JOE BIDEN'S COVID AMERICA - ILLEGALS COME FIRST!

 

Surge of covid delta variant poses new political threat to Biden and his agenda

Annie Linskey, Tyler Pager, Dan Diamond  2 hrs ago

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Larry Page has gone to Fiji and sold his superyacht

Overturned tractor trailer limits interstate to one lane

The rapid increase in coronavirus infections driven by the delta variant over the past month is turning the country’s attention back to the pandemic and threatening to subsume President Biden’s agenda — just as the White House and its allies hoped to move on from the virus and focus on promoting the administration’s other accomplishments.

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post President Biden exits the Oval Office to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on July 21, 2021.

Inside the White House, top officials are growing increasingly anxious about the state of the pandemic and are gravely concerned about the situation spiraling out of control in some areas of the country with low vaccination rates, according to two people who work in the administration and two others in close touch with the White House.

Biden’s team had always expected to see additional coronavirus outbreaks, but the White House assumed the increases in infections would be “mounds” and not “peaks,” according to one top administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private discussions.

Officials are now looking at models that predict anywhere from a few thousand new covid cases to more than 200,000 every day in the fall. One new forecast also estimates the United States could see three times the number of daily deaths from the coronavirus by October compared to now. The current seven-day average is about 250 deaths per day.

Stock markets have already shown jitters over the variant, with the Dow slumping more than 700 points Monday before rallying later in the week. Globally, hospitals are filling up — including in the United Kingdom, which is experiencing an outbreak so severe that the United States warned against traveling there.

“If you have hundreds of thousands of Americans getting sick, that’s problematic for any president,” said Cornell Belcher, who was one of former president Barack Obama’s pollsters. “It does become all consuming for the president — because he’s the president.”

More focus on covid leaves the president fewer opportunities to sell the stimulus package that Congress approved earlier this year or travel the country pressuring lawmakers to back his infrastructure plan. Other priorities that risk being squeezed include shoring up voting rights, a policing overhaul, gun control and new immigration rules.

Biden’s CNN town hall this week was dominated by questions about the virus — a marked change from his first formal news conference, during which the pandemic did not come up at all.

Americans are growing more concerned about the state of the pandemic. In an Axios-Ipsos poll conducted July 16-19, 39 percent of Americans said that returning to their pre-coronavirus life right now would be a risk, up from 28 percent in late June.

The White House has sought to place blame elsewhere, with Biden accusing social media platforms of “killing people” by allowing misinformation to spread on their platforms. And allies have pointed out that the biggest infections increases are coming in Republican-led states — another way of deflecting from the administration.

Top officials say Biden isn’t going to let up from his push for vaccinations and controlling the pandemic even he works to make a spending deal with Congress.

“Getting the pandemic under control [and] protecting Americans from the spread of the virus has been [and] continues to be his number-one priority,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday. “It will continue to be his priority moving forward. There’s no question.”

One White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said administration health experts don’t expect hospitalizations or deaths to reach the same levels seen during the height of the pandemic.

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post White House press secretary Jen Psaki said battling covid remains President Biden’s “number one priority” during a press briefing at the White House on July 23.

The White House has also been heartened that, in recent weeks, vaccination rates have risen faster than the national average in some states with high infection rates, such as Nevada and Florida, the person said.

Still, the delta variant surge is a serious enough threat that top White House officials and other administration officials are debating whether to urge vaccinated Americans to wear masks in more settings, people familiar with the discussion said this week.

Top White House aide Mike Donilon told reporters that the virus has “been a primary focus from the time he came into office and hasn’t let up.”

“He hasn’t taken his eye off the ball there,” Donilon said.

And he sought to cast Biden’s spending proposals as part of the covid response. “These investments that he’s proposing will make a big difference in terms of pushing forward,” Donilon said. “He has a lot on his plate and he’s fully focused on all of this.”

Still, the president’s allies and top advisers have also been clear that they want to draw attention to other parts of his agenda — including making a strong case for the infrastructure proposals via amped-up travel and events. In his call with reporters, Donilon walked through a slide show aimed at promoting Biden’s infrastructure proposals.

“When people focus on how this agenda is paid for, support for it actually increases,” Donilon said. “It also rises as they learn more and more about the individual components.”

