Tangle - The Senate's border bill.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Starting point is 00:00:19 Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly.

Starting point is 00:00:44 Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to

Starting point is 00:01:05 your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the border deal. Yes, the border deal is here. We have the details, the long-awaited

Starting point is 00:02:06 Senate-negotiated border bill that is actually a really big foreign aid funding bill, but we're going to talk about that in a minute. Before we do, though, a big announcement, a big, big announcement. New York City, we are coming. The response to our first ever Tangle live event in Philadelphia was better than we could have imagined. And so we are excited to announce that we are coming back Wednesday, April 17th in New York City. We're going to be gathering the Tangle community at The Loft at City Winery. I'm going to be moderating a conversation between a few very special guests about the 2024 election

Starting point is 00:02:47 with an audience Q&A after. We've got VIP tickets that include a post-show meet and greet and free Tangle merch and the best seats in the house. And tickets are on sale right now. Now, we are giving first dibs on these tickets to our paid subscribers, but I've decided I'm going to drop the code here on the podcast too. So paid subscribers and podcast listeners have first dibs on these tickets. This is not a giant venue. I am expecting we are going to sell out. I'm hopeful we will sell out. So if you want to buy a ticket to this event, April 17th, New York City, you can go to the link in the episode description or the link in today's newsletter. And the code is TANGLNYC2024, all caps lock.

Starting point is 00:03:35 That's all uppercase, TANGLNYC2024. And that will unlock the tickets for you for the next 24 hours. That ticket is going to be password protected. And then we're going to open it up to the general public. So go get your ticket right now. Show New York how much you guys love Tangle. All right, with that out of the way, we're going to jump in today with some quick hits. First up, Southern California is experiencing record rain, knocking out hours over a million households and killing at least three people from downed trees. California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency. Number two, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Starting point is 00:04:25 in an effort to push forward a potential hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. Israel said one-fifth of the remaining hostages are dead. Number three, CNN announced it was canceling its morning show and shaking up its anchor lineup amid declining ratings. Number four, jury deliberations began in the Michigan trial of the mother of a convicted mass shooter. She's the first parent of a U.S. school shooter to face charges tied to a mass shooting in U.S. history. And number five, King Charles III was diagnosed with cancer and will postpone public engagements during his treatment. After weeks of closed-door meetings, rumors, and promises, Senate negotiators finally revealed their plan to confront four different national security emergencies. The $118 billion package provides $60 billion to help support Ukraine,

Starting point is 00:05:30 $14.1 billion for Israel, $4.8 billion to deal with China's growing reach, and perhaps the most important ingredient, $20 billion to fund a series of changes to the U.S. migration system. billion to fund a series of changes to the U.S. migration system. Senate negotiators have just introduced their long-awaited bipartisan immigration bill, but its future isn't looking too good. House Speaker Mike Johnson already calling it dead on arrival. Is Donald Trump calling the shots here, Mr. Speaker? Of course not. He's not calling the shots. I am calling the shots for the House. That's our responsibility. And I have been seeing this far longer than President Trump has. On Sunday, Senate negotiators released the text of their $118 billion bill aimed at improving security on the U.S.-Mexico border while providing funding for Ukraine and Israel.

Starting point is 00:06:22 The bill, negotiated by Senators James Lankford, the Republican from Oklahoma, Chris Murphy, the Democrat from Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, the Independent from Arizona, attempts to close loopholes in the asylum process, provides new funding for the judges, asylum officers, and Border Patrol agents, limits the use of parole for migrants at the border, and gives the president new authority for shutting the border down when attempted crossings are too high. Republicans accomplished some of their long-standing policy goals with the bill, such as raising the standards for accepting asylum claims and creating a new system intended to process requests in under 90 days. Adults would likely

Starting point is 00:07:01 be detained or given a monitoring bracelet for the entirety of that process, and unaccompanied minors would be exempt. If approved, it would be the first comprehensive immigration reform legislation to pass Congress in decades. Democrats also want a number of priorities, including adding thousands more family-based and employment-based visas, granting a pathway to citizenship for thousands of Afghan refugees evacuated during the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, allowing work authorization for spouses of U.S. citizens waiting for immigrant visas, and guaranteeing access to counsel for child migrants. Additionally, the bill allows the federal government to quote-unquote shut down the border by immediately rejecting asylum seekers through a process modeled after the Trump-era Title 42 bill.

