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MORNING REPORT

Thursday, December 28

by Elizabeth Crisp & Lauren Sforza

Biden's border problems get bigger and bigger

The latest hurdle to President Biden's reelection effort is a 6,000-person caravan of migrants headed toward the southern border.

Immigration has been an irritant for the White House for much of Biden's time in office, whether it has come from allies in the Democratic Party or GOP opponents.

But the headaches have grown as the border issues have become intertwined with the president's call for Congress to deliver more aid to Ukraine.

Those talks have been at a standstill — very much because Biden tied funding for Ukraine and Israel to border security money, which then led to a thorny debate over immigration. Congress hasn't been able to find a compromise on that issue in a generation or two, and talks between senators before the Christmas break made little progress.

Now the caravan is adding to the political toxicity of the issue for Biden, who Republicans want to cast as not taking the issue seriously enough. It also meshes with a more general argument Republicans have sought to make about Biden being too weak on the foreign and domestic stage, a point seemingly intertwined with GOP attacks on the 81-year-old president's age.

BORDER SECURITY also is the signature issue for former President Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination who is ahead of Biden in The Hill/Decision Desk average of polls by a full 2 percentage points.

The Hill's Rafael Bernal examines the issue in a piece that notes the caravans serve a political purpose for those putting them together. They give organizers and migrants exposure for their cause, even as they give Republicans and conservative media ammunition for their attacks. That ammunition comes despite the fact that the caravans themselves rarely do anything to interfere with actual border security.

"How they get to the border if they enter illegally has no bearing on how they are processed," a CBP official told The Hill.

The Biden administration has sought to win Mexico's help with the caravan, which includes migrants from a host of countries. But as Bernal writes, Mexico's president shut down the possibility of a law enforcement crackdown, arguing the "root causes" of migration must be dealt with to solve the problem.

For the time being, that would seem to put the ball back in Congress' court when it returns in January. There has been plenty of talk of the possibility for progress in those discussions. But solving the root causes of migration? It's fair to be skeptical of that challenge being met successfully early in the new year.

It's all a problem for Biden, who gets criticized over the caravan, over a perceived weakness at the border and for an inability to get Ukraine aid across the finish line if progress on everything is stymied.

The administration on Wednesday said it was delivering the final $250 million it can give to Ukraine using its existing powers. The announcement came with a plea for Congress to take action.

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

Israeli forces carried out strikes across Gaza overnight and into Thursday, with dozens killed in an expanding air and ground offensive.
Understanding the state of the U.S. economy can get confusing. The Hill's Tobias Burns breaks down the top five misconceptions about rising interest rates, unemployment rates and inflation.
Mexico's 2024 election could determine how it conducts business with the United States. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas traveled to Mexico this week to discuss the surge of migrants at the border.

Leading the Day

Special counsel Jack Smith wants to bar former President Trump from making "political attacks" about his federal 2020 election subversion criminal prosecution at trial — a request that the former president appeared to lash out at Wednesday.

Senior assistant special counsel Molly Gaston accused Trump's legal team in court papers Wednesday of trying to "inject into this case partisan political attacks and irrelevant and prejudicial issues that have no place in a jury trial" (The Hill). Ultimately, the prosecutors are seeking to bar certain evidence that suggests Trump is being selectively prosecuted from the trial.

What Gaston wrote: "The Court should not permit the defendant to turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation, and should reject his attempt to inject politics into this proceeding."

How Trump responded: "Crooked Joe Biden's errand boy Deranged Jack Smith is so obsessed with attacking President Trump and interfering with the 2024 Presidential Election, and is so sad that the Supreme Court just unanimously rejected his desperate attempt to rush this Witch Hunt, that he is ignoring the law and clear instructions from District Court Judge Chutkan, who unequivocally stated that this 'case' is stayed and there should be no litigation."

The prosecutors are also asking D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to prevent Trump from blaming the D.C. mayor or the National Guard for the Jan. 6 attacks. They are further seeking to bar him from claiming to jurors that there were undercover federal agents present at the Capitol that day.

▪ Trump and Hunter Biden find common ground: The Hill's Rebecca Beitsch dives into the separate cases Trump and the president's son, Hunter Biden, are facing in 2024. Both men are turning to similar arguments in longshot efforts to get their respective cases dismissed as they each maintain they have been selectively and vindictively prosecuted. Read more.

Hunter Biden is facing nine total charges — including six misdemeanors and three felonies — related to tax evasion and other tax-related crimes. In addition, the House GOP has been investigating whether President Biden was involved in his son's and other family members' business dealings.

▪ The Hill: The House GOP is suggesting that President Biden may have obstructed justice if he knew his son was planning to subvert a congressional subpoena earlier this month.

