House Republicans are postponing a crucial vote on a comprehensive "compromise" immigration bill, originally scheduled for today, to next week with the hopes of securing 218 votes.
Why it matters: The bill was unlikely to pass in its current state — and leadership was skeptical it couldn't garner enough votes — even after President Trump endorsed it. Meanwhile, Congress failed Thursday to pass Rep. Bob Goodlatte's (R-VA) more conservative bill, making this legislation the sole comprehensive immigration bill in the House.
Behind the global furor over America’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy are tens of thousands of adults and children — most of them from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — who have risked extortion and sexual violence along the journey, and now separation from their families upon arrival. So why take those risks to reach the U.S.?
The big picture: This is not just a U.S. immigration crisis —it’s a Central American refugee crisis which started around 2013 and has continued to this day. In these countries, fear is often the primary motivator, rather than economic incentives.
President Trump's executive order Wednesday night didn't solve the crisis of separated migrant families, with most questions still unanswered — like whetherand how families that have already been separated will be reunited before deportation.
Between the lines: Depending on how it's carried out by three federal agencies, and whether a federal judge revisits a ruling that has helped lead to the separation of families, the executive order could either reunite migrant families or leave the U.S. with a crisis of migrant children whose parents have been deported without them.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody Thursday that the Trump administration "never really intended to" separate families at the border:
"It hasn't been good and the American people don't like the idea that we are separating families... We never really intended to do that. What we intended was to make sure that adults who bring children into the country are charged with the crime that they have committed."
Flashback: This breaks with two previous defenses Sessions has given on the administration policy that drew widespread backlash. He told Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Monday that he hoped it would serve as a deterrent, and last week he defended the policy by citing the Bible.
The Justice Department has formally asked a federal district judge to modify her 2015 decision on the Flores settlement, which prevents the U.S. government from detaining any migrant children for more than 20 days, as ordered by President Trump.
Why it matters: This is a key part of Trump's efforts to undo the family separation policy his administration instituted. If the judge doesn't change the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security will be faced with either releasing immigrant families until their immigration court dates, finding a way to complete family immigrant cases within 20 days — which is unlikely — or again separating children after 20 days and sending them to Health and Human Services.
The Department of Health and Human Services has requested that the Pentagon house 20,000 migrant children from July to the end of the year on military bases, the Washington Post reports.
The details: The Pentagon sent a notification to lawmakers on Wednesday about the request, which states that the sites housing the children would be overseen by "HHS employees or contractors working with them." It's similar to what President Obama did in 2014, reports the Post, when the administration put around 7,000 unaccompanied migrant children on three bases.
The program director at the border shelter visited by First Lady Melania Trump on Thursday said children in the shelter get 20 minutes a week to speak with their families on the phone, according to pool reports of the roundtable.
The details: Director Rogelio De La Cerda Jr. told her the kids get two 10-minute phone calls a week, after "a process" to ensure that "the persons that they're communicating with are indeed their family. And that could be through verification — a birth certificate, photo identification."
Sony Pictures Classics said on Wednesday that it would not be pulling "Boundaries," a film featuring Peter Fonda, after his tweet calling for President Trump's 11-year-old son, Barron Trump, to be put "in a cage with pedophiles," according to the Hollywood Reporter.
What they're saying: This comes only weeks afterRoseanne Barr's hit ABC sitcom "Roseanne" was cancelled after her racist tweet about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.
The House will vote on the “compromise” immigration bill tomorrow instead of this afternoon, after it voted down the more conservative bill by House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte.
Between the lines: It still is unlikely that the compromise bill passes — leadership has always been skeptical it can get the votes. But moderates need to tell their constituents they voted for something to protect Dreamers, and the Goodlatte bill is too conservative for them.
This post has been updated to note that the Goodlatte bill failed.
During a Cabinet meeting Thursday, President Trump continued blame "extremist, open border" Democrats for the child separation crisis plaguing the country, claiming that they've politicized the situation at the border and have intentionally failed to approve any solutions because they think it's "bad for the election."
"[Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi] don't care about the children. They don't care about the injury. They don't care about the problems. They don't care about anything. All they do is say, 'Obstruct & let's see how we do,' because they have no policies that are any good."
President Trump will unveil his administration's plan to reorganize the federal government during a Cabinet meeting this afternoon, including plans to merge the Departments of Education and Labor into a single agency and rename the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Health and Public Welfare.
Be smart: This massive proposed shakeup, titled “Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century: Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendations,” will face significant opposition in Congress, as the reshuffling will make it easier to cut and revise several domestic agencies. Similar efforts in the past have failed due to pushback.
