Biden and Trump head to US-Mexico border with immigration a top election issue – live | US elections 2024

Mike Johnson’s predecessor as House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was booted from his post by rightwing Republicans when he worked with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown. Johnson is trying to avoid that fate, and his hesitancy to put a bill sending military aid to Ukraine to a vote is seen as part of that. But as the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports, the Democrats who were fine with letting McCarthy perish now indicate they may be willing to save Johnson, should he allow the vote to go through:

The Democratic leadership in Congress has suggested it would protect the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, if he bucks his far-right colleagues and brings a stalled $60bn Ukraine military aid package to a vote, as a new poll shows public support for Ukraine is now fractured down party-political lines.

Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, floated the offer in an interview with the New York Times, saying “a reasonable number” of Democrats would vote to save the Republican speaker if the Ukraine vote resulted in a Republican mutiny.

Far-right members of Congress including Marjorie Taylor Greene have said they would seek to depose Johnson if he brings the foreign aid bill forward, threatening to send Republicans toward yet another protracted leadership crisis like the one that paralyzed the House under former speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Jeffries said that if Johnson were “to do the right thing”, there would be a “reasonable number of people” on the Democratic side “who will take the position that he should not fall as a result”. But Jeffries said he had not discussed the matter with Johnson, who has said Congress “must take care of America’s needs first”.

Republican congressman moves to force bill on Ukraine aid, border security bill, but Democrats skeptical – report

Republican Indiana congressman Jim Banks grilled Lloyd Austin during his appearance before the House armed services committee.

While Biden says he has confidence in Austin, the defense secretary is in hot water for waiting days to tell the president he had been hospitalized, since his job requires him to be available at all hours to respond to crises. Here’s Banks’s exchange with Austin:

‘I did not handle it right’, defense secretary Austin says of delay in notifying Biden of hospitalization

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has released details of what he’ll be up to during his visit to Eagle Pass, Texas, today.

“President Trump will meet with brave US Border Patrol agents and state and local law enforcement officials working on the frontlines of Biden’s crisis, and he will outline his plan to put America first and secure the border immediately upon taking office,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.

A major human rights body will today explore how climate change is driving people from their homes, the Guardian’s Nina Lakhani reports. Here’s more:

Communities under imminent threat from rising sea level, floods and other extreme weather will testify in Washington on Thursday, as the region’s foremost human rights body holds a first-of-its-kind hearing on how climate catastrophe is driving forced migration across the Americas.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) will hear from people on the frontline of the climate emergency in Mexico, Honduras, the Bahamas and Colombia, as part of a special hearing sought by human rights groups in Latin America, the US and the Caribbean.

A growing number of migrants and refugees trying to seek sanctuary in the US and other countries are being displaced by hurricanes, heatwaves and drought, as well as slow-onset climate disasters such as ocean acidification, coastal erosion and desertification.

The witnesses will include Higinio Alberto Ramírez from Honduras, who last year suffered life-altering injuries when a fire razed a detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, killing 43 migrants from Latin America. Ramírez is from Cedeño, a coastal fishing town that is disappearing under rising sea levels, and was trying to reach the US to pay off family debts after tidal waves destroyed the shrimp nursery where he and his father worked.

“The case of the Ramírez family is a tragic reminder that forced migration is not an issue for the future. Sea levels have been rising due to climate change for decades. States and humanitarian systems must catch up and ensure that protections are in place,” said Gretchen Kuhner, director of the Mexico based Institute for Women in Migration (Imumi), one of the groups which requested the hearing.

Here’s the Guardian’s Michael Gonzalez on how Joe Biden will see a starkly different situation in Brownsville to what Donald Trump is expected to encounter in Eagle Pass:

Joe Biden will travel to the US-Mexico border on Thursday amid rising concerns expressed by voters nationwide over immigration, as pressure builds on the US president to respond to alarmist rightwing claims of “invasion”, “crisis” and waves of “migrant crime”.

But when Biden arrives in Brownsville, Texas, he is likely to encounter scenes like those prevailing earlier this week in the city of almost 200,000 that lies at the eastern end of the border. Shoppers walked the streets and preparations were under way for annual binational celebrations, Charro Days and Sombrero fest, which highlight the city’s close relationship with its Mexican sister city, Matamoros.

Border patrol processing facilities in downtown Brownsville, where migrants can usually be found before or after making a formal request for asylum, and the bus station, where migrants are often heading out of town, were empty after a drop in the number of people crossing the border in the last two months.

Donald Trump will meanwhile today visit Eagle Pass, Texas, a much smaller city than Brownsville hundreds of miles to its north-west.

The Associated Press has a rundown of how the situation in the two regions’ differ. The biggest takeaway: Biden is visiting an area where border crossings have recently dropped, while Trump will appear in an area where they have surged, and the relatively smaller community has had trouble coping with the new arrivals.

Here’s more:

The Rio Grande Valley, which includes Brownsville, gives Biden a platform where illegal crossings have dropped sharply. It was the busiest corridor for illegal crossings on the U.S. border with Mexico for nine years until Del Rio, which includes Eagle Pass, overtook it in the 2022 budget year.

Del Rio was the busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors last year as well, but Tucson, Arizona, began taking the top spot last summer.

Arrests for illegal crossings topped 2 million for the first time in each of the government’s last two budget years, more than double Trump’s peak year of just under 1 million in 2019. But Rio Grande Valley has turned into an exception during recent months as traffic has shifted to Arizona and California for a host of reasons.

The Rio Grande Valley’s 7,340 border arrests in January were its lowest since June 2020, down 90% from more than 81,000 in July 2021, early in Biden’s presidency.

Del Rio has gone the opposite direction, exemplified by the arrival of about 16,000 predominantly Haitian migrants in the border town of Del Rio in September 2021. Eagle Pass, an hour’s drive from Del Rio, was relatively quiet during Trump’s presidency (and before) but became a hot spot under Biden. The Del Rio sector tallied more than 71,000 arrests in December, more than the entire 2019 budget year.

Biden to press for passage of immigration bill in Texas border visit

Biden, Trump head to US-Mexico border with immigration top issue in 2024 race