Closing summary
Weeks after announcing periodic closures of the border with Mexico to stop new asylum seekers from entering the United States, Joe Biden today debuted a policy that will allow undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to apply for permanent residency. The president’s Republican foes pounced on the rule, with Donald Trump saying it amounts to “mass amnesty” for undocumented people, and congressional Republicans vowing investigations. Speaking of Congress, Senate Democrats are expected to later today attempt to pass legislation that will ban “bump stocks”, the device that allows firearms to fire rapidly, which the supreme court decided can remain on the market last week. Republicans are expected to block the measure.
Here’s what else happened today:
Biden argued it was possible to both secure the border and promote immigration in a speech at the White House.
Matt Gaetz, a rightwing Republican congressman perhaps best known for leading the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, is under ethics committee investigation for alleged drug use and sexual misconduct.
Trump’s plans to address immigration involve mass deportations that strain the limits of the US law.
Henry Cuellar, the Democratic congressman who has been indicted on bribery charges, cheered Biden’s new rules for undocumented spouses and children.
New York’s state supreme court declined to hear Trump’s appeal of the gag order imposed by the judge in his business fraud case, which saw him convicted of 34 felonies.
As he concluded his speech, Joe Biden said he believe it is possible to simultaneously secure the border and allow immigrants to flourish in the United States.
“The Statue of Liberty is not some relic of American history. It still stands for who we are. But I also refuse to believe that for us to continue to be America that embraces immigration, we have to give up securing our border. They’re false choices. We can both secure the border and provide legal pathways to citizenship. We have to acknowledge that the patience of goodwill the American people is being tested by their fears at the border. They don’t understand a lot of it,” Biden said.
He then laid into Donald Trump for some of his recent rhetoric against immigrants:
These are the fears my predecessor is trying to play on when he says immigrants, in his words, are poisoning the blood of the country. When he calls immigrants, in his words, animals.
When he was president, he separated families and children at the border, and now he’s proposing to rip spouses and children from their families and homes and communities and place them in detention camps. He’s actually saying these things. It’s hard to believe it’s being said, but he’s actually saying these things out loud, and it’s outrageous.
Biden calls new policy a 'common-sense fix' for mixed-status families
Joe Biden said he intended to address the plight of families with mixed immigration statuses with his new order allowing undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to receive permanent residency.
Under the current procedure, undocumented people have to leave the country to apply for visas, with no guarantee they’ll get back in, Biden said.
“So, they stay in America, but in the shadows, living in constant fear of deportation without the ability to legally work all this, even though, under the law today, they’re eligible for long term legal status,” Biden said.
He continued:
Today, I’m announcing a common-sense fix to streamline the process for obtaining legal status for immigrants married to American citizens who live here and lived here for a long time.
For those wives or husbands and their children who have lived in America for a decade or more but are undocumented, this action will allow them to file a paperwork for legal status in the United States, allow them to work while they remain with their families in the United States.
Let’s be clear, this action still requires undocumented spouses to file all required legal paperwork to remain the United States, requires them to pass a criminal background check, and it doesn’t apply to anyone trying to come here today.
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Joe Biden is now at the podium, and recounted his recent actions on immigration, while taking a shot at Donald Trump.
The president talked about his new policies to temporarily shut the border to asylum seekers, while saying Trump scuttled immigration reform legislation in Congress “for pathetic and petty reasons”.
“Since we implemented my order, encounters have dropped 25% at the border, and we’re seeing the lowest number we’ve seen a long time,” Biden said.
He then acknowledged that “many people in this room also had concerns about the steps I’d taken,” but said he had no choice:
As President, I had to take these actions. Every nation must secure his borders, just that simple. And if Trump and the Republicans wouldn’t do it, working with me, then I would do it on my own, and I did at the time. I took these steps to secure the border.
Up next was Javier Quiroz Castro, a Daca recipient who said his wife and children are US citizens.
Such mixed-status families are in exactly the sort of situation Joe Biden’s new policy is intended to address.
“His actions today will prevent hundreds of thousands of families like mine across America from being torn apart, allowing us to continue to contribute to our communities and build a brighter, bigger future for our children,” Castro said.
The White House celebration of Daca’s 12 anniversary has begun.