President Trump told pool reporters that Melania was at the southern border visiting with migrant children.
Why it matters: Trump is trying to get on the right side of the family separation crisis he created. Melania will be thanking "law enforcement and social services providers for their hard work" and listening to how the administration can help reunite children with their families, according to a statement by the First Lady's communications director.
For tech executives, the Trump administration's child separation policy provided a moment of clarity when the choice to speak out was relatively easy.
Yes, but: After Trump's executive order on Wednesday, companies were once again struggling to figure out how to respond. The executive order itself turned down the heat for the moment — but also raised more questions than it answered. This has been an all-too-common experience, according to insiders at several of the tech companies.
While many tech executives struggle with how much to speak out about Trump's immigration policies, LittleBits CEO Ayah Bdeir said the choice is both straightforward and personal.
Details: These days Bdeir runs a company that helps teach kids to build robots. But when she was a child, Bdeir's family was forced to flee Lebanon several times, landing in the U.K. and Canada before eventually coming to the U.S.
On how Trump differs from past presidents, TIME's Karl Vick writes: “For the first 240 years of U.S. history, ... our most revered chief executives reliably articulated a set of high-minded, humanist values that bound together a diverse nation by naming what we aspired to: democracy, humanity, equality. ... Donald Trump doesn’t talk like that."
"How One Conservative Think Tank Is Stocking Trump’s Government ... By placing its people throughout the administration, the Heritage Foundation has succeeded in furthering its right-wing agenda," Jonathan Mahler writes for the N.Y. Times Magazine cover story.
The bottom line: “The Trump team may not have been prepared to staff the government, but the Heritage Foundation was ... Today it is clear that for all the chaos and churn of the current administration, Heritage has achieved a huge strategic victory.”
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg "has approved a plan to pour at least $80 million into the 2018 election, with the bulk of that money going to support Democratic congressional candidates," the N.Y. Times' Alex Burns reports.
Be smart: Bloomberg's commitment is a step toward running for president as a Democrat in 2020, and some longtime allies think/hope he might get the band back together.
So many sad, panicked people on the move: The Rohingya forced out of Myanmar to Bangladesh ... teenagers from Mexico and Central America seeking safety in the United States ... Syria's war refugees ... men from South Sudan and Nigeria crossing the Mediterranean Sea to feed their families.
The big picture: They're all part of a human wave roiling every continent, AP's Lori Hinnant and Colleen Barry report: The U.N. "refugee agency reported this week that nearly 69 million people were forcibly displaced in 2017, a record for the fifth straight year."
The Pope, the U.N., Bono, every living first lady (including his wife), a conservative radio host (Hugh Hewitt) who said this could be his Katrina, a Republican senator (Ted Cruz), a top aide (Kellyanne Conway), his oldest daughter — all of their condemnation and concern about caged kids at the border left Trump realizing he had a massive problem.
There's been a big jump over the last week in the percentage of Americans who say immigration is the most important issue facing the country, as they've been bombarded by the images and sounds of families being separated after trying to cross the border illegally, according to a new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll.
Why it matters: It's mostly Democrats who have shifted, and to a lesser extent independents — a sign that they're getting energized over the coverage. The survey was conducted before President Trump signed his executive order yesterday that's intended to stop the separations by detaining families together.
The House is expected to vote on two GOP immigration bills today — a bill championed by House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte and a compromise proposal negotiated by conservative Freedom Caucus members, moderates and House leadership.
The bottom line: Both bills have President Trump's support and cover similar Republican priorities on immigration, but only one — the leadership compromise — addresses the separation of families. The Goodlatte bill is considered more conservative and cuts legal immigration levels, while the leadership bill more or less maintains current levels. Neither bill is expected to pass.
Defense Secretary James Mattis has approved a Justice Department request to send 21 active-duty military lawyers to the southern border, the Pentagon confirmed to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Wednesday night.
The details: The DOJ wants the active-duty Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs) sent to six cities in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico to work as prosecutors for roughly six months on cases regarding undocumented immigrants. The decision comes in the heat of the battle over the Trump administration's application of a "zero-tolerance" policy to illegal border crossings, which refers all adults crossing illegally to the DOJ for criminal prosecution.
President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday aiming to end his administration's intensely controversial family separation policy.
What they're saying: The policy drew widespread criticism across party lines and from both state and federal lawmakers. And now, most Democrats are still unsatisfied while Republicans seem to be appeased by his order.