Top officials at Unite the Country, a pro-Biden super PAC, warned donors and surrogates earlier this month that focus groups with swing-state voters revealed that even many Biden supporters know little about his accomplishments.

“There is a real lack of information about the specifics of the Biden agenda,” according to a memo from the super PAC that was obtained by The Washington Post.

“There is a need to communicate with voters, even among high-information Biden supporters,” according to the memo. “There wasn’t a ton of knowledge about the components of the Biden plans.”

The memo, issued before the delta variant spread widely, didn’t directly mention covid. But there was one nod to a possible political benefit of a raging virus.

Since 1992, the sitting president has avoided significant midterm losses just twice (in 1998 and 2002), and in both cases it was because the president “was able to harness energy around a national crisis to remain popular,” according to the memo.

Indeed, voters give Biden high marks for his handling of the coronavirus crisis, and they’re more comfortable with his performance there than on other issues such as his handling of the economy or immigration.

Biden consistently sees higher ratings on his handling of the pandemic than his overall approval. Sixty-six percent of Americans say he’s doing a “good job” handling the coronavirus, according to a recent CBS News-YouGov poll. In the same poll, 58 percent of respondents approve of his performance as president.

[Vaccine hesitancy morphs into hostility as opposition to shots hardens]

“If anything, when covid is not on the agenda — when people are not focused on covid — his numbers tend to settle a little bit because people think, ‘Who would be better on the next thing?’ ” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who did work for Biden’s presidential campaign.

Still, Republicans see the next phase of the pandemic as a potential weakness for the president.

“The biggest thing that the average person knew was that everything was going to be over by July 4,” said Corry Bliss, a Republican strategist. “Now we’re a couple weeks past July 4, and the message from the White House is, ‘We have no idea what’s going on.’ ”

Bliss said the White House “looks lost and message-less.”

“They declared mission accomplished and the new slogan should be mission incompetence,” Bliss said. “The only part of getting back to normal was the vaccine rollout which was a direct result of the Trump administration and Operation Warp Speed. It’s unclear that they’ve done a single thing to advance the ball on covid.”

Biden targeted the Fourth of July as his goal for when the country would “begin to mark our independence from this virus,” as he put it in March, and Americans could safely gather in small groups.

In May, as millions of Americans were vaccinated, the CDC changed their guidance to say vaccinated people could shed masks in most circumstances. The mood at the White House was jubilant as the president and staff removed their masks and celebrated the country’s progress in curtailing the virus.

As July Fourth approached, however, administration officials nervously watched as the delta variant wreaked havoc in countries around the world.

© Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images A sign in a Los Angeles storefront on July 19.

The president still gave a victory speech of sorts on Independence Day, declaring “the virus is on the run and America is coming back,” but officials familiar with the planning of the event said the speech was toned down to reflect the uncertainty around the variant.

Biden’s overall low-key approach to the virus worries observers taking a longer view of his presidency.

Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, noted that Franklin Delano Roosevelt traveled “nonstop” when he was president, despite a physical disability. “Why can’t Biden be more mobile and out there talking to people? No president can be above the fray in a pandemic.”

Brinkley also said that Biden’s first six months in office became dominated by a swirl of non-covid issues, including voting rights and infrastructure. “There came a false sense of security on the covid front,” Brinkley said. “People will think in history that Biden needed to be doing regular addresses to the American public. That this was such a large emergency, with so many deaths on the line, that he need to be beating the drum more forcefully.”

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post Biden waves during his walk to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on July 21.

Biden may have a chance to rectify this stance in the fall.

[Mask mandates make a return — along with controversy]

Experts have cautioned that the delta variant — which first emerged in India and now represents more than 83 percent of U.S. coronavirus cases — is far more transmissible than prior strains of the virus, leading to a sharp uptick in new infections.

The daily average of confirmed coronavirus cases has roughly quadrupled in the past month, from about 11,000 per day in late June to 44,011 now, according to The Washington Post’s seven-day average of coronavirus cases. Variant-linked cases also have fueled a 59 percent increase in hospitalizations in Florida and a 76 percent increase in Louisiana in the past week, disproportionately among unvaccinated Americans.

“It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of and that I have seen in my 20-year career,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters on Thursday, urging holdout Americans to get vaccinated. Only about 49 percent of all Americans have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to The Post’s tracking.

The COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, a research consortium that incorporates analysis from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and other academic teams, also released new projections this week that account for the delta variant’s potential spread. The models incorporate factors such as vaccination levels and the speed at which the virus is spreading.

Under one particularly dire projection, the resurgent outbreak would peak in October with roughly 240,000 new cases per day and 4,000 deaths across the United States — bleak numbers roughly on par with the outbreak that Biden inherited in January.

“While I think it’s possible things could get that bad, I don’t think it’s likely,” said Justin Lessler, a University of North Carolina professor who has helped coordinate the models. “We’d never reach that worst-case scenario, because we would react. We don’t just tend to sit there and wait to die.”

Lessler said that the research hub’s consensus projection is that cases will peak in October at around 60,000 cases per day, but he cautioned that projection was based on data collected before the recent surge of variant-linked cases.

“The last two weeks have been quite bad compared to where we were thinking,” Lessler added. “I worry, and maybe think, that it’s going to be slightly worse than our consensus projection based on trends.”

© Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg News Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testify during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on July 20.

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and an epidemiologist who served on Biden’s coronavirus advisory board during the transition, said that he and his team had reviewed Kaiser Family Foundation data on how many Americans are still at risk for the spreading virus.

“We still come up with 100 million people in this country who have not been vaccinated, nor have they had covid-19” and retain lingering immunity, Osterholm said. “That is more than enough human wood for this coronavirus forest fire to burn. And that’s going to happen.”

Anne Gearan and Emily Guskin contributed to this report.

Joe Biden Accepts 600,000 Migrants in Six Months

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PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty

NEIL MUNRO

23 Jul 2021190

8:08

President Joe Biden and his deputies have allowed more than 600,000 migrants to come across the porous southern border in just six months since his January inauguration.

The huge inflow adds up to one migrant for every three children born in the United States during the same period in 2020.

The post-January 20 southern 600,000 inflow includes the 327,501 migrants allowed through the border into the United States under Title 8 of the nation’s immigration laws, plus the roughly 300,000 “got-away” migrants who evaded the U.S. border patrol.

The inflow total does not include the migrants blocked at the border, nor the usual inflow of one million legal immigrants per year into a nation where roughly 3.7 million babies are born each year.

On July 15, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statement showed that roughly 327,500 migrants were allowed entry between January 20 midday and June 30, despite the powerful Title 42 law, which allows officials to exclude all migrants during an epidemic.

The Title 8 inflow includes roughly 235,000 adults and related children, plus 75,000 left-behind children and job-seeking youths who were accompanied to the border by coyotes.

Asylum-seeking migrants gather at a makeshift camp on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro Port of Entry on July 22, 2021 in Tijuana, Mexico. Around 2,000 migrants are waiting at the camp for the opportunity to apply for asylum in the United States. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A DHS source leaked the estimate of 300,000 got-aways from October 1 to mid-July to Breitbart News on July 22. The got-asway number suggests that Biden’s deputies have allowed at least 400,000 foreign job-seekers into the United States.

The combined number is large because DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas is carefully opening many side doors in the border for migrants. For example, he has gradually raised the number of migrants who get through the Title 42 health barrier, from 14,000 in January up to 83,922 in June. That number is 25 times as many as the 3,320 migrants allowed through Trump’s Title 42 barrier in June 2020.

Mayorkas is also making it easier for economic migrants to sneak past the border.

In 2020, only about 69,000 migrants successfully got past Trump’s border, at a rate of roughly 5,750 migrants per month. However, under Mayorkas’ lenient policies, the rising inflow brought 50,000 illegal migrants across from mid-June to mid-July, an agency source told Breitbart News.

Under Trump, the detained migrants were often flown a thousand miles back to their countries for free. But Mayorkas instead directs his officers to shuttle the detained migrants back to a jumping-off point on the Mexican side of the border, where they rest up for another attempt.

Also, Mayorkas has largely abolished deportations and worksite actions by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for the migrants who do sneak past the border. And his fellow Democrats are promising to amnesty all migrants who can persuade Democrat-overseen clerks that they arrived before January 2021.

Migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are loaded into a transport van by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Sunland Park, New Mexico on July 22, 2021.   ((PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images)

The huge southern migration is a government-delivered boon for investors and progressives — and also a government-created economic threat for working Americans who are getting wage gains in a post-Trump labor shortage.

