. The former president, who is running for re-election, has made it clear that he does not want to see Biden presented with a legislative win on the border crisis.Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has said the Senate bill would be “dead on arrival” were it to reach his chamber. On Saturday he also made a pre-emptive move that could further imperil the chances of the Senate bill ever becoming law by announcing that he would bring to a vote on the House floor a separate $17.6bn military aid package for Israel.Johnson was asked by NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday whether his aid for Israel plan was a ruse to kill the Senate compromise deal on the border. He was also asked whether he was merely doing Trump’s bidding, with Trump “calling the shots”.“Of course not,” the speaker said. “He’s not calling the shots, I am calling the shots for the House – that’s our responsibility.”Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House, derided House Republicans, in interview on the ABC US network’s This Week Sunday show, as “wholly owned subsidiaries of Donald Trump”.With the numbers of migrants turning up at the border remaining high, and with the presidential election year getting under way, immigration is set to continue to cause ructions on both sides of the political aisle.On Sunday Nikki Haley, Trump’s only remaining rival in the race to secure the Republican nomination, accused Trump in a CNN interview of “playing politics” with the border with his attempt to scupper the Senate deal.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More