Early Tuesday morning in the Capitol, Mayorkas walked into the lion’s den, taking a meeting with House GOP members of the “border security caucus” – a group of members particularly fired up over the announcement last week that the White House would lift Trump-era covid restrictions at the border, known as Title 42.

Republicans said they gave him an earful.

“It was a rough crowd, and you got to give him a lot of credit for picking the roughest crowd, going in, and listening to them,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican who attended the private briefing, where Mayorkas appeared voluntarily. “Nothing was really resolved, other than he made a promise to give a number of follow-up pieces of information.”

Added Rep. Brian Babin of Texas, the co-chairman of the caucus: “We appreciated his courage to come in, knowing that we were opposed to him 100%. But we were not satisfied with the answers he gave us.”

When asked if impeachment proceedings could be launched against Mayorkas in a GOP majority, Babin replied, “Definitely on the table.”

As the thorny politics of immigration have caused a rift within the Democratic Party, with a number of the party’s most vulnerable members revolting against the Title 42 move, Republicans see the matter as a rallying cry that will be central to their push to take back the House and the Senate in the fall.

The Title 42 move has upended efforts to pass a $10 billion Covid-19 relief bill, forced the Biden administration to quietly attempt to calm nerves on Capitol Hill and could lead to a series of tough questions for Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Wednesday when he goes before the House Budget Committee. Republicans say they’re not done yet, planning theatrics this week to consume the House floor and try to force votes on the issue – all an attempt to put the squeeze on vulnerable Democrats.

While some leading Democrats say the policy must be lifted, they are uncertain about the political price they may pay for it.

“It’s the right thing to do, but I don’t know if it will be a political problem or not,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday.

The decision to end Title 42 – which allowed migrants to be turned away at the border instead of processed under normal immigration rules during the global pandemic – is already causing problems on the legislative front, potentially scuttling a push to pass $10 billion in long-sought aid to deal with the pandemic.

On Tuesday, Republicans blocked an effort to advance the Covid relief plan as they demanded votes on amendments – namely one to target the Title 42 policy. But unlike many vulnerable Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has backed the White House’s move on Title 42, saying the current policy “wreaked havoc on our asylum system.” And the New York Democrat is rejecting calls for a vote on an amendment over the issue, a fight that could stall the package for vaccines and therapeutics for weeks.

“The bottom line is this is a bipartisan agreement that does a whole lot of important good for the American people: vaccines, testing, therapeutics,” Schumer said. “It should not be held hostage for an extraneous issue.”

Democrats look to avoid tough vote
In a private lunch on Tuesday, one Senate Democrat told CNN that the consensus among Democrats was to try and avoid holding a vote on the measure at all. Such an amendment would divide Democrats – and could potentially pass the Senate – and threaten the White House’s immigration policies while embarrassing the President.

Democrats in competitive reelection battles are now racing to distance themselves from President Joe Biden’s decision-making and bracing for the possibility of a surge of migrants at the border, even as many acknowledge that the pandemic-era rule can’t remain in perpetuity as a way to control the surge at the Southern border.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat who is close to the White House but who also faces voters this year, made clear his displeasure with the administration’s move.

“I think this is the wrong time,” Warnock told CNN. “And I haven’t seen a plan.”

Several other Democrats in tough reelection battles echoed that sentiment.

“There are options,” Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat up for reelection in the fall, said when asked if he’d back an amendment on the issue.

“It’s obvious that there’s not a plan in place,” Kelly said. “This is a national security issue for the country, it’s a public health issue as well – not only for people in communities on the southern border, but for migrants. We need an orderly process.”

The administration says it does have a plan to deal with the expected surge.

Chris Magnus, commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, said once the policy ends May 23, they have taken a number of steps to prepare for an influx of migrants and beef up security at the border.

“We are doing everything we can to prepare for this increase, ensure we continue to process people humanely, and impose consequences on those who break the law,” Magnus said in a statement. “At the same time, we will continue to use all available resources to secure our borders. This includes the increased use of technology, on-ground monitoring, use of drones and additional support personnel to supplement (Border Patrol) agents and free them up from processing duties whenever possible.”

