"House Republicans appear to be on the precipice of torpedoing their best opportunity in years of passing border legislation," The Hill reports.
"Republicans had long insisted on changes to border and migration policy as a condition of approving any additional aid to Ukraine. But as Senate negotiators close in on a deal that does just that, opposition from former President Trump threatens to sink the bill, which many conservatives say doesn't go far enough to put the brakes on southern migration."
HuffPost: Republicans who screamed about a crisis on the border now oppose a plan to fix it.
"Republican and Democratic senators are taking to the airwaves, scrambling to pass severe restrictions on migrants flooding across the U.S.-Mexico border. There's just one thing: Their plan is all but dead," Axios reports.
"The Senate might pass the plan, which would be one of the harshest immigration bills of the century. President Biden is ready to sign it. But House Republicans — egged on by former President Trump — already are planning to shut it down."
The Oklahoma Republican Party voted to condemn Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) for working on a bipartisan immigration deal that they say runs counter to the state party's platform, the Oklahoma Voice reports.
The resolution is "largely symbolic" but explicitly states the party will "cease all support" for Lankford.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that a bipartisan Senate border deal is "dead on arrival" in the House.
"Far-right Republicans in Congress have pushed the federal government near the brink of shutting down in recent months in their quest to cut the budget. But many of them have also signaled that they do like some federal spending — at least when they're steering the money to their own districts," the Washington Post reports.
"Lawmakers have long used what are known as earmarks, where members of Congress can request funding for pet projects, to help move spending legislation along. The practice was cut back in 2011 but has since returned, with new rules and more transparency."
"Now a bloc of conservatives in the House — who have loudly opposed several measures to fund the government since the fall — are on track to direct a total of $371.8 million back to their home districts through individual requests. They stand to take credit for federal funding for projects important to their constituents even if they vote against the legislation that includes the money."
"House Speaker Mike Johnson said he intends to put a bipartisan tax package on the floor for a vote that would need a two-thirds majority to pass — moving business breaks and an expansion of the Child Tax Credit one significant step toward passage in the House," Politico reports.
Said Johnson: "There's a few subsets of members you have concerns for various reasons, but we're gonna probably run it on suspension. And I think you're gonna get a very high vote tally, probably on both sides of the aisle. There's a lot of great policy in there."
Punchbowl News: "Johnson hasn't announced publicly or told key members of his leadership whether he'll put the $70 billion tax bill on the House floor this week. This shouldn't be a terribly difficult call. The bill extends a host of business-friendly tax breaks alongside a minor expansion of the child tax credit. It passed the Ways and Means Committee by a 40-3 vote."
"But Johnson has a big decision to make here. New York Republicans have raised hell with the speaker over the Ways and Means Committee's unwillingness to lift the state and local tax exemption limit as part of this bill."
"Empire State Republicans, 'the majority makers' last cycle, see this as something their leadership can do to help them back home. Northeast Republicans – many of them moderates – have been forced by their leadership to vote for toxic bills for more than a year now."
"The House GOP leadership doesn't want to put this bill on the floor under a rule – the only way it's amendable – because it presents a whole host of other complications. And GOP leaders effectively believe they can call the New Yorkers' bluff. They won't vote against this package because it includes wildly popular provisions, the thinking goes."
"The U.S. failed to stop a deadly attack on an American military outpost in Jordan because the enemy drone approached its target at the same time a U.S. drone was also returning to base," the Wall Street Journal reports.
"The return of the U.S. drone led to some confusion over whether the incoming drone was friend or foe, officials have concluded so far."
"President Joe Biden is blaming Iran more explicitly than ever for the deaths of three American soldiers and is weighing what the consequences should be, as the domestic and foreign political dynamics surrounding his Middle East policy grow more complex by the moment," Politico reports.
"Some Democrats are increasingly worried that Biden's presidency is at risk of getting overtaken by foreign events. Congressional Republican leaders and allied hawks are pushing for a swift reaction to the attack. Biden's likely general election rival, Donald Trump, put the blame on the president, while conservatives wary of military action counseled caution."
"The U.S. range of options for responding to Sunday's deadly Iranian-backed militia attack includes a direct strike against Iran, hitting the regime's proxy groups or personnel abroad, and ratcheting up financial pressure on Tehran's battered economy," the Wall Street Journal reports.
Politico: The US tried to leave the Middle East to focus on Russia and China. Oct. 7 brought a reckoning.
"Negotiators from Israel, the U.S., Egypt and Qatar agreed in Paris on a framework for a new hostage deal," NBC News reports.
