Closing summary
The Biden administration is bracing for the end of the pandemic-era Title 42 and a potential surge of migrants at the southern border. Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas held a press conference where he warned people against trying to cross into the US, while fending off criticism from both the right and left over how the White House has prepared for this moment.
Here’s what else happened today:
A meeting between Joe Biden and the top Republicans and Democrats in Congress aimed at reaching an agreement to raise the debt ceiling was postponed, which could be a good sign for the long-running talks.
E Jean Carroll is considering another lawsuit against Donald Trump over comments he made about her at last night’s CNN town hall. You’ll recall that a jury earlier this week found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll, and awarded her $5m. The former president is appealing that verdict.
CNN’s chief executive defended last night’s town hall with Trump in a call with employees.
House Republicans approved a bill to reform the US immigration system in line with conservative priorities. It faces doom in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, condemned Republican senator Tommy Tuberville for remarks that appeared to defend white nationalists in the military.
Debt limit meeting between Biden, top lawmakers postponed
A meeting set for Friday between Joe Biden and the top Democrats and Republicans in Congress intended to find an agreement on raising the debt ceiling has been postponed, Reuters reports.
The two parties have been at odds for months over finding a way to raise the US government’s legal limit on how much debt it can take on, ahead of a 1 June deadline after which America could default on its obligation and potentially spark an economic crisis.
Citing a source familiar with the negotiations, Reuters said the delay in the meeting was a good sign. “Meetings are progressing. Staff is continuing to meet and it wasn’t the right moment to bring it back to principals,” the source said.
A White House spokesperson confirmed the delay, saying, “Staff will continue working and the all the principals agreed to meet early next week.”
Biden had met with congressional leaders, including Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy, earlier this week, but there seemed to be little progress made towards an agreement. McCarthy has demanded spending cuts and the enactment of conservative priorities in exchange for the GOP voting to increase the debt limit, which Biden and the Democrats have rejected.
Trump appeals verdict in Carroll sexual abuse, defamation case
Donald Trump has formally appealed a jury’s finding earlier this week that he is civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation of advice columnist E Jean Carroll, Law & Crime reports:
It's official.
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) May 11, 2023
Trump files a notice of appeal on the verdict in favor of E. Jean Carroll. @LawCrimeNews pic.twitter.com/tiRnC91uEH
The federal jury in New York City ordered him to pay a combined $5m in punitive and compensatory damages, following a trial in which Trump opted not to testify.
In a sign of the complexity of US immigration law, the conservative-dominated supreme court this morning issued an unanimous decision that offers a transgender woman from Guatemala a reprieve from deportation. Here’s more about it, from the Associated Press:
The US supreme court ruled on Thursday in favor of a transgender Guatemalan woman fighting deportation on the grounds that she would face persecution if returned to her native country.
The unanimous decision in favor of Estrella Santos-Zacaria gives her another chance to argue that immigration officials were wrong to reject her bid to remain in the US.
Lawyers for Santos-Zacaria, now in her mid-30s, said she first fled to the US after being raped as a young teenager and threatened with death because of her gender identity in a country that has targeted the LGBTQ+ community.
But a US immigration judge found she did not make a strong enough case that she would face persecution if sent back to Guatemala.
Caroll mulling new defamation lawsuit against Trump over town hall comments
E Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who this week won a $5m civil judgment against Donald Trump for sexually abusing and defaming her, says she may again sue the former president over comments he made at last night’s CNN town hall.
In an interview with the New York Times, Carroll described her shock at reading a transcript of Trump’s comments, which included him calling her a “whack job” and saying the sexual assault she said he committed was “fake”.
Here’s more from the interview:
Ms. Carroll said on Thursday morning that she had been asleep as Mr. Trump talked about her on the town hall program. She said that her lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, had sent her the transcript of his comments, and that she had read only the first paragraph.
“It’s just stupid, it’s just disgusting, vile, foul, it wounds people,” Ms. Carroll said in an interview with The New York Times, adding that she had been “insulted by better people.”
Ms. Carroll said she had been infuriated when her longtime stylist told her that her 15-year-old son was talking about what Mr. Trump had said.
“I am upset on the behalf of young men in America,” Ms. Carroll said. “They cannot listen to this balderdash and this old-timey view of women, which is a cave-man view.”
In addition to the case that ended Tuesday, Ms. Carroll has an earlier defamation suit against Mr. Trump that is still pending. Mr. Trump has argued in that case that he cannot be sued because he made those comments in his official capacity as president.