But both the House and Senate Democratic chairmen of the homeland security committees are not yet sold on the administration’s plan – even after getting briefed regularly by Mayorkas.

Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, but also is in charge of the Senate Democratic campaign committee, said Tuesday, “It’s important that the administration has a plan to deal with what will happen as a result of lifting” the policy even as he said he’s “confident” it ultimately will.

But asked if he supports lifting Title 42, Peters said: “I want to see the plan, but it’s still a work in progress.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, met Tuesday morning with Mayorkas to discuss the issue and warned that he still wanted to see a more robust plan for how the Homeland Security Department plans to combat a potential increase in border crossings this summer.

“Obviously, the administration has to come with policies that would convince the public that this issue will be managed. Not controlled, but managed,” Thompson said. “The policies have to be clear. … I am being told those policies are being worked on as we speak.”

Asked if he was convinced that the administration’s policies will be able to combat a surge, he said, “Well, I will wait until I see the policy.”

Conservative Democrats, too, are pushing back.

“Security of the border is everything,” said West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a leading moderate Democrat. “It’s everything. And we have to get our head straight about this and get secured borders.”

GOP plots midterm plans
House GOP leaders are eager to keep Title 42 in the spotlight, with a strategy that is largely centered around messaging.

The GOP leadership has encouraged Republicans to participate in a so-called conga line on Wednesday, according to GOP sources, in which members will line up on the House floor and repeatedly ask for unanimous consent to consider a bill from Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico that would keep the Trump-era policy in place.

And last week, sources said Republican leaders began officially whipping support for a “discharge petition” that would force a floor vote on that same bill if 218 lawmakers sign on to the effort. So far, 211 members have signed the petition: every single House Republican besides Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.

Conservative Rep. Chip Roy of Texas filed the petition last year, but has been steadily building support for it ever since; the effort picked up new steam in the wake of Biden’s Title 42 announcement.

“What are they afraid of? Just put it on the floor,” Roy said. “If you think it’s bad policy, then put it up.”

When asked if he would support the discharge petition, Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat in a tough reelection race, said he would have to look at it. But Phillips also made clear he has concerns with Biden’s Title 42 decision, and said he has begun to express some of those worries to the White House.

“I’ve been to the southern border twice. It appalled me, as it should appall any member of Congress, Democrat or Republican, and any American,” he said. “And I do concur that there should be a thoughtful, actionable plan in place before rescinding it. Plain and simple.”

“I would be shocked and dismayed if they don’t,” Phillips added. “Have I seen it? No.”

On Monday evening, the House Republican conference held a briefing with border patrol agents to hear how the end of Title 42 will impact their operations, then followed it up with a news conference in the Capitol afterward.

“You know, President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, said they would do something about this and they have not,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said. “They’ve only opened it up worse.”

Republicans have already taken dozens of trips to the southern border since last year, and there are more in the works in the near future: McCarthy said he will lead another border trip at the end of this month.

Republicans are confident that hammering Democrats over the border will not only energize their base, but also resonate with moderate and independent voters – especially since they have linked border security to the fentanyl crisis that has impacted communities all around the country.

“It’s far more than just aliens coming across, it’s far more than just the drugs coming across. This is a national security issue that’s gonna further get worse as time goes on this summer,” said Rep. John Katko of New York, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee.

One reason the GOP feels like it has the political upper hand: the National Republican Congressional Committee has shown members internal polling that shows the border is a salient issue in battleground districts, according to GOP sources.

Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the head of the House GOP’s campaign arm, told CNN: “Democrats will pay a political price for their incompetence.”

CNN’s Ted Barrett and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/05/politics/title-42-gop-election-strategy/index.html

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Big earthquakes offshore in Alaska or Chile lead Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders to worry about tsunamis coming from thousands of miles away. People take precautions. They move to higher ground. Faced with a real threat, Hawaiians prepare to make major changes to survive.

Apparently, Hawaiians are more interested in survival than Washington Democrats.

Democrats have now had three weeks of tsunami warnings, and the dictatorship of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., seems determined to force through trillions of dollars of additional spending and a host of radical woke policies – even though the American people are screaming, “No!”

