Republican presidential candidate, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley delivers remarks at her primary-night rally at the Grappone Conference Center, on Jan. 23, 2024, in Concord, New Hampshire. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign has applied for Secret Service protection, according to a spokesperson with the campaign and another source familiar with the situation.
The campaign spokesperson did not say what prompted the request, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
But Haley, who is former President Donald Trump’s remaining major challenger in the 2024 Republican primary race, has faced some recent incidents including being the target of two “swatting” attempts at her home in South Carolina, according to records previously obtained by ABC News.
In both cases, police were falsely directed to her residence on suspicion of a crime. In one of the incidents, she has said, her parents were home with a caretaker when officers arrived with “guns drawn.”
“It put the law enforcement officers in danger, it put my family in danger and, you know, it was not a safe situation,” Haley said in an interview with NBC News last month.
“That’s what happens when you run for president,” she said then. “What I don’t want is for my kids to live like this.”
She added that she felt the “swatting” was evidence of the “chaos surrounding our country right now.” (Both cases have been administratively closed, without known arrests.)
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and a five-person advisory council that includes the leaders of both chambers of Congress will now begin a threat assessment as part of responding to Haley, according to the Secret Service website.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service did not comment.
(WASHINGTON) — The three senators who negotiated a bipartisan bill that would beef up border security and immigration enforcement while authorizing more assistance to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine on Monday defended the package after House Republicans — led by Speaker Mike Johnson — are pushing to squash the deal before it even gets to the lower chamber.
Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., worked for months to negotiate the terms of the $118.28 billion bipartisan national security supplemental package, the text of which was released Sunday night.
Hours after the text’s release, Johnson shot it down, saying in a statement that the bill is “dead on arrival” and “even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President created.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said the legislation will not even receive a vote in the House.
On Monday, Johnson told reporters that the Senate’s bill does not meet “the criteria that’s necessary to solve the problem.”
The negotiators said they are hopeful that the package will pass the Senate and, if it passes, acknowledged that it faces a bumpy road in the House.
“I am hopeful that we’ll pass this bill through the Senate,” Murphy, the top Democratic negotiator, said to ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott. “I think Speaker Johnson is desperate to stop this bill from coming to the House of Representatives because he doesn’t want to deal with it and he knows there will be a lot of pressure for it to pass if it reaches … the House.”
“Our job is first to pass it through the Senate and that is what we are going to try to do this week,” Murphy added.
Former President Donald Trump, who wants to run on immigration in November has put immense pressure on Republicans to reject the deal — putting Republican negotiators in an impossible scenario. Trump called the border deal a “death wish for the Republican Party” and “a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border,” in separate posts on his social media channel Monday.
In an appearance on the Dan Bongino Show on Monday, Trump criticized the border deal, latching on to rhetoric surrounding the deal that it would allow 5,000 migrants into the country a day. Lankford has dismissed this narrative as false.
“This bill is a disaster. This bill has 5,000 people a day potentially coming into our country. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know this. I thought it was a typo. I thought they made a typo,” Trump said.
“This is crazy. This is lunacy, this bill. And you know what it is? It’s a gift to the Democrats,” the former president added.
Murphy did not shy away from claiming his GOP colleagues were bending the knee to Trump’s influence on this issue.
“I watched all of my Republican colleagues in the Senate stand up last fall and say we are not going to support Ukraine aid unless you get a bipartisan deal on the border,” Murphy said. “We got that bipartisan deal. It gives the president real powers to control the border and many Senate Republicans are going to oppose this bill because it is too effective, because Donald Trump is telling them, ‘No keep chaos at the border, don’t solve the problem because that is good politics for us.’ Well that is really bad for the country.”
The Senate will begin moving forward with the legislation later this week beginning with a procedural vote on Wednesday. Sixty senators will need to support the package for it to pass.
Murphy told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday morning that there are “about 25” Senate Republicans who are carefully considering whether or not to support the legislation. At least nine of them will need to support the bill for it to move forward in the Senate later this week, although likely more Republicans will need to back the bill as it’s expected that multiple Democrats will defect.
Lankford has found himself in the middle of a political storm as he fends off criticisms from his own Republican colleagues — including the former president — on the border deal that he helped craft.
