Biden speaks after issuing order to close southern border to asylum seekers when ‘overwhelmed’ – live | US elections 2024

Joe Biden did not hold back in blaming Donald Trump for the failure of a bipartisan immigration compromise negotiated in the Senate earlier this year, saying it would have been more effective than the executive order he signed today.

“Four months ago, after weeks of intense negotiation between my staff and Democrats and Republicans, we came to a clear, clear bipartisan deal with the strongest border security agreement in decades. Then Republicans in Congress … walked away from it. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to,” the president said.

He gestured to the officials flanking his podium, which he said were Democratic and Republican officials from border states.

“They know the border is not a political issue to be weaponized – it’s a responsibility we have to share, to do something about it. They don’t have time for the games played in Washington. Neither do the American people.”

Joe Biden is now speaking on his new immigration rule from the White House.

He is flanked by a group of officials, including Arizona’s Democratic senator Mark Kelly.

Joe Biden is scheduled to soon begin delivering remarks from the White House on his just-announced policy to close the southern border to new asylum seekers when authorities determine it is “overwhelmed”.

He was supposed to start at 2pm ET, but, as always, is late. Mark Kelly, the Democratic senator representing border state Arizona, earlier appeared before reporters at the White House, and described the new rule as a “good step forward”.

He then turned to blaming Republicans for rejecting a legislative compromise in Congress that would have made an array of changes to US immigration laws to stem the flow of migrants.

“For three years the president has been calling on Congress to take action on this issue,” Kelly said.

After months of ultimately fruitless haggling over immigration policy in Congress, Joe Biden has announced new rules that will see the southern border temporarily shut to most new asylum seekers at periods when it becomes “overwhelmed”. The policy change comes amid signs voters are increasingly concerned about migrants arriving in the United States, but risk alienating some of Biden’s allies, who warn it may amount to a draconian response to what is essentially a humanitarian crisis. Back at the Capitol, the GOP is continuing its counteroffensive against Biden following their standard bearer Donald Trump’s felony conviction last week. Speaker Mike Johnson blamed Democrats for the guilty verdict, saying it represents “a new low”, while attorney general Merrick Garland faced a tough crowd during a hearing before the judiciary committee.

Here’s what else has happened so far today:

• Biden attacked Trump as a “convicted felon” who should not be let back into the White House at a Monday evening fundraiser.

• Wisconsin’s attorney general filed charges against three Trump associates for attempting to disrupt Biden’s election victory in the state four years ago, including notorious attorney Kenneth Chesebro.

• Election denialism remains a concern in Georgia’s populous Fulton county, where an official with ties to a group promoting lies about the 2020 votes sits on its election board.

Joanna Walters

At Hunter Biden’s trial, US justice department lawyer Derek Hines walked jurors through the events of October 2018, when prosecutors have said the president’s son lied on his background check about his drug use while buying the gun, Reuters reports.

It was illegal because he was user of crack and a drug addict. No one is above the law,” Hines said.

Biden has pleaded not guilty to three felony charges accusing him of failing to disclose his use of illegal drugs when he bought a Colt Cobra .38-caliber revolver and of illegally possessing the weapon for 11 days in October 2018.

Defense attorney Abbe Lowell urged jurors to listen carefully to evidence that would be presented. Lowell said the gun purchase form asked Hunter Biden only if he was currently an addict, not whether he had used in the past, adding that his client had no “intent to deceive”.

US special counsel David Weiss, a Donald Trump appointee, brought the case against Hunter Biden and was present in the courtroom on Tuesday. Weiss has separately filed federal tax charges against Hunter Biden in California.

The trial is expected to offer a tour of Hunter Biden’s years-long struggles with drug and alcohol addiction.

First Lady Jill Biden attended court today, as did her and Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden.

Hunter Biden jury told ‘no one is above the law’

Joanna Walters

The prosecution laid out its case on Tuesday in the historic criminal trial of Hunter Biden on gun charges, telling jurors that Joe Biden’s son was addicted to drugs and lied on paperwork to obtain a revolver. “No one is above the law,” the jurors were told, according to Reuters.

The jury in federal court in Delaware heard opening statements from prosecution and defense lawyers before the first witness, an FBI agent, was called.