On Thursday, Ms. Kaplan said no decision had been made on whether a new defamation suit would be filed in light of Mr. Trump’s latest comments.
“Everything’s on the table, obviously, and we have to give serious consideration to it,” Ms. Kaplan said. “We have to weigh the various pros and cons and we’ll come to a decision in the next day or so, probably.”
Updated
CNN is out with a statement about its town hall with Donald Trump, the target of widespread criticism since its staging in Manchester, New Hampshire, last night.
The network defends both its decision to stage the event and the performance of the anchor, Kaitlan Collins, who took the hospital pass that was going one-on-one with Trump in front of a Republican audience:
Kaitlan Collins exemplified what it means to be a world-class journalist.
She asked tough, fair and revealing questions. And she followed up and fact-checked President Trump in real time to arm voters with crucial information about his positions as he enters the 2024 election as the Republican frontrunner.
That is CNN’s role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.
Here’s our report:
The Guardian’s Alexandra Villareal has written about what the end of Title 42 will mean for the US’s commitment to being a land of refuge. Here is the top of her analysis:
The right to seek asylum in the United States is in the balance as migrants fleeing violence and instability at home anxiously await a chance at safety – amid a major policy shift at the US’s southern border.
The Title 42 public health order – which has allowed officials to quickly expel migrants without giving them access to asylum for years now – is expected to finally end on 11 May. What does this mean for the US’s historic commitment as a beacon for freedom from persecution?
As government leaders brace for an anticipated uptick in migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross the border, the hardline policies they’re advancing to keep people out may spell potentially deadly consequences for some of the world’s most vulnerable.
In Congress, an immigration and border security package that backs an enforcement-only approach is expected to receive a vote on the Republican-controlled House floor as soon as this week.
If enacted, the proposed legislation would significantly curtail asylum, limit other humanitarian pathways, restart border wall construction, do away with safeguards for migrant kids and otherwise rewrite the US’s laws to be far less welcoming to those in need of protection.
Updated
With Title 42 set to expire within hours, my colleague Joanna Walters has put together this guide explaining what it is, how it started, why it’s ending and what happens next:
Updated
As Mayorkas mentioned in the White House briefing, there have been large numbers of people gathering at the southern border. Here are some of the pictures sent to us on the newswires:
Updated
Schumer: Tuberville remarks on white nationalists 'revolting'
The Democratic US Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, has condemned as “utterly revolting” remarks in which the Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville appeared to defend white nationalists in the US military.
In an interview with the Alabama station WBHM, published on Monday, Tuberville was asked: “Do you believe they should allow white nationalists in the military?”
He answered: “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.”
The Senate armed forces committee member added: “We are losing in the military so fast. And why? I can tell you why. Because the Democrats are attacking our military, saying we need to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists, people that don’t believe in our agenda, as Joe Biden’s agenda.”
Tuberville is currently attempting to impose his own agenda on the US military, by blocking promotions and appointments in protest of Pentagon rules about abortion access.
On Thursday, Schumer said: “Does Senator Tuberville honestly believe that our military is stronger with white nationalists in its ranks? I cannot believe this needs to be said, but white nationalism has no place in our armed forces and no place in any corner of American society, period, full stop, end of story.”
Previously, Sherrilyn Ifill, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense fund, said: “I hope we are not getting so numb that we refrain from demanding that Mr Tuberville’s colleagues in the Senate condemn his remarks.”
Schumer added: “I urge Senator Tuberville to think about the destructive spectacle he is creating in the Senate. His actions are dangerous.”
Read on …
Updated
The day so far
The Biden administration is bracing for the end of the pandemic-era Title 42 and a potential surge of migrants on the southern border. Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas just concluded a press conference where he warned people against trying to cross into the US, while fending off criticism from both the right and left over how the White House has prepared for this moment.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Debt ceiling negotiators from the White House and Congress’s leaders are back at the Capitol to break the high-stakes deadlock ahead of a 1 June deadline for a potential default.
CNN’s chief executive defended how last night’s town hall with Donald Trump went in a call with employees.
House Republicans are expected to later today approve a bill to reform the US immigration system in line with conservative priorities. It faces doom in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Joe Biden campaigned on undoing Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, but in recent months, the president has announced new rules for migrants that advocacy groups say are strikingly similar to those of his Republican adversary.