“I think everybody is going to make their own decision on that what direction they’re going to go,” Lankford told Scott. “The president has something he is trying to accomplish: he is trying to get elected back to be the president of the United States. I’ve got something I’m trying to accomplish: it’s securing the nation and our borders right now. So he’s got his purposes right now, I’ve got mine.”
A plan for the border is a nonpartisan issue for most Americans, who “just want a secure border,” Lankford said.
He called on his colleagues to read the bill thoroughly and work to come to an agreement.
“We’re going to find out actually in the days ahead as members look at it read it review it as we determine if we’re going to amend it or walk away from it. Everybody has got to be able to make their decisions on that, but it’s open now to conversation and the American people and members of Congress can look at it and say ‘let’s do something or let’s do nothing’ — and we’ve got to figure that out right now.”
On the CBS News program “Face the Nation” Sunday, Sinema said she thinks Johnson can be “persuaded” to support the bill after he has had ample opportunity to understand the bill, ask question and watch the debate in the Senate.
Sinema said change is needed to address a “national security threat” at the southern border.
“While the current administration does bear responsibility for mishandling the border, we have to give new legal tools to the administration and hold them accountable to implement them in order to stop this crisis,” she said.
Ahead of the bill’s text release, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday expressed his support for the border package — and said he and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are in lock step.
“Leader McConnell and I, who disagree on many issues, have never worked so closely together on legislation as we did on this, because we both realize the gravity of the situation and how important passage of this legislation is,” Schumer said to reporters.
He said it’s the time for lawmakers to come together to support this important plan for border security.
“We cannot let politics get in the way of passing this legislation,” Schumer said. “The senators have to drown out the noise of politics and politicians who tell them not to vote for this bill for political purposes.”
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa and Soorin Kim contributed to this report.
(NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev.) — With two days to go until Nevada’s presidential primary, President Joe Biden appears to have his sights set on November: At a get-out-the-vote rally on Sunday night in North Las Vegas, Biden sharpened his attacks on former President Donald Trump, the only Republican he called out by name in roughly half-hour remarks.
“Trump and his MAGA friends are dividing us, not uniting us. Dragging us back to the past, not leading us in the future. Refusing to accept the results of a general election and seeking, as Trump says, to terminate — his words — ‘terminate’ elements to the U.S. Constitution. You tell me that democracy is not at risk?” Biden said to a “raucous” crowd, according to pool reports.
Biden has focused on criticizing Trump over democracy and rights like abortion access while seeking to paint his likely November rival as too extreme to retake the White House.
At the same time, Trump and other Republicans have hammered Biden over inflation, immigration and foreign policy and the president continues to grapple with months of poor polling and low approval ratings, including a new survey from NBC News — weaknesses seized on by his long shot primary challenger Dean Phillips.
On Sunday night, Biden repeated his anti-MAGA message.
“We have to make sure that we stand for the truth and defeat the lies. You must make it clear that in America, just like all of you do in Nevada, we still believe in honesty, decency, dignity and respect,” he said to cheers.
One woman then shouted from the crowd, “You gotta win, Joe!” prompting Biden to respond, “That’s the reason why I’m running … We have to … It’s not much of a choice.”
The president touted some of his usual campaign stump lines, including what he called his achievements in health care access, infrastructure funding and representation in office while seeking to draw a contrast with Trump’s term in office.
“To call my son, and your sons and daughters, who gave their lives to this country, ‘suckers’ and ‘losers,’ that’s how this guy thinks,” Biden said, recalling reporting that Trump had refused to visit the graves of American service members in France during a rainstorm. “Who the hell does he think he is?”
Trump has adamantly denied that reporting, from 2020, and praised service members as “absolute heroes.”
“It’s a fake story and it’s a disgrace that they’re allowed to do it,” he said at the time.
Sunday marked Biden’s fifth visit to Nevada as president — a state where he narrowly beat Trump in 2020.
He entered the second of two events to chants of “four more years!” and said, “Hello Nevada!”
He did not face any protesters, who have interrupted some of his other appearances over his support for Israel in its war against Hamas. He’s also said Israel should be “careful” and seek to protect civilians.