Jill Biden is at the podium, with her husband standing beside her.
“Who knows the possibility of a dream better than those who traveled miles just to find it?” Biden said.
“I’ve seen it over and over again in my community, college students, immigrants and refugees, first-generation Americans who take nothing for granted. They show up, they don’t complain, and they only ask for one thing in return, the chance to work hard and build a good life for themselves and for their families. That’s the promise of America.”
Donald Trump has railed against the gag order imposed on him in New York, where a jury last month convicted him on 34 felony business fraud charges. But as the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports, he is not having much luck getting it withdrawn:
Donald Trump has lost one of two legal efforts to terminate a gag order imposed on the former president during his “hush-money” trial in New York on accounting fraud charges.
On Tuesday, New York’s state supreme court said it declined to hear Trump’s appeal against the gag order in the case involving Stormy Daniels that led to his conviction on 34 felonies, asserting that “no substantial constitutional question is directly involved”.
Trump’s lawyers had argued that the case presents “substantial constitutional questions of the highest importance”, in part because it includes no post-decision termination date.
“This gag order restricts President Trump’s core political speech on matters of central importance at the height of his presidential campaign … and thus it violates the fundamental right of every American voter to hear from … [a] candidate for president on matters of enormous public importance,” his attorneys wrote.
Biden to celebrate 12th anniversary of Daca amid immigration turmoil
We’re a few minutes away from the scheduled start time of a White House event where Joe Biden will celebrate the 12th anniversary of Daca, the program created by Barack Obama that allows undocumented people brought to the country as children to work and study in the United States.
That program, conceived by the Obama administration in response to the deadlock in Congress over immigration reform that persists to this day, has served 800,000 people since its implementation, but also faced legal challenges. Last month, the Biden administration allowed its participants to buy health insurance on the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act:
Republican House speaker Johnson says he expects courts to block Biden immigration order
Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, is no fan of Joe Biden’s new order allowing undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to apply for permanent residency.
“Just two weeks ago, the President pretended to crack down on the open-border catastrophe by engaging an election-year border charade. Now he’s trying to play both sides and is granting amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens,” Johnson said in a statement.
Here’s more:
The President may think our homeland security is some kind of game that he can try to use for political points, but Americans know this amnesty plan will only incentivize more illegal immigration and endanger Americans.
This is proof-positive of the Democrats’ plan to turn illegal aliens into voters. I fully expect this order, which is manifestly contrary to the Immigration and Naturalization Act, to be challenged and struck down in the courts.
A proposal from California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom to change the US constitution to fight gun violence has not gotten far. The Guardian’s Abené Clayton explains the reasons why:
As US courts roll back gun safety legislation and states expand gun rights, Gavin Newsom is pursuing an unprecedented long-shot effort to curb gun violence: a new constitutional amendment.
The deeply entrenched national gun culture and political divisions in the US has been a roadblock to establishing federal and state policies that would address the epidemic of gun violence in the US, which left nearly 43,000 people dead in 2023.
One way around this perennial stalemate is to pass an amendment. Last year, the California governor announced his plan to pass a 28th amendment aimed at enshrining safety measures that are supported by most Americans but haven’t been enacted by Congress and some Republican-led states.
The proposed amendment includes raising the federal age to buy a gun from 18 to 21, banning so-called assault weapons and mandating universal background checks and a waiting period between the purchase of a gun and its delivery.
A sharp and personal disagreement has broken out between two senators over “bump stocks” and whether they should be banned, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:
Political ripples from the supreme court’s decision to overturn a Trump White House-era ban on sales of “bump stocks” – a spring-loaded stock that uses recoil to in effect turn a semi-automatic firearm into a machine gun – continued to radiate on Monday when Jacky Rosen took exception to comments on the issue made by his Republican colleague JD Vance.
Vance, the Ohio senator and potential vice-presidential pick as Trump seeks a second presidency in November had dismissed efforts by senior Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, to pass legislation banning the devices as “a huge distraction”.
Vance went further. “What is the real gun violence problem in this country, and are we legislating in a way that solves fake problems? Or solves real problems?” Vance said, before adding: “My very strong suspicion is that the Schumer legislation is aimed at a PR problem, not something that’s going to meaningfully reduce gun violence in this country.”
