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WASHINGTON (AP) Delegation trips to the border. Apocalyptic warnings. A flurry of news conferences.

Republicans still divided over former President Donald Trumps legacy are seizing on his signature campaign issue, turning their focus to immigration as they try to regain the political upper hand.

Faced with President Joe Bidens early popularity, good news about vaccinations, and Americans embrace of the COVID-19 relief bill Washington Republicans opposed, the GOP is leaning in on the highly charged issue amid a spike in border crossings. They hope immigration can unite the party heading into next years elections, when control of Congress is at stake.

Heading into the midterms, I think that Republicans are increasingly realizing that this can be one of the most potent issues, both to motivate our voters, but equally as important, to appeal to swing voters especially in suburban swing districts who voted for Democrats in 2020, said former Trump aide Stephen Miller, the architect of his immigration policies. He said the issue has been a subject of discussion in his recent conversations with lawmakers as child border crossings have surged, straining U.S. facilities.

The situation at the southern border is complex. Since Bidens inauguration, the country has seen a dramatic spike in the number of people encountered by border officials, with 18,945 family members and 9,297 unaccompanied children encountered in February an increase of 168% and 63% from the month before, according to the Pew Research Center. That creates an enormous logistical challenge, since children, in particular, require higher standards of care and coordination across agencies.

Still, the encounters of both unaccompanied minors and families remain lower than at various points during the Trump administration, including in spring 2019. That May, authorities encountered more than 55,000 migrant children, including 11,500 unaccompanied minors, and around 84,500 migrants traveling in family units.

But that hasnt stopped Republicans from seizing on the issue, led by Trump himself. They blame Biden, who has been deeply critical of Trumps approach, for rolling back many of the former presidents hard-line deterrence policies. And they liken Bidens new, kinder tone to an invitation to would-be border crossers.

Theyre destroying our country. People are coming in by the hundreds of thousands, warned Trump in an interview Tuesday night with Fox News Channel. And, frankly, our country cant handle it. It is a crisis like we have rarely had and, certainly, we have never had on the border.

Its more than a crisis. This is a human heartbreak, said House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who led a delegation of a dozen fellow House Republicans to El Paso, Texas, on Monday.

This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration, he said.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a potential 2024 presidential candidate who is planning to lead his own Senate delegation tour to the Texas-Mexico border next Friday, accused the administration of having, in effect, issued an invitation for unaccompanied children to come to this country.

Even Sen. Mitt Romney, one of Trumps most prominent Republican critics, faulted Bidens moves, including the halting of construction of Trumps signature border wall project.

Whats happening at our southern border is a real crisis, and the Administration is making it worse by unlawfully freezing border wall funding appropriated by Congress, Romney tweeted after signing onto a letter with 39 other Republican senators criticizing the new approach to the border.

Democrats and immigration activists see it differently. They deride the policies Trump implemented to deter asylum as cruel and inhumane and an abdication of the countrys humanitarian responsibilities. That includes the decision to forcibly separate more than 3,000 children from their parents, with no system in place to reunite them.

But policies like Remain in Mexico, which forced asylum seekers to wait across the border as their cases were being adjudicated, and the expulsion of unaccompanied children were effective, and the number of migrants crossing the southern border declined precipitously, further slowed by the pandemic.

Beds were taken offline and staff downsized even as immigration experts on both sides of the aisle and career Homeland Security officials cautioned the numbers would likely begin to rise again once the pandemic subsided.

Advocates also note that apprehensions of single adults have been spiking since April 2020, long before Trump left office. And they accuse the last administration of enacting policies that clogged the immigration system making it take longer to move people through the system and failing to build capacity when numbers began rising. Biden transition officials, for instance, urged the outgoing administration to increase capacity, but were met with inaction. Miller said career officials theyd chosen to work with the incoming administration warned numbers would rise exponentially if policies were reversed.