“There’s a shortage of employees,” Biden told a restaurant owner during a CNN town hall on July 21. “People are looking to make more money and to bargain, and so I think your [restaurant] business and the tourist business is really going to be in a bind.” On May 10, Reuters reported:

Burrito chain Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG.N) said on Monday it plans to hire 20,000 more employees and will raise the average hourly wage to $15 by the end of June, as fast-food chains in the United States scramble to reopen dine-in services with the easing of pandemic curbs.

Overall, investors want to import more migrants — even very poor migrants — because they spike consumer sales, boost rental rates, cut wages, and so raise profits and stock values. They also serve as clients for welfare agencies, as, eventually, as voters for Democrat activists.

But migration damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, raises their rents, curbs their productivity, shrinks their political clout, and fractures their open-minded, equality-promoting civic culture.

In general, legal and illegal migration moves wealth from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to investors, from technology to stoop labor.

Biden’s decision to restart the economic extraction of valuable consumers, renters, and workers from poor countries also helps to move wealth — and social status — from heartland red states to the coastal blue states. Within each state, the extraction policy also helps to move wealth and status from GOP rural districts to Democrat cities.

Unsurprisingly, a lopsided majority of Americans oppose labor migration.

Mayorkas’s catch-and-repeat policies aid the huge inflow of got-aways.

Under his watch, agency officials have aided the migrants by ending legal penalties for repeat border crossers and ended Trump’s policy of providing free return flights to their home countries. Without penalties, the porous border is open to migrants who can make repeated tries.

Steve Scalise / Twitter

Volume 90%

 

For example, Reuters reported on May 31 that one migrant made seven repeat runs at the border before he got in. Under the headline “Try, try again: For some Central Americans, U.S. policy opens revolving door,” Reuters reported:

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – After six attempts to enter the United States from Mexico over two and a half months, 35-year-old Guatemalan migrant Nicolas was facing the prospect of failure and going back home to thousands of dollars of debt.

Then on his seventh shot – squeezing himself into a wedge on a cargo train for a harrowing seven-hour ride to Texas – he made it.

[…]

Nicolas tried to migrate to the United States twice in 2019 but was deported to Guatemala both times.

The migrant is now working construction jobs that would otherwise be held by Americans, according to Reuters:

Nicolas now lives in Houston and picks up construction jobs outside a Home Depot store, helping him send parts of his $100-a -day wages back home. Every week, his wife [and three children] makes deposits towards Nicolas’ [$13,000 smugglers] debt.

On July 11, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported:

Nearly everyone interviewed by the San Diego Union-Tribune shortly after being expelled to Tijuana said that they had tried crossing the border three or more times in recent weeks in hopes of getting in.

One man, who declined to be identified, said he’d lost count of how many times he tried. He tossed out a guess — 30.

In June, Mayorkas hinted that he would start punishing migrants who illegally cross the border. “We are, indeed, addressing the tools that we have to bring consequences to bear when individuals seek to avoid detection,” he told a House hearing.

Pro-migration advocates are using the repeat attempts encouraged by Mayorkas’ no-penalty, catch-and-repeat policies to claim that monthly migration numbers are being inflated. For example, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an advocate for immigration lawyers at the pro-migration Immigration Council, complained June 30 that the repeat crossers exaggerated the monthly numbers:

Few media outlets, Democrats, or GOP politicians — such as Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Rep. John Katko (R-NY) — mention migration’s economic damage to Americans.

 

Dem Officials in Border City Say Biden Immigration Policy Poses COVID Threat

Texas city says DHS is releasing migrants daily without testing

A train passes by the Customs and Border Protection office next to the Texas Mexican Railway International Bridge on January 14, 2019 in Laredo, Texas. (Photo by SUZANNE CORDEIRO / AFP) (Photo credit should read SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images)

Joseph Simonson • July 20, 2021 5:00 am

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The Democrat-run city of Laredo, Texas, claims President Joe Biden's immigration policies blatantly disregard safety protocols implemented to stop the spread of COVID-19 and could risk killing Americans.

