(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden said his $20 billion award to Intel Corp. demonstrated his investments in US industries that had withered under Donald Trump’s tenure, touting a flurry of government spending he hopes will help him defeat his Republican rival in a general-election rematch. ...
Biden trails Trump in several crucial states, including Arizona, as voters remain skeptical of the president’s handling of the economy. Biden is responding by using his bully pulpit, as well as federal dollars, in states to show the public the results of his plans. The president said Wednesday’s announcement would support 10,000 manufacturing jobs, including 3,000 in Phoenix. ...
Intel is the first company to land a preliminary funding deal from
the Chips Act for advanced manufacturing facilities. The law provided
$39 billion in grants, plus loans and guarantees worth $75 billion to
persuade companies to build factories on US soil and reverse a
decades-long shift of semiconductor production to Asia.
“A border wall is a 14th-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” the Democratic Texas congressmanHenry Cuellarsaid. “It will not bolster border security in Starr county.
The Biden administration says it is using executive power to allow border wall construction in Texas
FILE - A border wall section stands on July 14, 2021, near La Grulla, Texas, in Starr County. On Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, the Biden administration announced that they waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction, marking the administration’s first use of a sweeping executive power employed often during the Trump presidency. The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement with few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP, File)
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The Biden administration announced they waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction on Wednesday, marking the administration’s first use of sweeping executive power to pave the way for building more border barriers — a tactic used often during the Trump presidency.
The Department of Homeland Security posted theannouncement on the U.S. Federal Registrywith few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas, which is part of a busy Border Patrol sector seeing “high illegal entry.” According to government data, about 245,000 illegal entries have been recorded in this region during the current fiscal year.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, stated in the notice.
The Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act were some of the federal laws waived by DHS to make way for construction that will use funds from a congressional appropriation in 2019 for border wall construction. The waivers avoid time-consuming reviews and lawsuits challenging violation of environmental laws.
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Although no maps were provided in the announcement, aprevious mapshared during the gathering of public comments shows the piecemeal construction will add up to an additional 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the existing border barrier system in the area.
“The other concern that we have is that area is highly erosive. There’s a lot of arroyos,” said Starr County Judge Eloy Vera, the highest-elected official in the county, pointing out the creeks cutting through the ranchland and leading into the river.
Starr County is home to about 65,000 residents spread over about 1,200 square miles (3,108 square kilometers) that includes ranchland and part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
Environmental advocates say structures will run through public lands, habitats of endangered plants and animal species like the ocelot, a spotted wild cat.
“A plan to build a wall through will bulldoze an impermeable barrier straight through the heart of that habitat. It will stop wildlife migrations dead in their tracks. It will destroy a huge amount of wildlife refuge land. And it’s a horrific step backwards for the borderlands,” Laiken Jordahl, a southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said Wednesday afternoon.
During the Trump administration, about450 miles (724 kilometers) of barrierswere built along the southwest border between 2017 and January 2021. Texas Governor Greg Abbott renewed those efforts as part of hisongoing immigration enforcementfrom the state level after the Biden administration initially halted them at the start of his presidency.
The DHS decision on Wednesday contrasts the Biden administration’s posturing when aproclamationto end the construction on Jan. 20, 2021 stated, “building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection had no immediate comment.
The announcement prompted political debate by the Democratic administration facing an increase of migrants entering through the southern border in recent months, including thousands who entered the U.S. throughEagle Passat the end of September.
“A border wall is a 14th century solution to a 21st century problem. It will not bolster border security in Starr County,” U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar said in a statement. “I continue to stand against the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars on an ineffective border wall.”
Political proponents of the border wall said the waivers should be used as a launching pad for a shift in policy.
“After years of denying that a border wall and other physical barriers are effective, the DHS announcement represents a sea change in the administration’s thinking: A secure wall is an effective tool for maintaining control of our borders,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement. “Having made that concession, the administration needs to immediately begin construction of wall across the border to prevent the illegal traffic from simply moving to other areas of the border.”
When he ran for president in 2016, few of Donald Trump’s
promises thrilled his supporters more than his pledge not just to build a
wall on the southern border, but to force Mexico to pick up the tab.
“And who’s going to pay for it?” he’d say at his rallies. The crowd
would shout back joyfully, “Mexico!” It wasn’t about the money; the
point was to conjure a fantasy of America standing tall and dominating
our neighbor; their humiliation would be our glory.
A fantasy is just what it was, as Trump now admits. At a speech
in Iowa on Sunday, he blurted out the truth. “When you hear these
lunatics back there,” he said, pointing at the news media, “say, ‘Trump
didn’t get anything from Mexico,’ well, you know, there was no legal
mechanism. I said they’re going to help fund this wall, but there was no
legal mechanism. How do you go to a country, you say, ‘By the way I’m
building a wall, hand us a lot of money.’”
Of course it was about the money. Everything is about the money.
It wasn't a fantasy to neoliberal Bush 43 pal Vicente Fox, who took it seriously enough at the time when Trump first proposed to make Mexico pay that he wouldn't fucking pay.
This is revisionist history by Trump and by Waldman, which pretends there was no Border Wall Funding Act of 2017, nor serious elite opposition to its provision for a foreign remittances tax.
Trump would simply like to erase the history of his phony immigration promises, and Waldman would simply like no one to entertain seriously the particulars, which show there is a giant pot of money easily taxed to pay for border security.
Foreign remittances to the Latin South reached $142 billion in 2022, and Mexico's share was $60 billion.
The government of the United States farts away billions of dollars every minute of every day. Funding a $25 billion wall is a flea on that elephant's back. The fierce opposition to it is the thing of real size.