This was purposeful. They made it harder for the process to work efficiently ... theres no question, said Peter Boogaard of FWD.us, a pro-immigration reform group. The Trump administration did everything in their power for four years to make the already broken immigration system as cumbersome and ineffective as possible. And once they lost, they went out of their way to do as little as humanly possible to make sure the next administration was set up to succeed on this at all.

In an interview with ABC News George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday, Biden defended his handling of the situation. He said his administration was working with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to add more bed space, putting together new systems for connecting arriving children with relatives already in the country, and setting up a system for people to apply for asylum in their own countries.

In the meantime, he urged those considering the journey to stay put. Yes, I can say quite clearly: Dont come over, he said. Dont leave your town or city or community.

In the meantime, Republicans see Biden as boxed-in politically, with limited options for dealing with the border.

The administration has said that basically, everything that we did you name the policy ... they said that all of them are fill-in-the-blank adjective. Theyve described them in the most incendiary and condemnatory fashion possible, said Miller. And obviously my view is, of course, the opposite. But the point that Im making is when you do that you give yourself no room to adjust course. ... You leave yourself nowhere to go.

Theyre kind of stuck in a corner, agreed Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies think tank, which advocates on behalf of more restrictive immigration policies. Because Biden ran as the anti-Trump, he argued, the president has few options for deterring future migrants.

And thats why youre seeing so much glee, in some respect, he said. It is a kind of delicious irony that Bidens having to reopen detention centers that Trump had closed because he succeeded in shutting down the traffic.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a longtime Trump ally, said he expects the border to become a top issue if the numbers continue to grow.

If they dont control this, itll be a huge issue this year, and its an issue that gets you into public health, into the issue of defending America and whether there are borders, he said.

___ Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

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Republicans seize on immigration as border crossings surge - The Associated Press

