Category: joe biden

Democratic senators urge Biden to use 14th Amendment to raise debt limit

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

A group of Democratic senators led by Sen. Tina Smith (Minn.) are circulating a letter urging President Biden to invoke his constitutional authority under the 14th Amendment to raise the nation’s debt limit without having to pass legislation through Congress.  

These senators say the spending reforms that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has demanded in exchange for raising the debt limit are unacceptable and that Biden should circumvent Republican lawmakers by raising the debt limit unilaterally, something that has never been done before and would almost certainly be challenged in court.  

“We write to urgently request that you prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which clearly states: ‘the validity of the public debt of the United States...shall not be questioned.’ Using this authority would allow the United States to continue to pay its bills on-time, without delay, preventing a global economic catastrophe,” they write in a letter currently circulating through the Senate Democratic conference. 

The signatories on the letter so far include Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).  

More debt ceiling coverage from The Hill:

The lawmakers warned they will not accept any concessions attached to the debt limit that cut federal assistance for low-income Americans without raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations.  

“We cannot reach a budget agreement that increases the suffering of millions of Americans who are already living in desperation. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we must ask billionaires and large corporations who are doing phenomenally well to start paying their fair share of taxes,” they wrote in response to proposals by House Republicans to increase work requirements for people who rely on Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. 

The Democratic senators warned that Republican proposals in a House-passed bill to raise the debt limit could push as many as 21 million people off of Medicaid and deny nutrition assistance to 1.7 million women, infants and children. 

The lawmakers also blustered at House Republicans’ demands to attach major permitting reforms for fossil-fuel attraction projects to debt-limit legislation.  

“We also cannot allow these budget negotiations to undermine the historic clean energy and environmental justice investments made by Congress and your administration by allowing fossil fuel companies to unleash a flood of dirty energy projects that will worsen the climate crisis and disproportionately impact frontline communities. We must continue the transition from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy,” they wrote.  

Merkley said the letter is intended to assure Biden that he will have support on Capitol Hill if he decides to use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt limit in the absence of a deal with McCarthy.  

“It’s important because Kevin McCarthy has two main requests: attack ordinary, working families across America by cutting the foundations for health care, housing, education and good-paying jobs, and unleash fossil fuels on America. And both of those are absolutely unacceptable,” he said.  

"I want the president to see that he has the support in the Senate to use the 14th Amendment," he said. "He has support to say no to outrageous demands from the radical right."

Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen, however, warned last week that invoking the 14th Amendment would be a "constitutional crisis" and would spur a legal battle. 

What Will Joe Biden Do If Hunter Is Indicted?

Posted on by RealClearWire

By Charles Lipson for RealClearWire

What will President Biden do if his son is indicted by the federal prosecutor in Delaware? That’s one of three questions looming over U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ fateful choice.

The second is whether the indictment will go after a larger, coordinated family scheme of influence peddling or confine itself to smaller, tightly-confined issues like lying to get a gun permit and not registering as a foreign lobbyist.

The third is whether Attorney General Merrick Garland will approve Weiss’ proposed charges. Significant political calculations follow from those decisions.

It’s easy enough to answer what Garland will do. He has little choice but to approve any charges Weiss proposes after the government’s multi-year investigation. Anything else would look shady, a far cry from the neutral, apolitical justice Garland’s department is charged with dispensing. Burying the charges, after Garland’s refusal to appoint a special counsel, would embroil his department in its nastiest controversy since John Mitchell befouled it under President Nixon.

Assuming the federal attorney proposes felony charges and Garland approves them, Joe Biden faces the toughest choice of his political life.

The president’s dilemma is why it’s so interesting to follow recent speculation by Miranda Devine, a reporter and columnist for the New York Post. She’s the most informed journalist on the Hunter Biden story. Her paper broke the news about the emails on Hunter’s laptop, three weeks before the 2020 election, and Devine has done the best follow-up reporting.

To bury that story before the election took the combined, Herculean efforts of the legacy media, social media giants, and former CIA officials. Their success helped elect Biden. But the “little story that could” just keeps chugging along, mostly because the corruption is so extensive, so rich for investigation. Criminal charges now seem likely, not that the mainstream media has shown much interest.

Now, Devine is speculating that Biden is setting the stage to pardon Hunter, framing it as the actions of a loving father who backs his troubled child. “My son has done nothing wrong,” Biden told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle in a rare one-on-one interview. “I trust him. I have faith in him, and it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him.”

Whether such sentiments presage a pardon, as Devine thinks, is still a guess. We can say something more concrete, though, as Biden weighs such a move. Four consequences stand out:

  • A presidential pardon would set off a political firestorm.
  • The White House will try its best to prevent any public revelation of the family’s business dealings. That means the president and his advisors want to prevent a trial, get Hunter to take a plea, and convince the judge to seal the evidence. Another option is to go trial, knowing it won’t be held until after the election.
  • If Biden pardons his son this year, he’s signaling he won’t run for reelection. He wouldn’t put that albatross around his own neck if he intended to face the voters.
  • If Biden does run and pardons his son after November 2024, the political impact depends on who wins the White House and Capitol Hill. The calculations are more complicated than one might expect.

Let’s consider each in turn.

First, a pardon would set off the biggest political firestorm since Watergate. It would look worse than self-dealing, bad as that is. It would look like the president is covering up his family’s corruption, not only to get Hunter off the hook but to prevent the disclosure of damning evidence in court.

That evidence is likely to touch many more Biden family members than Hunter, and perhaps the president himself. The more Biden family members who are implicated, the more the whole operation looks like a concerted operation to monetize Joe’s political position. It also might threaten to shred Joe’s repeated claim that he knew nothing about any family business interests or influence peddling. The wider the sleaze, the harder it is to sell that story.