Defense attorney Abbe Lowell told the jury that evidence presented in the trial will show that Hunter Biden, 54, did not knowingly violate the law.

It is the first ever criminal trial of the child of a sitting US president, with US district judge Maryellen Noreika presiding. Donald Trump last week became the first US president (sitting or former) to be convicted of a crime.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer welcomed Joe Biden’s new actions on asylum seekers, but faulted Republicans for blocking legislation he said would better address the problems at the southern border.

“As the president makes his announcement, let’s be very clear about one thing: legislation would have been the more effective way to go. President Biden has been clear from the beginning he prefers legislation, but given how obstinate Republicans have become – turning down any real opportunity for strong border legislation – the president is left with little choice but to act on his own,” Schumer said.

He continued:

Shame on our Republican friends. They say they want to protect the border. Donald Trump comes out with a very crass statement, let’s keep it in chaos so I might win the election. And they go along. They do a 180-degree turn. That’s a disgrace, and it’s forced President Biden to act the way he does, which is a lot better than doing nothing, but not as preferable as passing legislation, as the president admits.

We had an opportunity to pass a strong bipartisan border bill back in February, and just over a few weeks ago.

Both times, Republicans put politics ahead of bipartisanship, and blundered the best chance we have seen in decades to pass a border security bill America urgently needs. Americans will not easily forget it.

Republicans have spent years insisting to voters that Joe Biden is not doing enough to address illegal immigration, and are not impressed by his just-announced policy to bar asylum seekers when the southern border becomes “overwhelmed”.

“It’s window dressing. Everybody knows it … If he was concerned about the border, he would have done this a long time ago,” House speaker Mike Johnson said at a press conference today. His office dubbed the new policy an “election-year border charade”, while Johnson added he did not believe the policy would do enough to discourage migrants. “From what we’re hearing, it will ignore multiple elements that have to be addressed,” he said.

The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, was similarly dismissive:

With an election just months away, the President hopes that issuing an executive order will demonstrate that he cares about this crisis and is trying to fix it.

Never mind that his order would still allow more than 900,000 illegal aliens to come in every year at the southern border. This is on top of the half-million illegal parolees President Biden intends to continue waving into the country. Combined, that’s more than the population of 10 states. It’s a new Dallas, Texas, every year.

This is like turning a garden hose on a five-alarm fire. And the American people are not fools. They know that this play is too little, too late.

Joe Biden’s actions to limit migrant arrivals at the southern border come after months of ultimately futile negotiations aimed at passing an immigration policy compromise in Congress. But as the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino and Joan E Greve report, the new policy risks alienating some of the president’s supporters, who view it as a draconian response to a humanitarian crisis:

The White House on Tuesday announced an executive order that will temporarily shut down the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers attempting to cross outside of lawful ports of entry, when a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded.

The order would take effect immediately, senior administration officials said on a press call. Those seeking asylum would be held to a much more rigorous standard for establishing credible fear of returning to their home country, although certain groups – including trafficking victims and unaccompanied children – would be excluded from the ban.

“Individuals who do not manifest a fear will be immediately removable, and we anticipate that we will be removing those individuals in a matter of days, if not hours,” one official said. “The bottom line is that the standard will be significantly higher. And so we do anticipate that fewer individuals will be screened in as a result.”

The move comes amid rising public concern over the number of migrants crossing into the US, with polls showing a majority of Americans dissatisfied with the president’s handling of the border. The White House has been under immense pressure from Republicans and some Democrats to reduce the number of migrants arriving at the southern border.

Joe Biden has taken a slate of new actions intended to prevent migrants from entering the United States from Mexico when the southern border is “overwhelmed”, the White House announced.

“President Biden believes we must secure our border. That is why today, he announced executive actions to bar migrants who cross our southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum,” the White House said in a statement.

“These actions will be in effect when high levels of encounters at the Southern Border exceed our ability to deliver timely consequences, as is the case today. They will make it easier for immigration officers to remove those without a lawful basis to remain and reduce the burden on our Border Patrol agents.”

