SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
President Joe Biden speaks with US Customs and Border Protection officers as he visits the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on January 8, 2023.
President Biden is currently in the process of negotiating with Congress for a package of military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Republicans in the House of Representatives see this as a point of leverage and are trying to push President Biden into accepting regressive immigration reforms in order to win their votes. They are trying to put Biden into a lose-lose situation where he has to decide between helping Ukraine (the part of the package that Republicans object to) and helping migrants at the southern border.
According to news outlets, the White House is open to considering a package of terrible immigration policies in order to secure the requested military aid. As CBS News reports, these immigration policies include an exclusion authority similar to Title 42, mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and expanded executive authority for expedited removal. Trading these backward immigration policies for military aid is not only bad policy, but bad politics. This is a critical moment when the White House and congressional Democrats need to have clear advocacy and make the case to the American people that conservative immigration policies are bad for the country, while refusing to take part in these Republican hostage negotiations.
Although I am going to spend most of this article discussing what the Democrats should do, it is important to start by emphasizing what a reprehensible move this is by the Republicans to try to force the Democrats into choosing between helping migrants and helping Ukraine. We have grown so used to the awful things that the modern Republican Party does on a regular basis, that we frequently take it for granted and become overly focused on the morality of how the Democrats will respond. However, we need to keep a clear moral perspective and start from the point of acknowledging that holding Ukraine aid hostage to try and push a pugnacious and punitive set of immigration policies is a terrible thing to do.
Holding Ukraine aid hostage to try and push a pugnacious and punitive set of immigration policies is a terrible thing to do.
I know that there are many in the progressive community who are ambivalent about funding Ukraine’s defense. However, the fundamental truth is that the Ukrainian people were invaded by a world power armed with nuclear weapons and are facing an existential threat, even though they have not committed any aggressive acts toward Russia. What the Republicans are doing is forcing an unnecessary and immoral dilemma on the Democrats: either help this group of people who need aid and hurt this other group of people who need aid; or hurt this group of people who need aid and help this other group of people who need aid. There is no reason we cannot help both. This move by the Republicans effectively amounts to a hostage negotiation with real human lives on the line. They’ve attempted to set up a set of outcomes where people are going to die either way, all in an effort to make the Democrats look bad. Shame on them.
I should also note that I am only focusing on the Ukraine portion of this military aid package because that is the part that the Republicans are keen to stop. There is a broader discussion about military aid to Israel and Taiwan, but for now, the point of contention is Ukraine.
It is no surprise that the “reforms” on immigration that the GOP is pushing are bad policy. You can find a great clip of Democratic Rep. Greg Casar of Texas and Juan González of Democracy Now! tearing apart the proposed laws here. I have also previously written about how right-wing policy is the cause of the crisis at the border. To summarize, conservative policies cause disruption in Latin America and the Caribbean, which causes people to be desperate and flee their home countries. Then, conservative policy denies them an orderly, humane way to come to the United State, which causes them to show up at the southern border seeking help. The Republican narrative that people come to the border and try to cross because of some imaginary “open border” policy is completely incorrect. Instead, as Rep. Casar notes in the clip above, the Trump administration expanded economic sanctions and restrictions on Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and the inevitable result was a significant increase in people from those countries fleeing and coming to the southern U.S. border.
This increase in people arriving at the southern border from these three countries is a direct result of policy moves taken under the Trump administration, as well as some from the Biden administration. For example, Donald Trump expanded oil sanctions against Venezuela and tried to foment a coup by supporting Juan Guaidó’s attempt to proclaim himself President in order to force Nicolás Maduro out of office. The intent behind actions like this is to destabilize conditions in the target country, which is exactly the effect that was achieved. The problem is that it did not lead to the desired change in leadership, but instead caused large numbers of people to flee. Further, these people fleeing are not deterred by our insanely outsized spending on “border security.” As Casar and González note in the clip above, the U.S. spends billions of dollars on so-called border security, but the number of people showing up at the border only continues to increase. If “tough” border security measures were effective at stopping people from coming to the border, then shouldn’t we see the numbers decreasing? Instead, Republican border policies are only increasing the number of people coming to the border, largely because they misidentify the source of the problem, and are based on the false and frankly racist idea that people coming to the border are a hoard of invaders, instead of the reality that they are mostly desperate people seeking a better life.
The exclusion authority that Republicans are proposing will be similar to what happened with Title 42 under Donald Trump. Trump used Title 42 to direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to turn away people who had crossed into the U.S., even if they were requesting asylum. This is illegal because the U.S. is required by international law to at least give asylum seekers on U.S. soil a hearing for their claim, no matter how they entered the country. Also, it was a humanitarian disaster. It sent asylum seekers back into Mexico where many had nowhere to return and became victims of crime, violence, and extortion.