The chairman of the House committee investigating these issues has said Hunter’s corruption was merely one part of the family business. And that business was selling influence. Rep. James Comer has publicly said that his House Oversight Committee has already collected evidence that nine Biden family members are involved in sketchy business deals, including substantial payments from foreign firms.

Some of those firms are closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Comer added that his committee is investigating the possible involvement of at least three more family members, as well as Joe Biden’s own role. His conclusion: “The entire Biden family” is entrapped in the financial enrichment scheme. So far, however, Comer hasn’t named names or provided the evidence. He says he will provide much more at a major press conference Wednesday.

Comer’s principle suggestion is that the Biden family’s influence-peddling scheme is much broader, and their criminal actions more serious, than isolated schemes perpetrated by the president’s conniving second son. He adds that his evidence points to Joe Biden’s direct involvement, including possible payments for official actions.

That is what he told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, although he hasn’t yet provided the evidence for that incendiary allegation. Comer is also attacking the FBI for desultory investigation – which ignored much of the malfeasance – and calling out the mainstream media for its concerted silence.

Related: Hunter Biden’s Stripper Baby Mama Drama Isn’t Making Joe Biden’s Life Any Easier

The Internal Revenue Service might be implicated, too, since a lot of payments – and a lot of Hunter’s income – went through what Comer calls the family’s “web of LLCs.” A senior supervisory agent at the IRS is seeking whistleblower protection to tell Congress about “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed” in investigating Hunter’s taxes.

If political pressure really was applied to the IRS over Hunter’s taxes, or if senior agents acted improperly to curry favor, those would obviously be very serious matters, legally and politically. Comer and the House Republicans in the committee’s majority want that testimony under oath and are seeking responses from the IRS and DOJ.

Anticipating an indictment soon, Comer has urged the Justice Department to hold off until his committee presents more evidence to the public this week. “When you have the opportunity to see the evidence that the House Oversight Committee will produce with respect to the web of [Biden family] LLCs, with respect to the number of adversarial countries that this family influence peddled in, and this is not just about the president’s son. This is about the entire Biden family, including the President of the United States.”

However wide-ranging the indictment is, Hunter will do everything he can to strike a plea deal and seal all the evidence to prevent its disclosure at trial. That would clearly be the preference inside the White House. But it’s not in the public interest.

If the DOJ tries to seal the evidence, it would be joining in a cover-up. The Department must require that Hunter attest to all incriminating evidence and that it all be made public as part of any plea deal. The judge himself should demand it. That requirement might kill Hunter’s willingness to take the deal. Rather than reveal the evidence now, the White House would prefer kick it down the road, to a trial date after the November 2024 election.

Whether a trial happens or not, a pardon for Hunter would be politically fatal for the president, and he and his advisers must know it. That leads to a clear conclusion. If Joe pardons Hunter this year, running for reelection becomes unrealistic. Such a self-inflicted wound would be a far more powerful signal of his intentions than a speech declaring his candidacy. There’s no way Joe would eviscerate his political prospects like that if he intended to face the voters again.

Of course, Biden could delay any pardon until after November 2024. That would still invite a high-profile congressional investigation and perhaps impeachment, but the political maneuvering would depend on the election outcome. If Biden loses and the current Republican House moves quickly to impeach, Senate Democrats would be in a bind. It takes overwhelming evidence to convince senators to humiliate a president from their own party. The only thing that would do it is overwhelming fear of their constituents at the ballot box.

Related: Things Get Awkward When Karine Jean-Pierre Gets Asked About Hunter Biden’s Baby With a Stripper

The situation is entirely different if Biden wins and the Republicans take both the House and Senate. The problem, in three words, is President Kamala Harris. Although the new House would have no trouble collecting votes for impeachment, they might hesitate before passing the ultimate decision to their Republican colleagues in the Senate. Do they really want to elevate Harris into the Oval Office?

None of these prospects is a happy one. Each one adds to the misery of a country beset by lawlessness on the streets, chaos at the southern border, stagnant real income, and a looming debt crisis. We need to know whether the Biden family – not just Hunter – was engaged in a series of corrupt schemes to peddle the influence of a high-ranking government official.

We need to know all the family members involved and their business partners. We need to know what they were paid for doing and who paid them. What we don’t need is a weak, narrowly-drawn indictment, an official cover-up of the evidence, and, worst of all, a self-serving presidential pardon.

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

The post What Will Joe Biden Do If Hunter Is Indicted? appeared first on The Political Insider.

Joe Biden ‘Will Be Impeached’ Over Report Allegedly Linking Him to ‘Criminal Scheme,’ Says MTG

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene confidently predicted President Joe Biden “will be impeached” following a bombshell report alleging he engaged in criminal activity.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) announced Wednesday that a whistleblower had come forth claiming the DOJ and FBI possess a file describing an alleged “criminal scheme” between Biden and a foreign national while he was serving as Vice President.

Grassley has described the whistleblower as “credible.”

Comer subpoenaed the form in question which the accuser claims “describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”

They claim the DOJ has the document in their possession.

Axios describes the claims as “the most direct allegation against President Biden himself.”

Comer’s subpoena is demanding the document within a week.

RELATED: GOP Senator Grassley Accuses FBI of Covering Up Biden Family ‘Potential Criminal Conduct’

Could Biden Be Impeached Over Alleged ‘Criminal Scheme’?

Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) posted a ‘breaking news’ video along with a copy of the joint letter from Grassley and Comer suggesting she now has “evidence” to prove President Biden’s alleged “criminal scheme.”

