Morning Report — Biden, Trump duel over border during separate Texas stops

It was a split screen at the southern border on Thursday.

President Biden and former President Trump made dueling visits to the U.S.-Mexico border, offering the most glaring preview of how they will each handle the hot-button immigration issue heading into the 2024 election.

Meanwhile, the House and Senate approved a short-term fix Thursday for a government funding impasse that threatened to shut down the government this weekend.

IN TEXAS, Biden went on offense on immigration, slamming Republicans for squashing the bipartisan border deal and pushing them to bring it to a vote. He also appealed directly to Trump, asking the former president to work with him on pressuring lawmakers to pass the legislation, which Trump himself has criticized.

“You know and I know it’s the toughest, most efficient, most effective border security bill this country’s ever seen,” Biden said in Brownsville, Texas, where he met with Border Patrol agents. “So instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done?”

For Biden, Thursday’s trip was a chance to try and flip the script on a political liability, and Democrats believe he is better off confronting it head-on than ignoring it. While progressive Democrats pushed Biden further to the left on the issue in the leadup to the 2020 election and in the first half of his term, now more centrist members of his party facing swing-state elections are urging the president to take immediate action to quell the flow of migrants.

A Tuesday Gallup poll showed immigration has now passed the government as the most often cited problem for Americans. In February, 28 percent of respondents cited immigration as the most important issue to them, up from 20 percent. 

In Eagle Pass, meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) greeted Trump warmly. The former president’s visit to the border was on more comfortable terrain — cracking down on immigration has been part of Trump’s agenda since he ran for the White House in 2016. He made multiple trips to the border during his time in office, and polling has shown voters trust him more than Biden on the issues of immigration and border security (The Hill and NBC News).

The border visit highlighted the finger pointing between candidates Trump and Biden and themes they present to voters. Trump and his allies blame the border crisis on Biden’s policies.

“This is a Joe Biden invasion,” Trump said, claiming the U.S. was being “overrun by Biden migrant crime.” He referenced the killing of Laken Riley, a University of Georgia student whose tragedy quickly found its way into the narratives of some conservatives on Capitol Hill. Police charged an undocumented Venezuelan migrant in the case (The Wall Street Journal).

▪ The New York Times analysis: Biden says he would close the border, if only he could. Trump says Biden could close the border, if only he would. The president’s belief in legislating immigration changes is up against his predecessor’s vow to return to the White House and be a “Day 1” dictator.

▪ Fox News: In an interview with Sean Hannity from Eagle Pass, Trump declared the border a “war zone.”

ON CAPITOL HILL, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Thursday doubled down on his calls to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy for migrants trying to enter the U.S. and recounted telling Biden that Mexico “will do what we say” if the administration decides to implement the policy. Johnson touted H.R. 2, the House-approved GOP border bill that includes many elements of Trump’s policies (The Hill).

“How do you reduce the flow? The answer is simple. You reinstate Remain in Mexico, that alone would reduce the flow by 70 percent — that’s their estimate,” Johnson said. “I told the president that at the White House again. He acted as though he had never heard that, didn’t understand, said he couldn’t do it. I said, ‘That’s not true.’”

© The Associated Press / Eric Gay | Former President Trump met Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in Eagle Pass, Texas, to discuss border security.

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3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ “Brain fog” in people who experienced COVID-19 infection, a major public health issue, can be measured in lower IQ points and may be linked to the brain’s blood vessels, scientists report.

▪ Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Christopher Waller, an economist, is one of the central bank’s most closely watched officials and a name now floated to chair the Fed one day. 

▪ Trump said there are “a lot of good choices” to succeed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who announced he will step down as GOP leader in November and finish his term in 2027. “A lot of people are calling me to politic [sic] for that particular job,” Trump added Thursday while in Texas.

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LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press / J. Scott Applewhite | Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) at the Capitol on Thursday.

CONGRESS 

News coverage about short-term measures that paper over government funding impasses in Congress — and there have been many — use a recurring phrase about the rationale: “more time to resolve funding disputes.” Alas, resolutions are scarce in the Capitol this year. 

SHUTDOWN AVERTED: The latest temporary spending measure passed Thursday bought lawmakers another week to wrap up a plan to fund half the government. That plan went to the Senate, which approved it Thursday night by a vote of 77 to 13, defusing a potential partial government shutdown this weekend. The House voted 320 to 99 for the bill, with Democrats providing most of the “ayes.” Ninety-seven Republicans and two Democrats opposed the measure.

Congress will provide another three weeks to negotiate and pass the balance of appropriations needed this budget year. The House still has to pass those bills individually over the next three weeks before a March 22 deadline, or go through the shutdown exercise again.

Under the agreement congressional leaders struck this week, these measures are due March 8: military construction, water development, the Food and Drug Administration, and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Energy, Interior, Veterans Affairs, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.

The rest of the funding bills will be due March 22, to cover the departments of Defense, Homeland Security (and border security funding), Labor and Health and Human Services; State and international operations; and funding for the legislative branch, financial services agencies and appropriations for the general government.

