Biden Goes It Alone on the Border

Plus: James Carville on the state of the race.

President Biden is heading to France this week to kick off what Politico calls “a month of high stakes international meetings.” The wars in Gaza and Ukraine will be front of mind for Biden at next week’s G7 summit in Italy and the NATO summit in D.C. weeks after that. Happy Wednesday.

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A fence blocks car lines at the San Ysidro crossing port on the US-Mexico border, as seen from Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico, on June 4, 2024. (Photo by GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP via Getty Images)

Channeling Trump, Biden Takes Solo Border Action

Amid widespread concerns about his handling of the southern border—and months after Republicans refused to get on board a legislative border-security package—President Biden is going it alone. Here’s the New York Times: 

President Biden issued an executive order on Tuesday that prevents migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border when crossings surge, a dramatic election-year move to ease pressure on the immigration system and address a major concern among voters.

The measure is the most restrictive border policy instituted by Mr. Biden, or any other modern Democrat, and echoes an effort in 2018 by President Donald J. Trump to cut off migration that was blocked in federal court.

In remarks at the White House, Mr. Biden said he was forced to take executive action because Republicans had blocked bipartisan legislation that had some of the most significant border security restrictions Congress had considered in years.

“We must face a simple truth,” said the president, who was joined by a group of lawmakers and mayors from border communities. “To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now.”

Aware that the policy raised uncomfortable comparisons, Mr. Biden took pains to distinguish his actions from those of Mr. Trump. “We continue to work closely with our Mexican neighbors instead of attacking them,” Mr. Biden said. He said he would never refer to immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country, as Mr. Trump has done.

Saying the policy “raised uncomfortable comparisons” to Trump’s border actions is artful politesse from the Times: In taking unilateral action, Biden endorsed the same expansive reading of Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act that Trump relied on for his own most extensive unilateral immigration actions, most notably his hugely controversial Travel Ban. 

That Trump ban faced substantial legal challenges, but was ultimately vindicated 5-4 by the Supreme Court, and not without reason: The authorities to restrict immigration granted to the president by the act are sweeping and open-ended.

“Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,” the act reads, “he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” 

Biden’s actions are a stark admission of how much the political climate has shifted on immigration: During his first campaign, Trump’s immigration actions provided the grounds for some of Biden’s most aggressive attacks. 

But there’s little doubt that such a shift has taken place. Illegal crossings, while no longer setting monthly records as they were this spring, remain enormously high. Back in February, a Pew survey found that 78 percent of Americans viewed the situation either as a “crisis” or a “major problem”; only 18 percent said the government was doing a good job dealing with it. In Gallup polls, immigration has for months ranked alongside the economy as the biggest problem facing Americans today.

The bind for Biden is that Republicans can reasonably ask: If you were going to endorse Trump’s expansive reading of the president’s powers to restrict migration, why are those restrictions coming so late in your first term? Our Joe Perticone talked to a handful of GOP senators yesterday; Sen. Roger Marshall called the action “too little, too late.” 

Whether the American people agree—or whether the action proves enough to protect Biden from vulnerability on the issue going into November—remains to be seen.

—Andrew Egger

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James Carville Speaks

My latest Conversation with the preeminent Democratic strategist, James Carville, has been online for a few days. Some of you have already watched or listened to it—or read the transcript. But—inexplicably!—some of you probably haven’t had the chance to do this yet. So I thought it would be worthwhile to provide some excerpts here. Here’s James:

On the state of the race

People feel like the country’s going in the wrong direction. The combined number of people that would rather have another choice is as high as I can ever remember it. But the actual distance between President Biden and Trump is anywhere between even and Biden minus 2. It’s clearly very close. There clearly can be events that can have an impact on the outcome of this election.

How to talk about the economy

I would say don’t tell people how good the economy is . . . Statistically, he’s right . . . But if people don’t think it’s a good economy, they say, “Well, how can this guy fix something that he doesn’t even think is broke?”

The message from Biden seems to be, “You should be happy with what you got,” and from Trump is, “You should be happy with what you had.” But there’s no message in there that says, “You’re going to be happy with what you’re going to see.” And he could do that, he could say, “We have unfinished work. I have a record to build on, not to sit on . . .”