While the House Oversight Committee has not procured the document claimed to be in possession of the DOJ as of yet, Greene insists the group will continue to investigate Biden’s potential pay-for-play scheme with foreign nationals.

Greene claims the material would allegedly contain “proof and information that Joe Biden, as Vice President of the United States, actually interacted with a foreign national and made a deal with a foreign national in exchange for money.”

In a subsequent interview on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Greene suggests impeachment might finally be on the table.

“Now on the Oversight Committee, because we have real subpoena powers, we have the power to investigate and we have the power to do what we’re doing now,” she said.

“And that form shows the proof that Joe Biden took a money payment from a foreign national in exchange for policy decisions while he was vice president of the United States,” Greene claims.

She added: “This means that Joe Biden will be impeached.”

RELATED: Joe Biden Named in Email Discussing Call With Hunter About Major Gas Deal With China

Will the FBI Produce the Document?

Grassley, in an interview with Fox News’ Sandra Smith, reiterated that the whistleblower is viewed as “credible” by the Committee.

“So the Justice Department, the FBI needs to come clean to the American people, what they did with the document, because we know the document exists from very credible whistleblower information that we got,” insists Grassley.

“We really need to know what steps did the Justice Department and FBI take to investigate and to vet the document to determine if it’s accurate or not?”

If they saw the name Biden and viewed it as evidence of a ‘criminal scheme’ those steps most likely involved burying it as deep as humanly possible.

“If the Justice Department and the FBI have any hopes of redeeming their once trusted position with the American people, Garland and Wray must answer this subpoena and tell us what they’re doing with this information that we think is very credible based upon what whistleblowers are telling us,” added Grassley.

The Iowa congressman has been at the forefront of investigating corruption in the Biden family.

Prior to this report, Grassley accused the FBI of hiding ‘potential criminal conduct’ by the Biden family.

Representative Comer recently suggested at least a dozen relatives of President Biden could be exposed in foreign money deals.

A statement from the White House does not expressly deny any of the accusations but blows off the whistleblower claims as more of the same from Republicans.

“For going on 5 years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded politically-motivated attacks against [Biden] without offering evidence for their claims,” tweeted spokesman Ian Sams.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested the allegations of criminal activity involving the “big guy” are so prevalent that he’s transferring the nickname ‘Crooked’ from Hillary Clinton to ‘Crooked Joe Biden.’

Comer has been indicating a press conference may come early this month where he intends to discuss the committee’s findings regarding “influence peddling” by Biden family members.

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The post Joe Biden ‘Will Be Impeached’ Over Report Allegedly Linking Him to ‘Criminal Scheme,’ Says MTG appeared first on The Political Insider.

The Memo: Texas killing sparks outrage from Biden’s border critics

Posted on (Updated by Niall Stanage

A horrific mass killing in Texas has opened new sores in the national debate over illegal immigration and crime.

Five people, including a young boy whose age has been reported as 8 or 9, were killed Friday in Cleveland, Texas. The shooting in the small community about 45 miles north of Houston happened after neighbors reportedly told a man to stop shooting in his yard and he became enraged. 

The alleged shooter has been named as Francisco Oropeza, 38. As of Monday afternoon, law enforcement agencies have been unable to apprehend Oropeza, despite a massive manhunt.

The case has taken on political power for reasons beyond the gruesome nature of the killing.

Oropeza is a Mexican national who appears to have been in the United States illegally. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have confirmed that he was deported on at least four previous occasions stretching back more than a decade.

His previous deportations, those officials said, took place in March 2009, September 2009, January 2012 and July 2016.

That record, and the terrible crime of which he stands accused, has outraged those who want a stricter border policy.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents rank-and-file Border Patrol agents, noted that seeking to illegally reenter the United States having previously been deported is a felony.

“Had we prosecuted him for that felony, he would not have been able to kill” his alleged victims, Judd said.

Judd also made a wider point about border policy under President Biden.

“When you hear people like [Homeland Security] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas say the border is not open, you have to look at this particular case … If somebody was able to reenter this country five different times despite being deported, that clearly shows the border is, in fact, open.”

Liberal advocates hit back, arguing that, historically, immigrants commit crime at lower rates than native-born Americans — and that attempts to draw a cause-and-effect line between immigration policy and the latest killing are raw demagoguery.

It’s a point that finds support from some independent observers.

Rhetoric linking illegal immigration and violent crime “has been used for a long time,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

“None of the social science data confirms that is true and it quite often shows the opposite — that neighborhoods with a lot of immigration are safer,” said Zelizer. “But politically it has been very powerful. It creates the idea of an enemy coming from outside who is now inside.”

The political battle is only growing more intense.

“This illegal alien brutally murdered 5 individuals in an ‘execution-style’ shooting,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) tweeted Monday. “He was previously deported and has been arrested numerous times. Why was he in our country roaming around freely?”

Biggs called for the impeachment of Mayorkas.

Kari Lake, the defeated GOP candidate in last November’s Arizona gubernatorial election, tweeted, “How do we continue to let these criminals into the country?”

At Monday’s media briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre characterized the events in Cleveland as “yet another shocking, horrific act of gun violence.” 

Jean-Pierre noted that while President Biden was “praying” for those affected, “the president believes prayers alone are not enough.” 

The press secretary noted Biden’s desire for Congress to pass stricter gun-control legislation — a long-held wish that has almost no chance of being fulfilled anytime soon.

Continuing the political back-and-forth, the Republican National Committee tweeted within minutes of Jean-Pierre’s opening remarks that she did “not mention” that Oropeza is “an illegal immigrant who has been deported FIVE TIMES.”