Under the new policy, noncitizens who unlawfully enter the United States over its southern border will be turned back when immigration authorities determine they are “overwhelmed”, the White House said. The administration noted that the rule was not permanent, and new asylum seekers would be accepted again when new arrivals are “low enough for America’s system to safely and effectively manage border operations”, while there would be exceptions to the closure for trafficking victims and children traveling alone.

Attorney general Merrick Garland is currently being grilled by the House judiciary committee, whose Republican leaders have threatened to hold him in contempt for not releasing recordings of Joe Biden’s interview with a special counsel.

The White House has moved to assert executive privilege over the recording of Biden speaking with Robert Hur, the special prosecutor who investigated his possession of classified documents, and ultimately determined he should not face charges.

It remains unclear if Republicans will actually go through with bringing charges against Garland, and Jim Jordan, the judiciary committee’s rightwing chair, has billed this hearing as investigating “how the DOJ has become politicized and weaponized under the leadership of Attorney General Merrick Garland”.

In his opening statement, the attorney general defended the justice department’s work, and hit back at what he described as attempts to intimidate him. Here’s what he had to say:

Election denialism remains a threat in swing states, including Georgia, where the Guardian’s George Chidi and Sam Levine report a Republican county-level official has refused to certify the results of a recent vote, and could do so again in November:

A Republican on the Fulton county election board who refused to certify the May primary election is a member of an election denial activist network founded by Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally who aided his efforts to overturn the election in Georgia and elsewhere.

Julie Adams, who was appointed to the board in February, abstained from certifying the results of the May primary last month. Each of the other four board members, including the other Republican appointee Michael Heekin, voted for certification. No allegation of error or misconduct has been raised about the 21 May primary.

Adams is the regional coordinator for southeastern states in the Election Integrity Network (EIN), a national group that has recruited election deniers to target local election offices. She helped start the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition after attending an EIN summit on election integrity in 2022, according to a publicly posted biography.

She has also been affiliated with Tea Party Patriots, another election denialist group.

“Julie Adams’ role on the Fulton county election board makes as much sense as inviting a fox to a seat in the henhouse,” said Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director at the New Georgia Project Action Fund, a left-leaning group focused on voting rights.

“Ms Adams has made clear – in her private work for the Election Integrity Network, in her recent lawsuit against the county board, and in refusing to certify the May elections – that she is not working to make elections stronger or build voter confidence. Instead, Ms Adams is beating the dead horse of fictitious stolen elections.”

She added: “We are concerned that Ms Adams and her cohorts will continue to push this narrative in November.”

Wisconsin’s top prosecutor has filed felony charges against three Donald Trump associates over their failed attempt to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in the state.

The group includes Kenneth Chesebro, who was indicted for a similar scheme in Georgia, and pleaded guilty to the charges. Here’s more on this breaking story, from the Guardian’s Sam Levine and Alice Herman:

Wisconsin’s attorney general, Josh Kaul, filed felony charges against three men who played a key role in the effort to appoint fake electors in the state as part of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election.

Kenneth Chesebro, Jim Troupis and Michael Roman were each charged with one felony count of forgery, according to court documents. The crime is a class H felony punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and up to six years in prison.

Chesebro was the architect of the fake elector plan. Five days after the election, he emailed Troupis, a retired judge who was leading the Trump campaign’s legal efforts in Wisconsin, to muse about the possibility of throwing out Joe Biden’s win in Wisconsin and appointing a Trump slate of electors. The two developed the scheme over the next few months. Chesebro would later work with Roman to coordinate the efforts across states and to get the slates of fake electors to Washington.

Chesebro pleaded guilty to conspiracy to filing false documents for his role in the scheme in a separate case in Georgia earlier this year. Roman faces charges in Georgia and is also a defendant in an Arizona case.

This is the first time Troupis, who sits on a judicial ethics panel in Wisconsin, has been charged.

Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, kept up his defense of Donald Trump today at a press conference. He decried Trump’s conviction as politically motivated and representing “a new low” for Democrats:

Trump was convicted by a New York City jury of charges brought by Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s Democratic district attorney. However, despite the claims of some Republicans, there is no evidence that Joe Biden or any other top Democrats were involved in Bragg’s decision to indict Trump.

Joe Biden will deliver a speech at 2pm, the White House just announced.