Mayorkas was challenged to respond to those claims at the briefing. Here’s what he had to say:
This administration stands markedly different than the prior administration … We have, in fact, a family reunification task force that has now reunified, I think, more than 700 families that were cruelly separated … We have rescinded the public charge rule that punishes individuals who have migrated to the United States just for accessing public resources to which they are entitled. We have granted temporary protected status to quite a number of countries. This president has led the unprecedented expansion of lawful pathways. We stand markedly different than the prior administration. We do not resemble it at all.
He concluded by saying: “We are a nation of immigrants, and we are a nation of laws. And those laws provide that, if one qualifies for humanitarian relief, then one has established the basis to remain in the United States. And if one has not, then one is to be removed. And that is exactly what is going to happen.”
Updated
Since Joe Biden took office, Republicans have repeatedly accused his administration of “opening” the southern border.
Asked about that claim, Mayorkas said that’s not the case.
“We removed, returned and expelled 1.4 million people last year,” he said. “Ask those 1.4 million people if they think the border is open. Our apprehension rate at the border is consistent with the average apprehension rate in prior years.”
Mayorkas warned that “we could see very crowded border patrol facilities” after Title 42’s end, but declined to say how long that situation could last.
“We are working as hard as we can to make sure that that time it takes is as little as possible,” the homeland security secretary said. “This is a challenge, and we’re going to meet this challenge.”
Updated
Republican administrations in states such as Texas have lately taken to bussing recently arrived migrants to Washington DC, with a new group being dropped off outside Kamala Harris’s residence this morning.
Asked about that at the press conference, Mayorkas condemned the practice:
It is a both sad and tragic day when a government official uses migrants as a pawn for political purposes.”
Mayorkas was challenged by a reporter about why the Biden administration didn’t move faster to prepare for Title 42’s end, considering they’ve known it was going to expire for about two years.
Here’s what he had to say:
I have said for months and months that the challenge at the border is, and is going to be, very difficult. And we have spoken repeatedly about the fact that that difficulty may actually only increase at this time of transition. It is going to take a period of time for our approach to actually gain traction and show results. And I’ve been very clear about that … The fundamental reason why we have a challenge at our border, and we’ve had this challenge many a time before, is because we are working within the constraints of … a fundamentally broken immigration system. And we also are operating on resources that are far less than those that we need.”
Mayorkas blames lack of Congressional funding and 'broken, outdated immigration system' for current issues
Mayorkas had some choice words for Congress, which he blamed for not changing immigration law to better react to the latest trends in immigration.
“Our current situation is the outcome of Congress leaving a broken, outdated immigration system in place for over two decades, despite unanimous agreement that we desperately need legislative reform,” Mayorkas said. “It is also the result of Congress’s decision not to provide us with the resources we need and that we requested.”
“We … yet again, call on Congress to pass desperately needed immigration reform,” he concluded.
There are plenty of ideas for immigration reform in Congress – in fact, the House will probably pass a measure to do that later today. What’s lacking is enough common ground between Democrats and Republicans, and even within the parties, to get a bill through Congress.
Updated
Mayorkas says US seeing 'large numbers of encounters' with people at border
As the White House press briefing kicked off, homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned migrants against trying to enter the United States after Title 42 ends at midnight tonight.
“If anyone arrives at our southern border after midnight tonight, they will be presumed ineligible for asylum and subjected to steeper consequences for unlawful entry, including a minimum five-year ban on re-entry and potential criminal prosecution,” Mayorkas said.
“We are clear-eyed about the challenges we are likely to face in the days and weeks ahead, and we are ready to meet them,” he said, noting that immigration authorities expect “to see large numbers of encounters” and “are already seeing high numbers of encounters in certain sectors”.
“I want to be very clear: our borders are not open. People who cross our border unlawfully and without a legal basis to remain will be promptly processed and removed,” Mayorkas said.
Updated
The White House press briefing should be getting under way any minute now.
This blog will follow it live as homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaks. Or, you can watch it as it happens at the livestream above.
Homeland security secretary Mayorkas to take questions ahead of Title 42 end
We’re a few minutes away from the daily White House press briefing, where homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will appear ahead of the midnight expiration of Title 42, the rule put in place under Donald Trump that has allowed US authorities to turn away most asylum seekers over the past three years.
Immigration authorities and some communities at the border are bracing for a potential surge of new migrants once the measure expires, and Mayorkas is likely to use his appearance to warn people against trying to cross into the US illegally, and outline steps Washington will take to stem the flow. He may also be asked about the possibility Republicans will follow through on their threats to impeach him over the situation at the border.