The atrocity in Texas arises at an especially febrile time when it comes to debates about the border.

Encounters between unauthorized migrants and Customs and Border Protection agents at the southwestern border hit their highest figure ever recorded last December, at more than 252,000. 

The figure declined significantly in January and February, to fewer than 160,000 in each month. But in March, the most recent month for which data is available, those encounters rose again, to almost 192,000.

It is widely expected that those numbers will surge once Title 42 ends in less than two weeks. That Trump-era policy, continued under Biden, was used to quickly expel migrants and is expected to end on May 11.

Immigration has long been one of Biden’s weakest political issues and Republicans are sure to want to press their advantage on the topic as the presidential campaign heats up. 

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll in mid-April, just 27 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s handling of immigration — tying for the lowest approval number in any of the 11 issues tested in that survey.

Advocates of a stricter immigration policy see the shooting in Texas as evidence of how badly the current policy is falling.

“It’s just another example of what happens when we fail to enforse our laws, when you fail to enforce the border,” said Ira Mehlman, the media director of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors a stricter immigration system. “Virtually nobody is deported anymore.”

But Mehlman distanced himself from a controversial statement from the office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, which referred to the victims of the Cleveland shooting as “five illegal immigrants.”

“It doesn’t matter what the immigration states of the victims is,” Mehlman said. “Nobody should be killed for asking a guy to stop shooting in his backyard.”

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Where Did All the Biden Illegal Immigrants Go? Sanctuary Cities Like New York Are Only Part of the Answer

Posted on by RealClearWire

By James Varney for RealClearInvestigations

In New York City, if the newcomers aren’t put up at the luxury cruise terminal that served the QE2, they could get $700-a-night midtown hotel accommodations with iconic Manhattan views. In Chicago, they found themselves whisked to suburban lodgings. In Denver, officials refer to them discreetly as “guests” and you needn’t bother inquiring about their inns or addresses.  

The people enjoying these free digs aren’t privacy-conscious jet-setters, but the secrecy surrounding them might be comparable: They’re some of the millions of migrants who have illegally crossed into the U.S. since the Biden administration relaxed most border controls.

RELATED: Nearly 270,000 Apprehensions, Gotaways at Southern Border in March

No one knows exactly how many people have poured across the southwestern U.S. border since President Biden took office, or where they’ve gone since. The official number of encounters by Customs and Border Patrol stands at 5.2 million people, logged over the last two full federal fiscal years and fiscal 2023 through March. But that number is imprecise because it includes repeat encounters with the same people and omits the many who slipped into the country unnoticed by border agents.  

Under President Biden, the U.S. smashed past the 200,000 monthly encounters mark for the first time in July 2021 and it has repeatedly topped that record in the months since. By comparison, in fiscal 2020, which ended a month before Biden’s defeat of President Trump, the U.S. averaged 38,174 monthly encounters at the border, according to CBP figures.  

Earlier: Why Hasn’t the GOP Impeached Mayorkas Yet? 

Because of an official lack of transparency, all those people and the circumstances by which they have arrived and remained have made it hard to take stock of the historic influx. Through midnight flights and buses from the border to far-flung locales, the administration has made it difficult to identify where the migrants are now living and receiving services. Also unclear are the costs associated with the arrivals.  

But flares have been sent up – especially over immigrant sanctuary cities like New York, Denver and Chicago, which have long promised to house migrants. While those cities are providing housing and other services for a small fraction of the recent migrants, the costs are significant for these budget-strapped metropolises.

Denver plans to spend $20 million in the first six months of this year to provide housing to migrants. Officials say this works out to between $800 and $1,000 per week per person.   

In January the state of Illinois turned down Chicago’s request for more funds, saying it had already spent close to $120 million on its “asylum seeker emergency response” – or roughly $33,000 per migrant.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has asked for more than $500 million in federal aid, while pegging the city’s spending at between $2 billion and $3 billion.     

Other data points of the opaque costs of Biden-era illegal immigration include Massachusetts’ estimate that it will need $28 million to launch a program to provide driver’s licenses to undocumented residents. The state is seeking a share of the omnibus spending bill passed by Democrats in December 2022 when they controlled both houses of Congress, which included $800 million for cities grappling with the influx.  

RELATED: Biden to Open Up Medicaid, Obamacare to About 700,000 Illegal Immigrants

These numbers are incomplete in part because it is hard to separate the added cost of recent migrants from costs for the millions of undocumented immigrants who were in the country before the recent surge.  

A March study by the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that, after accounting for taxes paid by undocumented migrants, they cost taxpayers over $150 billion per year – a 30% increase since 2017.  

Yet FAIR acknowledges the problem of fixing costs has become more difficult, given the record-breaking numbers of illegal crossers in the past two and a half years and efforts by some government agencies to mask their spending.  

“We often had to grapple with a paucity of easily accessible official data,” the report notes. “Many state and federal entities do not publish detailed data that they collect, making it difficult to reliably separate illegal aliens from citizens of lawful immigrants. We have also encountered cases where the current administration has revoked or restricted documents published by previous administrations in order to reduce the visibility of data which shines a negative light on their immigration policy agenda.”

Those totals also involve far more than simple food and board. To arrive at its staggering sum, FAIR includes estimates of the costs in education, health care and law enforcement.  

“The irony is not only are these sanctuary jurisdictions turning to Washington with their hands out, but that they still refuse to join with governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis in demanding that the federal government take decisive steps to stanch the influx of new migrants,” FAIR spokesman Ira Mehlman told RealClearInvestigations, referring to the Republican chief executives of Texas and Florida, respectively. “The obvious hypocrisy of declaring yourself a sanctuary jurisdiction while complaining about the costs and burdens associated with it are undeniable.”