Starting point is 00:07:46 The shutdown is allowable if crossings surpass a daily average of 4,000 for seven days and becomes mandatory if the daily averages reach 5,000 crossings per day for a week. That benchmark has happened every week but one for the last four months, and if the bill were passed today, it would immediately trigger a shutdown. Though the bill describes this scenario as a shutdown, 1,400 appointments a day would remain available to asylum seekers who apply through the government's CBP One app or enter through a legal port. The bill also grants the president the power to waive this requirement. There is a link to the text of the 370-page bill in today's episode description, and there is also a summary link to the bill as well. House Speaker Mike Johnson,

Starting point is 00:08:31 the Republican from Louisiana, said the bill was dead on arrival in the House, and former President Donald Trump has been criticizing the bill harshly since before the text was released. Many Senate Republicans also said they would not support the bill before the text was released, and some misrepresented its content before its details were made public. Minority leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican from Kentucky who is supportive of the bill, conceded it faced headwinds because it is now an election year, and has suggested giving Republicans more time to read the bill's content. Polling shows voters strongly disapprove of President Biden's handling of the border.

Starting point is 00:09:05 In a statement, Biden said Congress should get it to my desk so I can sign it into law immediately. While the package is being sold as a border security measure, the money granted by the bill primarily goes to foreign aid. It includes $60 billion of assistance for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $4.83 billion for the Indo-Pacific region, and $2.4 billion for operations in the Red Sea, where the Houthi rebels continue to attack merchant ships. It also has $9.2 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Ukraine. About $20 billion is earmarked for border policies. In December alone, more than 300,000 migrants were recorded at the U.S.-Mexico border, the most ever on record. On Monday, a Border Patrol union endorsed the deal.

Starting point is 00:09:52 Today, we're going to go over some of the arguments about this deal from the left and the right, and then my take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. First up, let's start with the left are saying. Many on the left criticize Republicans for their apparent opposition to legislating on an issue they've made central to their party platform for years. Some think the GOP could be handing Democrats a political victory if they refuse to hold a vote on the bill in the House. Others scrutinize the contents of the bill, arguing that Democrats have abandoned their principles on immigration policy. In the Washington Post, Catherine Rample wrote that the GOP dog

Starting point is 00:10:39 caught the car. After months, decades of running on tightening the border, House Republicans are suddenly paralyzed when offered the chance to do so, Rample said. There are different ways to interpret why this much-awaited, much-desired legislation ended up, in Johnson's words, dead on arrival in the House. Maybe GOP lawmakers genuinely think they should hold out for the more draconian bill they put forward last year, known as H.R. 2. There are two major problems with this strategy. First, H.R. 2 would not supply funding for pretty much anything that could stop border crossings. Second, it would almost certainly never become law, even if Republicans were to gain control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, Rample wrote.

Starting point is 00:11:19 Maybe House Republicans have convinced themselves that any legislation that could appeal to Democrats must ipso facto be too reasonable for them to consider. In a twist of the Groucho Marx line, they never belonged to a club that would have anyone else as a member. In The American Prospect, Robert Kutner suggested Republican attempts to sabotage the bipartisan immigration bill may yet backfire on the far right. bill may yet backfire on the far right. Trump and Republican House members are determined to deny President Biden of victory no matter what the costs of resolving the refugee crisis, Guttner said. The measure is far more restrictive than anything Democrats have contemplated since the original anti-immigrant law of exactly a century ago. But the border crisis is real, and so is the political and fiscal damage in blue states and cities far from the Mexican border. The compromise bill is not pretty. Much better comprehensive immigration reform was nearly enacted a decade ago but was blocked by far-right Republicans, Guttner said. Assuming that the bill