Chances are it will be to announce his executive order on immigration, but his administration did not specify what Biden will talk about.

It’s unclear when Joe Biden will issue his executive order allowing him to temporarily shut down the southern border, but it is expected to happen today.

Ahead of the president’s announcement, Republicans are amping up their attacks on his administration, and its handling of the migration wave.

“Crooked Joe Biden is *pretending* to secure the border with a toothless executive order that allows thousands of unvetted illegal aliens to enter EVERY DAY,” Dylan Johnson, the deputy communications director for Donald Trump’s campaign, said in a press release.

“If Biden cared about securing our border, he could have left in place the successful Trump border policies that resulted in the safest and most secure border in history.”

Rather than turning away all new asylum seekers, Biden’s executive order is expected to give him the power to reject new applicants once daily arrivals rise above a certain average. As for the Trump campaign’s claim that migrants are unvetted, the Refugee Council USA coalition points out that asylum seekers are vetted after they file their application with US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Joe Biden, of course, has his own problems, and one of them is the large number of migrant arrivals on the southern border that has taken place during his term. There are a number of reasons why this has occurred, but polls have shown that the trend is plainly a concern for voters, and Republicans have seized on it to argue Biden is unfit for office.

Earlier this year, the Senate tried to pass legislation that Biden said would help his government better manage the migration wave, but that was shut down by Republicans acting at the behest of Donald Trump. The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports that the president will today unveil a policy that will allow him to temporarily close the southern border to new asylum seekers. Here’s more:

Joe Biden on Tuesday was set to announce an executive order that would reportedly temporarily shut down the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers attempting to cross outside of lawful ports of entry, when a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded.

The move comes amid rising public concern over the number of migrants crossing into the US, with polls showing a majority of Americans dissatisfied with the president’s handling of the border. The White House has been under immense pressure from Republicans and some Democrats to reduce the number of migrants arriving at the southern border.

Many progressive and Hispanic lawmakers expressed alarm at the sweep of the order, the most aggressive border move taken by the administration so far.

Speaking to donors in White Plains, New York, Joe Biden yesterday said this year’s presidential campaign would be like no other, thanks to Donald Trump’s felony conviction.

“Folks – the campaign entered uncharted territory last week. For the first time in American history, a former president that is a convicted felon is now seeking the office of the presidency,” Biden said.

Not since 1892 has an incumbent president faced a challenge to a second term from a former president. However, until Trump, no American president, current or former, has ever been convicted of a crime.

Speaking to donors at the event hosted by HBO chief executive Richard Plepler, Biden reiterated his argument that Trump would harm America’s democracy, if re-elected.

“The threat Trump poses would be greater in a second term,” Biden said, describing his predecessor as “unhinged”.

“Just listen to his rantings. He wants to, in his words, be a dictator in one day,” the president added.

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Joe Biden went on the attack against Donald Trump last night, with a new and potentially potent weapon: his conviction on business fraud charges. At a campaign event in New York, the president described Trump as a “convicted felon”, and said, “This guy does not deserve to be president whether or not I’m running.” The remarks comes after months of polling that showed the president trailing his predecessor in surveys of the swing states that will determine the election. But all of those were conducted before a jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments ahead of the 2016 election, a historic conviction that Biden’s campaign is clearly hoping will make voters turn their backs on the ex-president.

Only a few polls have been released since the Thursday’s verdict, but they contain signs that Trump’s conviction has dented his support with independents, and the so-called “double haters” – people who like neither candidate. Both groups are seen as pivotal to determining the election, and we’ll see if the trend persists in the months of campaigning to come.

Here’s what else is happening today:

• Biden is expected to today sign an executive order allowing the government to turn away asylum seekers from the border, if crossings reach a certain average level. The measure represents an unprecedented crackdown by a Democratic president, and comes as he tried to blunt Republican attacks on his immigration record.

• House Republicans have summoned attorney general Merrick Garland for a hearing aimed at holding him in contempt for not turning over recordings of Biden’s interview with a special counsel. The White House last month asserted executive privilege over the audio.

• Senate Democrats will hold a hearing exploring how the health outcomes of women nationwide have changed in the two years since the supreme court’s conservatives overturned Roe v Wade.