None of these policies will slow down the number of people showing up at the border. They will only cause more human suffering and cost the U.S. government money.
Mandatory detention for asylum seekers would result in a sudden increase in the number of people detained, which the system is not prepared to handle. U.S. immigration detention is terrible for the detainees. They face inhumane conditions and abuse. Further, detaining them is expensive and often prevents them from accessing the tools they need to prepare their asylum cases in immigration court. Expanding immigration detention will only expand human suffering. It will not increase public safety, as migrants in immigration court overwhelmingly appear in court for their hearings, and non-citizens commit crime at a lower rate than U.S. citizens. Finally, expanded expedited removal will only deprive people of their due process rights under the 14th Amendment, similar to the expansion of the exclusion authority described above.
None of these policies will slow down the number of people showing up at the border. They will only cause more human suffering and cost the U.S. government money. Department of Homeland Security officials are usually hawkish on immigration, but even they are warning that these proposals will completely overwhelm the detention system and “break the border.”
Not only are the policies proposed by Republicans ineffective, cruel, and expensive, but if President Biden takes this deal, it will hurt the Democrats electorally. This is at a time when defeating Donald Trump is a national priority, given that he has said he will be a dictator “on day one” and is paving the way for fascism in the United States. The result will be bad policy and an unpopular incumbent in Joe Biden heading into the 2024 election.
Americans are generally sympathetic toward immigrants, but polling on immigration issues varies wildly depending on the phrasing of the question asked. A 2021 survey from the CATO Institute found that 72% of Americans agree that immigrants come to the U.S. for jobs and to improve their lives, and 91% of Americans welcome at least some level of immigration. Although there are some questions on surveys that show a more restrictionist mindset, I think that most Americans have basic human empathy and don’t want to see the government inflict cruelty and suffering on immigrants.
If President Biden takes this deal, he is going to lose all of his credibility on immigration. His record on immigration issues has already been mixed at best. Most notably, he received a lot of criticism for rolling out humanitarian programs for Ukrainians to come to the U.S., but left the door at the southern border closed to the mostly non-white immigrants who seek refuge there. We could see a narrative develop that President Biden only cares about white immigrants like Ukrainians. The immigrant community could easily feel like they have been sold out for Ukraine. This would be disastrous for a presidential candidate who needs strong turnout among non-white voters to win. Turnout is the key to winning the presidency and this will result in less enthusiasm for Biden and therefore, lower turnout.
Taking this deal will also muddy the immigration debate.
It is also important to point out that this will do absolutely nothing to help President Biden win over conservative voters. Hardcore conservatives are so detached from reality that Biden could literally put the military on the border and seal it off, and the conservatives would still say that he is an “open border” president. Taking this deal will not move the needle with conservative voters at all. It will only serve to drive down turnout among the Democratic base, which is a recipe for disaster in 2024. Indeed, this is the intention of the Republicans in the House. They want to force Biden into a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation.
Taking this deal will also muddy the immigration debate. When I argue with people on X (formerly Twitter) about immigration, one thing I hear frequently is, “Well Obama put kids in cages too,” when discussing the Trump administration’s monstrous child separation policy. If these policies come into law, the new refrain from the right-wingers will be, “Well Biden detained all of the asylum seekers.” It will give the conservatives another talking point that they can use to obfuscate and justify their horrible immigration policies in the future.
President Biden needs to call out the Republicans to the American people and repeatedly emphasize how morally bankrupt they are. He needs to call this what it is, a hostage negotiation where he is being asked to trade the lives of migrants for the lives of Ukrainians, and persuade the American people to stand up against the GOP on this. If he can do it, then the Republicans will blink, just like they have blinked before on government shutdown negotiations. They backed down in the past when it became so toxic and unpopular to hold things up that they had no choice. The same thing needs to happen here.
If President Biden caves to them, it will be a disaster, both for migrants at the southern border and his electoral prospects in 2024. I urge President Biden and the Democratic leadership to not take part in this GOP hostage negotiation.
Dear Common Dreams reader, The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets. That’s why I believe that Common Dreams is doing the best and most consequential reporting that we’ve ever done. Our small but mighty team is a progressive reporting powerhouse, covering the news every day that the corporate media never will. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. And to ignite change for the common good. Now here’s the key piece that I want all our readers to understand: None of this would be possible without your financial support. That’s not just some fundraising cliche. It’s the absolute and literal truth. We don’t accept corporate advertising and never will. We don’t have a paywall because we don’t think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. Will you donate now to help power the nonprofit, independent reporting of Common Dreams? Thank you for being a vital member of our community. Together, we can keep independent journalism alive when it’s needed most. - Craig Brown, Co-founder |
President Biden is currently in the process of negotiating with Congress for a package of military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Republicans in the House of Representatives see this as a point of leverage and are trying to push President Biden into accepting regressive immigration reforms in order to win their votes. They are trying to put Biden into a lose-lose situation where he has to decide between helping Ukraine (the part of the package that Republicans object to) and helping migrants at the southern border.