Starting point is 00:12:15 does pass the Senate but is blocked in the House, a worsening crisis may eventually backfire on the Republicans. Biden can now say he was willing to fix the border and support an ally from an invasion by Russia, but was cynically blocked by Trump's minions who wanted an issue in the elections. In Vox, Nicole Nerea said Democrats are trying to pass a right-wing border bill, but the GOP won't let them. Some of the agreed-upon border security measures are ones that Democrats, who staked out a fairly unified position in support of immigrant rights during the Trump era, wouldn't have dreamed of supporting a few years ago. But the aftermath of Trump's presidency, which brought about a sharp rightward shift in the politics of immigration and the ballooning crisis at the border, have driven some moderate

Starting point is 00:12:58 Democrats to abandon the party line, Naria wrote. These are complex problems in need of complex solutions, and the deal in the Senate does not fit that description. These are complex problems in need of complex solutions, and the deal in the Senate does not fit that description. Progressives have denounced the bill, but it's really Trump who is all but assured that it won't go anywhere, Naria added. Democrats might still ridicule Trump's call to build a wall on the southern border, but they're now favoring an agenda that focuses more on constructing a figurative wall grounded in legal hurdles and new enforcement measures designed to keep migrants out than on meaningfully reforming the immigration system. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying.

Starting point is 00:13:46 The right is largely averse to the bill, arguing there are ample reasons to reject it beyond President Trump's opposition. A smaller faction supports the bill and says it represents a win for conservatives on key border issues. Others criticize the bill for specific provisions, such as its asylum policy. In National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy argued the bill should be rejected on the merits. The good in the bipartisan Senate negotiator's proposal, and there definitely is some, A, can already be accomplished under current law, and B, would require faith that the Biden administration will for some reason enforce these provisions, even though it has systematically refused to enforce existing border security provisions. More important, to get the illusory good in the

Starting point is 00:14:29 proposal, Congress would have to enact provisions in the deal that would both undermine existing statutory restrictions and etch into our laws magnets for illegal immigration, McCarthy wrote. Both legally and practically speaking, the border can be shut down right this instant. There is no legal requirement that any alien who sets foot on American soil be permitted to apply for asylum, which is a discretionary act of national clemency, not a right of the alien. There's similarly no mandate that such aliens be routed into a process that enables them to remain, McCarthy said. This is about national security. It shouldn't be reduced to partisan politics, even in an election year. The bipartisan senator's

Starting point is 00:15:10 proposal is counterproductive on the merits. Congress should pressure Biden to use his existing authority to secure the border and end the crisis. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most.

Starting point is 00:15:45 Stay in the know. CBC News. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel

Starting point is 00:16:05 a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called it a border security bill worth passing. This is almost entirely a border security bill, and its provisions include longtime GOP priorities that the party's restrictionists could never have passed only a few months ago. Republicans demanded border measures last year as the price for passing military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Pacific allies. Democrats resisted at first but later agreed to negotiate and have made concessions that are infuriating the open borders left. Will Republicans now abandon what they claim to want, the board wrote? Oklahoma

Starting point is 00:16:50 Senator James Langford, who negotiated for the GOP, deserves thanks for digging into the policy nuances and writing a bill that Mr. Trump never came close to getting when he was president, the board said. Republicans may think they can write a better law if Mr. Trump wins in November, but don't count on it. Democrats will again demand much more in return. If Republicans pass up this rare chance at border reform, they may not get a better one. In The Federalist, Margo Cleveland wrote under the Senate's atrocious border bill, everybody gets asylum. The backers of the Senate bill seek to portray its provisions as, in the words of Joe Biden, the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades. There is little that is tough

Starting point is 00:17:30 in the bill, however, and what is can easily be sidestepped, either by the Biden administration or the throngs of illegal aliens invading from the South, Cleveland wrote. Consider, for instance, the emergency authority the bill would grant to the Secretary of Homeland Security to summarily remove aliens. Beyond the flood of aliens allowed to enter the United States without triggering the emergency authority, the statutory exemptions gut the Secretary's authority. Specifically, the bill provides that the Border Emergency Authority cannot be used against an unaccompanied alien child. So every illegal alien who is under 18 or can pass as someone who is under 18 will be allowed in, Cleveland wrote. Is that what Congress believes is appropriate? We don't know because the cowards prefer to leave it to the administrative state.