Groups that favor more relaxed border security measures, such as the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and the American Immigration Council, did not respond to RCI’s request for comment; the liberal Brookings Institution declined to comment. 

RELATED: Illegal Immigration is Surging… Across the Northern Border, Now

Cities housing many migrants have a hard time estimating costs. New York Mayor Adams has asked for more than $500 million in federal aid, while pegging the city’s spending one time at $2 billion and another time at $3 billion. Those are the sorts of bills New York has racked up putting what they call “asylum seekers” or “migrants” in hotels.

And Adams, whose requests sometimes include the claim “we are all in this together,” wants to spend even more. This month, he floated the idea of paying college tuition for illegal immigrants if they attend New York state schools outside the city.

Using Adams’ own number of some 40,000 illegal immigrants that New York City has foot the bills for, it means taxpayers are spending roughly $150,000 per person to host new arrivals. In March, City Hall scaled back its count of the number of its immigrants to 12,700, which meant the taxpayers’ were spending nearly $5 million a day to take care of them, according to a New York Post analysis.  

The Office of the New York City Public Advocate, which helps immigrants navigate the benefits available to them, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Adams declined to address questions about spending, pointing instead to various links the city maintains for immigrants and noting the city has expanded a New York County Supreme Court decision in 1981 regarding shelter for homeless people to cover immigrants.   

Whatever the current official number of illegal immigrants New York is dealing with it is but a fraction of those that have poured into various Texas communities along the border.   

Officials at El Paso’s City Hall, one of the ground zeroes in the illegal immigration crush, did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment on its spending. But Gov. Abbott said his Operation Lone Star, launched in March 2021, has “allocated more than $4 billion to do the federal government’s job and secure the border,” Abbott’s spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said.   

It was Abbott who began busing illegal immigrants to some of the sanctuary cities that declare themselves so welcoming, such as New York, Denver and Chicago.

RELATED: Cruz to Mayorkas: ‘If You Had Integrity, You Would Resign’

“Texas began busing migrants to sanctuary cities last April to provide relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border communities,” Mahaleris said. “Mayors Adams, [Muriel] Bowser and [Lori] Lightfoot were all too happy to tout their sanctuary city statuses until Texas bused over 16,900 migrants, collectively, to their self-declared sanctuary. Instead of complaining about dealing with a fraction of the border crisis Texas communities see every day, these hypocrites should call on President Biden to take immediate action to secure the border – something the president continues failing to do.”  

Lightfoot, departing as mayor of Chicago after her defeat in February, first turned to Illinois for millions to help the Windy City cope with its several thousand illegal immigrants Texas provided. In January, however, the state turned her down, saying it had already spent close to $120 million on its “asylum seeker emergency response.”  

That response came last September when Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued an “emergency disaster proclamation.” His proclamation and the words of other state leaders presented a schizophrenic picture in which they portray Illinois as a “welcoming beacon of hope” and complain they weren’t given “official advance warning.”

Most of the money Illinois spent – more than $61.5 million, or roughly $31,000 per immigrant – went to contracts with organizations or staff “who provided on site case management and other services at multiple locations.”  

Illinois dropped another $8 million on “interim housing,” nearly $4 million on “health screenings for asylum seekers, and more than $29 million on “hotel, transportation and housing costs,” according to their breakdown.  

Nowhere did Pritzker or Lightfoot question the wisdom of the Biden administration ‘s border policies, and there was no indication they understood the burdens that had been put on border cities and states. Instead, the unmistakable message was that if illegal immigrants were going to be sent where the “welcoming beacon” shone, other people should pay for it.

RELATED: Rio Grande Border Patrol Agents Assaulted While Apprehending Illegal Aliens

“They can say all that is for free, but now they’re finding out they can’t have a welfare society and an open border,” said Lora Reis, the director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Denver held a budget “transparency and equity” meeting earlier this month at which Chief Financial Officer Margaret Danuser said the city will have spent between $17 and $20 million on housing and other services for between 5,000 and 6,000 illegal immigrants between Dec. 2022 and this June. The city hoped to get federal taxpayers to reimburse it for $2.8 million, and a Colorado state fund for another $3.5 million.

Those figures show Denver spent about the same as Chicago at roughly $33,000 per immigrant, costs that are still far below New York City’s. 

“None of these sanctuary mayors or governors have ever asked for a secure border, it was always just, ‘feds, give us money!’” said Reis. “They can say all that for free, but they are finding out you can’t have a welfare system and an open border.”

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

The post Where Did All the Biden Illegal Immigrants Go? Sanctuary Cities Like New York Are Only Part of the Answer appeared first on The Political Insider.

Biden’s strategy on Trump indictment? Get out of the way 

Posted on (Updated by Jordain Carney

If former President Trump is indicted this week, the White House is expected to employ a simple strategy: Get out of the way.  

As a Trump indictment over the alleged Stormy Daniels hush-money scheme looms from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the White House has publicly been mum.  

Privately, aides and allies said that was an intentional strategy to let the news speak for itself while pointing to the importance of accountability and rule of law.  

“The White House doesn’t have to do much here,” said one Biden ally who is close to the president’s team. “They need to acknowledge that it’s a serious legal matter and then leave it up to the courts.”  

Allies to President Biden say they are aware that Trump’s team will inevitably turn the indictment into a political issue, suggesting that Bragg, a Democrat with connections to the president, is conducting another "witch hunt.”  

Indeed, Trump and his supporters have already been doing so, and their effort went into hyperdrive on Saturday when the former president claimed to his followers on Truth Social that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday.  