According to news outlets, the White House is open to considering a package of terrible immigration policies in order to secure the requested military aid. As CBS News reports, these immigration policies include an exclusion authority similar to Title 42, mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and expanded executive authority for expedited removal. Trading these backward immigration policies for military aid is not only bad policy, but bad politics. This is a critical moment when the White House and congressional Democrats need to have clear advocacy and make the case to the American people that conservative immigration policies are bad for the country, while refusing to take part in these Republican hostage negotiations.
Although I am going to spend most of this article discussing what the Democrats should do, it is important to start by emphasizing what a reprehensible move this is by the Republicans to try to force the Democrats into choosing between helping migrants and helping Ukraine. We have grown so used to the awful things that the modern Republican Party does on a regular basis, that we frequently take it for granted and become overly focused on the morality of how the Democrats will respond. However, we need to keep a clear moral perspective and start from the point of acknowledging that holding Ukraine aid hostage to try and push a pugnacious and punitive set of immigration policies is a terrible thing to do.
Holding Ukraine aid hostage to try and push a pugnacious and punitive set of immigration policies is a terrible thing to do.
I know that there are many in the progressive community who are ambivalent about funding Ukraine’s defense. However, the fundamental truth is that the Ukrainian people were invaded by a world power armed with nuclear weapons and are facing an existential threat, even though they have not committed any aggressive acts toward Russia. What the Republicans are doing is forcing an unnecessary and immoral dilemma on the Democrats: either help this group of people who need aid and hurt this other group of people who need aid; or hurt this group of people who need aid and help this other group of people who need aid. There is no reason we cannot help both. This move by the Republicans effectively amounts to a hostage negotiation with real human lives on the line. They’ve attempted to set up a set of outcomes where people are going to die either way, all in an effort to make the Democrats look bad. Shame on them.
I should also note that I am only focusing on the Ukraine portion of this military aid package because that is the part that the Republicans are keen to stop. There is a broader discussion about military aid to Israel and Taiwan, but for now, the point of contention is Ukraine.
It is no surprise that the “reforms” on immigration that the GOP is pushing are bad policy. You can find a great clip of Democratic Rep. Greg Casar of Texas and Juan González of Democracy Now! tearing apart the proposed laws here. I have also previously written about how right-wing policy is the cause of the crisis at the border. To summarize, conservative policies cause disruption in Latin America and the Caribbean, which causes people to be desperate and flee their home countries. Then, conservative policy denies them an orderly, humane way to come to the United State, which causes them to show up at the southern border seeking help. The Republican narrative that people come to the border and try to cross because of some imaginary “open border” policy is completely incorrect. Instead, as Rep. Casar notes in the clip above, the Trump administration expanded economic sanctions and restrictions on Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and the inevitable result was a significant increase in people from those countries fleeing and coming to the southern U.S. border.
This increase in people arriving at the southern border from these three countries is a direct result of policy moves taken under the Trump administration, as well as some from the Biden administration. For example, Donald Trump expanded oil sanctions against Venezuela and tried to foment a coup by supporting Juan Guaidó’s attempt to proclaim himself President in order to force Nicolás Maduro out of office. The intent behind actions like this is to destabilize conditions in the target country, which is exactly the effect that was achieved. The problem is that it did not lead to the desired change in leadership, but instead caused large numbers of people to flee. Further, these people fleeing are not deterred by our insanely outsized spending on “border security.” As Casar and González note in the clip above, the U.S. spends billions of dollars on so-called border security, but the number of people showing up at the border only continues to increase. If “tough” border security measures were effective at stopping people from coming to the border, then shouldn’t we see the numbers decreasing? Instead, Republican border policies are only increasing the number of people coming to the border, largely because they misidentify the source of the problem, and are based on the false and frankly racist idea that people coming to the border are a hoard of invaders, instead of the reality that they are mostly desperate people seeking a better life.
The exclusion authority that Republicans are proposing will be similar to what happened with Title 42 under Donald Trump. Trump used Title 42 to direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to turn away people who had crossed into the U.S., even if they were requesting asylum. This is illegal because the U.S. is required by international law to at least give asylum seekers on U.S. soil a hearing for their claim, no matter how they entered the country. Also, it was a humanitarian disaster. It sent asylum seekers back into Mexico where many had nowhere to return and became victims of crime, violence, and extortion.
None of these policies will slow down the number of people showing up at the border. They will only cause more human suffering and cost the U.S. government money.