KEVIN MCCARTHY DROPS THE GLOVES ON BUILD BACK BETTER AND KICKS OFF 2022 MIDTERM FIGHT

Big government socialism and woke radical policies – and incompetence on issues such as inflation, crime, controlling the border, leaving Afghanistan, and solving logistics problems – are all adding up to an easily repudiated mess. Fed up Americans have a simple battle cry: “It just doesn’t work.”

You may think I am exaggerating about a tsunami-like anti-Democrat wave, but consider recent evidence.

On Nov. 2 Glenn Youngkin led an entire team to victory in Virginia. The team included Lt. Gov.-elect Winsome Sears, a Jamaica-born naturalized citizen who served in the U.S. Marine Corps and loves America. It also included Attorney General-elect Jason Miyares, the son of Cuban refugees who escaped the oppression of communism.

This diverse, impressive Republican team swept Virginia and carried with it a new Republican majority in the legislature. For Pelosi and the Democrats, this was earthquake No. 1.

A few miles north, in New Jersey, Ed Durr Jr., an independent truck driver, defeated New Jersey State Senate President Stephen Sweeney in one of the biggest upsets in modern politics. Durr spent only $2,300. Clearly, the voters were saying: “Not Sweeney.” Consider that Sweeney got almost 59% of the vote four years earlier. This was earthquake No. 2.

Nationally, the polling has been increasingly bad for Democrats.
On the opposite side of the country, in Seattle, a Republican won the city attorney’s race for the first time in more than 30 years.

In a state legislative special election in San Antonio, Texas, a Republican won in a 73% Latino district.

A few days later Democratic Texas State Legislator Ryan Guillen switched parties, saying: “After much consideration and prayer with my family, I feel that my fiscally conservative, pro-business, and pro-life values are no longer in-step with the Democrat Party of today, and I am proudly running as a Republican to represent House District 31.”

Last week in South Carolina, Republicans had solid victories in municipal elections. In Georgetown, Carol Jayroe became the first Republican ever elected mayor. In Columbia, Republican Daniel Rickenmann was elected mayor in a county that went 68% for Biden.

Nationally, the polling has been increasingly bad for Democrats. A generic ballot is a question of whether you are more likely to vote for one party or the other.

On Nov. 7, the Suffolk University/USA Today poll showed an 8% generic advantage for Republicans (46-38) in congressional voting and 38% approval for President Biden. On Nov. 11, the ABC News/Washington Post poll showed a 10% Republican generic advantage (51-41). On Nov. 16, Rasmussen reported a 13-point generic gap (51-38).

As Rasmussen reported:

“The 13-point edge for Republicans in the latest poll is larger than Democrats enjoyed at any time during the 2018 midterm campaign, due both to greater GOP partisan intensity and a wide advantage among independents. While 89% of Republican voters say they would vote for their own party’s candidate, only 77% of Democrats would vote for the Democratic candidate. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, 48% would vote Republican and 26% would vote Democrats, with another 17% undecided.”

In less than two weeks, the generic ballot has moved against the Democrats in every poll. But, of course, in the Pelosi dictatorship none of these results in real elections or polls have had any impact. Democrats seem more worried about being kneecapped by Dictator Pelosi today than being thrown out by voters next year.

Furthermore, the threat to all Democrats is compounded with President Biden at 38% approval and Vice President Harris down to 28% approval. (And anyone who listens to the 10 hours of her laughing will understand that she is likely to go even lower when her supporters hear how whacked she sounds.)

The power of the emerging anti-Democrat tsunami coming this early creates huge problems for the Democratic Party. The scale of the tsunami will encourage Democrats to retire (note Sen. Patrick Leahy announced his retirement just last week). We will have to see if Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., can withstand the psychological pressure of their radical members and the constant harassment of left-wing activists invading bathrooms, surrounding cars and boats, etc.

At the same time, the wave will encourage Republicans to run everywhere, at every level. (If a little-known truck driver can spend $2,300 to beat the most powerful state politician in New Jersey, any Republican can win anywhere.) In the process, Democratic fundraising will get harder, and Republican fundraising will get easier.