On Sunday, Trump took to the social media platform again and accused Biden of having “stuffed” the district attorney’s office that is probing the case with officials from Department of Justice. 

“Biden wants to pretend he has nothing to do with the Manhattan D.A.’s Assault on Democracy when, in fact, he has ‘stuffed’ the D.A.’s Office with Department of Injustice people, including one top DOJ operative from D.C,” Trump wrote on the site without mentioning to whom he was referring.   

He also took aim at Bragg, who he said is “taking his orders from D.C.”  

Democrats say Biden should not feel compelled to “get in the mud,” as one major Democratic donor put it. 

The president can create a contrast with Trump by keeping his head down as the news around the indictment ensues.  

“It’s the right thing to do, the opposite of what Trump would have done, and presents the split screen of Trump’s crimes with Biden delivering for the American people,” said Democratic strategist Josh Schwerin. “There is nothing Trump wants more than to have more reason to falsely claim that his legal troubles are a political attack rather than the rule of law.”  

At the White House briefing on Monday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refrained from speaking about Trump’s case, citing “an ongoing investigation.  

“We do not comment on any ongoing investigations from here,” Jean-Pierre said. “We’ve been very consistent on that.”  

Ultimately, Democrats and Biden’s team hope the get-out-of-way strategy will accomplish another goal: It will divide Republicans ahead of a pivotal GOP primary race, in which Trump faces competition from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to run for the White House, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who is already in the race. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence and others are also expected to join the GOP primary.   

“Republicans are going to be split — some will defend Trump, others will seek his base without embracing him,” said Basil Smikle, the former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party who serves as the director of the Public Policy Program at Hunter College. “Both present a good foil for Democrats and Biden.”  

So far, Republicans have walked a fine line on the possible impeachment.  

On Monday, DeSantis held a press conference where he attacked Bragg, calling him a “Soros-funded prosecutor” while accusing him of “weaponizing” the Manhattan district attorney’s office.  

But at the same time, the governor, who did not mention Trump by name, slapped the former president when he said he doesn’t “know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.” 

“I can’t speak to that,” DeSantis added pointedly.  

Democrats expect that tone to continue from the Florida governor — and other Republican rivals — as the presidential race heats up.  

In that scenario, they say, Biden comes out on top.  

“It makes the GOP nomination battle more contentious, which is good for Biden,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.  

In addition, Bannon argued Trump’s potential indictment and trial could galvanize Republicans behind Trump, “who is a lesser threat to Biden than a candidate like DeSantis.”  

While allies expect Biden to largely take a do-nothing approach on the potential indictment, allies cautioned that the strategy could change if protests turn violent, as they did during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. 

“They’re not going to talk about it unless they have to talk about it,” the ally said.  

Mayorkas says his critics on Capitol Hill ‘will not force’ him out

Posted on (Updated by Lauren Sforza

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a new interview that he will not be pushed out of his position amid efforts from some House Republicans to impeach him.

"They will not force me out," he told CNN's Chris Wallace on Sunday's episode of "Who's Talking to Chris Wallace."

Many House Republicans have repeatedly called to impeach Mayorkas, arguing that the secretary does not have "operational control" of the border despite repeated claims the border is secure.

Two articles of impeachment have now been levied against Mayorkas this year, alleging that Mayorkas lied to Congress about having control of the border and that he has failed in his duties to control the border.

The GOP's impeachment case against him is dependent on a 2006 law that states operational control of the border is defined as the prevention "of all unlawful entries." Critics have argued that this definition of operational control was commonly seen as impossible to meet.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called on Mayorkas to resign in November, saying that a House investigation will determine if an impeachment inquiry is warranted. The Department of Homeland Security has previously said that Mayorkas has no plans to resign.

Mayorkas said that he takes calls for his impeachment "seriously" and that he intends to appear before Congress when he is called to.

"I take them seriously," he said. "It is the leadership of the House that provided those remarks. I don't dismiss it by any measure, but what I do is I focus on my work."

He also added that he does not think he has done anything wrong.

"I think it is a disagreement over policy," he said. "And I think it is used for political purposes to continue a negative dialogue about a migration challenge that is not unique to the United States, to continue that dialogue to uplift it for political reasons."

The impeachment of cabinet members has been exceedingly rare throughout U.S. history.

Former President Grant’s secretary of war, William Belknap, was the only Cabinet member to be impeached in history. He resigned in 1876 before he would have been likely convicted for taking kickbacks for appointing a contractor to run a trading post in Oklahoma.

Mary Miller to skip Biden’s State of the Union

Posted on (Updated by Rachel Scully

Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) said she will skip President Biden's State of the Union on Tuesday, saying she does not want to "show up to and listen to him continue to lie."

In a statement released Monday by her office, Miller said she is boycotting the president’s speech over his failure to properly address recent issues including the national security risk posed by the Chinese balloon and the discovery of classified documents in his home and office.

"Joe Biden’s presidency has been filled with lie after lie, especially lies about the border being secure, inflation being temporary, and the DOJ targeting parents for attending school board meetings," she said. "I will not be attending Biden’s State of the Union to listen to him lie about the damage he has caused to our country while the left-wing media and members of Congress applaud his lies.”

Miller also lamented former Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripping up President Trump's third State of the Union address in 2020, "which celebrated a secure border, support for our military, and American energy independence."

In an interview with Breitbart News over the weekend, Miller also accused Biden of lying about the southern border being secure and the impact of his policies on energy prices.

“I mean, I could go on and on with his lies,” she added.

Even though she won’t attend, she’s invited a guest.