The city attorney’s office alleged in a July 16 lawsuit that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been releasing migrants into Laredo daily, a policy that undermines public health. Federal officials told Laredo that Customs and Border Protection plans on doubling the number of migrants brought to the city to manage overflow at other DHS facilities, according to the complaint.

"Not every apprehended person is tested for COVID-19 as part of [DHS’s] processing procedure before they are legally released from immigration custody and into the general public," the lawsuit says. "Therefore, many, if not most, go untested and risk spreading the disease to … the general public after their release."

Laredo’s lawsuit comes as the Biden administration struggles with a surge of the COVID-19 Delta variant. Situated directly on the southern border, with an almost 100 percent Latino population, the city claims the "flood" of migrants "has caused irreparable harm and injury to our community given little to no hospital availability." The Delta variant makes up a majority of new coronavirus cases in the United States and Latin America.

The White House did not return a request for comment.

The city is asking federal courts to block DHS from transporting migrants to the city, as well as a permanent order barring migrant arrivals until Laredo shelters have the capacity to accommodate them. Rising coronavirus outbreaks in detention facilities have prompted fears from Border Protection and DHS agents tasked with processing migrants.

Biden has blamed Republican officials and social media sites for hindering pandemic health measures and vaccination efforts. But the historically high number of migrants from around the world attempting to cross into the country could constitute the largest risk to public health. The number of migrants who tested positive for COVID-19 increased by roughly 340 percent between March and May. Among Democrats in Laredo, the strain on public resources means even allies of the Biden administration feel compelled to take legal action to avert what they believe could be a catastrophe. 

"Unfortunately, the federal government has left this public health concern to be tackled by our local government with no consideration of the city’s little to no resources nor regard for the deadly ramifications it could have on the country," the lawsuit says.

The outcry from Democrats in Laredo has yet to deter administration officials. The White House is working to repeal Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control-directed law that gives the federal government broad authority to stop migrants from entering the country. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the law ineffective in a June memo. But congressional Republicans warned Biden on June 25 that ending Title 42 would cause "the border crisis [to] reach an irreversible climax." 

"Without Title 42, the already inundated facilities would explode with migrants, and our nation would suffer lasting and irreparable consequences," a group of Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

Jobless Claims Spike to Two-Month High

419,000 Americans filed for initial jobless benefits, shattering expectations

Collin Anderson • July 22, 2021 11:34 am

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First-time unemployment claims shattered expectations last week, rising to a two-month high just weeks after President Joe Biden said the U.S. economy was "on the move again."

The Department of Labor found that 419,000 Americans filed for initial jobless benefits in the week that ended July 17—20 percent higher than the 350,000 estimate forecasted by economists.

The two-month high in new jobless claims comes just weeks after Biden seized on a June report that showed a pandemic low in the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits.

"No other major economy in the world is growing as fast as ours," Biden said. "None of this success is an accident. It isn't luck."

While many House Democrats have tied an ongoing labor shortage to Biden's enhanced unemployment benefits, the White House's top economist recently blamed businesses for the hiring shortfall.

"We have to recognize that we are coming out of a truly unique pandemic," White House economic adviser Brian Deese told Yahoo Finance on Monday. "At the same time, if businesses pay a fair wage, if they offer benefits, we're confident that they're going to find workers when they need them."

The White House did not return a request for comment.

Roughly half of U.S. states have moved to end Biden's boosted benefits, which are slated to expire in September, at an earlier date. Nevada, Rhode Island, and California lead the nation in the number of people on unemployment benefits, according to Thursday's report. All three states are run by Democrats.

Report: ‘Mostly’ Single Male Border Crossers Bussed to Louisiana Cities

PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images

JOHN BINDER

23 Jul 202124

2:23

A group of “mostly” single male border crossers, along with some single women, were bussed into four Louisiana cities after being released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), local media reports.

According to WAFB 9 News, border crossers were bussed to Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Natchez, and Monroe, Louisiana, after they were released by DHS thanks to the Biden administration’s expansive catch and release policy.