Biden tailored his message in Nevada to include $3 billion in federal funding, from the 2021 infrastructure bill, for Brightline West, a high-speed rail to connect Las Vegas and Los Angeles, which he said will bring 35,000 jobs.
Earlier Sunday, at a high-dollar fundraiser in Henderson, inside the home of prominent Nevada Democrats, Biden jabbed at Trump over his economic record, according to pool reports.
“It sounds unbelievable, un-American, that a sitting — that a former president seeking the office is hoping for a recession,” Biden said.
He sought to project confidence about his prospects on Election Day: “You’re the reason Donald Trump is a defeated former president. And you’re the reason [we’ll] make Donald Trump a loser again,” he said.
Criticizing Trump’s character, he cited Trump’s comments about how people in Perry, Iowa, needed to “get over” a recent school shooting there, saying that’s not how a president is supposed to talk.
Trump, reacting to Perry, had expressed his sympathy as well. “We’re really with you as much as anybody can be,” he said in January. “It’s a very terrible thing that happened. It’s just terrible.”
US House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks during a press conference after the Republican Conference meeting at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 17, 2024. — Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — In a scathing new statement Sunday night, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the Senate bipartisan bill to overhaul the immigration system along with providing aid to Israel and Ukraine was dead on arrival if it makes it to the House.
“I’ve seen enough. This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created. As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, “the border never closes.” If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival,” Johnson said in a statement on X, echoing comments he made before the bill’s release.
Johnson’s statement comes just hours after the text of the bill dropped. The Senate spent months working in a bipartisan manner to come to a deal on a national security supplemental plan.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said the legislation, which includes millions of dollars in new foreign aid and is the first major overhaul of the country’s immigration system in years, will not even receive a vote in the House.
“Let me be clear: The Senate Border Bill will NOT receive a vote in the House. Here’s what the people pushing this “deal” aren’t telling you: It accepts 5,000 illegal immigrants a day and gives automatic work permits to asylum recipients—a magnet for more illegal immigration,” Scalise said in a statement on X.
GOP Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota is also against the Senate bill.
“I’ll say it again: Any deal from the Senate that explicitly allows for even ONE illegal crossing will be dead on arrival in the House. What we’ve seen is an insult to the American people who’ve been forced to bear the consequences of Democrats’ open-border policies,” Emmer said in a statement on X.
GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York voiced strong objections to the bill in her post on X.
“This Joe Biden/Chuck Schumer Open Border Bill is an absolute non-starter and will further incentivize thousands of illegals to pour in across our borders daily,” Stefanik, a top ally of former President Donald Trump, said on X.
Rank-and-file House Republicans have been collectively voicing opposition to the Senate bill since the text was released earlier Sunday night.
“It took the Senate months to build a bill. I GUARANTEE it will take the House months to review EVERY line,” Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX) said in a statement on X.
Over in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed the bipartisan bill, saying, “I am grateful to Senator Lankford for working tirelessly to ensure that supplemental national security legislation begins with direct and immediate solutions to the crisis at our southern border.”
“America’s sovereignty is being tested here at home, and our credibility is being tested by emboldened adversaries around the world. The challenges we face will not resolve themselves, nor will our adversaries wait for America to muster the resolve to meet them. The Senate must carefully consider the opportunity in front of us and prepare to act,” McConnell added.
Meanwhile, there is already some early opposition from Senate Democrats, including Alex Padilla of California. Padilla said the bipartisan deal “misses the mark” and amounts to “dismantling” the asylum system.
“The deal includes a new version of a failed Trump-era immigration policy that will cause more chaos at the border, not less,” Padilla said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — A bipartisan group of senators has released the text of a proposal of a bill that would tie billions of dollars in new foreign aid to the first major overhaul of the country’s immigration system in years.
Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., hammered out an agreement that would beef up border security and immigration enforcement while authorizing more assistance to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine.
Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), released the text of the $118.28 billion bipartisan national security supplemental package on Sunday night.
Included in the funding is $60.06 billion to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia and $14.1 billion in security assistance for Israel. It also includes $10 billion in humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, Ukraine and other people in conflict zones. $4.83 billion will support Indo-Pacific regional partners and “deter aggression by the Chinese government.”