Mandatory detention for asylum seekers would result in a sudden increase in the number of people detained, which the system is not prepared to handle. U.S. immigration detention is terrible for the detainees. They face inhumane conditions and abuse. Further, detaining them is expensive and often prevents them from accessing the tools they need to prepare their asylum cases in immigration court. Expanding immigration detention will only expand human suffering. It will not increase public safety, as migrants in immigration court overwhelmingly appear in court for their hearings, and non-citizens commit crime at a lower rate than U.S. citizens. Finally, expanded expedited removal will only deprive people of their due process rights under the 14th Amendment, similar to the expansion of the exclusion authority described above.
None of these policies will slow down the number of people showing up at the border. They will only cause more human suffering and cost the U.S. government money. Department of Homeland Security officials are usually hawkish on immigration, but even they are warning that these proposals will completely overwhelm the detention system and “break the border.”
Not only are the policies proposed by Republicans ineffective, cruel, and expensive, but if President Biden takes this deal, it will hurt the Democrats electorally. This is at a time when defeating Donald Trump is a national priority, given that he has said he will be a dictator “on day one” and is paving the way for fascism in the United States. The result will be bad policy and an unpopular incumbent in Joe Biden heading into the 2024 election.
Americans are generally sympathetic toward immigrants, but polling on immigration issues varies wildly depending on the phrasing of the question asked. A 2021 survey from the CATO Institute found that 72% of Americans agree that immigrants come to the U.S. for jobs and to improve their lives, and 91% of Americans welcome at least some level of immigration. Although there are some questions on surveys that show a more restrictionist mindset, I think that most Americans have basic human empathy and don’t want to see the government inflict cruelty and suffering on immigrants.
If President Biden takes this deal, he is going to lose all of his credibility on immigration. His record on immigration issues has already been mixed at best. Most notably, he received a lot of criticism for rolling out humanitarian programs for Ukrainians to come to the U.S., but left the door at the southern border closed to the mostly non-white immigrants who seek refuge there. We could see a narrative develop that President Biden only cares about white immigrants like Ukrainians. The immigrant community could easily feel like they have been sold out for Ukraine. This would be disastrous for a presidential candidate who needs strong turnout among non-white voters to win. Turnout is the key to winning the presidency and this will result in less enthusiasm for Biden and therefore, lower turnout.
Taking this deal will also muddy the immigration debate.
It is also important to point out that this will do absolutely nothing to help President Biden win over conservative voters. Hardcore conservatives are so detached from reality that Biden could literally put the military on the border and seal it off, and the conservatives would still say that he is an “open border” president. Taking this deal will not move the needle with conservative voters at all. It will only serve to drive down turnout among the Democratic base, which is a recipe for disaster in 2024. Indeed, this is the intention of the Republicans in the House. They want to force Biden into a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation.
Taking this deal will also muddy the immigration debate. When I argue with people on X (formerly Twitter) about immigration, one thing I hear frequently is, “Well Obama put kids in cages too,” when discussing the Trump administration’s monstrous child separation policy. If these policies come into law, the new refrain from the right-wingers will be, “Well Biden detained all of the asylum seekers.” It will give the conservatives another talking point that they can use to obfuscate and justify their horrible immigration policies in the future.
President Biden needs to call out the Republicans to the American people and repeatedly emphasize how morally bankrupt they are. He needs to call this what it is, a hostage negotiation where he is being asked to trade the lives of migrants for the lives of Ukrainians, and persuade the American people to stand up against the GOP on this. If he can do it, then the Republicans will blink, just like they have blinked before on government shutdown negotiations. They backed down in the past when it became so toxic and unpopular to hold things up that they had no choice. The same thing needs to happen here.
If President Biden caves to them, it will be a disaster, both for migrants at the southern border and his electoral prospects in 2024. I urge President Biden and the Democratic leadership to not take part in this GOP hostage negotiation.
President Biden is currently in the process of negotiating with Congress for a package of military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Republicans in the House of Representatives see this as a point of leverage and are trying to push President Biden into accepting regressive immigration reforms in order to win their votes. They are trying to put Biden into a lose-lose situation where he has to decide between helping Ukraine (the part of the package that Republicans object to) and helping migrants at the southern border.
According to news outlets, the White House is open to considering a package of terrible immigration policies in order to secure the requested military aid. As CBS News reports, these immigration policies include an exclusion authority similar to Title 42, mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and expanded executive authority for expedited removal. Trading these backward immigration policies for military aid is not only bad policy, but bad politics. This is a critical moment when the White House and congressional Democrats need to have clear advocacy and make the case to the American people that conservative immigration policies are bad for the country, while refusing to take part in these Republican hostage negotiations.
Although I am going to spend most of this article discussing what the Democrats should do, it is important to start by emphasizing what a reprehensible move this is by the Republicans to try to force the Democrats into choosing between helping migrants and helping Ukraine. We have grown so used to the awful things that the modern Republican Party does on a regular basis, that we frequently take it for granted and become overly focused on the morality of how the Democrats will respond. However, we need to keep a clear moral perspective and start from the point of acknowledging that holding Ukraine aid hostage to try and push a pugnacious and punitive set of immigration policies is a terrible thing to do.