The briefing starts at 1 pm eastern time. After Mayorkas speaks, expect press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to take more questions from the White House press corps.
Debt ceiling negotiations continue at Capitol today
Punchbowl News reports that top Democratic and Republican negotiators will hold talks at the Capitol this afternoon to find an agreement on increasing the debt ceiling:
DEBT LIMIT: Negotiators from the House, Senate and White House will meet today at 12:30 p.m. in the Capitol.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 11, 2023
Earlier this week, the top lawmakers in Congress met with Joe Biden at the White House ahead of the 1 June after which the US government could default on its obligations for the first time in history. There was no indication that progress was made at the meeting, where Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy stuck to his demand that Democrats support spending cuts and the enactment of some conservative priorities in exchange for his party’s vote to increase the limit.
Biden, meanwhile, has refused to negotiate over an increase, saying the GOP should support raising the government’s legal borrowing limit to pay for spending already approved under previous administrations.
This afternoon’s debt limit talks will likely be held behind closed doors, but we’ll be keeping a lookout in case any details trickle out.
CNN taking heat for Donald Trump town hall event
CNN has taken a lot of heat for how last night’s town hall with Donald Trump went, with some Democrats and commentators questioning whether the network should have held the event at all.
Brian Stelter, a longtime media watcher who until recently hosted a show for the network, reported on this morning’s editorial call with CNN staffers and its CEO Chris Licht, who addressed some employees’ concerns about how the event was conducted:
Chris Licht begins CNN's 9am editorial call by praising @kaitlancollins for a "masterful performance last night." He says "I couldn't be more proud of her" and the whole team in NH. Then he says he's aware of the backlash... More to come
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 11, 2023
"You do not have to like the former president's answers, but you can't say that we didn't get them," Licht tells staffers, many of whom are angry about the town hall. "Kaitlan pressed him again and again and made news. Made a LOT of news." And "that is our job."
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 11, 2023
The town hall’s host Kaitlan Collins did indeed try to get Trump to specify his position on certain issues, with only some success. The former president refused to answer whether he would sign a national abortion ban, and said he would accept the 2024 election only with caveats. That’s not necessarily Collins’s fault – you can’t force someone to say something they don’t want to – but it was one of the more criticized aspects of the town hall.
Another controversial feature of the event was the behavior of the audience, which was composed of Republican voters, some of whom supported Trump, and others who were undecided. They clapped and cheered throughout the town hall, including as Trump told lies and hurled insults at his opponents. Here’s what Licht had to say about that dynamic:
"While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story," Licht adds, because those folks represent "a large swath of America," and the media screwed up by missing that part of the story in 2015/16.
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 11, 2023
Updated
Donald Trump’s performance at last night’s town hall was panned by some of his fellow Republicans.
Politico reports that John Thune, who is the second-in-command among Senate Republicans, implied Democratic candidates were the winners of the night:
Thune, number two Senate Republican, on Trump's town hall: "Looked like a lot of Democrat campaign ads being written last night."
— Anthony Adragna (@AnthonyAdragna) May 11, 2023
CNN, meanwhile, found other Republicans senators who were uneasy about some of Trump’s comments, particularly his ambivalence towards supporting Ukraine and continued downplaying of the January 6 insurrection:
GOP Sen. Todd Young told me he worries about Trump’s judgment after his comments last night not calling Putin a “war criminal” and not taking sides on Ukraine v. Russia. “That's why I don't intend to support him for the Republican nomination.” pic.twitter.com/amDvfyRa6c
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 11, 2023
For those who missed it, the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt watched CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump last night, which, he reports, was about what you would expect:
It began and ended in a way that absolutely everyone could have predicted.
Appearing at a CNN town hall, Donald Trump immediately launched into a series of debunked, nonsense claims about election fraud, speaking nearly nonstop for more than five minutes.
Trump steamrolled over attempted interruptions from Kaitlan Collins, the CNN interviewer, as the town hall immediately turned into what many had feared: an opportunity for Trump to lie about dozens of topics, almost completely unfettered, across 60 minutes of prime-time television.
From 8pm to just after 9pm, there was never a moment when CNN or Collins had any semblance of control. Trump lied about election fraud and about the January 6 insurrection. He obfuscated on trade tariffs and the aims of abortion advocates, and claimed, wrongly, that he had “finished” the wall.
Whatever happens when Title 42 ends, the GOP is looking to make the most of it.