The whole point of forcing Trump to accept bollard fencing was to make him a failure on his signature issue. Everyone already knew it was inadequate from the time of Bush, who agreed to it BECAUSE he knew it wouldn't work. Bush WANTED a porous border. Bollard fencing to Bush was like running on a pro-life plank and never having to do anything about it once in office. Good politics, that's all. Good optics.
Trump was set up to fail, and like a fool, he accepted it. That's the real story.
It was Republican payback for all the mean things Trump said about Republicans in 2015-2016. "We'll fix you, buster. Here's your fucking wall."
These facts are why WaPo has to write an article about the failure of bollard fencing periodically, in order to keep the lie alive that a border wall doesn't work. Their agenda is the same as the Republican Democrat agenda of a porous border, to keep the cheap labor flowing in, and the drugs. It's also Drudge's agenda.
Those two things are the most important to a sick, dying society, otherwise we'd have fixed this long ago.
And obviously, Trump is part of the problem, not the solution.
Now the stink on the border wall is so bad no one will come near it for a generation.
The House passed a $1.4 trillion federal spending package that averts a government shutdown and maintains some funding for a southern border wall. The measure passed Tuesday despite the objections of
liberal Democrats and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who
said they opposed the $1.375 billion allocated for the construction of a
southern border wall as well as other border security provisions. The spending bill would provide funding through the rest of
fiscal 2020. It passed in two different measures in order to avoid
sending President Trump one “omnibus” package, which he had vowed to
reject.
Senators voted 54-41 on a resolution to end the
declaration, which Trump used to shift billions of dollars from the
military toward wall construction. ...
If Trump had been serious about building the wall, he wouldn't have signed a border deal which ties his hands. He would have vetoed it and proceeded with the national emergency.
Had he done so, legislators would have had little choice but to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government departments threatened with a shutdown at existing levels.
That's the art of the deal, Mr. Big Stuff, but Mr. Big Stuff is all bark and no bite.
No construction for Trump’s wall has begun anywhere, although officials have started or completed fence replacement projects in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
Trump, who made building a border wall a central promise of his campaign, declared the emergency on Feb. 15 to bypass Congress and shift up to $6.6 billion, mostly from the Pentagon budget, to build — or rebuild — 234 miles of fencing.
Trump acted after Congress had appropriated only $1.375 billion for 55 miles of border barrier in the Rio Grande Valley, far less than he wanted.
But the 1,169-page appropriations bill Trump signed into law when he issued his emergency declaration also contained restrictions on construction in specific towns, parks and wildlife reserves along about 150 miles of the border in the Rio Grande Valley, which is the administration’s top priority for building new barriers. The restrictions have thwarted Trump’s efforts to build a wall there, at least for now.
An aide to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who helped negotiate the restrictions, said it’s not clear if the terms of the spending bill would override the emergency declaration, or vice versa, leaving landowners and town officials in limbo.
Two in Michigan, two in Wisconsin, two in Washington.
The wall will stop the cheap illegal agricultural migrant labor used to pick the apples, grapes, etc. and pour profits into the hands of greedy Republican farmers, who are the real problem.
It has nothing to do with the emergency declaration, which is what the story placement in Drudge's lineup is meant to imply. This is Drudge the partisan.
The AP story also incorrectly calls it a wall. It's bollard fencing. Trump is prohibited from installing a wall by the legislation he just signed.
Construction has begun on the fifth border wall project of Donald Trump's presidency, replacing up to 14 miles of barrier in San Diego, authorities said Tuesday.
The first panels are in place to replace a steel-mesh fence with 30-foot-high steel bollards . . .. The bollards replace a second layer of barrier that worked like a fortress when it was built about a decade ago but is now often breached with powerful battery-operated saws sold in home improvement stores.
Work on replacing a first layer of San Diego barrier is nearly complete, also 14 miles long and made of steel bollards up to 30-feet high. The old fence, built in the early 1990s, was made of corrugated steel matting used by the military as temporary runways. ... Trump inherited barriers covering about one-third of the border. His administration has awarded $1 billion in contracts to cover 97 miles, the vast majority of it to replace existing barriers. ...
The president who was elected by the forgotten middle of the country
on promises to build a wall, enforce immigration laws, and protect their
economic interests just signed into law a bill that betrays all of
those promises. ... Trump just signed a law that makes the wall, even if it is finally constructed,
less useful because it provides a large, ongoing, uncapped amnesty.
Further, the law expanded legal immigration by doubling the cap for H2B
unskilled, non-agricultural workers. This is slap in the face to the
working and middle class workers who President Trump repeatedly has
promised to protect and whose wages he says he wants to see increase.
Several months into the Trump administration, I started running a daily
"Border Wall Construction Update" on Twitter, announcing how many miles
of the wall had been completed that day and how many miles since the
inauguration. It was always the same numbers: 0 and 0, respectively.
I was immediately attacked by people in the Trump base. You're being unfair, he hasn't had enough time, there's a legislative process, he's doing the best he can. As days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months and months
turned to years, and not 1 inch of the wall was built, the "3-D chess"
crowd dwindled.
Sometimes Trump would concede he hadn't built any part of the
wall. Sometimes he would fib and claim it was being built. There's no
way to sugarcoat it: That was a lie.
Drug dealers, drunk drivers, criminals, welfare dependents and
low-wage workers driving down American wages continued to flow across
our border.
We are now past the midway point of Trump's first term, maybe
his only term. If Trump couldn't come up with a legislative fix when he
controlled both houses of Congress, he's sure not going to now that he's
lost the House.
We are headed for another failed Republican presidency.
The occasional fib that the wall was being built has now become the refrain, but it's still a lie.
And Rush Limbaugh is endlessly repeating it on his show today. What a joke, and it's on you.