The Guardian

Trump ally was not part of the 6 January riot but he had numerous contacts with key far-right groups and figures involved Roger Stone is seen with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio in Washington DC on 11 December 2020. Photograph: Amy Harris/REX/Shutterstock As the federal investigation of the 6 January Capitol insurrection expands, scrutiny of Donald Trumps decades-long ally Roger Stone is expected to intensify, given his links to at least four far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who had been charged, plus Stones incendiary comments at rallies the night before the riot and in prior weeks, say ex-prosecutors and Stone associates Although Stone was not part of the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that shocked America, the self-styled dirty trickster who was convicted on seven counts in the Russia investigations into the 2016 elections but later pardoned by Trump had numerous contacts with key groups and figures involved in the riot in the weeks before and just prior to its start. The night before the riot, Stone spoke at a Washington DC Rally to Save America where the former presidents unfounded claims that the election was stolen by Democrats were pushed and Stone urged an epic struggle for the future of this country, between dark and light, between the godly and the godless, between good and evil. Early on 6 January, Stone was seen in cellphone videos near a Washington hotel hanging out with six members of the far-right militia Oath Keepers serving as his bodyguards, including three who have been charged in the federal investigation. Stone, according to Mother Jones, also raised funds for private security events on 5 January and 6 January before the Capitol attack, which included a rambling talk by Trump urging his supporters to fight like hell. Back on 12 December, Stone also spoke at a Stop the Steal rally that amplified Trumps erroneous claims of massive election fraud, and urged hundreds of Trump loyalists to fight until the bitter end Never give up, never quit, never surrender, and fight for America, Stone implored the crowd Congressional investigators looking into the far-right Proud Boys, including some charged in the riot, have also reportedly been looking into ties that Stone had with their leaders Enrique Tarrio and Ethan Nordean, who were seen in a video in contact with Stone at another demonstration in DC the night before the December 12 rally, according to Just Security Nordean is one of at least a dozen Proud Boys who have been charged so far in the riot investigation, and one of several who are facing conspiracy charges Tarrio, who attended Stones trial and had other contacts with him, was arrested in DC two days before the riot and charged with setting fire in December to a Black Lives Matter flag and for carrying high capacity magazines for weapons Back in 2016, Stone first set up the group Stop the Steal which raised false claims that the election would be stolen from Trump, a baseless charge that grew exponentially post election in 2020 to try to undermine Bidens victory. Last year Trump railed against Stones conviction in the Russia inquiry which included lying to Congress and drew a 40-month jail sentence. But shortly before Stone was to enter prison in mid 2020 Trump commuted his sentence, and in December gave him a full pardon. Members of the Oath Keepers provide security to Roger Stone in Washington DC on 5 January. Photograph: Jim Urquhart/Reuters Former senior prosecutors say that Stone could be a growing focus of the federal inquiry of the riot which has already charged more than 300 people including at least a dozen Proud Boys and 10 Oath Keepers for illegal acts related to their roles in the Capitol attack. Prosecutors follow the facts and evidence where they lead, and certainly should be investigating any connections between Stone and those who were responsible for the insurrection on January 6, Mary McCord, a veteran prosecutor who led the national security division at Justice at the end of the Obama administration until May 2017, said in an interview Other ex-prosecutors go further and see Stone as a potential target. As a result of the pardon corruptly granted by Trump, it would not be surprising for Roger Stone to become a federal prosecutors holy grail, said Phil Halpern, who retired last year after 36 years as an assistant US attorney who specialized in corruption cases. In this quest, the charged Oath Keepers and Proud Boys are merely pawns leading to the ultimate prize. Rest assured, prosecutors will be dangling lenient treatment and other inducements in return for any testimony implicating Stone in the Capitol riot. But some ex-prosecutors caution that charging Stone will be difficult absent direct evidence of an intent to commit or aid and abet treason or seditious conspiracy, said Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the justice departments fraud section The Washington Post and other outlets have reported that Stone and Alex Jones, the host of the conspiracy driven InfoWars talk show where Stone has often appeared as a guest and promoted disinformation, are being investigated related to their ties with figures in the riot and if they had any role in its planning. Jones, who has boasted he paid $500,000 for the rally on 6 January, and Stone have had close links since at least the 2016 campaign, when Stone spoke glowingly of Jones declaring in an interview that his show is the major source of everything. In an email, Stone vehemently denied having anything to do with the Capitol riot. Any statement, claim, insinuation, or report alleging, or even implying, that I had any involvement in or knowledge, whether advance or contemporaneous, about the commission of any unlawful acts by any person or group in or around the US Capitol or anywhere in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, is categorically false. Stone has previously said that he simply wanted to spur peaceful protests of Congress on 6 January and stressed that he denounced the violence at the Capitol. On his website, StoneColdTruth, he has launched appeals to help with legal expenses by requesting checks for the STONE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND to help prepare to fend off this malicious assault on me once again. Stones denials notwithstanding, some former lobbying partners of his at Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly voice dismay at his decades long fealty to Trump, a client of the firm in the 1980s, about a decade after Stone earned notoriety for playing a small part in the scandal-ridden 1972 Richard Nixon campaign. Roger has been totally devoted to Trump for over 30 years and that has clouded his judgment about his own ethical values and led to a criminal conviction, said Charlie Black in an interview. Im not surprised that the devotion is still there, even post-election and post-pardon. Similarly, ex-Stone partner Peter Kelly said hes been shocked by Stones recent drive to discredit the election results and similar efforts by Michael Flynn, who was also convicted in the Russia inquiry and pardoned by Trump. To see people like Gen Flynn and Stone who just escaped a serious encounter with the law, walking the edge again is stunning, Kelly said in an interview. In 2016, Kelly blasted Stones modus operandi, telling the Guardian that Roger operates by a different set of rules, and his object is to disrupt. He traffics in the unusual.

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Pelosi baited Republicans by collecting positive news coverage about Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus deal from their districts - Yahoo News

Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse voted Thursday in favor of the American Dream and Promise Act, which would provide legal status for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, as well as those with Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure.

The bill passed the House on a 228 to 197 vote. Newhouse was one of nine Republicans to support the bill.