Holding Ukraine aid hostage to try and push a pugnacious and punitive set of immigration policies is a terrible thing to do.
I know that there are many in the progressive community who are ambivalent about funding Ukraine’s defense. However, the fundamental truth is that the Ukrainian people were invaded by a world power armed with nuclear weapons and are facing an existential threat, even though they have not committed any aggressive acts toward Russia. What the Republicans are doing is forcing an unnecessary and immoral dilemma on the Democrats: either help this group of people who need aid and hurt this other group of people who need aid; or hurt this group of people who need aid and help this other group of people who need aid. There is no reason we cannot help both. This move by the Republicans effectively amounts to a hostage negotiation with real human lives on the line. They’ve attempted to set up a set of outcomes where people are going to die either way, all in an effort to make the Democrats look bad. Shame on them.
I should also note that I am only focusing on the Ukraine portion of this military aid package because that is the part that the Republicans are keen to stop. There is a broader discussion about military aid to Israel and Taiwan, but for now, the point of contention is Ukraine.
It is no surprise that the “reforms” on immigration that the GOP is pushing are bad policy. You can find a great clip of Democratic Rep. Greg Casar of Texas and Juan González of Democracy Now! tearing apart the proposed laws here. I have also previously written about how right-wing policy is the cause of the crisis at the border. To summarize, conservative policies cause disruption in Latin America and the Caribbean, which causes people to be desperate and flee their home countries. Then, conservative policy denies them an orderly, humane way to come to the United State, which causes them to show up at the southern border seeking help. The Republican narrative that people come to the border and try to cross because of some imaginary “open border” policy is completely incorrect. Instead, as Rep. Casar notes in the clip above, the Trump administration expanded economic sanctions and restrictions on Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and the inevitable result was a significant increase in people from those countries fleeing and coming to the southern U.S. border.
This increase in people arriving at the southern border from these three countries is a direct result of policy moves taken under the Trump administration, as well as some from the Biden administration. For example, Donald Trump expanded oil sanctions against Venezuela and tried to foment a coup by supporting Juan Guaidó’s attempt to proclaim himself President in order to force Nicolás Maduro out of office. The intent behind actions like this is to destabilize conditions in the target country, which is exactly the effect that was achieved. The problem is that it did not lead to the desired change in leadership, but instead caused large numbers of people to flee. Further, these people fleeing are not deterred by our insanely outsized spending on “border security.” As Casar and González note in the clip above, the U.S. spends billions of dollars on so-called border security, but the number of people showing up at the border only continues to increase. If “tough” border security measures were effective at stopping people from coming to the border, then shouldn’t we see the numbers decreasing? Instead, Republican border policies are only increasing the number of people coming to the border, largely because they misidentify the source of the problem, and are based on the false and frankly racist idea that people coming to the border are a hoard of invaders, instead of the reality that they are mostly desperate people seeking a better life.
The exclusion authority that Republicans are proposing will be similar to what happened with Title 42 under Donald Trump. Trump used Title 42 to direct U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to turn away people who had crossed into the U.S., even if they were requesting asylum. This is illegal because the U.S. is required by international law to at least give asylum seekers on U.S. soil a hearing for their claim, no matter how they entered the country. Also, it was a humanitarian disaster. It sent asylum seekers back into Mexico where many had nowhere to return and became victims of crime, violence, and extortion.
None of these policies will slow down the number of people showing up at the border. They will only cause more human suffering and cost the U.S. government money.
Mandatory detention for asylum seekers would result in a sudden increase in the number of people detained, which the system is not prepared to handle. U.S. immigration detention is terrible for the detainees. They face inhumane conditions and abuse. Further, detaining them is expensive and often prevents them from accessing the tools they need to prepare their asylum cases in immigration court. Expanding immigration detention will only expand human suffering. It will not increase public safety, as migrants in immigration court overwhelmingly appear in court for their hearings, and non-citizens commit crime at a lower rate than U.S. citizens. Finally, expanded expedited removal will only deprive people of their due process rights under the 14th Amendment, similar to the expansion of the exclusion authority described above.
None of these policies will slow down the number of people showing up at the border. They will only cause more human suffering and cost the U.S. government money. Department of Homeland Security officials are usually hawkish on immigration, but even they are warning that these proposals will completely overwhelm the detention system and “break the border.”
Not only are the policies proposed by Republicans ineffective, cruel, and expensive, but if President Biden takes this deal, it will hurt the Democrats electorally. This is at a time when defeating Donald Trump is a national priority, given that he has said he will be a dictator “on day one” and is paving the way for fascism in the United States. The result will be bad policy and an unpopular incumbent in Joe Biden heading into the 2024 election.