"The deal would see the release of the remaining American and Israeli hostages in phases starting with the women and children, accompanied by phased pauses in the fighting and aid deliveries to Gaza, along with the exchange of Palestinian prisoners."
"A draft is being presented to Hamas today, they added. In the past, the militant group has been insisting on an immediate permanent cease-fire first, which would be a deal-breaker."
"Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told U.S. officials last week that he and the Israeli military will not allow the rebuilding of illegal outposts or settlements by Israeli settlers inside the Gaza Strip," Axios reports.
"The Biden administration is concerned that a one-kilometer buffer zone Israel is planning to establish inside Gaza will be used for the rebuilding of the settlements that were dismantled during the 2005 Israeli pullout from the enclave."
Tom Nichols: "For years, Trump has attacked and obliterated anything like virtue in the Republican Party, a process that regularly features Republicans pulling their political souls from their bodies and handing them to Trump in jars for display on his mantle at Mar-a-Lago. (Ted Cruz going from the potential conscience of the 2016 GOP convention to a Trump-praising, phone-banking flunky is only one such example.)"
"But some of the less noticed enablers in the GOP are those who remain quiet in the face of Trump's ghoulish attacks on others rather than risk Trump turning his ire—and his MAGA mob—on them. When challenged, they speak up only long enough to make excuses for Trump and engage in moral obfuscation over issues that they must certainly know are not remotely complicated, such as whether the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party should defame a woman he's been found liable for sexually abusing."
Punchbowl News: "Even if House Republicans are successful at impeaching Mayorkas, the Democratic-controlled Senate will certainly acquit him. Meaning this all will have achieved nothing. Mayorkas will still be going to work every day at his office in Southeast D.C."
"And at the same time the House Republican Conference is seeking to remove Mayorkas, the party has rejected out of hand the Senate's emerging bipartisan border security and immigration policy deal."
"This is the kind of stuff that makes or breaks House majorities. It will depend as much on who wins the spin war as any floor votes."
Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security Secretary under George W. Bush, argues in the Wall Street Journal that House Republicans shouldn't impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Said Chertoff: "Political and policy disagreements aren't impeachable offenses."
"Pennsylvania's highest court issued a significant reproductive rights ruling Monday, sending a case on whether Medicaid should cover the cost of the procedure back to a lower court and with some justices signaling they were ready to recognize abortion access as a right protected by the state's constitution," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Politico: "In emerging plans that involve everything from the EPA to the Federal Trade Commission to the Postal Service, nearly 100 anti-abortion and conservative groups are mapping out ways the next president can use the sprawling federal bureaucracy to curb abortion access."
"Legislative efforts in Missouri and Mississippi are attempting to prevent voters from having a say over abortion rights, building on anti-abortion strategies seen in other states, including last year in Ohio," the AP reports.
"Democrats and abortion rights advocates say the efforts are evidence that Republican lawmakers and abortion opponents are trying to undercut democratic processes meant to give voters a direct role in forming state laws."
"President Biden deliberately avoided the word for nearly three years, using euphemisms like 'the other guy' and 'my predecessor.' Now his speeches are peppered with it: 'Trump,'" Axios reports.
"Biden's subtle shift in rhetoric is a clear sign his team is in general election mode — and wants to frame the race for the White House as a choice between Biden and Donald Trump, more than as a referendum on Biden's presidency."
"The Biden White House has spent months trying to make 'Bidenomics' work. But as the general election campaign begins, the president's team is rolling out something a little different: an economic argument that tries to frame former President Donald Trump as the candidate of corporate tax cuts and Biden as a scourge of the ultra-wealthy," Politico reports.
"It is a decidedly populist turn meant to overcome voters' doubts about the state of the economy by moving the debate away from a referendum on Biden and into a choice between the two main parties."
E. Jean Carroll told MSNBC that she was not intimidated by Donald Trump, who was ordered to pay her $83.3 million for defaming her. Said Carroll: "This team of brilliant young people have, as you said, stood up to the man… He's nothing. He is without. He is like a walrus snorting, and like a rhino flopping his head. It was … he is not there. That was a surprising thing to me."
Writer E. Jean Carroll told CNN that the court proceedings were little more than a "campaign stop" for the former president. Said Carroll: "The courtroom was not a courtroom to him, it was a campaign stop. That was clear." She added: "He's using me to win voters. Sexual assault. A man found liable for sexual assault is using the woman he sexually assaulted to get votes."
"My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury and I won't say anything more about it."— U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, quoted by the Washington Post, to the jurors in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial.