Elected to a fourth term in November, Newhouse has long supported legal status for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children, often referred to as Dreamers, and pushed to make the DACA program permanent.

Newhouse said he had concerns about the bill mainly, that it doesnt address a surge of migrants coming through the U.S.-Mexico border. He voted for the bill in hopes the issue could be addressed while the bill is in the Senate and provide a permanent solution for DACA recipients, including those in Central Washington.

Congress cannot keep kicking this can down the road, and until we have a comprehensive solution signed into law, these young people who were brought to this country at no fault of their own will continue to suffer, Newhouse said in a written statement.

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Newhouse one of 9 Republicans to vote in favor of American Dream and Promise Act - Yakima Herald-Republic

GOP lawmakers introduced two dozen bills that would make it harder to vote in Texas ahead of Friday's filing deadline. Those bills would bar counties from sending absentee ballot request forms to people who did not ask for them, limit counties' authority to expand voting hours, require faster purges of voter rolls, make it easier to challenge signatures on absentee ballots and more.

Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican sponsors of two of those bills on Monday identified the bogeyman that inspired the legislative pushes: Harris County, the state's largest county and the home of Houston. Democrats have made major gains in recent elections in what was once a conservative-leaning area, helping the party narrow the GOP's margins in statewide elections and giving Republicans incentive to seek to limit votes there.

"We must pass laws to prevent election officials from jeopardizing the election process," Abbott said after detailing Harris County's handling of the 2020 election.

The bills are part of a larger push across Republican-controlled statehouses -- including Georgia and Arizona -- to implement new laws to suppress votes following former President Donald Trump's lie that voter fraud was to blame for his loss last year to President Joe Biden.

Abbott and other Republicans have offered no evidence of widespread fraud in Texas. The only example Abbott cited Monday was a 2014 case in which a man was charged with offering cocaine and cash for votes in a school board race in Donna, Texas.

Still, Abbott claimed that efforts to broaden voting access such as those of Harris County introduce "the potential for voter fraud."

"There's really one thing all of us can and should agree upon, and that is we must have trust and confidence in our elections," Abbott said. "One way to do that is to make sure that we reduce the potential for voter fraud in our elections."

He made no mention of Republicans' role in undermining that trust by falsely claiming that the results in several swing states were tainted and attempting to overturn them in courts and in Congress.

Matt Angle, a Democratic strategist who founded the Lone Star Project, a political action committee that backs Democrats, said Republicans are targeting Harris County because of Democrats' rising vote share in -- along with Tarrant County, home of Fort Worth -- "the two kind of linchpin counties."

"When Democrats get up to about 55% consistently in Harris County and when we carry Tarrant County, it'll be hard for Republicans to make that up in the rural counties," Angle said.

The legislative moves by GOP lawmakers come after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led a lawsuit by Republican state attorneys general from 17 states to disenfranchise the voters of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by overturning their results based on unfounded claims of fraud. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in November offered a $1 million reward for evidence of voter fraud in Texas, but has not yet paid anyone.

"It's part of the big lie," Lina Hidalgo, who as Harris County judge is the county's chief executive, said Monday on CNN. "It's part of the intimidation, the confusion, the antics that (the Republican Party) has engaged in for so many generations that culminated in President Trump asking people to overturn the election."

"What they're doing is filing bills that are essentially a poll tax that weaponize the election system against our own voters," Hidalgo said. "Obviously, these Republicans are hoping their work is going to disenfranchise mostly Democrats. But the truth of the matter is, it's going to disenfranchise both parties. And what they're proposing is absolutely tragic and reminiscent of the worst of what we've seen in Texas and across the South since Reconstruction."

Meanwhile, Cain, the Texas House Republican who was alongside Abbott on Monday, claimed that "the only form of voter suppression" is illegal votes being cast.