Americans are generally sympathetic toward immigrants, but polling on immigration issues varies wildly depending on the phrasing of the question asked. A 2021 survey from the CATO Institute found that 72% of Americans agree that immigrants come to the U.S. for jobs and to improve their lives, and 91% of Americans welcome at least some level of immigration. Although there are some questions on surveys that show a more restrictionist mindset, I think that most Americans have basic human empathy and don’t want to see the government inflict cruelty and suffering on immigrants.
If President Biden takes this deal, he is going to lose all of his credibility on immigration. His record on immigration issues has already been mixed at best. Most notably, he received a lot of criticism for rolling out humanitarian programs for Ukrainians to come to the U.S., but left the door at the southern border closed to the mostly non-white immigrants who seek refuge there. We could see a narrative develop that President Biden only cares about white immigrants like Ukrainians. The immigrant community could easily feel like they have been sold out for Ukraine. This would be disastrous for a presidential candidate who needs strong turnout among non-white voters to win. Turnout is the key to winning the presidency and this will result in less enthusiasm for Biden and therefore, lower turnout.
Taking this deal will also muddy the immigration debate.
It is also important to point out that this will do absolutely nothing to help President Biden win over conservative voters. Hardcore conservatives are so detached from reality that Biden could literally put the military on the border and seal it off, and the conservatives would still say that he is an “open border” president. Taking this deal will not move the needle with conservative voters at all. It will only serve to drive down turnout among the Democratic base, which is a recipe for disaster in 2024. Indeed, this is the intention of the Republicans in the House. They want to force Biden into a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation.
Taking this deal will also muddy the immigration debate. When I argue with people on X (formerly Twitter) about immigration, one thing I hear frequently is, “Well Obama put kids in cages too,” when discussing the Trump administration’s monstrous child separation policy. If these policies come into law, the new refrain from the right-wingers will be, “Well Biden detained all of the asylum seekers.” It will give the conservatives another talking point that they can use to obfuscate and justify their horrible immigration policies in the future.
President Biden needs to call out the Republicans to the American people and repeatedly emphasize how morally bankrupt they are. He needs to call this what it is, a hostage negotiation where he is being asked to trade the lives of migrants for the lives of Ukrainians, and persuade the American people to stand up against the GOP on this. If he can do it, then the Republicans will blink, just like they have blinked before on government shutdown negotiations. They backed down in the past when it became so toxic and unpopular to hold things up that they had no choice. The same thing needs to happen here.
If President Biden caves to them, it will be a disaster, both for migrants at the southern border and his electoral prospects in 2024. I urge President Biden and the Democratic leadership to not take part in this GOP hostage negotiation.
Italian labor unions led a massive 24-hour general strike on Monday to protest Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, with estimates of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators rallying in dozens of cities across Italy.
Protesters took to squares, streets, transport hubs, ports, university campuses, and other spaces in more than 75 cities and towns, rallying under the call to "Block Everything." Places including schools, train stations, and retail stores were shut for the day.
"The strike is called in response to the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, the blockade of humanitarian aid by the Israeli army, and the threats directed against the... Global Sumud Flotilla, which has on board Italian workers and trade unionists committed to bringing food and basic necessities to the Palestinian population," explained Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), a grassroots union confederation known for its militant stance on labor and political issues.
In Rome, tens of thousands of Palestine defenders rallied at the Termini rail station, Italy's largest, with many of the demonstrators occupying the building.
While protest activities snarled traffic in some parts of the Italian capital, many Roman motorists showed solidarity with the demonstrators by honking their horns and raising their fists into the air.
Watch: Pro-Gaza protesters who blocked a highway near Rome were met with visible solidarity from drivers. Regional news coverage of the paralyzed Central Station showed only people expressing support for the protest.Source: Paolo Mossetti on X (@paolomossetti)
[image or embed]
— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) September 22, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Milan saw an estimated 50,000 people turn out to locations including the central rail station, where some protesters damaged property and clashed with police, who said 10 people were arrested and 60 officers were injured.
“If we don’t block what Israel is doing, if we don’t block trade, the distribution of weapons and everything else with Israel, we will not ever achieve anything,” protester Walter Montagnoli, who is the Base Unitary Confederation's (CUB) national secretary, told The Associated Press at a march in Milan.
In Bologna—home to the world's oldest continuously operating university—students occupied lecture halls and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, including the Tangenziale, the ring highway around the city, where police attacked them with water cannons and tear gas.
Dockworkers and other demonstrators marched and blocked ports in cities including Genoa, Trieste, and Livorno.
Thousands of protesters also blocked the main train station in Naples.
Source: Potere al Popolo via X (@potere_alpopolo)
[image or embed]
— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) September 22, 2025 at 11:06 AM
In the Adriatic seaside resort of Termoli, hundreds of student-led Palestine defenders rallied in St. Anthony's Square and, with Mayor Nicola Balice's permission, draped a Palestinian flag from the façade of City Hall.