Today, the party will use its control of the House of Representatives to hold a vote on the Secure the Border Act, which would restart construction of the border wall Donald Trump tried to build, pay for more border patrol agents and reform the asylum system. Democrats, who have dubbed the legislation the “Child Deportation Act” are telling their lawmakers to vote against it. While it appears likely to pass the House, there’s little reason to believe it will make it through the Senate, which Democrats control.
Blaming Joe Biden for undocumented migration has become a cornerstone of the Republican platform since he took office, and polls indicate it’s not a bad strategy. On Wednesday, a Reuters/Ipsos survey showed a mere 26% of respondents approving of how the president has handled immigration.
On the senate floor today, the chamber’s top Republican Mitch McConnell again took the administration to task over the issue:
Now, as the Democrats finally give up the COVID state of emergency, Title 42 is finally going away. That wouldn’t pose a crisis for an Administration that was willing to get tough on its own and enforce existing immigration law. But Democrats don’t seem willing to do that. Just the opposite. President Biden’s team have designed a bizarre Rube Goldberg system that amounts to a special concierge service to help even more illegal immigrants come here even more easily.”
Here’s the latest from Reuters on how Washington is preparing for the end of Title 42, and the new rules it has put in place to discourage migrants from crossing the border illegally after it ends:
The US will lift Covid-19 border restrictions known as Title 42 on Thursday night, a major shift that has drawn tens of thousands of migrants to the US-Mexico border, straining local communities and intensifying political divisions.
The number of migrants caught crossing illegally has climbed in recent weeks, with daily apprehensions surpassing 10,000 on Monday and Tuesday. US border cities have struggled to shelter migrants and provide transportation to onward destinations.
The Biden administration is surging personnel and funds to the border while implementing a new regulation that will deny asylum to most migrants who cross illegally. The new measure will take effect when Title 42 ends along with the broad Covid public health emergency.
Last year, the Guardian’s Nina Lakhani took a close look at what exactly Title 42 meant for migrants who made it to the US southern border. With the policy ending in hours, it’s a story worth taking a look back at:
As hundreds of migrants line up along an Arizona border barrier at about 4am, agents try to separate them by nationality.
“Anyone from Russia or Bangladesh? I need somebody else from Russia here,” an agent shouts. Then, quietly, almost to himself, he says: “These are Romanian.”
It’s a routine task for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in this flat expanse of desert where the wall ends. People from at least 115 countries have been stopped here during the past year, with entire families from Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, India and Cameroon among those arriving in Yuma, south-west Arizona after wading through the perilous knee-deep Colorado River.
How Title 42 kept migrants out of America for three years
Donald Trump won the White House in 2016 with pledges to crack down on undocumented migrants and refugees. He had mixed success in that regard until March 2020, when the US government took unprecedented measures to stop the spread of Covid-19, including by implementing Title 42. Drawing from a federal law Congress passed in 1944, the policy allowed the United States to quickly expel migrants who turn up at its border seeking asylum, and has resulted in millions of expulsions over the past three years.
The policy ends at midnight tonight, and officials at the border worry a big influx of migrants could follow – which would be a liability to Joe Biden, who has been criticized both by the Republican opposition and migrant rights groups for his approach to immigration. In response, the homeland security department has passed new regulations that will penalize migrants who cross illegally.
Last week, the Guardian’s Alex Hinojosa reported on how El Paso, Texas, a major border crossing, is preparing for Title 42’s end:
House Republicans set to pass immigration bill ahead of Title 42 end
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Be they Republican or Democrat, Washington’s political leaders have for years failed find agreement on reforming the nation’s immigration system, despite saying the rules are badly in need of an overhaul. That basic fact does not seem set to change, even though today at midnight Title 42, a public health measure implemented by Donald Trump when the Covid-19 pandemic began that allowed migrants to be quickly expelled at the US border and blocked most asylum applications, expires. Joe Biden’s White House is bracing for what could be a surge of migrants along the frontier with Mexico, while Republicans are today expected to push a measure overhauling the US immigration system through the House of Representatives. It’s not expected to go anywhere in the Senate, but you can expect to hear a lot about immigration for the rest of this week.
Here’s what we expect to happen today:
Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will appear at the White House’s briefing to reporters along with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at 1pm eastern time.
Besides Title 42, other provisions of the Covid-19 public health emergency end at midnight tonight, including vaccine requirements for federal employees and air travelers.
Expect to hear more about the CNN town hall with Donald Trump last night, including debate over whether the network should have held it all, and reaction to the former president’s lies and opinions.