"You know, the only form of voter suppression is when an illegitimate voter, an ineligible voter, casts a ballot. When an ineligible voter casts their ballot, what they're actually doing is they're silencing the voice of an American citizen, of someone that is eligible to vote. It's wrong and we should stop it," Cain said.

Bettencourt said he was pushing for "uniformity" among counties' early voting hours, which he said couldn't be viewed as "anything but a positive because everyone can view those hours."

"I don't think there's any denial of voter rights with that. I think uniformity is what we need in Texas so rural voters coming home from work have the same access as urban voters," he said.

Abbott in February declared that election security would be an emergency item on the Texas Legislature's agenda for its 2021 session.

"Election fraud is unacceptable, and that's exactly why I made it an emergency item this session," he said Monday. "Our objective is very simple, and that is to ensure that every eligible voter gets to vote. It's also to ensure that only eligible votes are the ones that count at the ballot box."

Over and over, Abbott and the GOP lawmakers pointed to Harris County's efforts to expand voting access in 2020 as examples of what they are seeking to prohibit.

Other Republican legislators have also cited Harris County, including state Rep. Jared Patterson, who said that "irregularities in Harris County polling hours of operation and the opportunity for voter fraud when no one is looking" motivated a bill he introduced that would prohibit counties from allowing early voting after 9 p.m.

Bettencourt called for 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. voting hours everywhere, and said keeping the same hours everywhere "helps rural Texans feel like they have the same opportunity as urban Texans" -- despite the reality that urban voters often face long lines that do not exist in rural areas.

Proposals such as Bettencourt's Senate Bill 7, which would bar public officials from sending absentee ballot request forms and would require identification with returned mail-in ballots, and Cain's House Bill 6, which similarly bans the mailing of absentee ballot request forms and also would block county elections officials from altering elections procedures without the approval of the Texas secretary of state, largely seek to bar local elections officials from making their own decisions about administering elections.

"A lot of them sound pretty technical but what they really do is increase the authority of the secretary of state of Texas to direct the counties to do specific things," Angle said.

Bradner reported from Chicago and Gallagher reported from Houston.

Excerpt from:
Texas Republicans target Houston with raft of bills seeking new voting restrictions - CNN

On an invitation-only call last week, Sen. Ted Cruz huddled with Republican state lawmakers to call them to battle on the issue of voting rights.

Democrats are trying to expand voting rights to illegal aliens and child molesters, he claimed, and Republicans must do all they can to stop them. If they push through far-reaching election legislation now before the Senate, the GOP wont win elections again for generations, he said.

Asked if there was room to compromise, Cruz was blunt: No.

H.R. 1s only objective is to ensure that Democrats can never again lose another election, that they will win and maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and of the state legislatures for the next century, Cruz said told the group organized by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed, conservative group that provides model legislation to state legislators.

Cruzs statements, recorded by a person on the call and obtained by The Associated Press, capture the building intensity behind Republicans nationwide campaign to restrict access to the ballot. From statehouses to Washington, the fight over who can vote and how often cast as voting integrity has galvanized a Republican Party in search of unifying mission in the post-Trump era. For a powerful network of conservatives, voting restrictions are now viewed as a political life-or-death debate, and the fight has all-but eclipsed traditional Republican issues like abortion, gun rights and tax cuts as an organizing tool.

That potency is drawing influential figures and money from across the right, ensuring that the clash over the legislation in Washington will be partisan and expensive.

It kind of feels like an all-hands-on-deck moment for the conservative movement, when the movement writ large realizes the sanctity of our elections is paramount and voter distrust is at an all-time high, said Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action, an influential conservative advocacy group in Washington. Weve had a bit of a battle cry from the grassroots, urging us to pick this fight.

Several prominent groups have recently entered the fray: Anti-abortion rights group, the Susan B. Anthony List, has partnered with another conservative Christian group to fund a new organization, the Election Transparency Initiative. FreedomWorks, a group formed to push for smaller government, has initiated a $10 million calling for tighter voting laws in the states. It will be run by Cleta Mitchell, a prominent Republican attorney who advised former President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Heritage Action has announced a new effort also focused on changes in state voting laws. It included a $700,000 ad campaign to back GOP-written bills in Georgia, the groups first foray into advocating for state policy.