"Faced with such an important subject, the genocide in Palestine, we students... said this would be a nonpartisan demonstration because in the face of what is happening in the Gaza Strip—hospitals bombed, children killed every day—there can be no political ideology," said one Termoli protester. "We must all be united.”
Some participants in Monday's general strike pointed the finger at their own government.
"In the face of what is happening in Gaza you have to decide where you are," Italian General Confederation of Labor leader Maurizio Landini told La Stampa. "If you don’t tell the Israeli government that you have to stop and don't send them more weapons, but instead you keep sending them... you actually become complicit in what’s happening.”
While European nations including Ireland, Norway, Spain, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, and Denmark have formally recognized Palestine or announced their intent to do so since October 2023, Italy has given no indication that it will follow suit. More than 150 of 193 United Nations member states have recognized Palestine.
Although increasingly critical of Israel's 718-day genocidal assault—which has left at least 241,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing in Gaza—right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been accused of complicity in genocide for actions including presiding over arms sales to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meloni has rejected the ICC warrants and said Netanyahu would not be arrested if he enters Italy.
"Meloni should listen to the voice of those who are peacefully protesting and asking her to act, rather than curling up to Washington to protect her friend, the war criminal Netanyahu," Giuseppe Conte, who leads the independent progressive Five Star Movement, said Monday on social media. "Meloni should take a stand with the facts against those who have slaughtered 20,000 children, rather than limiting herself to saying, 'I do not agree.' And she should stop running away from the debate in Parliament."
As US President Donald Trump faces mounting accusations of authoritarian conduct, the Supreme Court's right-wing majority on Monday empowered him to proceed with firing a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission and agreed to review a 90-year-old precedent that restricts executive power over independent agencies such as the FTC.
Trump in March fired the FTC's two Democratic commissioners, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, without cause. Slaughter fought back, and US District Judge Loren AliKhan allowed her to return to work while the case continued. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld that decision, but it was halted Monday by the nation's top court.
Monday's decision was unsigned, though the three liberals collectively dissented, led by Justice Elena Kagan. In addition to letting Trump move forward with ousting Slaughter, the majority agreed to reconsider the precedent established with Humphrey's Executor v. United States, a 1935 case that centered on whether the Federal Trade Commission Act unconstitutionally interfered with the executive power of the president.
In Humphrey's Executor, the high court found that Congress' removal protections for FTC members did not violate the separation of powers. Along with revisiting the precedent established by that landmark decision in December, the justices plan to weigh whether a federal court may prevent a person's removal from public office.
The court's stay allowing Trump to fire Slaughter was granted as part of the court's emergency process, or shadow docket. In a short but scathing dissent, Kagan noted that it is part of a recent trend: "Earlier this year, the same majority, by the same mechanism, permitted the president to fire without cause members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merits Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission."
"I dissented from the majority's prior stay orders, and today do so again. Under existing law, what Congress said goes—as this court unanimously decided nearly a century ago," she wrote. In Humphrey's Executor, Kagan continued, "Congress, we held, may restrict the president's power to remove members of the FTC, as well as other agencies performing 'quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial' functions, without violating the Constitution."
"So the president cannot, as he concededly did here, fire an FTC commissioner without any reason. To reach a different result requires reversing the rule stated in Humphrey's: It entails overriding rather than accepting Congress' judgment about agency design," she argued. "The majority may be raring to take that action, as its grant of certiorari before judgment suggests. But until the deed is done, Humphrey's controls, and prevents the majority from giving the president the unlimited removal power Congress denied him."
More broadly, Kagan declared that "our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars. Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the president, and thus to reshape the nation's separation of powers."
Kagan, of course, is correct that the Supreme Court will soon overturn Humphrey's Executor and allow the president to fire leaders of any independent agency (other than the Fed—maybe?!). She's also right to bemoan the fact that SCOTUS effectively overruled Humphrey's on the shadow docket already.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) September 22, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the anti-monopoly think tank Open Markets Institute, slammed the court in a Monday statement.
"Today, in a one-paragraph order, the Supreme Court authorized President Trump's illegal firing of Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and his ongoing destruction of the independent, bipartisan Federal Trade Commission," Vaheesan said.
"As Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent, Commissioner Slaughter was fired without cause and is clearly entitled to her position under the FTC Act and controlling Supreme Court precedent," he added. "The court could override Congress' decision to create an independent FTC on specious constitutional grounds but until it takes that step Commissioner Slaughter has a right to her job.”
While the justices agreed to take Slaughter's case, they turned away petitions from two ousted Democratic appointees referenced by Kagan: Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board. According to SCOTUSblog: "The court did not provide any explanation for its decision not to take up Harris' and Wilcox's cases at this time. They will continue to move forward in the lower courts."