Local officials, WAFB reports, were not notified ahead of time:

Immigrants bussed to Baton Rouge were dropped off at the Greyhound bus station and directed to St. Vincent de Paul. Volunteers at the shelter gave them bags of goods and toiletries, even though they could not house them. [Emphasis added]

…

However, that is not always the case. Kelley says at the three other drop-off sites in Shreveport, Natchez, and Monroe the group wasn’t told in advance about immigrants seeking asylum in those cities. [Emphasis added]

…

Some of those leaders who say they were left out of the loop include Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, Senator Bill Cassidy, and Congressman Garret Graves. Those who spoke with WAFB say they’re upset with the little to no warning give to local officials. [Emphasis added]

For months, Breitbart News has chronicled Biden’s catch and release operation through which at least tens of thousands of illegal aliens are being briefly detained, put up in migrant hotels, then bussed or flown into the U.S. interior with only the promise that they will show up to their asylum hearings months, or years later.

Most recently, the Biden administration used Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas to fly nearly 800 border crossers into the U.S. interior.

The latest available data, from February 19 to April 22, reveals the Biden administration has flown about 7,200 border crossers into the U.S. interior on domestic commercial flights. Border crossers are allowed to bypass photo identification requirements, boarding flights without a photo ID, and do not have to prove they are negative for the Chinese coronavirus.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here. 

EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/AFP/Getty Images

JOHN BINDER

16 Jul 20213,818

Joe Biden: ‘Absolutely Bizarre’ to Suggest Limit on U.S. Capacity to Absorb Immigrants

JOEL B. POLLAK

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Former Vice President Joe Biden campaigned inside a Chinese restaurant on Tuesday evening, telling supporters it was “bizarre” to suggest a limit on immigration to the U.S.

Biden promised to expand immigration to the U.S. if elected president.

“Folks, look — the idea that there’s some limitation on the capacity of anyone who — on the immigrants in this country is absolutely bizarre! It’s absolutely bizarre.”

Biden, speaking to a packed crowd inside the Harbor Palace Seafood Restaurant on the eve of the next Democratic debate, addressed members of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, urging them to turn out the vote ahead of Saturday’s caucuses.

Last month, the AAPI Victory Fund super PAC endorsed Biden for president, citing his ability to defeat President Donald Trump and his experience working with immigrant communities from South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific generally.

Though the AAPI immigrant community is politically diverse, it has trended Democratic in recent years.

Last year, Breitbart News reported, another local AAPI organization in Las Vegas expressed opposition to President Trump’s proposed merit-based system for legal immigration.

On Tuesday, Biden promised, if elected, to allow family reunification visas.

“We should be able to increase, to three million people, the people who could come for family reunification. Period, period, period, period.”

He called the idea that the U.S. could not “reunite” more families “absolutely bizarre.”

Biden also reminded his audience that Latinos were not the only beneficiaries of President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which applied to those brought to the country illegally as children.

He said there were “thousands and thousands of AAPI ‘Dreamers'” who had benefited from DACA as well.

Afterwards, Biden greeted attendees, some of whom proceeded to the Chinatown Mall to cast early votes before the polling place there closed.

Biden hopes to finish in the top three in Nevada, and to win South Carolina on Feb. 29, to make the case that he is still a top contender for his party’s nomination. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) now leads national polls, as well as Nevada polls.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Biden’s DHS Cancels 31 Miles of Border Wall Construction Funded by Trump

ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images

JOHN BINDER

23 Jul 2021128

2:48

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has canceled 31 miles of border wall construction set for Laredo, Texas, that was previously funded by Congress and former President Trump’s administration.

On Friday, DHS officials announced that they were terminating two border wall construction projects concentrated in the Laredo region because it is “not necessary to address any life, safety, environmental, or other remediation requirements” outlined by Biden’s executive order that halted wall construction altogether.

According to DHS officials, the 31-mile project had not yet started and they are looking at canceling more border wall construction projects that were previously funded by Trump.

Officials wrote in a news release:

DHS continues to review all other paused border barrier projects and is in the process of determining which projects may be necessary to address life, safety, environmental, or other remediation requirements and where to conduct environmental planning. [Emphasis added]

The Administration also continues to call on Congress to cancel remaining border wall funding and instead fund smarter border security measures, like border technology and modernization of land ports of entry, that are proven to be more effective at improving safety and security at the border.
[Emphasis added]

While Biden cancels border wall construction, the state of Texas is breaking ground on border wall construction in Eagle Pass thanks to an initiative by Gov. Greg Abbott (R).