So far, the states have been the center of the debate.More than 250 bills have have been introduced in 43 states that would change how Americans vote, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice, which backs expanded voting access. That includes measures that would limit mail voting, cut hours that polling places are open and impose restrictions that Democrats argue amount to the greatest assault on voting rights since Jim Crow.

That push was triggered by Trumps lies that he lost the presidential election due to fraud claims rejected by the courts and by prominent Republicans and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that those groundless claims sparked.

But the fight over voting laws now extends far beyond Trump and is shifting to Washington, where the Democratic-led Senate will soon consider an array of voting changes. The package, known as H.R. 1, would require states to automatically register eligible voters, as well as offer same-day registration. It would limit states ability to purge registered voters from their rolls and restore former felons voting rights. Among dozens of other provisions, it would also require states to offer 15 days of early voting and allow no-excuse absentee balloting. Democrats, who are marshaling their own resources behind the bill, argue it is necessary to block what they describe as voter suppression efforts in the states.

Republicans contend its a grab bag of long-sought Democratic goals aimed at tilting elections in their favor. Cruz claimed it would lead to voting by millions of criminals and illegal aliens.

The bill says America would be better off if more murderers were voting, America would be better off if more rapists and child molesters were voting, Cruz said.

He added that he had recently participated in an all-day strategy call with national conservative leaders to coordinate opposition. The leaders agreed that Republicans would seek to rebrand the Democratic-backed bill as the Corrupt Politicians Act, he said.

The focus on voting is visible across the conservative movement, even among groups with no clear interest in the voting debate. At a televised town hall in February, leading Christian conservative Tony Perkins fielded several questions about voting before tackling topics on the social issues his Family Research Council typically focuses on.

Perkins answered the question by recalling how voting laws were made stricter in his native Louisiana after a close 1996 Senate race won by Democrats. He noted that the state now votes solidly Republican.

When you have free, fair elections, youre going to have outcomes that are positive, Perkins said before urging viewers to push state lawmakers to restore election integrity.

Stronger voting regulations have long been a conservative goal, driven by old and some say outdated conventional wisdom that Republicans thrive in elections with lower turnout, and Democrats in ones with more voters. That has translated to GOP efforts to tighten voter identification laws and require more frequent voter roll purges. Both efforts tend to disproportionally exclude Black and Latino voters, groups that lean Democratic.

In a sign of the increasing attention to the issue last year, Leonard Leo, a Trump advisor and one of the strategists behind the conservative focus on the federal judiciary, formed The Honest Elections Project to push for voting restrictions and coordinate GOP effort to monitor the 2020 vote.

But the issue expanded beyond what many conservatives expected. As Trump groundlessly blamed fraud for his loss, and he and his allies lost more than 50 court cases trying to overturn the election, his conservative base became convinced of vague irregularities and holes in the voting system.

While Leos group, like other parts of the establishment GOP, kept a distance from such claims, state lawmakers stepped in quickly with bills aimed at fixing phantom problems and restoring confidence in the system.

Were certain our vote will count, were certain our vote is secure, were certain our system is fair and not having any sort of nefarious activities, said Iowa Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, a Republican who authored a wide-ranging election bill that shortened the states early voting period.

Similarly, other outside groups soon jumped into the debate thats roiling their activists who write the letters, make phone calls and send the small donations that keep the groups relevant.

Its gone up the chain of priority, said Noah Wall, executive vice president of FreedomWorks, which trained 60 top activists in Orlando last weekend on voting issues. If you were to poll our activists right now, election integrity is going to be near the top of the list. Twelve months ago, that wasnt the case.

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Ted Cruz To Republicans: Do Not Compromise On Harsher Voting Restrictions - HuffPost