The New York Times noted that "the justices are separately considering the Trump administration’s request to remove Lisa Cook as a Federal Reserve governor. The Supreme Court has yet to act, but has suggested that the central bank may be insulated from presidential meddling under the law."
However, as Law Dork's Chris Geidner highlighted on social media, the second question the justices will consider in the Slaughter case, regarding courts preventing removals from public office, "would have implications even for the 'Fed carveout' exception that the court suggested exists."
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling for an investigation into the Department of Housing and Urban Development after several whistleblowers reported that Trump appointees have gutted enforcement of the decades-old law banning housing discrimination.
A New York Times report published Monday, quotes "half a dozen current and former employees of HUD’s fair housing office" who "said that the Trump political appointees had made it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs" enforcing the 1968 Fair Housing Act "which involve investigating and prosecuting landlords, real estate agents, lenders and others who discriminate based on race, religion, gender, family status or disability."
In a video posted to social media, Warren (D-Mass.) explained that “if you’re a mom protecting her kids from living with an abusive father or if you’re getting denied a mortgage because of the color of your skin, you have civil rights protection under US law. But the Trump administration has been systematically destroying these federal protections for renters and homeowners.”
According to the Times, when President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, formerly led by billionaire Elon Musk, launched its crusade to dismantle large parts of the federal government at the start of Trump's second term earlier this year, the Office of Fair Housing (OFH) had its staff cut by 65% through layoffs and reassignments, with the number of employees dropping from 31 to 11. Just six of the remaining staff now work on fair housing cases.
The number of discrimination charges pursued by the office has plummeted since Trump took office. In most years, it has 35. During Trump's second term, the office has pursued just four. Meanwhile, it's obtained just $200,000 total in legal settlements after previously obtaining anywhere from $4 million to $8 million per year.
Emails and memos obtained by the Times show a pattern of Trump appointees obstructing investigations:
In one email, a Trump appointee... described decades of housing discrimination cases as “artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary.”
In another, a career supervisor in the department’s [OFH] objected to lawyers being reassigned to other offices; the supervisor was fired six days later for insubordination.
In a third, the office’s director of enforcement warned that Trump appointees were using gag orders and intimidation to block discrimination cases from moving forward. The urgent message was sent to a US senator, who is referring it to the department’s acting inspector general for investigation.
Several lawyers said they have been restricted from using past cases in enforcement and communicating with certain clients without approval from Trump's appointees.
A memo also reportedly went out to employees informing them that documents “contrary to administration policy” would be thrown out, and that “tenuous theories of discrimination” would no longer be pursued.
Among those supposedly "tenuous" cases have been ones involving appraisal bias—the practice of undervaluing homes owned by Black families—zoning restrictions blocking housing for Black and Latino families, and cases related to discrimination against people over gender or gender expression.
The administration has also abandoned cases related to the racist practice of "redlining"—the decades-old practice of denying mortgages to minorities and others in minority neighborhoods—with memos from Trump appointees calling the concept "legally unsound."
The changes follow a sweeping set of executive orders from Trump during his first week in office, targeting "diversity equity, and inclusion" (DEI) programs. Employees at the Office of Fair Housing told the Times that Trump appointees had begun to describe much of the department's work as "an offshoot of DEI."
A HUD spokesperson, Kasey Lovett, told the Times that it was "patently false" to suggest that the administration was trying to weaken the Fair Housing Act. She pointed out that HUD was still handling approximately 4,100 cases this year, on par with the previous year. As the Times notes, "Lovett did not address, however, how many of the cases had been investigated or had resulted in legal action."
According to the Times:
Hundreds of pending fair housing cases were frozen, and some settlements revoked, even when accusations of discrimination had been substantiated, according to the interviews and the internal communications.
In one instance, a large homeowner’s association in Texas was found to have banned the use of housing vouchers by Black residents. That case had been referred to the Justice Department, but the referral was abruptly withdrawn by the new Trump appointees.
Four current staff members have provided the trove of documents to Warren, who announced Monday that she'd sent a request to Brian Harrison, HUD’s acting inspector general, to open an investigation into its handling of discrimination cases.
Warren said that the documents "show the extent of the Trump administration's attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law."
In a press release from the Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Warren, the ranking member, highlighted the particularly devastating impact staffing cuts have had on the enforcement of complaints under the Violence Against Women Act, which the Times says only two of the six lawyers remaining at HUD have experience with.
According to Warren, whistleblowers said the cuts were "placing survivors in greater danger of suffering additional trauma, physical violence, and even death."
Warren said that as a result of the hundreds of dropped cases, "Now people are asking, 'well, why would I file a case at all if nothing's going to happen?'"
Calling for an independent investigation, Warren said, "We wrote these laws to make this a fairer America, and now it's time to enforce those laws."