It also includes border policy changes, $20.3 billion for existing operational border needs, and the introduction of the Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence Off Fentanyl Act.
The deal, only reached after four months of sometimes tense negotiations, may not be enough for hard-liners in Congress pushing for stricter regulations at the southern border.
“The devil is in the details. We’ll check it out. I’m not prejudging anything,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday. He previously called the deal “dead on arrival” if the final text was what had already been described in the press.
That Republican skepticism means the bill will face serious hurdles in passing both chambers of Congress.
Sources previously told ABC News that the deal would require the Department of Homeland Security to nearly shut down the border if migrant crossings increase above 5,000 per day on any given week or if average daily encounters reach a 4,000-a-day threshold in a one-week span.
That set off Republican attacks over the legislation — which Lankford, his party’s key negotiator on the proposal, worked to refute in the leadup to its release.
“They’re still waiting to be able to read the bill on this. And this has been our great challenge of being able to fight through the final words, to be able to get the bill text out so people can hear it,” he said on Fox News last month. “Right now, there’s internet rumors is all that people are running on. It would be absolutely absurd for me to agree to 5,000 people a day. This bill focuses on getting us to zero illegal crossings a day. There’s no amnesty.”
The Senate is expected to begin moving forward with the legislation later this week. Supporters will need 60 senators to back the bill during a Wednesday procedural vote, though it’s not yet clear whether there will be the requisite number of Republicans.
President Joe Biden reacted to news of the deal, by saying in a statement: “For too long, going back decades, the immigration system has been broken. It’s time to fix it. That’s why over two months ago I instructed members of my administration to work with a bipartisan group of Senators to – finally – seriously address the issue. And, that’s what they’ve done – working around the clock, through the holidays and over weekends. Now we’ve reached an agreement on a bipartisan national security deal that includes the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades. I strongly support it.”
Sec. of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas also released a statement in support of the bipartisan Senate bill.
“The bipartisan agreement in the Senate is tough, fair, and takes meaningful steps to address the challenges our country faces after decades of Congressional inaction,” his statement read.
“It would allow DHS to remove more quickly those who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States, reducing the time from years to months. It would expedite protection and work authorization for those with legitimate claims. It would provide flexibility to respond to changing dynamics at the border, including temporarily prohibiting border entries for certain individuals when encounters are extremely high. It also delivers much-needed resources to support and expand the DHS workforce after decades of chronic underfunding, and it further invests in technology to help prevent fentanyl from entering our country at ports of entry,” his statement continued.
Joshua Boucher/The State/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley made a surprise cameo during “Saturday Night Live”‘s cold open, mocking a fictional “Donald Trump,” played by cast member James Austin Johnson, and joking about her past controversy talking about the Civil War.
The roughly two-minute appearance during a parody of a CNN town hall culminated with actress and comedian Ayo Edebiri, the episode’s host, zinging Haley for her past comments in which she initially failed to name slavery as a main cause of the Civil War.
Introduced in the sketch as a “concerned South Carolina voter,” Haley delivered several quips as she went back and forth with Johnson’s version of Trump.
She began by asking the caricature of the former president, “Why won’t you debate Nikki Haley?” — jabbing at the real-life Trump’s decision not to debate because of his large lead in the GOP primary race over her.
“Trump” then exclaimed, “Oh my god, it’s her, the woman who was in charge of security on Jan. 6, it’s Nancy Pelosi.” It was a callback to a recent gaffe by Trump in which he appeared to confuse Haley for the former speaker of the House at a campaign event.
“Donald, you might need a mental competency test,” Haley retorted.
“Trump” then said that he “took the test, and I aced it.”
“Perfect score. They said I’m 100% mental,” he joked.
“And I’m competent because I’m a man. That’s why a woman should never run our economy. Women are terrible with money. In fact, a woman I know recently asked me for $83.3 million,” he added, a nod to the damages won by writer E. Jean Carroll from a New York civil jury after Trump was found to have defamed her after she said he sexually assaulted her, for which he was also found liable by a jury.
(He denies that and has vowed to appeal.)