STAY, DON’T GO: House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) officially reversed his decision to retire. One key lobbyist who encouraged him to stay put, according to the lawmaker: Trump. The former president praised Green on social media and said he would have his “complete and total endorsement” if he decides to seek reelection.

HANDS OFF: Some Republicans, including Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, have wasted no time in arguing that whoever the Senate GOP leader is at the end of the year should vow immediately as a candidate to keep the Senate filibuster in place. Trump as president wanted the Senate to ditch the filibuster, but McConnell disagreed. The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports on a Trump civil war brewing as the jockeying for the internal Senate GOP competition for McConnell’s post begins. And speaking of jockeying, Punchbowl News describes Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s assertive bid among colleagues to gather support to be leader: “I didn’t see any benefit in waiting.”

MORE IN POLITICS

💡 In yet another sign the administration isresponding to pressure on its climate policies in the power sector, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Thursday it would delay part of its plan to slash planet-warming pollution. The agency said it would exempt existing gas plants from a proposed regulation to cut power plant emissions and move ahead toward finalizing rules cutting emissions from existing coal and new natural gas plants this spring. The agency announced it would begin work immediately on a separate rulemaking covering existing gas plants. A new rule would not be finalized before the election.

Republican candidates in key states criticize Biden’s climate policies and point to energy costs when appealing to voters to reject Democratic candidates and put a conservative in the White House in 2025. The administration, urged by car manufacturers and union workers, is reportedly considering a slower U.S. shift to electric cars.

2024 ROUNDUP  

▪ Biden, the second Catholic president in U.S. history, told reporters Thursday that he does not support the Catholic Church’s view that destroying some human embryos during in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment is immoral. “I don’t agree with that position,” he said. Biden won Catholic voters in 2020 by 4 points over Trump.

▪ Alabama’s House overwhelmingly passed a bill Thursday to protect IVF service providers by creating civil and criminal immunity from prosecution or legal action related to IVF “goods and services.” The measure, which heads to the state Senate, is a rapid political and statutory response to the Alabama Supreme Court’s seismic ruling that human embryos created for use in IVF are children.

▪ Biden’s campaign is amassing a cash advantage as Trump’s campaign bleeds money. 

▪ Third-party proponents say there’s a growing opportunity to make inroads with voters disenchanted with both major parties. They point to Michigan primary results and the double-digit “uncommitted” ballots. 

▪ Here’s what to follow as Harvard University faces a subpoena deadline as part of an antisemitism probe organized by House Republicans. 

▪ Susie Wiles, a savvy Trump campaign adviser based in Florida, was interviewed by NBC News for a profile. She’s guided Republican politicians for more than four decades.

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WHERE AND WHEN

The House will convene at 10 a.m.

The Senate will meet for a pro forma session at noon. 

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10 a.m. Biden will meet at the White House with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy at 1 p.m. The president will travel to Camp David at 5:45 p.m.

Vice President Harris will fly to Durham, N.C., and the city’s “Black Wall Street” this morning to announce the award of $32 million to 10 venture capital firms under the Treasury Department’s State Small Business Credit Initiative. She will be joined at 12:40 p.m. by North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. Harris will return to Washington this evening.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will attend the president’s meeting with the Italian prime minister at 1 p.m. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is in Santiago, Chile, where she will meet this morning with Minister of Finance Mario Marcel of Chile for a roundtable discussion about financing the transition to green energy. She and Marcel will hold a bilateral meeting and then a joint press conference at the Ministry of Finance. Yellen and Governor Rosanna Costa of the Central Bank of Chile will hold a bilateral meeting, followed by an afternoon event with female Chilean economists and business leaders. The secretary will meet with Chilean President Gabriel Boric Font. In the evening, Yellen will join a roundtable discussion hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce with leaders from the private sector. 

First lady Jill Biden will travel to Atlanta to launch the reelection campaign’s new “Women for Biden” outreach program at 2:45 p.m. aimed at battleground states. She will fly to Tucson and arrive at 7 p.m. 

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, duringa 1 p.m. CT event located at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, will speak about investments planned for transportation infrastructure and job creation. Deputy Secretary of Transportation Polly Trottenberg will participate. 

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1:30 p.m.

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ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press / Bilal Hussein | In Beirut, Lebanon, a Palestinian boy joined families Thursday who demonstrated for a Gaza cease-fire.

INTERNATIONAL

CEASE-FIRE IN GAZA: Calls in Congress for increased humanitarian aid and a cease-fire in Gaza grew Thursday after more than 100 people were killed near a convoy of trucks bringing in aid to civilians in Gaza City. The two sides offered different stories on what happened Thursday, with Palestinians and Gazan officials contending that Israeli troops opened fire on people seeking humanitarian aid. Israel said many of the dead were trampled in a chaotic stampede for the food aid and that its troops only fired when they felt endangered by the crowd. The violence was quickly condemned by Arab countries, and Biden expressed concern it would add to the difficulty of negotiating a cease-fire in the nearly five-month conflict (The Washington Post and NBC News). Video broadcast by CNN is HERE.

“Hope springs eternal,” Biden told reporters when asked if he still expected an agreement by Monday. “I was on the telephone with the people in the region,” he continued, adding: “Probably not by Monday, but I’m hopeful.”