Rosen, the Democratic senator, hit back, facing re-election this year in politically purple Nevada, the site of the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting that killed 58 and prompted Trump to ban the rapid-fire device.
“This is not a fake problem,” she told reporters. “Let him come to Las Vegas. Let him see the memorial for those people who died. Let him talk to those families. It’s not a fake problem. Those families are dead.”
The day so far
Weeks after announcing periodic closures of the border with Mexico to stop new asylum seekers from entering the United States, Joe Biden today announced a policy that will allow undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to apply for permanent residency. The president’s Republican foes pounced on the new policy, with Donald Trump saying that it amounts to “mass amnesty” for undocumented people, and congressional Republicans vowing investigations. Speaking of Congress, Senate Democrats are expected to later today attempt to pass legislation that will ban “bump stocks”, the device that allows firearms to fire rapidly, which the supreme court decided can remain on the market last week. Republicans are expected to block the measure.
Here’s what else is going on:
Matt Gaetz, a rightwing Republican congressman perhaps best known for leading the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, is under ethics committee investigation for alleged drug use and sexual misconduct.
Trump’s plans to address immigration involve mass deportations that strain the limits of the US law.
Henry Cuellar, the Democratic congressman who has been indicted on bribery charges, cheered Biden’s new rules for undocumented spouses and children.
Schumer says Senate Democrats will make likely quixotic attempt to pass 'bump stock' ban today
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats will attempt to pass a ban on “bump stock” firearm modifications today, but acknowledged the GOP is likely to block the measure.
The supreme court’s conservative majority last week overturned a ban on the devices implemented by the Trump administration following a mass shooting in Las Vegas that was the deadliest in American history. In remarks on the Senate floor, Schumer characterized the new attempt to keep the modifications off the market as a matter of saving lives.
“What today’s bill does is return things to the status quo set by Donald Trump, saying bump stocks are dangerous and should be prohibited. Senate Republicans by and large supported Donald Trump’s ban on bump stocks back then, so they should support this bill today,” Schumer said.
He continued:
But sadly, some of our colleagues on the other side are making it clear they will ignore the immense worry most Americans have about gun violence and they will block today’s bill. Some on the other side say this bill is political theatre, that is does nothing, that it’s a stunt. Go tell families who lost loved ones that this is a stunt. Go tell the many who have recovered from injuries that this is a stunt.
Are my Republican colleagues serious? Do they really think banning bump stocks is some kind of stunt? Again, they should tell that to the people of Nevada who have dead relatives because of bump stocks.
Updated
Congressional Republicans slam Biden over residency for some undocumented spouses and children of US citizens
Republicans in the House and Senate are in uproar over Joe Biden’s newly announced policy that will allow US citizens’ undocumented spouses and children who have resided in the country for more than a decade to apply for residency.
Missouri senator Josh Hawley vowed to investigate the policy, if the GOP regains control of the Senate following the November elections. The party is seen as having a good chance of doing so, since Democrats are defending two seats in red states and several others in swing states.
“In the months to come, with Congress and the presidency in better hands, we will investigate these lawless plans for amnesty, your ongoing abuse of parole authority, and your dereliction of duty,” Hawley wrote in a letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who carries out Biden’s immigration policies.
Kevin Hern, who chairs the Republican Study Committee, a large and influential group focused on pursuing conservative policies in the House, said Biden’s new rule gave him “whiplash”.
“Just a few weeks ago, he signed an order pretending to shut down the border, but now he’s incentivizing illegal immigration by granting parole. It’s incoherent policymaking – who is he trying to appease?” the Oklahoma lawmaker said.
“These intentionally deceptive executive orders are doing nothing to stop the invasion at our border or the flow of deadly fentanyl into our communities. I’m sick of the failed leadership of the Biden administration.”
Updated
While Joe Biden has tightened access to asylum while simultaneously allowing some long-term undocumented people to apply for residency in the United States, Donald Trump is campaigning on an entirely punitive crackdown on migrants, which may stretch the bounds of legality, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports:
Donald Trump is planning to unleash the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history should he win re-election in November, involving legally questionable deployments of military and police units and the creation of vast detention camps along the southern border.