“The Texas Department of Transportation has begun clearing vegetation and constructing a concrete barrier on state land after a competitive bidding process,” a spokesperson for Abbott said of the project.

Meanwhile, illegal immigration continues surging.

Analysis by Steven Kopits of Princeton Policy Advisors estimates that the Biden administration will drive nearly 1.7 million illegal aliens to the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of 2021 — making it the worst year for illegal immigration in American history.

For perspective, should nearly 1.7 million illegal aliens arrive at the border this year, this would be a foreign population three times the size of Wyoming’s.

In June, more than 178,000 border crossers were encountered by federal immigration officials along the border. This total does not include illegal aliens who successfully crossed into the U.S., undetected by federal immigration officials.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here. 

Democrats Plan to Hide Amnesty Behind $10 Billion Border Project

John Moore/Getty Images

NEIL MUNRO

23 Jul 202114

5:51

Democrats are adding $10 billion to the pending $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill to help hide their huge amnesties from worried voters, according to a report in Axios.

The extra money would provide Democrats with a $10 billion talking point to fend off criticism from local voters who recognize how an amnesty of roughly 8 million economic migrants would damage their wages, wealth, and communities.

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), a member of the Senate Budget Committee, road-tested the rhetoric at Axios.com, saying, “I’ve consistently advocated for making smart, modern investments when it comes to border security.” The spending would fund “modernization of ports at our border” and would require drug “screening of [all] passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles that come into the United States.”

Axios described the Democrats’ plan for the next few weeks:

Why it matters: Democrats already planned to include roughly $120 billion for pathways to citizenship for Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status holders and undocumented essential workers. The sources said there will be even more to address immigration — with more direct infrastructure ties.

But even the $10 billion fig-leaf would be covertly designed to accelerate migration into Americans’ jobs, neighborhoods, and civic life. Axios reported:

What we’re hearing: Details haven’t been finalized, but the funds could be put toward facilities for handling asylum claims; additional staff for higher cross-border traffic areas; expanding immigration courts to address backlogs; alternatives-to-detention programs, and various ports-of-entry repairs, three sources familiar with the negotiations say.

The $10 billion spending plan comes as the Biden administration refuses to build any more border wall with money that Congress formally appropriated in 2019 and 2020.

The extra $10 billion is just one of the many ways in which the giant budget bill is used to hide the amnesty under massive spending programs for government healthcare, daycare for children, education programs for adults, as well as a variety of climate-related spending programs.

The Democrats are hiding the amnesty in the gigantic spending plan because they do not have public support for their radical migration and amnesty agenda — but also, they do not want to offer concessions that would win over public support for careful amnesties.

So, Senate Democrats want to pass their amnesties by burying them in a bill that sets spending levels under the no-filibuster “reconciliation” process. This maneuver could allow them to pass a fast-track, nation-changing amnesty with just 51 votes instead of the 60 votes normally required to get bills through the 100-member Senate.

The task is difficult, in part, because the Senate rules say that a senior clerk in the Senate must first OK the proposed spending as directly related to budgets. The clerk, titled the “parliamentarian,” can reject pieces of the bill if they are related to policy debates instead of budget allocations.

So far, no GOP Senator has broken ranks to say he will give for the Democratic amnesty — largely because the amnesty would raise government spending and eventually provide Democrats will millions of voters.

Democrats are “going to do the best that we can” to include amnesties in the spending plan, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said in a July 20 interview with PBS:

Well, we’re trying to cover people who have been in the forefront, among other things, of protecting our economy, critical care workers, dreamers, and others.

I have believed for a long time, as I think almost all the members of the Democratic Caucus and some Republicans, that the time is long overdue to pass comprehensive immigration reform and a path toward citizenship.

So we can’t do it completely, the way I would like to do it, in a reconciliation bill. There are real constraints, in terms of policy, what you can do. We’re going to do the best that we can.

“I believe we can draft a bill to get it done,” budget chief Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) tweeted on July 20.

Even if the parliamentarian does strike the amnesty from the budget, the $10 billion for border construction will likely remain, a source told Breitbart News.

Overall, investors want to import more migrants — even very poor migrants — because they spike consumer sales, boost rental rates, cut wages, and so raise profits and stock values. They also serve as clients for welfare agencies, as, eventually, as voters for Democrat activists.