There’s one word that Biden needs to use more often: recovery. By saying “the recovery,” you remind people that we were down. We’re certainly better off when he took office on January 20, 2021. I think that’s one word that they need to use. And that people will say, “Well, yeah, it was better than it was.”

On reproductive rights

It is the best issue that Democrats have. It just is. Time and time again, you see it proving itself in one election after another. So that has to be part of President Biden’s reelection strategy, an integral part. But it has to be said in a way that people can understand.

If I were Biden, I would say that I am not outsourcing Supreme Court picks. Plain and simple, I will ask every prospective nominee, “Do you believe there’s an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution as I do?” If they answer yes, I would say, “Do you believe that the Supreme Court should operate under the same code of ethics as federal district courts do throughout the United States?” If the answer’s yes, I’ll consider that nominee . . .

Trump’s going to continue to give you the same kind of courts you got right now. The same court restricting rights, the same court of ethical calamities after another, the same partisanship.

The Supreme Court has become an enormous issue.

And the other thing I would do is [emphasize] every time Republicans have said they wanted to get rid of birth control. Because I got news for you, birth control is popular out there. And you’ve got to drive it home. You’ve got to keep them answering. You got to keep Trump off guard. You can do it with things like this. You can’t let him get his footing.

On running against MAGA

The Democrats should run against MAGA. MAGA is less popular than Trump. We need a lot of people who voted for Trump and not all of them are MAGAs. A lot of them have different reasons. We need some of those people. And if we can drive a wedge between MAGA and them, we could get some, or some could stay home because they’re not comfortable with it. MAGA, according to an NBC poll, is at a 24 percent approval. Trump’s at 42 percent. I think you have an opportunity there, and you’ve got to take opportunities at every point.

Biden’s challenges

I have to say this: Every conversation that everyone has in every focus group about President Biden begins with age, in the middle it’s age, and at the end it’s age. And that’s a real fact that they have to live with, and they’ve just got to plow through it. And getting mad at the New York Times for talking about his age is not going to work.

 I think there’s only so much Biden can do. I think if you’ve talked to them, they’d say, “James, that’s a great idea, but we’ve got to get him out there to say that and that’s not the easiest thing in the world to do.” And I can understand that. I think it’s probably a lot harder than we believe over there. They have to be very, very careful how he’s deployed and they have to husband him pretty closely.

On the guilty verdict in New York

Remember, juries are supreme. And they all sat there, you know, for six weeks . . . listened to 28 hours of testimony . . . went through every charge. That matters to people.

And it is also good to talk about the facts of the case . . . Sex with a porn star, ask the porn star to beat him on the butt with a rolled-up magazine, then have a catch-and-kill story, then come up with $130,000 so somebody doesn’t find out and embarrass your presidential campaign. And he hid that from the American people [in 2016] who were the real victims here.

And if it was public, then people could easily conclude that it didn’t matter. But they weren’t given that choice. Because of Mr. Trump’s duplicity, that was hidden from people, which they had a right to know. I think if you make that argument, the fraud that was perpetrated was on the people, on the voter, I think that’ll take you a long way. I think it can have an impact.

Taking the threat of Trump seriously

He told you on day one what he was going to do. He told you the kind of people that he was going to appoint and he’s going to take that as a complete justification to do whatever he wants to do.

We say in one breath, “He’s going to do all these horrible things.” In the next breath we say, “Don’t vote for him because you can’t believe a word he says.” Well, that’s where you get into a jam. Do you believe him or not believe him? And I think when it comes to his own [desire for] personal power, you always have to believe him.

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One more thing. Go back and read the very moving piece James wrote in October 2020 for The Bulwark, “A Crusade for Something Noble.” James captured what was at stake in that election—and what’s at stake in this one. And I think he also captured our pride at the Bulwark in being part of a common effort, often with people we’ve disagreed with in the past, to save our great democracy.

—William Kristol

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Catching up . . .

• The GOP push for post-verdict payback: ‘Fight fire with fire’: New York Times

• Trump again suggests political opponents may face prosecution, too: Washington Post

• Risk of war between Israel and Hezbollah builds as clashes escalate: Wall Street Journal

• Praise, but some trepidation, among Democrats after Biden’s border actions: ABC News

• Scorching heat wave set to smash records across U.S. Southwest: Axios

• Montana’s marquee Senate race is set, as Jon Tester and Tim Sheehy win primaries: NBC News

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