In Congress, Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said there should be an opening of at least two points of entry for assistance to enter Gaza, instead of the one crossing at the southern border, to increase aid to areas including northern Gaza (The Hill).

“If those areas have all of the food and medicine and water and gas that folks need, you will avoid tragic, gut-wrenching events like today. That has to be a priority,” he said, adding that “diplomatic leaders got to push and push and push on all sides to bring this war to an end.” 

THE WHITE HOUSE IS CONSIDERING airdropping aid from U.S. military planes into Gaza as land deliveries become increasingly difficult. The announcement comes as Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has flattened most of the densely populated enclave, killed tens of thousands, displaced nearly all its population and left Gazans on the brink of starvation. The volume of total humanitarian aid getting into Gaza fell by half in February in comparison to January, U.N. data shows (Reuters and Axios).

Shortages of food, medicines and other essentials have grown so dire that Jordan unilaterally carried out airdrops of humanitarian aid packages earlier this week, sending packages parachuting down just off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast for desperate people to wade or row out to collect (CBS News).

Mexico’s safest state is betting big on nearshoring, hoping to attract foreign investors who are weary of rising criminality and government corruption in other parts of the country. Yucatán, a state that occupies about a third of its namesake peninsula, has historically been a low-crime state in part because it is geographically isolated from the rest of the country. Yet under Gov. Mauricio Vila, The Hill’s Rafael Bernal reports the state has surged security spending from about $875 million to about $2.1 billion. 

“What I’ve talked about with some governors is that once you have criminality [in your state], it costs ten times as much as prevention,” Vila told The Hill in a recent interview. “What we have done is invest in security, see it not as an expenditure but as an investment, because security also becomes a competitive advantage when it comes to attracting investments.”

UKRAINE NOW FEARS Russia will break through its defenses by summer if Kyiv doesn’t get more help from allies. Russian President Vladimir Putin still aims to capture Kyiv, according to intelligence (The Washington Post). 

🚨 Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron is not retreating from his remarks Monday that he would consider sending Western troops to help Ukraine. His comments this week rattled NATO and forced the White House to say there are no plans to put U.S. forces into Ukraine to help its troops defend against Russian forces. Putin, in a speech to his Parliament, suggested that Russia could target NATO countries with nuclear weapons if their forces join Ukraine against his country (The Guardian).

Bloomberg News: In France, the Senate voted for an abortion amendment to make abortion a constitutional “freedom,” following the lower chamber. 

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ELSEWHERE

COURTS

A judge in Illinois on Wednesday ruled that Trump can be barred from the state’s primary ballot under section 3 of the 14th Amendment, also known as the “insurrection clause.” The order overrules a January determination from the Illinois State Board of Elections that the former president could remain eligible.

But Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter placed an immediate stay on her decision until Friday “in anticipation of an appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, or the Illinois Supreme Court.” A Trump spokesperson on Wednesday announced an intent to appeal. The former president’s lawyers have filed the appeal, as well as a separate court filing asking the judge to clarify the length of the stay in place or to simply “enter an order staying the Judgment pending resolution of this case” (ABC News and Axios).

CNN: Here’s what to know about the timing of Trump’s election interference trial.

A federal judge in Texas on Thursday blocked a law in the state that would allow state and local police officers to arrest migrants who cross from Mexico without authorization, siding with the federal government in a legal showdown over immigration enforcement.

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OPINION

■ Why the Supreme Court had to hear Trump’s case, by David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley, opinion contributors, The Wall Street Journal.

■ The Supreme Court aids and abets Trump’s bid for delay, by Ruth Marcus, associate editor and columnist, The Washington Post.

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THE CLOSER

© The Associated Press / NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP | Mars, as illustrated by NASA in 2021.

And finally … 👏👏👏 Kudos to the winners of this week’s Morning Report Quiz. With recent headlines and trivia about space travel in mind, readers formed a galaxy of savvy guessers.

Here’s who went 4/4: Lynn Gardner, Harry Strulovici, Mark Roeddiger, Jaina Mehta Buck, Mary Anne McEnery, Carmine Patracea, Peter Sprofera, Bob Hickerson, Linda L. Field, Patrick Kavanagh, Richard Baznik, Lou Tisler, Stan Wasser, Blair Marasco, Ned Sauthoff, Pam Manges, Phil Kirstein, Candi Cee, Chuck Schoenenberger, Terry Pflaumer, Laura Retaliata, Robert Bradley, Steve James, Jerry LaCamera, Luther Berg, Shyam Bhakta, Jose A. Ramos, Jack Barshay and Jeremy Serwer. 

They knew that moon lander Odysseus, created by Houston’s Intuitive Machines, was briefly a U.S. success after reaching the lunar surface Feb. 22, but then it toppled on its side.

Former Sen. Buckner Thruston of Kentucky was never an astronaut. He served from 1805 to 1809. 

Virgin Galactic last year charged $450,000 for a passenger to travel to the edge of space and back.

You would need about nine months to make a journey from Earth to Mars, based on current technology, according to NASA.

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