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And even though they now control the White House as well as Congress, Republicans are still in the doomsday-machine business — and what they’re currently threatening to blow up is health care for nearly nine million children.

Now, however, G.O.P. leaders are in trouble. They need to pass a “continuing resolution” in order to maintain funding for the government and avoid a shutdown. But despite control of both houses of Congress, they don’t have the votes.

passing the bill in the Senate will require 60 votes. With only 51 Republicans Democratic votes are needed.

Protecting the Dreamers is, by the way, enormously popular, even among Republicans, who oppose deporting them by a huge margin. So it’s not as if the G.O.P. would be giving up a lot. But Donald Trump torpedoed the deal, apparently because he doesn’t want immigrants from “shithole countries.”

Yet G.O.P. leaders seem to believe that they can bully Democrats by threatening to hurt millions of children — because Democrats care more about those children than they do. They also believe that if this tactic fails they can frame it as an exhibition of callousness by Democrats.

Sanders then offered a new twist, saying Trump thinks the idea probably has “more potential” at the state level than the federal level. (States already have the ability to set a higher age for such purchases. To date, only two — Illinois and Hawaii — have done so.)

Sanders also stressed that Trump does not necessarily support “universal” background checks, despite his use of that word previously. “Universal” can mean different things to different people, she said.

Others are less charitable, saying that Trump’s flexibility stems from a lack of deeply rooted convictions on many issues. “He’s going with the television headlines from day to day instead of following a policy strategy,”

When asked last week to assess Trump’s reliability as a negotiating partner, however, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) argued that Congress is the one charged with coming up with policy measures.

Besides stalled pushes on immigration and guns, Trump has also proposed significant investment in the country’s ailing infrastructure. But when Trump finally delivered a 53-page plan to Capitol Hill last month, the document was widely panned by Democrats and largely met with silence from the GOP.

Trump also initially pledged to leave Medicaid intact but later embraced cuts to the program, which provides health insurance to the poor.

Trump has since talked repeatedly about the importance of respecting the flag, but he has not pushed Congress to advance any legislation imposing consequences for its desecration.

He went to CPAC and was hailed as a conquering hero, and a week later, he moves to the left of many Democrats on gun control,” Heye said. Trump’s policy inconsistencies are sure to complicate and even stymie whatever legislative agenda he has this year, leaving a vacuum of policy details that lawmakers then attempt to fill.

I knew walking out of that meeting that the White House was going to have to dial back some of what the president said,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “The president’s sort of lack of policy foundation allows him to flow where he thinks where the country is going.”

“The president has two powers under the Constitution: One is to sign legislation. One is to veto legislation,” he said. “Obviously, he’s important. But the executive is not the primary policymaker. It’s the Congress.”

“The American people know what’s going on,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor. “They know this president not only created the problem, but seems to be against every solution that might pass because it isn’t 100 percent of what he wants. If, at the end of the week, we are unable to find a bill that can pass — and I sincerely hope that’s not the case due to the good efforts of so many people on both sides of the aisle — the responsibility will fall entirely on the president’s shoulders and those in this body who went along with him.”

ennet is part of a group of bipartisan senators who announced on Thursday that they reached a deal that would incorporate four issues the White House wanted to include: DACA, border security, chain migration, and the visa lottery system.

“It should not come to that,” Bennet said when asked if he would withhold his vote to fund the government if a compromise is not reached

The president’s comments come as Democrats and Republicans in Congress scramble to make a deal on immigration that would protect Dreamers, immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. Trump has expressed interest in such a deal, but has said changes to the legal immigration system would have to accompany it.

We allowed about 1.5 million immigrants a year to settle in America in 2014 and 2015, the latest year such figures are available, but a new poll shows that Americans think that number is way too high. 

Harvard-Harris poll, 72 percent of Americans think we should admit fewer than 1 million immigrants a year. Of those, 54 percent think we should have fewer than 500,000 immigrants a year, and 35 percent think the number should be 250,000 or even less.

While President Trump has been acting as “good cop” with his extremely generous offer of eventual citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers, his essential “bad cop,” Acting ICE Director Tom Homan, has been enforcing the law in sanctuary cities and states.

The Obama administration had essentially allowed San Francisco and other liberal areas to opt out of federal immigration law, but that is changing under Director Homan, who promised a 400 percent increase in workplace enforcement.