Starting point is 00:18:15 The Senate bill proves that. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So this is a rare moment where I just got done writing a lengthy, detailed piece on what Congress should do to solve a specific problem, and then Congress published the details of their own solution. So I think it's worth comparing my proposal to what the Senate negotiators just came up with. My first impression is that Republicans got way more here than I expected. After reading some commentary from conservative pundits that this bill is a Democratic wish list, I feel like I'm living in the upside down. This deal is a reflection of long-standing Republican priorities, not Democratic ones, and it completely ignores longtime Democratic demands

Starting point is 00:19:11 like a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers. Noah Rothman was one of the few pundits who seemed to see this clearly, joking in National Review that Republicans from 10 years ago would be in medical grade shock if they got to see this bill and then found out their own party was rejecting it. Not only was a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers not included, and there was very little indication that it would be, but I was surprised at how few Democratic priorities were addressed. That's what didn't make it in, though. Here are some things that this bill does that I included in my compromise proposal. It grants funding for judges, asylum officers, and border patrol agents. It speeds up processing so fewer migrants are released into the U.S. with court dates years in the future.

Starting point is 00:19:54 It requires migrants to seek asylum in nations they pass through before entering the U.S. and to provide more evidence they could not safely live in their home country. It removes the executive's ability to use humanitarian parole to grant temporary legal status to migrants at the southern border. It provides additional visas, including 50,000 more green cards for five years, and it directs funds to target the cartel's illicit fentanyl trade. I vaguely suggested a policy that addresses the cartel in some way. This won't surprise more established angle readers, but my favorite part of the proposal is this, quote, provides $440 million

Starting point is 00:20:30 to hire additional immigration judge teams and to increase the capacity of the immigration courts to expeditiously process and adjudicate cases and to support a long-standing program that provides legal representation for certain adults who cannot represent themselves due to serious mental or developmental disabilities. I have long called for this kind of funding, as I think one of the fundamental issues of the border is disorder, which is caused in part by the system being overwhelmed. Increasing courtroom capacity to process all migrants in a timely manner means the ones without real asylum claims will be deported, while the ones with legitimate claims will get safe harbor here. This will remove incentives for huge migrant caravans to travel to our border and help relieve some pressure on the

Starting point is 00:21:15 entire system. The bill also provides funding for issues that I didn't include in my proposal, but that I think are worthy of addressing. To combat human trafficking, to process a backlog of DNA samples from migrants encountered at the border, to provide legal counsel for kids or the mentally disabled, and to cover transportation costs, either for migrants to be deported expeditiously if they don't meet asylum claims, or to be sent to cities across the U.S. where they have family members if they do. The bill also enacts some policies that I didn't include in my proposal but that I think are good prescriptions. The shutdown triggers that should help prevent daily arrivals from ever exceeding historical highs on a regular

Starting point is 00:21:55 basis. The cutting of red tape for hiring U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, including the removal of extraneous polygraph tests for three years, the new training requirements for Border Patrol agents that include use of non-lethal force and education about transnational criminal organizations, and the pathway to citizenship for Afghan refugees who came here during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. And the bill includes one big thing that I intentionally excluded from my proposal. It is still, primarily, a foreign aid funding bill. The vast majority of its appropriations goes to Ukraine, Israel, and other foreign military support. Our southern border and these foreign military interventions should not be inextricably

Starting point is 00:22:35 linked, but they are. Of course, there is plenty in the bill I don't like. It empowers Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and President Biden to undermine many of its most restrictionist provisions at will, really whenever they would like, by simply declaring it in the national interest. There are no spending offsets to the bill, so it is expensive. There is no expansion of E-Verify systems that are paired with more legal work visas. It does not do nearly enough to open up temporary legal pathways for migrants to come here and work, which is the primary reason most arrive on our southern border. It leaves DACA recipients out in the cold again,