Still, with the tide receding, Pelosi charges toward the beach – and the lemmings (replacing the donkey as the symbol of the Democratic Party) march in lockstep behind her, toward the coming tsunami.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/voter-tsunami-democrats-pelosi-newt-gingrich

The post Voter tsunami begins to drown Democrats first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s sweeping new vaccine requirements have Republican governors threatening lawsuits. His unapologetic response: “Have at it.”

The administration is gearing up for another major clash between federal and state rule. But while many details about the rules remain unknown, Biden appears to be on firm legal ground to issue the directive in the name of protecting employee safety, according to several experts interviewed by The Associated Press.

“My bet is that with respect to that statutory authority, they’re on pretty strong footing given the evidence strongly suggesting … the degree of risk that (unvaccinated individuals) pose, not only to themselves but also unto others,” said University of Connecticut law professor Sachin Pandya.

Republicans swiftly denounced the mandate that could impact 100 million Americans as government overreach and vowed to sue, and private employers who resist the requirements may do so as well. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called it an “assault on private businesses” while Gov. Henry McMaster promised to “fight them to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian.” The Republican National Committee has also said it will sue the administration “to protect Americans and their liberties.”

Such cases could present another clash between state and federal authority at a time when Biden’s Justice Department is already suing Texas over its new state law that bans most abortions, arguing that it was enacted “in open defiance of the Constitution.”

The White House is gearing up for legal challenges and believes that even if some of the mandates are tossed out, millions of Americans will get a shot because of the new requirements — saving lives and preventing the spread of the virus.

Biden is putting enforcement in the hands of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is drafting a rule “over the coming weeks,” Jeffrey Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said Friday. He warned that “if a workplace refuses to follow the standard, the OSHA fines could be quite significant.”

Courts have upheld vaccination requirements as a condition of employment, both before the pandemic — in challenges brought by health care workers — and since the coronavirus outbreak, said Lindsay Wiley, director of the Health Law and Policy Program at American University Washington College of Law.

Where Biden’s vaccine requirements could be more open to attack is over questions of whether the administration followed the proper process to implement them, she said.

“The argument that mandatory vaccination impermissibly infringes on bodily autonomy or medical decision making, those arguments have not been successful and I don’t expect that to change,” Wiley said. “I think the challenges that are harder to predict the outcome of are going to be the ones that are really sort of the boring challenges about whether they followed the right process.”

Emergency temporary standards — under which the rules are being implemented on a fast track — have been particularly vulnerable to challenges, Wiley said. But the risks presented by the coronavirus and the existence of a declared public health emergency could put this one “on stronger footing than any other ones past administrations have tried to impose that have been challenged in court,” she said.

Indeed, the question of whether the mandate is legally sound is separate from whether it will be upheld by judges, including by a conservative-majority Supreme Court which has trended toward generous interpretations of religious freedom and may be looking to ensure that any mandate sufficiently takes faith-based objections into account.

Vaccination “has become politicized and there are many Republican district judges who might be hostile to the regulation for political reasons,” said Michael Harper, a Boston University law professor.

“I could imagine an unfortunate opinion that attempted to justify this political stance by rejecting the use of OSHA against infectious disease rather than against hazards intrinsic to the workplace,” Harper wrote in an email.

The expansive rules mandate that all employers with more than 100 workers require them to be vaccinated or test for the virus weekly, affecting about 80 million Americans. And the roughly 17 million workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid also will have to be fully vaccinated.

Biden is also requiring vaccination for employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government — with no option to test out. That covers several million more workers.

Republican-dominated Montana stands alone in having a state law on the books that directly contradicts the new federal mandate. The state passed a law earlier this year making it illegal for private employers to require vaccines as a condition for employment.

But University of Montana constitutional law professor Anthony Johnstone said the federal rules would trump the state law. That means larger Montana businesses that previously couldn’t require their employees to get vaccinated will now likely be required to, including hospitals that are some of the largest employers in the sparsely populated state.

Given that the rules are still being drafted and haven’t been released, experts say the devil is in the details. It remains to be seen exactly what the rule will require employers to do or not do, and how it accounts for things such as other rights that unvaccinated employees may assert, such as the right to a disability accommodation, Pandya said.