In response to “Trump” making a joke about the “Sixth Sense” and claiming, “I see dead people,” Haley joked on “SNL”: “Yeah, that’s what voters will say if they see you and Joe [Biden] on the ballot.”
And when “Trump” said that he was going to beat her in South Carolina, Haley asked, “Did you win your home state in the last election?”
But it was Edebiri, one of the stars of FX’s “The Bear,” who, at the end, poked fun at Haley.
“I was just curious, what would you say was the main cause of the Civil War? And do you think it starts with an ‘S’ and ends with a ‘Lavery,'” Edebiri asked, playing a member of the town hall audience.
“Yep, I probably should have said that the first time,” Haley said, smiling, before segueing into the show’s signature intro.
Posting about her appearance on X afterward, Haley wrote that she “had a blast” on the show.
“Know it was past Donald’s bedtime so looking forward to the stream of unhinged tweets in the a.m.,” she added.
The late-night appearance comes as she is preparing to face Trump in South Carolina’s Republican primary, the next contest in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.
Haley, a former South Carolina governor, recently made headlines for what she said about the Civil War.
At a December town hall, she initially did not mention slavery as one of the main causes of the conflict — instead saying the war was about “basically how the government was going to run” and “freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”
Haley soon walked back her initial answer and has repeatedly called the response a mistake on the campaign trail.
Appearing last week on “The Breakfast Club” radio show, Haley said that she was “too busy judging” the questioner’s “intentions then I was just answering the question. And it was a mistake.”
“Slavery should have been the first thing that came out of my mouth,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. JD Vance on Sunday defended Donald Trump as the former president faces a litany of legal issues amid his comeback campaign for the White House.
In a contentious interview with ABC News “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos, Vance — a onetime Trump critic — also doubled down on his views of the 2020 election, saying the results shouldn’t have been immediately certified, and he went on to suggest Trump should ignore “illegitimate” U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
Vance, an Ohio Republican who has been floated in the media as a potential running mate for Trump, was asked by Stephanopoulos if he would have certified the 2020 election results as vice president, as required by the Constitution and as then-Vice President Mike Pence did.
Vance called it a “ridiculous question” and claimed Stephanopoulos was “obsessed with talking about this” but went on to say he would have liked to see the certification of the 2020 election handled differently.
“Do I think there were problems in 2020? Yes, I do,” he said citing a list of issues, including social media restrictions on some content about Hunter Biden and changes in state election laws to accommodate for health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” he continued. “That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done.”
The Constitution makes no such provisions for this. There has been no confirmed evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 race, and the results were affirmed by local officials across the country, including many Republicans.
Stephanopoulos also asked Vance about a September 2021 podcast interview where he said that if Trump is reelected in 2024, he would advise the former president to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people” — and, if and when the courts tried to stop him, “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'”
“Fire everyone in the government, then defy the Supreme Court? You think it’s OK for the president to defy the Supreme Court?” Stephanopoulos asked.
Vance asserted that he “did not say fire everyone in government,” but Stephanopoulos pushed back, repeating that Vance said in the podcast Trump should replace “every civil servant in the administrative state.”
Vance, however, continued, arguing, “We have a major problem here with administrators and bureaucrats in the government who don’t respond to the elected branches. … If those people aren’t following the rules, then of course you’ve got to fire them, and of course, the president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should. That’s the way the Constitution works.”
“The Constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings, doesn’t it?” Stephanopoulos pressed.
“The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings … but if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling,” Vance said.
Vance separately cast the civil and criminal cases against Trump as biased, including a jury in New York finding the former president liable for sexual assault and another New York jury awarding $83 million in defamation damages to E. Jean Carroll, who says she was assaulted by Trump — which has been spotlighted in anti-Trump advertising.
Trump denies wrongdoing and has vowed to appeal.
“I think it’s actually very unfair to the victims of sexual assault to say that somehow their lives are being worse by electing Donald Trump for president when what he’s trying to do, I think, is restore prosperity,” Vance told Stephanopoulos when asked to respond to the argument that backing Trump meant tacitly supporting abusers.
“If you actually look at so many of the court cases against Donald Trump, George, this is not about prosecuting Trump for something that he did. It’s about throwing him off the ballot because Democrats feel that they can’t beat him at the ballot box. And so, they’re trying to defeat him in court,” Vance argued, though Republicans and non-Democrats have brought some of the complaints against Trump.