Harvard-Harris poll shows that most Americans not only think total immigration should be reduced, but also that we should give preference to immigrants with something to contribute to our country, based on their education and skills.

“It is wrong,” Bill Clinton said then, “to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.”

there are policy and human-rights implications to what the president says and does. Dehumanizing rhetoric is a powerful real-world tool, especially when it’s coming from the president of the United States.

As with his remarks on Wednesday, it’s unclear whether Trump was referring specifically to gang members or to undocumented immigrants as a whole. This ambiguity could perhaps be chalked up to the president’s imprecise speech, but it’s connected to real policy. This unclarity is a key mechanism in the federal government’s targeting of immigrants across the country.

In 2017, ICE arrested and detained Daniel Ramirez Medina, a young undocumented immigrant who’d been shielded from deportation by enrolling in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. ICE tried to strip him of his protected status and deport him, all because they claimed a tattoo of his birthplace proved his affiliation with a gang. According to criminal-justice and immigration advocates, the number of MS-13 arrests is inflated by these flimsy cases. In the Ramirez case, a federal judge criticized ICE for lying even in the court of law about Ramirez’s affiliation, saying the “agency [offered] no evidence to this Court to support its assertions.”

According to The Marshall Project, immigrants only have to meet some very loose criteria in order to fall into the gang dragnet, including hanging out where gang members usually frequent or being labeled as a gang member by a “reliable source,” such as a teacher.

the treatment of individuals caught up in the dragnet—from frigid detention centers to the separation of mothers from children—certainly still resembles what might be reserved for animals.

the combination of draconian rhetoric and the elision of nuance between real and perceived criminal elements is a crux of how racism has worked for centuries in this country and around the world.

“superpredator” originates as a zoological term for apex predatory animals—to mobilize massive public support for new criminal-justice policies and provide a moral high ground to marginalize any opponents.

any reasonable assessment of mass incarceration in black America will show that the damage has long been done. In Illinois, for example, over 80 percent of juveniles sentenced to life without parole under the superpredator dragnet were minorities. Driven to bloodlust against an ill-defined population of black youths made to be less than human, America strained against the Constitution and the basic precepts of human rights to stamp out a threat—based on a theory that has since been discredited.

The true peril of Trump’s comments on Wednesday is this: that the state will be further empowered to suspend human rights.

Dehumanization is not just a buzzword, but a descriptor of a specific and well-known psychological and sociological process, by which people are conditioned to accept inflicting increasingly inhumane conditions and punishments on other people

dehumanization means both a broadening of what’s acceptable and just who is unacceptable.

The most likely outcome of Trump’s “animals” rhetoric isn’t a return to some mythological Pax Americana, as his supporters might suggest. Quite the opposite: It could fuel more informing on neighbors, more regular harassment for people of color, a deeper and wider dragnet, and an increased acceptance of brutality and extralegal practices. That’s what happens when people stop being people.

Biden calls for a $15 minimum wage, increased Social Security benefits for the poorest Americans, and strengthening the power of unions to organize and bargain. He advocates a substantial program to tackle infrastructure, and a sweeping gun control plan.

He proposes to assist low-income schools by tripling the amount of federal assistance to fund universal pre-K and raise teachers’ salaries. A frequent critic, German Lopez of Vox, describes his proposal for criminal justice reform as “one of the most comprehensive among presidential campaigns, taking on various parts of the criminal justice system at once.” And he is committed to fighting voter suppression and expanding the right to vote.

When it comes to the environment, even the progressive Sunrise Movement (which supports Sanders) calls Biden’s plan to combat climate change “comprehensive.” Focused on achieving clean energy and eliminating harmful emissions, it would cost $1.7 trillion over a decade—which, while far less the cost of the Green New Deal, represents a giant leap forward.

How does Biden propose to raise revenue? By tax increases of $3.4 trillion over a decade, virtually all derived from raising rates for corporations and wealthy—including treating capital gains as ordinary income.

His immigration plan is smart and balanced. While avoiding the extremes of decriminalizing the border or abolishing ICE, it protects Dreamers, provides a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, welcomes increased immigration, and reverses our shameful and sadistic maltreatment of asylum seekers and their children.

The relevant question is not how all this compares to Sanders’s unachievable wish list, but to the reality of America under Donald Trump. Anyone who dismisses the difference is not a progressive, but a myopic and politically-infantile purist.