Where and When

The House will meet for a pro forma session at 10:30 a.m.
The Senate will convene for a pro forma session at 10:30 a.m.
The president has no public events on his schedule today. He and first lady Jill Biden are in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, through New Year's.
Vice President Harris is in California with second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Zoom In

The main super PAC that supports House Democrats is pouring nearly $6 million into the race to replace ousted ex-Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) with television and digital ads aimed at flipping the seat back in their favor in the upcoming special election.

Former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi (N.Y.) will face Republican nominee Mazi Melesa Pilip, a Nassau County, N.Y., lawmaker and Israeli military veteran, in a Feb. 13 special election.

"Tom Suozzi is a fighter who has a proven record of lowering costs, strengthening police, and working across the aisle to get things done. House Majority PAC looks forward to flipping NY-03 blue," said House Majority PAC President Mike Smith.

VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE: Jacob N. Kornbluh of the Jewish news outlet Forward shares that Pilip, an Ethiopian Jew who served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), is highlighting her military service (complete with uniform photo) in her fundraising message.

Suozzi and Pilip are running to replace Santos, the scandal-plagued Republican who was was kicked out of Congress on Dec. 1 in a bipartisan 311-114-2 vote. The House Ethics Committee unanimously voted in favor of his removal after an investigation determined there was "substantial evidence" he had committed federal crimes. One of his GOP colleagues, Rep. Max Miller (Ohio), is among those who claim they were scammed.

MORE CONGRESS

The House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) Wednesday over potential campaign finance offenses and other violations of House rules.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who narrowly won reelection in 2022, is running in a different district in 2024 that is more conservative.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) warned the Federal Reserve to "cut interest rates now" or risk guaranteeing Trump's reelection in 2024.

2024 ROUNDUP

President Biden's reelection campaign is leaning heavily into "Bidenomics" as a selling point. Only problem: The message is falling flat with discouraged voters. The Hill's Sylvan Lane reports economic experts say much of the frustration can be chalked up to high inflation and a steep spike in food and energy prices.

"People's individual experiences in the economy should not be considered incorrect just because they're at odds with macroeconomic statistics," said Kathryn Anne Edwards, an independent economic policy consultant.

"People can understand over time that houses go up in value, cars go up in value, but at the end of the day, with eggs and gasoline, people kind of want to pay what they have always paid — or at least close to it," said Gordon Gray, vice president for economic policy at the right-leaning American Action Forum.

Looking ahead, Lane reports: "Biden could struggle to sell voters on the economy as the scars of COVID-19 linger for millions of Americans, but there are early signs that 2024 could make that pitch easier."

Elsewhere

Skepticism is growing over Israel's ability to drive Hamas from Gaza, as the nearly three-month war continues. The New York Times reports that a defiant Hamas has shown no signs of backing down.

"We are not worried about the future of the Gaza Strip," Osama Hamdan, the militant organization's representative in Lebanon, recently said during a news conference in Beirut's southern suburbs. "The decision maker is the Palestinian people alone."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stressed that the ultimate goal is to eliminate the Islamist group that led the deadly Oct. 7 massacre that sparked the conflict.

And some Israelis are coming to realize that the war isn't nearly over.

David Horovitz, founding editor of The Times of Israel, writes "the war may be moving toward half-done."

"Militarily, the IDF is indeed taking apart Hamas in Gaza's north and center — killing its gunmen, targeting its tunnels, destroying its weapons stores, reducing its capacity to fire rockets and missiles into Israel. But the second half of the task will be far more complicated."

STATE WATCH

Pro-Palestinian protestors shut down holiday traffic at two of the country's biggest international airports — Los Angeles and John F. Kennedy — on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

ONLINE

The watermelon emoji has a new meaning — support for Palestine. The New York Times explains why it's taken hold as a symbol of Palestinian resistance: "The fruit is grown in Gaza and the West Bank, and it is the same four colors — red, green, black and white — as the Palestinian flag."

Opinion

Avert your eyes, avoid responsibility and just blame TikTok, by Zeynep Tufekci, columnist, The New York Times.
At the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, anthropology matters as much as history, by Alma Gottlieb of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Ron Duncan Hart of the Institute for Tolerance Studies, opinion contributors, The Hill.

The Closer

And finally…Julie Farnam — who became assistant director of intelligence for the Capitol Police just days before the 2020 election, giving her deep insight into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — will be discussing her upcoming book "Domestic Darkness: An Insider's Account of the January 6th Insurrection, and the Future of Right-Wing Extremism" during an event on Jan. 6, on the third anniversary of the riot, at Politics & Prose on Connecticut Avenue in D.C.

From the description of the book, which will be out Jan. 2:

"In addition to offering a harrowing view of what it was like on the ground, watching the violence unfold and knowing it could have been prevented, Domestic Darkness also examines the specific groups and ideologies, such as the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, QAnon, and white supremacists, who were central to the events of January 6 and who, emboldened by Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders, continue to be a threat to our democracy. The book will also explore what happened within the Capitol Police in the wake of the insurrection, and how to address future dangers from domestic terrorism."

Details on the P&P event here.