“I think most Americans recognize that this is not what we want to fight the 2024 election on. Let’s fight it over issues,” the senator added.
He sought to dismiss the findings of the New York juries, saying there are in “extremely left-wing jurisdictions” and contending that politics played a role in some of the accusations being brought.
“So juries in New York City are not legitimate when they find someone liable for sexual defamation and assault?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Well, when the cases are funded by left-wing donors and when the case has absolute left-wing bias all over it, George, absolutely I think that we should call into question that particular conclusion,” Vance replied.
(WASHINGTON) — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday criticized Republican colleagues who have come out against a pending bipartisan deal in the Senate to tie foreign military aid to an overhaul of immigration policy.
In an interview with ABC News “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos, Jeffries also said that a stand-alone Israel military aid bill proposed by Speaker Mike Johnson, as an alternative to the Senate agreement, isn’t “comprehensive” enough “to address the national security priorities of the American people.”
“We’ve got to support Israel’s ability to defend itself against Hamas and to defeat Hamas. We also need to make sure that we’re doing everything possible to bring the hostages home, including American citizens, and to be able to surge humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians who are in harm’s way in Gaza through no fault of their own,” Jeffries told Stephanopoulos.
“Beyond that, we also have to address the national security priorities of the American people in other parts of the world,” Jeffries said.
“The legislation being put forth by House Republicans does none of that,” he said.
“The responsible approach is a comprehensive one to address America’s national security priorities,” he continued.
That includes “supporting our NATO allies, stopping Russian aggression, which is necessary — and Ukraine has done a very good job showing incredible resilience against a brutal Russian attack, we can’t abandon that. And we also, of course, have to work on the challenges related to our broken immigration system,” he said.
But, Jeffries said, funding legislation should not include conditions on military support for Israel, which is something that some progressive Democrats have called for in light of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza as it targets Hamas fighters.
More than 27,000 people have died, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
“Israel has a right to defend itself and also, of course, a responsibility to conduct its war in a manner consistent with the international rules of conflict,” Jeffries said Sunday. “We shouldn’t put conditions on the ability of any of our allies to defend themselves, particularly against a brutal terrorist regime like Hamas.”
Jeffries told Stephanopoulos that the the Senate’s military funding and immigration package could be available “as early as later on this afternoon, if not tomorrow.”
“We’ll see what emerges,” he said.
Johnson has criticized the reported details of that pending deal and called it “dead on arrival” if the final text is what has already been described in the press.
The speaker said last week that the Senate’s bill must include key parts of a strict border proposal that House Republicans have already passed.
“The devil is in the details. We’ll check it out. I’m not prejudging anything,” Johnson on Friday. Some other GOP lawmakers have directly dismissed the deal.
On “This Week,” Jeffries pushed back on Johnson’s skepticism and said, “How can a bill be dead on arrival and extreme MAGA Republicans in the House haven’t even seen the text? They don’t even know what solutions are being proposed in terms of addressing the challenges at the border.”
“We need more common sense in Washington, D.C., less conflict and less chaos,” Jeffries said. “We’re in a period of divided government. That means we should be trying to find bipartisan common ground.”
He jabbed at House Republicans as “wholly owned subsidiaries of Donald Trump,” a criticism that Johnson has rejected.
Ahead of an imminent vote to approve articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Jeffries maintained that such a move would be purely political because there is no evidence of a crime.
“What does impeaching Secretary Mayorkas have to do with fixing the challenges at the border? The answer is absolutely nothing,” he said.
In the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, Jeffries was asked about Biden’s continued streak of poor polling, including against Trump.
Stephanopoulos pressed Jeffries on what he feels Biden should do to close the gap in support.
“That was a tremendous victory in South Carolina, a decisive one. And I think it demonstrates that as we enter into the campaign season, the American people are beginning to focus on President Biden’s incredible track record of results,” Jeffries said.
He added, “Yes, more needs to be done in terms of addressing affordability and the inflationary pressures, and President Biden has a vision to do that.”