Still, at its heart this election is about one man: Trump. That’s why it’s imperative that Biden daily remind voters, in style and substance, that he is Trump’s antithesis: decent, dignified, compassionate, and competent; a man they can trust.

To a great extent, Biden is less a leader than a vehicle. Which means that his campaign will need to present Biden at his best—the warm and engaging guy who looks like a “can-do” president.

As a child, Biden struggled to conquer a congenital stutter he fights against still, which may explain some of his verbal tics in debate. To control stuttering requires immense concentration and willpower: that Biden became a politician is a triumph—and something of a wonder

that’s the Biden his campaign needs voters to internalize: a leader with the resilience to conquer adversity and come out stronger and more compassionate than before. Which is a pretty fair metaphor for the America which, millions hope, will follow Donald Trump.

A Morning Consult poll in February showed that 30 percent of independent voters were less likely to support Biden because of controversy regarding his son. Republican senators are primed to use their subpoena power to “investigate” Hunter and thereby deep-dye the damage to his father, undercutting his appeal as an ordinary guy who exemplifies middle-class values.

The deal would allow the roughly 700,000 people enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program to stay in the country after the program ends in early March.

We have made it clear: We are not giving up our fight to protect America’s dreamers from the cruelty of deportation.”

The protesters demanded “a clean bill” — meaning that the Dream Act would get an up-or-down vote on its own without any language regarding border security attached. They “demanded” that Pelosi show a commitment to protecting “all 11 million” undocumented immigrants believed to be in the country.

“The Democrats are the ones who stopped their assault on sanctuary cities, stopped the wall, the increased deportations in our last bill that was at the end of April, and we are determined to get Republican votes to pass the clean DREAM Act,” she said. “Is it possible to pass a bill without some border security? Well, we’ll have to see. We didn’t agree to anything in that regard, except to listen and something that deals with technology or something like that – but nothing like a wall.”

accused Republican congressional leaders of “trying to nullify the 2016 election”

warned that the president’s decision to give Congress six months to come up with a solution for “dreamer” immigrants brought to the country illegally as children could cause a “civil war” within the Republican Party

Sanders said that “the president was right in firing Director Comey,” and pushed back on some of Bannon’s other assertions. “I think that Steve always likes to speak in, kind of, the most extreme measures,”

Bannon has at times also treated Trump as an imperfect vehicle for his own nationalist agenda

“It’s difficult to make the case that you’re helping the president if you’re in the position where you’re actively opposing either him or his political agenda,”

Republicans have seized upon the surge, labeling it the “Biden border crisis” in a new series of political ads and splashing coverage across conservative media.

Mr. Biden and his homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, are balancing their desire to reject Trump’s uncompromising approach — particularly with regard to unaccompanied minors, who have arrived at the border this month at a rate of roughly 400 people a day

A month ago, immigration didn’t register as a top concern for most Americans. A Pew Research Center poll in early February found that just 38 percent of the country thought that “reducing illegal immigration” should be a major priority among the United States’ foreign policy goals.

But in a CNN poll released last week, immigration was the only issue, from a list of seven, on which Americans gave Mr. Biden meaningfully negative reviews.

Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee this week, Mr. Mayorkas acknowledged that the situation at the border “is undoubtedly difficult,” and sought to manage expectations.

The arc of Mr. Byrd’s half-century career in the chamber is instructive. In the deliberations around the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he conducted one of the most disgraceful filibusters in Senate history, joining a two-month effort by Southern senators to derail the landmark legislation. But about 13 years later, Senate Democrats showed their confidence in his changed attitude by making him majority leader.

Mr. Byrd recognized this obstruction as a mortal threat to a functioning Senate. Working with Vice President Walter Mondale, who was presiding in the Senate, Mr. Byrd moved forcefully to crush the next post-cloture filibuster in 1978 (this time brought by two liberal Democrats).

It is fundamental to the distinctive nature of the Senate that the minority party must have its rights protected. But the best way to do that is through regular order — a legislative process that involves public hearings, committee work in which bipartisan understanding of issues develops and principled compromise occurs, and a vigorous amendment process and serious debate on the Senate floor, leading to a final vote, with the majority prevailing.

Moreover, there is no convincing rationale for establishing two classes of legislative action. It should be unacceptable that the $2.1 trillion tax cut in 2017 or the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act could be done by majority vote (through reconciliation) but that 60 votes are required before helping the Dreamers, requiring background checks for guns, combating climate change or protecting the right to vote.