Trump has laid out his vision for a “record-setting deportation operation” in a series of rally speeches, newspaper articles and social media posts. He intends to move swiftly after inauguration day next January to stage mass roundups of immigrants across the country, conducting raids inside big cities where he would face certain Democratic opposition.
“On day one, we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Freeland, Michigan, on Wednesday. He told his adoring supporters that immigrants were coming in by the millions from foreign prisons and “insane asylums” leading to the “plunder, rape, slaughter and destruction of the American suburbs, cities and towns”.
Immigration experts say that the deportation plans for a Trump White House 2.0 dwarf anything previously seen – both in scale and in the intensity of the former president’s determination to run roughshod over legal guardrails. He attempted workplace raids during his 2016 presidential term, but they were largely stymied in the courts.
“This time we need to take Trump at his word,” said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “When he talks about mass deportation – in boxcars, or bus loads, or planes, or whatever – that’s what he’s going to do.”
Trump campaign accuses Biden of offering 'mass amnesty' to undocumented
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has slammed Joe Biden’s new program that will allow some undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to apply for residency.
“Biden only cares about one thing – power – and that’s why he is giving mass amnesty and citizenship to hundreds of thousands of illegals who he knows will ultimately vote for him and the Open Border Democrat Party,” the Trump campaign’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“Biden’s mass amnesty plan will undoubtedly lead to a greater surge in migrant crime, cost taxpayers millions of dollars they cannot afford, overwhelm public services, and steal Social Security and Medicare benefits from American seniors to fund benefits for illegals – draining the programs Americans paid into their entire working lives. Biden has created another invitation for illegal immigration through his mass amnesty order.”
As is often the case with Trump and his surrogates, Leavitt includes a number of falsehoods in her statement. Biden’s new policy does not grant anyone citizenship, but rather permanent residency – which does not come with the right to vote. It also only applies to people who have been in the country for 10 or more years, meaning new undocumented arrivals face a lengthy wait before they could access it. There is also no evidence that undocumented migrants commit crimes at higher rates than people with legal status.
Democratic senator Dick Durbin cheered Joe Biden’s new policy allowing some undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to remain in the country.
“Allowing those who have lived here at least 10 years a chance to continue living here without fear of deportation is fair and long overdue. The Republican party and its chosen leader see immigration in terms of fear and hate and ‘poisoning the blood’ of America. President Biden understands that, as challenging as it may be, immigration is at the heart of who we are as Americans. I commend President Biden for today’s announcement. It’s the right thing,” the Illinois lawmaker said.
Durbin is a longtime advocate for Dreamers, as undocumented people brought to the United States as children are known. The Daca program currently allows that group to study and work in the United States, and they are also covered by the new Biden administration policy.
Updated
House ethics committee says rightwing lawmaker Gaetz remains under investigation for alleged drug use, sexual misconduct
The House ethics committee has given an update into its investigation of Matt Gaetz, a rightwing Republican lawmaker from Florida who has been the subject of a long-running inquiry into his behavior.
The committee said they were continuing their investigation of Gaetz over whether he “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct”.
However, they were no longer looking into allegations that Gaetz “may have shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe or improper gratuity”.
The justice department had looked into sex-trafficking allegations against Gaetz, but later closed the investigation without filing charges, clearing the way for the ethics committee’s inquiry to restart. Gaetz was a leader of the eight Republicans who banded together to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House last year, which McCarthy later claimed was done to stymie the ethics committee’s investigation:
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Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar, who represents a Texas district along the US border with Mexico, cheered Joe Biden’s new policy allowing undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to apply for residency.
“I applaud the administration for working to protect Dreamers and noncitizen spouses and children of US citizens. These executive actions will help keep American families united and strengthen our economy,” Cuellar said in a statement. Dreamers refers to undocumented people who were brought into the country as children.
“This decision is a step forward for the thousands of Dreamers and noncitizen spouses and children of US citizens in Texas. While it does not address wider immigration challenges, it promotes decisive action for immigration reform. We need a bipartisan comprehensive immigration approach to solve the challenges at our border and ensure that Dreamers and noncitizen spouses of US citizens have a place in the nation that they love.”
