This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday defended his administration’s decision to waive 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow for construction of roughly 20 miles of additional border wall, saying he had no choice but to use the Trump-era funding for the barrier to stop illegal migration from Mexico.
Still, the waiving of federal laws for the construction — something also done when Republican Donald Trump was president — raised questions, particularly because Biden condemned border wall spending when he was running for the White House.
Administration officials on Thursday announced they’d resume deporting migrants back to Venezuela, as part of their effort to to slow arrivals.
The decision was met with immediate criticism from immigrant advocates and Mexico President Andres Manuel López Obrador, who called it a “setback.”
The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement of the latest wall action in the Federal Registry with few details about the construction in Starr County, Texas, part of a busy Border Patrol sector seeing “high illegal entry.” According to government data, about 245,000 illegal crossings have been recorded so far this budget year in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.
Homeland Security has also worked on roughly 13 miles in the Rio Grande Valley, and another small-scale project to fill “small gaps that remain open from prior construction activities” in the border wall.
The original article contains 809 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
While I do not support wall construction, I actually don’t mind that he allowed the project to move forward. It shows respect for the office and for the voters of the previous administration. While he won’t get much credit for it, being the only adult in a room is just a pretty tough gig, I personally respect it.
That said, I do not agree with waiving federal regulations to make it happen. It’s not like this is some magic fix that is sure to work or something, its not worth cutting through red tape.
Trump signed into law in 2019. Allowing the White House to waive the environmental rules. Do I wish he would have tied up in red tape yes. But this money and the waiver were from the previous Administration. Biden has been in office for three years. Seems to me that makes him look less than enthusiastic about the wall.
Then he could have un-waived them, assuming it was done via executive order. Simply allowing the regulations to protect the things they are supposed to protect, like the environment.
The funds for 20 miles of border wall were approved in 2019 before Biden took office. He urged Congress to reassign these funds for more intelligent and efficient enforcement purposes, but Republicans did not comply. Now, Biden has to fulfill his lawful obligations.
And the GOP House 100% would have voted to start an impeachment trial if he didn’t follow through on it. They would draw a false equivalence between the extortion scheme against Ukraine that lead to Trump’s first impeachment trial, where one aspect of it was Trump unlawfully withholding congressionally mandated funds, and claim that this is the same thing. Actually, they’ll say this is worse because they’re completely shameless and untethered to reality.
That’s an excellent point. If he doesn’t comply in good faith, it would 100% be in conservative media that he’s sabotaging the borders, misappropriating funds, and haul him off to a real impeachment trial. It’d be the excuse for political theater that they want, and likely exactly why Congress wouldn’t reallocate the funds to something else.
I feel like a more creative person would have built an 10 foot long section of wall (or better yet a really fancy gate) valued at whatever amount of money congress had allocated.
It needs to pass an audit. The wall is stupid, but building a monument instead of a wall should fail audits and is a type of corruption worthy of impeachment.
That would be like USPS getting $30million to replace a fleet of delivery trucks and instead buying a handful of monster trucks that can’t enter residential areas. No one’s gonna look at that and go, “whoops! You got me! We said buy 120 USPS trucks with the approved budget but instead you bought 5 monster trucks and a sweet set of ramps and said you followed the ‘spirit of the ask’ because they’re all trucks. Well, I see no reason to investigate this for misusing funds! As you were!”
He waived environmental protections with executive powers to expedite the process. He isnt just passively letting this happen because his hands are tied.
Would those environmental protections have allowed the wall to simply not be built, or would they have just delayed it, costing even more money for environmental reviews, changed plans, etc., when a government shutdown is imminent?
That’s a real question, to be clear, and not one the article answered one way or the other.
Even if it were the case, as they said the budget is already allocated. Why not make them waste as much of it as possible paying for stuff that isn’t building the wall that everyone knows is useless? Making it look like even more of an expensive boondoggle seems like a better strategy than paving the way through federally protected lands.
And that’s setting aside the costs of maintaining what gets built or what it would cost to remove the wall at some point.
He has to do it at the end of the year to comply with the order.
The end of the year is in 3 months.
It’s security theater, just like the TSA you see at the airport do nothing. The real protection is hidden both at the airport and at the border.
In general that’s not true.
Reinforced cockpit doors.
Isolation of runways/terminals (yes incursions happen)
Habit tracing, and Id scanning upon entry. Gait analysis and license plate reading.
Air Marshalls (yes not on every flight)
Lots of shit that comes together to do a ton behind the scenes.
All means shit if someone puts their mind to it. TSA misses the majority of treat items.
On the upside because these things get built by the lowest bidder the wall probably represents a significant transfer of monies to the Mexican-American community, which is no bad thing.
The idea of migrants making bank building a wall to keep migrants out is wonderful.
Say what you will about whats legally required but if Biden didn’t want to catch criticism from his fellow democratic lawmakers, he shouldn’t have made a campaign promise saying he wouldn’t build ‘another foot’ of border wall. Its not like he’s unaware how these things work, he kind of brought this on his self.
You can delve into the definition of “another” in that context. It could mean “no more than what is currently built” or it could mean " no more than what’s already been determined/legally required will be built".
Though even with that, I will grant that using that wording could be considered deceptive. As much as people like to say “technically correct is the best correct”, I would disagree when it comes to politics. It’s Aes Sedai lying vs outright lying.