Starting point is 00:23:17 meaning they'll continue to be second-class citizens and will remain a bargaining chip for future negotiations. But guess what? It is still better than what we have now, by a long shot. Again, I am surprised Republicans are the ones being so outspokenly opposed to the bill. And I feel bad for Senator James Langford, actually. We're talking about a piece of legislation that just got endorsed by the Border Patrol Union. That's what he won in negotiations, and now right-wing media and his conservative colleagues are dragging him across the coals like he's some kind of traitor. If Biden were to actually sign something like this into law, I imagine he would get eviscerated by progressives who focus on immigration work because this bill really does prioritize Republican ideas. That Trump called

Starting point is 00:23:55 it mass amnesty and other Republicans have suggested it somehow codify illegal immigration is pure politicking. Quite literally, it includes no amnesty. In almost every way, this bill is a restrictionist piece of legislation and one that has just enough provisions to tighten amnesty, rein in parole, and expand resources on the border to actually be effective. Of course, Republicans will insist this is Biden realizing he is losing on immigration and that passing it will help him electorally and criticize him for not shepherding in a bill like this into law three years ago if he really wanted these policies. And those are all fair points. But leaders responding to the popular will is part of how a democracy is supposed to work. That popular will is on the side of a part of the Republican

Starting point is 00:24:41 agenda, and the bill is here, now. The politics of this moment are on Republican side. The border is in crisis, and there is an opportunity to improve the situation, even partially, or to play election year politics. Congress should choose improvement. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take. All right, we are skipping our reader question today because this pod got a little bit long, but next up is our under the radar section. A full year after the East Palestine, Ohio train crash that led to a massive environmental cleanup, the crash site is still under active construction. Norfolk Southern, the freight company involved in

Starting point is 00:25:33 the crash, says the costs associated with the crash have topped $800 million. But the accident, which many thought would usher in new safety rules and serve as a wake-up call around rail safety, has not led to any reforms. Congress hasn't passed a rail safety bill, and derailments on the biggest U.S. railroads actually went up 13% in the first 10 months of 2023. Morning Brew has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. Next up is our numbers section. The amount of funding allocated to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the new immigration bill is $7.6 billion, nearly double its current annual budget. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service's current annual budget for asylum processing

Starting point is 00:26:21 is $313 million. The additional funding for asylum processing allocated to the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service by the immigration bill is $4 billion. The approximate number of new asylum officers and support staff funded by the bill is 4,300. The number of judicial immigration teams funded by the bill is 100. The number of new family and work visas over the next five years approved in the bill is 250. The number of new family and work visas over the next five years approved in the bill is 250,000. And Donald Trump's advantage over President Biden in voters' assessment of who would do a better job securing the border and controlling immigration is now 35 points, according to a recent NBC News poll. All right, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day section.

Starting point is 00:27:07 Pittsburgh native Suzanne Volpe first heard about scarf bombing back in 2014 from a Facebook post. The practice is a kind of guerrilla kindness campaign where a charitable gang of knitters craft warm clothing to donate to needy people when the weather starts to turn cold. to donate to needy people when the weather starts to turn cold. Volpe, who has been crocheting for about 50 years, said she was so inspired by the idea that she started doing it herself. I enjoy crocheting. I enjoy getting together with people to make things, and I love, love, love putting them out, especially when you see the reaction of some people. They're so appreciative, Volpe said. Good Morning America has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, that is it for today's podcast. As I mentioned, tickets are on sale right now.

Starting point is 00:27:58 Go check out our episode description, or go to our website, or go to our newsletter today, or go to our website or go to our newsletter today and click the link to City Winery. If you want to get your ticket, it's Tangle NYC 2024, all caps. We are coming to New York City, April 17th. Big day in Tangle world over here at Tangle HQ. We'll be right back here at same time tomorrow. Have a good one.

Starting point is 00:28:45 Peace. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from

Starting point is 00:29:49 the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Tangle - The Senate's border bill.

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