Cuellar was recently indicted on charges related to taking bribes from foreign business interests, but remains in Congress as the legal process plays out:
Updated
Joe Biden’s move to protect some undocumented spouses and children of US citizens from deportation comes weeks after he announced measures intended to curb the flow of asylum seekers into the country. That policy split Democrats, with some saying it was a necessary response to the surge in border crossers seen since he took office, and others calling it a draconian response to a global humanitarian crisis. Over the weekend, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino took a closer look at the divide:
Democratic mayors, governors and members of Congress from the south-west to the north-east stood beside Joe Biden at the White House, when he unveiled an executive order temporarily sealing the US-Mexico border to most asylum seekers – the most restrictive immigration policy of his presidency.
“We must face a simple truth,” the US president said. “To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now.”
Those around him agreed, applauding the directive as a welcome, if belated, step. Yet for many Democrats not in attendance, the moment marked an astonishing retreat from just four years ago, when the president campaigned on dismantling the incendiary immigration policies of Donald Trump.
Most Democrats accept that Biden had to do something to address an issue that has become one of his biggest political vulnerabilities. But the party, once united in furious opposition to Trump’s asylum clampdown, now finds itself divided over his course of action, split on both the substance of the policy and the wisdom of its politics.
Here’s more about the Biden administration’s new policy allowing undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to obtain residency, from the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino:
Joe Biden was set to announce a new action opening a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented spouses and children of US citizens, a sweeping initiative that could provide relief to hundreds of thousands of “mixed-status” families in the country, according to senior administration officials.
Biden is expected to announce the new actions at a White House event marking the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or Daca, which presently shields from deportation nearly 530,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children.
“These eligible non-citizens who have lived here for 10 years or more have deep family and community ties in the United States,” a senior administration official told reporters, previewing the plan. “Many of these families include US citizen children, yet they live in fear and face deep uncertainty about their future.”
Under the policy, undocumented immigrants who have resided in the US for 10 or more years, as of 17 June, and are legally married to a US citizen will be newly eligible to pursue legal status while living and working in the US.
Biden campaign contrasts new rules on undocumented spouses, children with Trump policies
In a statement, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez contrasted the president’s new rule allowing undocumented spouses and children to stay in the country with the hardline immigration policies Donald Trump implemented as president, and has vowed to bring back if returned to the White House.
“Families belong together – it’s that simple. It’s why President Biden’s actions today are so important, and it’s also a powerful stark reminder of Donald Trump’s unforgivable legacy of ripping crying children away from their parents when he put in place his family separation policy,” Chavez Rodriguez said.
Here’s more:
In fact, the somber reality is that if Trump gets the chance, he will go even further: reimplementing family separation, using the National Guard to round up and deport immigrants, and standing up massive detention camps. Not because it will fix our immigration system, but because Trump thinks it’s good politics to pick on vulnerable immigrants.
Joe Biden will not let that happen.
Biden moves to protect undocumented spouses, children from deportation in latest immigration push
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Weeks after implementing new rules to limit the flow of asylum seekers across the southern border, Joe Biden today is set to announce a policy that will allow some undocumented spouses and children of US citizens to reside permanently in the country. The president’s move comes as polls show immigration is one of the top issues on voters’ minds ahead of the November election, and after he faced a backlash to the tighter asylum rules from advocates who argued they were no different from the hardline policies implemented under Donald Trump.
Biden’s re-election campaign argues the new rules are a marked contrast from the hardline policies Trump championed as president, when his administration separated migrant families at the US-Mexico border. “Joe Biden Is Fighting To Keep Families Together. Donald Trump Tears Families Apart,” read a press release from the campaign sent to reporters this morning. Biden is set to discuss immigration at a White House event scheduled for 2.45pm ET that will celebrate the 12th anniversary of Daca, a program that shields undocumented people brought to the US as children from deportation.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Senate Democrats will attempt to pass legislation to ban “bump stocks”, the firearm modification that allows rapid fire, and which the supreme court’s conservatives allowed to remain on the market last week. The GOP is expected to block the measure.
Trump will hold a rally at 4pm in Racine, Wisconsin, a state he probably must win to capture the White House in November.
Oklahoma and Virginia are holding primaries today. In the latter state, rightwing congressman Bob Good is fighting for his seat against John McGuire, a challenger who received Trump’s endorsement in retaliation for Good backing Ron DeSantis in the GOP’s presidential primary.
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