Just days after the jury awarded her more than $83 million in her defamation case against Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll told ABC News that she plans to use money on "something Donald Trump hates." Said Carroll: "If it'll cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that's my intent."
Timothy O'Brien: "For E. Jean Carroll, the former president may come to resemble a lucrative annuity."
Joah Walsh: "If Attorney General Letitia James gets the $300 million she is seeking, suddenly, between that and the two Carroll awards, Trump is dangerously close to the $400 million he has testified he has in cash on hand."
Conservative attorney George Conway, who introduced E. Jean Carroll to the lawyer she used for her defamation case against Donald Trump, took a victory lap on CNN.
Daily Beast: "Now that the retired federal judge babysitting the Trump Organization has uncovered potential tax fraud at the company, the Trumps responded over the weekend by tasking their own accountant as a monitor that monitors the court monitor."
"In an indignant court filing Monday morning, a lawyer for the Trumps for the first time launched an all-out attack on Judge Barbara S. Jones—calling her latest report on the family company an absolute lie, a cheap attempt to justify her government-mandated job, and a last-minute ploy to bolster the New York Attorney General's bank fraud case that just wrapped up."
CNBC: Trump lashes out at financial monitor in business fraud case after she reports errors.
Daily Beast: "Since 2020, Sinema has spent roughly $210,000 of her U.S. Senate office budget on private charter flights for herself and her staff, according to publicly available records—a high sum on an expense most lawmakers rarely, if ever, make."
"Given that senators have limited annual budgets to fund their operations, Sinema's use of private flights also raises questions about why she is prioritizing that expense over other essential functions of her office."
"Within days, Donald Trump could potentially have his sprawling real estate business empire ordered 'dissolved' for repeated misrepresentations on financial statements to lenders, adding him to a short list of scam marketers, con artists and others who have been hit with the ultimate punishment for violating New York's powerful anti-fraud law," the AP reports.
"An Associated Press analysis of nearly 70 years of civil cases under the law showed that such a penalty has only been imposed a dozen previous times, and Trump's case stands apart in a significant way: It's the only big business found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses."
Jonathan Alter writes that Mark Burnett, the producer of The Apprentice "has long been rumored to have dirt" on Donald Trump.
"Now, the podcaster Sam Harris says he has it from two people independently that Burnett is sitting on 'the equivalent of the Fuhrman tapes' — Trump 'using the N-word with abandon.' If Burnett changes his mind and goes public, it would — at a minimum — nip Trump's recent gains with black voters and possibly derail him altogether."
"Attorney General Merrick Garland will be out of commission this weekend due to back surgery and is going out of his way to make sure that there are no doubts about who will be in charge during his absence," Politico reports.
"The unusual, early announcement by the Biden administration's top law enforcement officer is intended to avoid the storm of criticism Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin faced recently after failing to tell colleagues and the White House when he was hospitalized for prostate cancer surgery and was readmitted for complications."
"In the wake of the 2020 election, the president of the far-right network One America News sent a potentially explosive email to former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, with a spreadsheet claiming to contain passwords of employees from the voting technology company Smartmatic," CNN reports.
"The existence of the spreadsheet was recently disclosed by Smartmatic, which is suing OAN for defamation. CNN pieced together who was involved in the email exchanges by examining court records from three separate cases stemming from the 2020 election."
"Biden administration officials on Monday announced $150 million in research funding for 18 states, most of which are contested or red, as part of a raft of policies to boost the nation's manufacturing industries ahead of the election," the Washington Post reports.
"The battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin are among the places receiving funding to set up 'innovation engines' for industries ranging from aerospace to textiles to energy under a new program overseen by the National Science Foundation."
"A son of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro is among the targets of a police operation in Rio de Janeiro as an investigation widens into the alleged misuse of the country's spying agency," Bloomberg reports.
"President Biden's 2021 declaration that 'America is back' was welcomed by European officials eager to move past their trade troubles with the Trump administration," the Wall Street Journal reports.
"Yet instead of reversing policies driven by Donald Trump's protectionist view, Biden has advanced many of them. The president has kept trade barriers in place, left European companies out of subsidies designed to bolster U.S. manufacturing and surprised allies with tighter restrictions on Chinese access to American technology."
Former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte slammed his successor as a drug addict and accused him of trying to hang on to power like his dictator father, The Guardian reports.
Said Duterte: "Bongbong Marcos was high back then. Now that he's the president, he's still high… We have a drug addict for a president! That son of a whore!"
Associated Press: "Beijing may find Biden the lesser of two evils for his steadiness over Trump's unpredictability but also point out that the Chinese government agonizes over Biden's success in building partnerships to counter China."
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