But migration damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, raises their rents, curbs their productivity, shrinks their political clout, and fractures their open-minded, equality-promoting civic culture.

In general, legal and illegal migration moves wealth from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to investors, from technology to stoop labor.

Biden’s decision to restart the economic extraction of valuable consumers, renters, and workers from poor countries also helps move wealth — and social status — from heartland red states to the coastal blue states. Within each state, the extraction policy also helps move wealth and status from GOP rural districts to Democrat cities.

Unsurprisingly, a lopsided majority of Americans oppose labor migration.

House Republicans: Amnesty Crusade Is About Expanding Democrats’ Voter Base

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

JOHN BINDER

23 Jul 2021121

5:25

A group of House Republicans is asking President Joe Biden to reject Senate Democrats’ plan to include amnesty for illegal aliens in a federal budget, saying the measure is nothing more than an effort to expand the Democrat Party’s voter base.

In a letter to Biden, 24 House Republicans led by Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) urged Biden to oppose a plan by Senate Democrats to slip an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens in a budget via the little-known reconciliation process.

“We write to you today asking that you immediately reject calls from Congressional Democrats to include amnesty in the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation framework,” the House Republicans write:

Simply engaging in this very debate will further destabilize the crisis at the border and bankroll vicious criminal cartels. In reality, enacting amnesty for millions now will make this crisis permanent by signaling our borders are effectively open to all. [Emphasis added]

…

Rejecting calls to inject amnesty into reconciliation would be a meaningful sign that you are finally willing to find common ground with your political opponents. Everyday Americans we represent are tired of observing your party’s crusade to end voter I.D. laws while at the same time going to every length to expand their ranks of voters by millions through amnesty. The citizens of this country are smarter than you think, they see that this is about one thing: a partisan power grab. [Emphasis added]

We implore you to put substance behind your calls for unity and to start by rejecting calls to inject amnesty into reconciliation. [Emphasis added]

Those who signed the letter include:

Bob Good (R-VA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Ted Budd (R-NC), Jody Hice (R-GA), Mary Miller (R-IL), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Randy Weber (R-TX), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Ralph Norman (R-SC), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Yvette Herrell (R-NM), Matt Rosendale (R-MT), Scott Perry (R-PA), Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Brian Babin (R-TX), Bill Posey (R-FL), Michael Cloud (R-TX), Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), Barry Moore (R-AL), and Glenn Grothman (R-WI)

The full letter can be read here:

Good Letter to Biden – No A… by John Binder

This week, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) bragged that the nation’s mass illegal and legal immigration policy — whereby hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are added to the U.S. population every year and about 1.2 million green cards are awarded to legal immigrants annually — has made the electorate increasingly difficult for Republicans.

“Republicans, when in control of state legislatures, are by design trying to make it more difficult for some people to vote. Why? The answer is very simple,” Durbin said. “The demographics of America are not on the side of the Republican Party.”

“The new voters in this country are moving away from them, away from Donald Trump, away from their party creed that they preach, and instead, they’re moving to be independents or even vote on the other side,” Durbin continued.

Data over the last few election cycles have repeatedly shown the impact that a growing foreign-born voting population has in terms of electing Democrats over Republicans. In 2020, about 1-in-10 U.S. voters were born outside the country, the highest rate since 1970.

A significant increase in naturalization rates ahead of the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election could deliver big gains for Democrats as margins in a number of swing states have been small over the last two presidential elections. In Pennsylvania, for example, Biden won the state by fewer than 81,000 votes.

The Washington Post, New York Times, the Atlantic, Axios, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal have all admitted that rapid demographic changes because of immigration are tilting the nation toward a permanent Democrat dominance.

“The single biggest threat to Republicans’ long-term viability is demographics,” Axios acknowledged last year. “The numbers simply do not lie … there’s not a single demographic megatrend that favors Republicans.”

In the 2016 presidential election, for example, Republican Donald Trump won 49 percent of native-born Americans compared to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 45 percent, according to exit polling data. Among foreign-born residents, though, Clinton dominated by garnering 64 percent of naturalized citizens compared to Trump’s 31 percent.

(CNN)

Current legal immigration levels are expected to bring in 15 million new foreign-born voters by 2041. About eight million of those voters will have arrived entirely due to the process known as “chain migration” whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.