For example — with the growing number of fully remote businesses and workers — if the rules are written to include people who don’t have workplace exposure, “there certainly is room for an issue there,” said Erika Todd, an employment attorney with Sullivan & Worcester in Boston.

Charles Craver, a labor and employment law professor at George Washington University, said the mandate presented a “close question” legally. But he said the Biden administration did have a legitimate argument that such a requirement was necessary for employers to protect the safety of workers, customers and members of the public.

The thornier question, though, is how employers — and courts — will sort through requests for accommodations for employees on religious or other grounds.

Though such accommodations may include having an employee work from home, “you can have a situation where someone has to be present and you can’t provide an accommodation because of the danger involved,” he added.

“I would not be a betting person if this went up before the Supreme Court,” Craver said. “I could even picture the court divided 5-4, and I wouldn’t bet which way it would go.”

____

Richer reported from Boston. Reporter Iris Samuels contributed to this report from Helena, Montana. Samuels is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Source: https://www.wnct.com/news/politics/bidens-vaccine-rules-to-set-off-barrage-of-legal-challenges-2/

The post Biden’s vaccine rules to set off barrage of legal challenges first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

It will come as a surprise to few, but media polarization has increased in the past half-decade and, a new Pew Research report asserts, appears to have been driven by Republican’s increasing distrust of the media. Pew will track that divide as the nation ultimately comes together at the polls to pick then next President and a slate of elected officials nationwide.

Of the 30 news sources* cited in the survey, “U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided,” none were trusted by more than half of the respondents.

That is according to a survey of 12,043 U.S. adults, all members of Pew’s American Trends online panel, conducted in October and November of 2019. They were asked which news outlets they relied on and trusted for news about politics and the upcoming 2020 election.

Certainly, the current head of the Republican party, President Donald Trump, has done his part in fomenting that distrust, regularly branding the mainstream media as political enemies and fake news.

Republicans said they distrusted 20 of the 30 sources cited, with only seven of those news sources them generating more trust than distrust led by Fox News, with 65% saying they trust that outlet. That outlet “towers above all others” among Republicans as a go-to source for political news, Pew said.

CNN was the most trusted by Democrats, with 67% saying that was the case.

A big difference is that while no other news sources come close to rivaling Fox among Republicans, a number of sources besides CNN are highly trusted and frequently used by Democrats. For example, two-thirds of liberal Democrats trust the New York Times, while just 10% of conservative Republicans do.

Between the 2014 study and this latest one, Republicans’ distrust increased for 14 of the 20 sources that were the same in both years, including distrust of CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times (all particular targets of the President’s animus).

The survey found that Republicans and Republican-leaning independents view many mainstream media outlets as untrustworthy, the same outlets Democrats and leaners mostly see as credible.

Compared to a similar study in 2014, Republicans are even more alienated from most of the “more established” sources, while Democrats remain confident in them, and in some cases even more confident than before.

One big takeaway is that just because people use a news source does not mean they necessarily trust it. While 24% of Republicans said they got news from CNN “in the past week,” some four-in-ten who did say they distrusted CNN. Similarly, of the 23% of Democrats who got political news from Fox nearly three-in-ten (27%) said they distrusted it.

The survey also marks the launch of a Pew Research Center Election News Pathways initiative that will extend through the 2020 election and explore how American’s news habits and attitudes affect their perception of that election.

There will be five more surveys conducted as part of the initiative, all drawn from Pew’s American Trends Panel. 

Pew will make that raw data available online for independent analysis via an online tool, API and data set, updated approximately every other month. It will also issue weekly (Wednesdays at 10 a.m.) email alerts with analysis that news outlets can use in their reporting on the election. Pew will also hold workshops for journalists interested in learning more about the initiative.

* The 30 outlets polled were: ABC News, BBC, Breitbart, Business Insider, BuzzFeed, CBS News, CNN, Daily Caller, Fox News, HuffPost, MSNBC, NBC News, Newsweek, New York Post, NPR, PBS, Politico, Rush Limbaugh Show (radio), Sean Hannity Show (radio), The Guardian, The Hill, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Time, Univision, USA Today, Vice, Vox, Washington Examiner.

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