My father had come to recognize that in contrast to what so many of today’s most vulnerable immigrants face, the system his family encountered ultimately supported them. He also knew intimately that lives are at stake.

The stars are aligned to make progress on immigration. If it was up to me, I’d take the Biden package and say, “Let’s go.” But the reality is, what can be done that will get 60 votes? What can be done through reconciliation? Now that the Covid bill is done, we turn our attention to this.

So, there’s the T.P.S. question. There’s the situation at the border. There’s restoring the asylum system. There’s taking care of Dreamers. My bill says any essential worker deserves a pathway to citizenship. But there’s other more bureaucratic pieces people aren’t talking about: the length of time the process takes to become a citizen; the cost of the application itself.

The answer also matters on a deeper institutional level. Some justices have drifted quite far from their ideological starting points. Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens and David Souter come to mind. All were Republican-appointed justices (by Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, respectively) who ended their careers as among the most liberal members of the court they served on. Could history repeat itself with any members of the Roberts court?

Chief among executive orders that begin to tackle the issue of climate change, Mr. Biden has signed a letter to re-enter the United States in the Paris climate accords, which it will officially rejoin 30 days from now. In 2019, Mr. Trump formally notified the United Nations that the United States would withdraw from the coalition of nearly 200 countries working to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas.

Mr. Biden will end the Trump administration’s 1776 Commission, which released a report on Monday that historians said distorted the role of slavery in the United States, among other history. Mr. Biden also revoked Mr. Trump’s executive order limiting the ability of federal agencies, contractors and other institutions to hold diversity and inclusion training.

Mr. Biden is moving to extend a federal moratorium on evictions and has asked agencies, including the Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development Departments, to prolong a moratorium on foreclosures on federally guaranteed mortgages that was enacted in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The extensions all run through at least the end of March.

Following in the footsteps of some of his predecessors, Mr. Biden has established ethics rules for those who serve in his administration that aim “to restore and maintain trust in the government.” He has ordered all of his appointees in the executive branch to sign an ethics pledge.

Washington Post Congressional Reporter Karoun Demirjian says that election could have an impact on a critical trade deal, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Neither Canada nor the US have ratified the USMCA.

Barrón-López reports that LULAC is "trying to register tends of thousands of Latinos ahead of the Iowa Democratic caucuses, hoping that the group could have some sway" in who ultimately carries the state in the Democratic presidential contest.

But McConnell did tell Senate Republicans in their weekly meeting that they needed to prepare for an impeachment trial. The GOP cracks when it comes to impeachment are very limited, but still worth tracking.Republican Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida this past week told CNN, "I don't think you can rule anything out until you know all the facts." Rooney also decided this past week not to seek reelection, which could him more of a wild card in the weeks ahead.Former GOP Gov. John Kasich of Ohio said he would vote yes on impeachment if he were in the House. Kasich was in the House back when President Bill Clinton was impeached. Kasich, though, is a constant Trump critic, so reading too much into his tough criticism would be unwise. But, again, it is worth tracking any Republican dissent or wavering on the impeachment question.

Hunger is stronger than fear.

Undocumented immigrants contribute more than $11 billion a year in state and local taxes. Immigrants are an essential part of our multiethnic, multicultural society.

But before the Biden administration can address the challenge of new migrant caravans heading north, it will have to deal with the tens of thousands of asylum seekers, mostly Central Americans, already stranded in Mexico along the U.S. border.

If he wants to be the anti-Trump president, Mr. Biden will have to resolve this situation promptly and humanely.

The administration has a long list of promises to fulfill in its first 100 days, from legalizing America’s approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants and protecting Dreamers to granting temporary protected status to the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States who escaped Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

As long as there aren’t enough Covid-19 vaccines for everyone, it’s unlikely the Biden administration will allow a massive influx of refugees and asylum seekers into the country. These months of vaccine scarcity will hopefully provide the administration the time it needs to formulate and execute a new immigration policy that can address the crisis.

They’ll also have to deal with the unauthorized immigrants who have been in the United States for decades, waiting for their status to be regularized.

Good leaders are defined by how they treat the most vulnerable in their charge, not the wealthiest or most powerful. And immigrants are, by far, the most vulnerable.