ABC News’ Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
(GEORGIA) — A controversial Republican-backed bill that would criminalize state bail funds and expand the list of charges that require cash or property bail has passed the Georgia Senate.
The legislative move comes amid ongoing protests against the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, dubbed “Cop City” by its critics, which will be used for specialized training for both law enforcement and fire department service workers.
The bill adds roughly 30 charges that would be ineligible for release without a property or cash bond. These charges include unlawful assembly and obstruction of a law enforcement officer, and racketeering and conspiracy — charges that have been made against several “Cop City” protesters.
The bill would also make it a misdemeanor for “any individual, corporation, organization, charity, nonprofit corporation, or group in any jurisdiction” to submit more than three cash bonds per year.
This would make it harder for local advocacy organizations like Southerners On New Ground to bail out Black mothers and caregivers on Mother’s Day or for groups like the Atlanta Solidarity Fund to bail out protesters who have been arrested during demonstrations.
Bail is the money a defendant must pay to get out of jail while they await a trial, according to legal research database Justia. It’s collateral for the court to ensure that the defendant will return for the remainder of their criminal trial.
When Sen. Kim Jackson asked if the bill would impact her church congregation’s ability to post bail as a charity, Sen. Josh McLaurin said that it would according to the language of the legislation.
McLaurin – who is opposed to the bill – argued that this would force judges to set bail even in cases in which defendants would have otherwise been released on their own recognizance, including those who are charged with low-level or non-violent offenses. He added that it could worsen conditions in Georgia jails.
“We have to remember somebody is innocent until proven guilty when they’re held pretrial,” said McLaurin. “So what that means is it is unconstitutional to use cash bail or pretrial procedure as punishment.”
He also cited the Supreme Court case – Citizens United v. FEC – which ruled that restrictions on “independent expenditures” is a ban on speech.
Republican Sen. Randy Robertson argued the legislation would make communities feel safer and address concerns about violence.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday attended the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base of the three U.S. Army reservists killed Sunday in a drone strike in Jordan.
Accompanying him were first lady Jill Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown and other top military officials.
At the beginning of the solemn movement, Biden, the first lady and other military officials walked up to the plane and stood with their heads bowed down as a chaplain offered prayers.
With a dreary gray sky above, Biden stood as the transfer cases containing the remains of the three U.S. Army reservists were slowly taken out of a plane one at a time.
The first lady appeared teary-eyed and Biden emotional with his head bowed and at times with his eyes closed, looking up to place his hand on his heart as the cases were brought out.
Each transfer case was draped in the American flag and then placed inside a black vehicle as fellow service members saluted to pay final respects before the car was driven way.
The families of the fallen watched the solemn event from a small area out of view from the cameras, where seats were arranged for them.
The Bidens met with the families privately before receiving the remains, the White House said.
The Pentagon announced on Monday that Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Georgia, were killed in a drone attack over the weekend on the U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria and Iraq.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby confirmed that Biden had spoken with families of the fallen.
“He expressed to them how proud we all are of their service, how we mourn and feel sorrow over their loss, made sure that those families knew that, not only was that service and sacrifice, going to be honored and respected, but that they would continue to get the support that they need as they work through what no family wants to have to go through,” he said.
Kirby said that during those phone calls Biden gauged the families’ feelings about his attending the dignified transfer at Dover.
In a phone call with the parents of Spc. Sanders, Biden informed them of Sanders being posthumously promoted to the rank of sergeant and sought their permission to attend the dignified transfer.
Hearing the news of the promotion left Shawn Sanders and Oneida Oliver-Sanders in tears.
“With your permission, I’d like to be there with you if that’s OK,” Biden is heard asking on the call. “We would love for you to be there. Sir we would be honored,” they told him.
“All of them supported his presence there and so the president will be going to the dignified transfer on Friday,” Kirby said.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder announced that both Kennedy Sanders and Breonna Moffett had been posthumously promoted to the rank of sergeant.
Deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said Thursday that it is protocol for the president to ask Gold Star families for their permission to attend a dignified transfer.
This was Biden’s second time attending the solemn occasion since taking office.
He last attended a dignified transfer in August 2021 to receive the remains of service members killed in the Kabul airport bombing in Afghanistan.
ABC News’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