In the statement released by her office, Miller announced that should will be bringing Retired Illinois Air Force Colonel (Ret.) Mark A. Hurley as her guest, who left the military over Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine.

“Biden used the COVID vaccine mandate as a political purge to force the best and the brightest out of our military, and Biden has still failed to provide accountability for his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan more than two years ago,” Miller said.

Hurley called the invite an “honor” and praised Miller and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for their efforts to end the COVID military vaccine requirement.

“These legislative leaders continued the battle we did not have time to complete through our normal chain of command,” Hurley said. “We are truly grateful for the thousands of military careers they have saved.”

Miller will likely not be alone in her decision, as many lawmakers in the past have also skipped a president's State of the Union to project partisan disgust.

In 1999, several GOP lawmakers boycotted then-President Clinton's address while the Senate was still conducting an impeachment trial over his affair with a White House intern. More recently, during former President Trump’s time in office, several Democratic lawmakers chose to boycott his State of the Union addresses, as well as his inauguration.

Updated at 6:09 p.m.

Senate GOP pours cold water on idea of impeaching Biden

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Senate Republicans are pouring cold water on the idea that President Biden’s classified documents controversy rises to the level of an impeachable offense, heading off House conservatives looking for revenge after former President Trump’s two trials.

Even before Tuesday’s revelation that about a dozen classified documents had been found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home, GOP senators were cool to the idea of impeachment. 

“I don’t think you want to get into where it’s a tit for tat, every two years or four years you’re dealing with impeachment proceedings in the House and Senate,” Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) told The Hill. “There has to be a really good reason, obviously, the constitutional reasons and grounds for that. So we’ll see where it goes.” 

Asked whether Biden’s possession of classified documents has the potential to rise to the level of an impeachable offense, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to the Senate GOP leadership team, gave a simple answer: “No.” 

Many Republicans thought the Democrats’ first impeachment of Trump over delaying military aide to Ukraine was a partisan overreach. But that means they are also wary of doing the same thing now that their party has the House majority.

It’s just one of several tension points emerging between Republicans in the two chambers.  

Senate Republicans have mostly ignored chatter in the House about impeaching Biden’s secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, or wiping out the tax code and replacing it with a 23 percent to 30 percent national sales tax. 

Some Republicans think talk of impeaching Biden will grow in the House, even though GOP senators warn that it’s a bad idea. 

House Republicans introduced more than a dozen impeachment resolutions against Biden in the last Congress, and the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee has already initiated an investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents, which could lay the ground for future impeachment proceedings.  

Trump has also come under criticism for a separate classified documents controversy, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in an interview with Fox Business argued that Biden’s handling of classified documents was more egregious because the former Republican president at least secured the classified information he held with padlocks.

“That’s much different than what we’re finding now with President Biden, and I think it is severely going to cause him a great deal of trouble in the future as we get more of the truth,” McCarthy told Fox host Larry Kudlow. 

A few Senate Republicans entertain the idea that the classified documents found at Biden’s Delaware home and former Washington, D.C., office would lead to a Senate impeachment trial. 

“This actually might be an impeachable offense. If there’s a high crime and misdemeanor standard, which there is, this is the closest thing to one in recent years,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “If the special counsel comes up with anything, realizing [Biden’s] a sitting president, I suppose they could draft up what would become articles of impeachment, depending on what they find.” 

Cramer said “I personally hate impeachments” but thinks the standard has changed since House Democrats impeached Trump in 2019 after he held up aid to Ukraine to use as leverage to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden’s family’s business dealings in the country.  

Only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney (Utah), voted to convict on an article of impeachment during Trump’s 2020 Senate trial.  

Cramer said “Democrats created an impeachment cycle and we may be in that cycle,” calling Trump’s first impeachment “far-fetched and silly.”  

He said House Republicans now need to decide whether they want to keep the impeachment bar as low as they believe Democrats set it in 2019 or whether to elevate it to cover only the most serious crimes.  

The documents found at Pence’s home would further muddy any attempt to argue that Biden’s possession of classified documents meets the standard of high crimes and misdemeanors. 

Romney on Tuesday said it will be hard for House Republicans to credibly push an article of impeachment against Biden for keeping classified documents at his Delaware home after Pence admitted the same transgression.  

“I can’t imagine that’s where it’s going to head with so many people in the same arena,” he said.  

Some key Senate Republicans, such as Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (Fla.), are already on record downplaying Trump’s possession of classified documents at his Florida home as a “storage” issue.  

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday dismissed a question about whether Biden’s possession of classified documents could rise to the level of an impeachable offense.  

“I don’t have an answer to that hypothetical. I do think that the Justice Department seems to be willing to treat everybody the same and to try to retrieve the documents, and obviously it’s not a great idea to take classified documents away from the archives. We’ll see how they continue to handle it,” he said.   

Republican senators say it should be up to Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, to decide whether Biden should be charged with a crime, not House Republicans, who filed more than a dozen articles of impeachment against Biden in the last Congress.  

“It could be a criminal offense,” Cornyn said. “That’s what the special counsel is for. Mishandling classified materials is very serious.”   

Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith in November to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents and whether he unlawfully interfered with the 2021 transfer of presidential power.  

Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted some Democrats for “hypocrisy” by trying to minimize Biden’s culpability after hammering Trump for months after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August to retrieve classified documents.  

“The thing that’s made this such a story is the hypocrisy, [Democrats] attacking Trump,” he said. “Nobody should take classified materials outside of a secure facility, period.”   

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said fellow Republicans should “be careful” about “knee-jerking to impeachment.”  

“I think the country will fatigue of that,” he said, pointing out that recent impeachment proceedings against former Presidents Clinton and Trump “have not ended up with any real result.”  

