President Joe Biden yesterday signed an executive order on asylum targeted at reducing the influx of illegal immigrants at the southern border, but critics have doubts about the effects these changes will have.
“I’m moving past Republican obstruction and using the executive authorities available to me as president to do what I can on my own to address the border,” Biden said, flanked by border district lawmakers.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on an executive order limiting asylum in the East Room of the White House on June 4, 2024. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Under the executive order, asylum requests at the southern border would be shut down once the average number of daily encounters exceeds 2,500.
The border will remain shut until that daily average stays below 1,500 for at least a week.
Senior administration officials boasted that the order was the president’s most aggressive unilateral move of his administration.
But Republicans say it’s “too little, too late.”
Former President Donald Trump argued in a video posted online that the executive order “won’t STOP the invasion—it will make the invasion WORSE.”
Several Republicans in Congress told The Epoch Times that they felt the same.
“If Joe Biden wants, he can reinstitute the Trump policies that he vanquished on day one,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said. “This is not an unsolvable problem. You don’t have to be able to unwind a Rubik’s Cube to seal the border. You just have to reinstitute the Trump policies that were working.”
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), on the other side of the Republican ideological spectrum from Gaetz, agreed.
“At the end of the day, the fact that three-and-a-half years into his administration, he finally realizes that he has his executive authority to shut down the border crisis … is laughable,” Lawler said.
Lawler said that Biden “created [the border crisis] by reversing many of the policies of the Trump administration.”
On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said the same, adding the executive order “is absolutely too little too late.”
“Now, because his poll numbers are bad, he wants to take some action to improve his chances of reelection on this issue,” Lummis added. “He has already laid bare his agenda on the border, which is that there is no border.”
But it wasn’t just Republicans fuming over the issue—progressives in Congress also expressed frustration with the executive action for the opposite reason.
“It is extremely disappointing to see the Biden administration severely restricting access to asylum,” said Rep. Pramilla Jayapal (D-Wash.), who heads up the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in a statement.
“The reality is that the only thing that will fix the border is to modernize a desperately outdated immigration system that has reduced legal pathways and resources to process immigrants to intolerable levels,” Jayapal added.
—Joseph Lord and T.J. Muscaro
US Attorney General Merrick Garland testifies during a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled "Oversight of the US Department of Justice" on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on June 4, 2024. US Attorney General Merrick Garland defended the Justice Department on Tuesday against what he called "repeated attacks" and conspiracy theories floated by Republican lawmakers. Photo by Drew ANGERER / AFP
GARLAND FIRES BACK AT CLAIMS
During a fiery hearing yesterday, Attorney General Merrick Garland pushed back on Republicans’ claims that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has become weaponized for partisan ends.
“These repeated attacks on the Justice Department are unprecedented and unfounded. These attacks have not, and they will not, influence our decision making,” Garland told the House Judiciary Committee in his opening statement.
The hearing comes as Garland faces a threat to be held in contempt of Congress if he refuses to hand over the tapes of Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur.
The DOJ has said the differences between the tapes and the transcribed interview—which has been released to the public—are “minor” and has persisted in declining Republicans’ demands that the tapes be released.
Weeks ago, Republicans on the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees advanced resolutions holding Garland in contempt, but these resolutions haven’t been brought to the House floor yet.
During his remarks yesterday, Garland accused the panels of advancing the resolutions against him “as a means of obtaining sensitive law enforcement information that could harm the integrity of future investigations … for no legitimate reason.”
Turning over the tapes, he argued, would “jeopardize the ability of our prosecutors and agents to do their jobs effectively in future investigations.”
Garland’s right not to be too worried about the threats—as attorney general, he’d be in charge of making the decision on whether or not to prosecute himself.
The same situation played out during President Barack Obama’s administration, when then-Attorney General Eric Holder decided that he wouldn’t be prosecuting himself over Republicans’ objections.
Garland also addressed allegations that the DOJ had colluded with local prosecutors in New York to help convict Trump.
There are “false claims that a jury verdict in a state trial, brought by a local district attorney, was somehow controlled by the Justice Department,” Garland told the panel.
“That conspiracy theory is an attack on the judicial process itself,” he said.
But Garland failed to address allegations about Michael Colangelo, an ex-DOJ prosecutor who served as a lead prosecutor in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump.
Concerns about this were raised by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) several weeks ago in a letter.
“That a former senior Biden Justice Department official is now leading the prosecution of President Biden’s chief political rival only adds to the perception that the Biden Justice Department is politicized and weaponized,” Jordan wrote.
—Joseph Lord, Samantha Flom, and Jack Phillips
BOOKMARKS
In New Jersey yesterday, Republican Curtis Bashaw and Democrat Andy Kim won the primaries for the Senate seat occupied by embattled Sen. Bob Menendez, who will run as an independent. More takeaways from the primaries here.
Yesterday, the trial of first son Hunter Biden formally began in Wilmington, Delaware. The Epoch Times’ Jacob Burg and Stacy Robinson reported that jurors heard the opening arguments in the case, which circulates around untrue statements Biden made to obtain a firearm in 2018.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) is introducing a resolution on Tuesday to advance his legislation banning federal funding for research that makes some viruses more deadly, a process known as “gain-of-function,” The Epoch Times’ Frank Fang and Eva Fu reported. Gain of function research has been at the forefront of many theories about the origins of the COVID-19 virus.
It’s been 35 years since anywhere between hundreds or thousands of protesters were gunned down by Chinese Communist Party soldiers at Tiananmen Square. An article by The Epoch Times’ Eva Fu catalogs activists’ recollections of the day—and grief at its bloody outcome. “This is the brutality of the CCP,” one of the activists said.
Biden is continuing to cast suspicion on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s motives in his nation’s ongoing war in Gaza. Biden said that “there’s every reason” for people to draw the conclusion that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political benefit, The Epoch Times’ Ryan Morgan reported.
Voters in Arizona will have a choice this November on whether to tighten the state’s immigration enforcement, The Epoch Times’ Austin Alonzo reported. It comes after the state legislature passed a resolution along party lines. If endorsed by voters, it would authorize Arizona state and local police to arrest illegal immigrants crossing the border without authorization, and would allow judges to order deportations.