“If you start doing it on everything, I think it would be bad politically and for the mechanics of government working,” he said.  

Democrats picked up five House seats in the 1998 midterm elections as the Republican majority was in the midst of gearing up to impeach Clinton, marking a rare instance when the president’s party picked up House seats in the middle of a second term.  

Republicans picked up 14 House seats in the 2020 election after Democrats impeached Trump at the end of 2019.

Democrats express alarm over Biden classified docs: ‘I’m very concerned’

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Democrats are expressing alarm over President Biden’s classified documents controversy, with some criticizing the president as diminished in stature and his staff as irresponsible.

“I’m very concerned,” said Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.), one of several incumbent Democrats who face potentially difficult reelection races next year in reliably GOP states in presidential elections.

“We have to get to the bottom of it to find out what the hell happened, why it happened,” he said.

“This is about national security,” Tester added, saying investigators need to find out if “it put our national security at risk.”

Biden’s January has been submerged in revelation after revelation of classified documents found at his former office and home. Most recently, 11 more documents were found during a search at Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home on Friday.

The drip-drip-drip nature of the findings has left Democrats and Republicans alike wondering whether there will be more documents found and has left the White House looking off-balance at times.

Biden emerged from the 2022 midterms in a stronger position after Democrats gained a seat in the Senate and held down their losses in the House. Democrats still see Biden as their most likely standard-bearer, and lawmakers in his party have been quick to contrast his handling of classified documents with former President Trump — who is dealing with his own controversy.

At the same time, there’s little doubt the issue has raised some questions for Biden and the White House just as his team prepared to move forward with an expected presidential announcement later this year.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who like Tester is up for reelection next year in a state that Trump won easily in 2020, blasted the lax handling of secret information as “unbelievable” and “totally irresponsible.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)

Biden’s attempt to dismiss the building scandal last week by asserting “there’s no there there” also drew a barb from Manchin.

He told CNN on Monday “that’s just not a good statement,” adding “we just don’t know” what secrets may have been compromised.

Criticism from Manchin is hardly unheard of, but Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who represents a safer state for Democrats, was also somewhat critical on Sunday. He said the controversy “diminishes” Biden and noted the president rightly felt “embarrassed by the situation.”

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.)

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) on November 15, 2022. (Greg Nash)

Durbin on Monday said of the White House: “They were not careful in handling classified documents.”

“When I think of how we deal with them in the Capitol in comparison, whoever was responsible for it didn’t follow the basic rules,” Durbin said of the handling of classified documents.

Durbin said he never took a classified document out of his office, “let alone out of the building.”

Yet Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stopped short of speculating whether Biden committed a potential crime, telling reporters: “I wouldn’t go that far.”

House Republicans are saber-rattling over the issue, signaling they intend to use their newly won oversight powers to look into the Biden documents story in a more aggressive way than they looked into Trump’s controversy.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the new chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has requested that the Secret Service hand over all the information it has on visitors to Biden’s Delaware home in the time since he served as vice president.

The request — made to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Monday — came after Comer demanded that visitor logs for the residence be turned over. The White House said last week that such records do not exist.

Later on Monday, White House counsel Stuart Delery wrote to Comer that the administration does not have possession of the documents the National Archives and Department of Justice have taken as part of the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials.

Delery pledged to “accommodate legitimate oversight interests” in response to Comer’s request.

One GOP strategist said Republicans will go after Biden aggressively given the Trump controversy.

“The House is going to have a field day with investigations because of the fact that the Biden administration has been so outspoken criticizing Trump for the exact thing,” said Brian Darling, a former Senate aide.

Darling said the House could vote on articles of impeachment if the special prosecutor or House investigators find Biden broken the law or jeopardized national security.

“It’s possible. It depends on how the hearings go in the House. I think it’s quite possible that there will be discussion about impeachment because Democrats seemed so open to the idea of impeachment against President Trump and we’ve seen a lot of the payback from many of the things that happened when Democrats controlled the House, like kicking members off committees,” he said.

Durbin told reporters he expects House Republicans to go overboard in trying to tear down Biden, just as they did when they tried to blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the death of four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said Biden’s possession of classified documents now effectively “completely neutralizes” Democratic attacks against Trump for holding sensitive material in Florida.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.)

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday, November 29, 2022. (Greg Nash)

“I’m not sure I understand all the laws that pertain to classified documents. I know the procedures that apply, but it seems to me the Justice Department is going to have to sort all that out and I think right now it’s still an evolving situation,” he said.

Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), a senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the careful handling of classified documents should always be a top priority and declared: “All of the circumstances are going to be examined …. So there’s a message that nobody is above the law.” 

“The rule that I follow scrupulously is you don’t take documents out of the room,” he said. “Obviously there’s a lot of information coming out and I want to wait and see what the facts are. 

But Wyden also gave Biden some political cover by drawing a distinction with Trump.  

“One point that I don’t believe is in contention is President Biden has voluntarily cooperated and the former president did not,” he said. 

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who faces a competitive re-election in a Republican-leaning state, urged the administration to be as transparent as possible.  

“There’s nothing that’s betrayal of national interest, there’s nothing he’s trying to hide but they need to come out with all of it,” he said. “He’s got to deal with it and get it over with.” 

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) expressed frustration that the media attention surrounding the classified documents scandal threatens to eclipse the congressional agenda.  

“It’s being looked at to the nth degree,” he said. “I’m concerned that I think we’re wasting an awful lot of effort on something that has a special prosecutor look[ing] into it and at the end of the day it looks like all you’re going to find is some sloppiness. We have real problems to work on,” he said.