WASHINGTON WIRE 04/02/2021 KAMALA HARRIS REFUSDES TO VISIT BORDER!!! GOES ON VACATION IN CALIFORNIA INSTEAD!!!

 

April 2, 2021

While the U.S.-Mexico border is nearly 2,000 miles from Washington, D.C., the topic continued to dominate the news inside the Beltway. Though President Joe Biden has handed the issue off to Vice President Kamala Harris, she announced this week she has no intention of visiting the border (and in fact headed off for a four-day holiday weekend in California). Weeks after rejecting requests, the Biden administration finally allowed the media into border facilities — and it wasn't pretty. News also broke that Biden administration officials have tried to prevent Republican senators who visited the border from posting pictures and videos taken while they toured the border. And if that wasn't enough, former President Donald Trump vowed to make his own visit to the border — which would come before either Biden or Harris bothers to go down. In other news, Biden put forward a $2 trillion infrastructure bill that will include massive tax increases. Here's your latest installment of Washington Wire.

1. Kamala: No, I Won't Go

Ethan Miller/Getty Images   The crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border continued to dominate the news in the nation's capital, but it's not forefront on the mind of Vice President Harris.   Biden assigned Harris the task of handling what has become a full-blown "child migrant crisis," but Harris this week said she has no plans to visit or tour overflowing detention facilities and will use "diplomacy" to handle the surge of unaccompanied minors. "Vice President Kamala Harris won’t be on the ground at the Southwest border anytime soon as she leads efforts to address a rise in migrants trying to enter the country," The Associated Press reported. "Harris has no plans to visit the U.S.-Mexico border region 'in the near future,' spokeswoman Symone Sanders said Friday." "The vice president is not doing the border," Sanders said, adding that while Harris will receive briefings from Mexican and Central American officials, she had not yet met with anyone about the issue. And the veep took off on Thursday for a four-day holiday weekend in California, so the "crisis" appears to be on the back burner for now.

2. Media Finally Gets A Peek

DARIO LOPEZ-MILLS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images   After weeks of denying journalists access to an overcrowded migrant facility at the U.S.-Mexico border, reporters this week were finally allowed in to get their first look. A pool of selected reporters and photographers was allowed into the center in Donna, Texas, where more than 4,000 migrants are held. Some 3,400 are unaccompanied minors. Photos show migrants packed into plexiglass pods, strewn with shiny Mylar blankets. "There are eight 'pods' in total — critics have called them 'cages' in reference to criticism leveled at the Trump administration — each containing 500-600 migrants," Fox News reported. "Guidelines say there should only be 32 migrants in each pod. Donna’s temporary facility is 140,000 square feet. Children sleep on three-inch gym mats and lie under metallic foil blankets. Kids are given masks but many don’t wear them. In one room, pool reporters saw a purple and pink pen surrounding a group of 27 children on an alphabet rug, ranging from 3-9 years old. The youngest child is just four months old." The pool was reportedly told that there are now more than 500 Border Patrol agents working at the facility, which should cost $6 million a month but now costs $16 million a month. "The Department of Homeland Security turned over 600 unaccompanied children to HHS on Monday and will have 270 migrants leave on Tuesday. Two planes are flying out each day from the Rio Grande Valley each day to El Paso and San Diego transporting migrants," Fox reported.

3. No Pictures, Please

Screenshot: Fox News   When a group of Republicans senators, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, visited the border and toured the facilities there, Biden officials reportedly tried to keep them from taking pictures and videos. Cruz shared a video on Sunday of a woman whom he identified as a Biden "senior adviser" attempting to block him from taking photos of migrants who were being detained in an overcrowded U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in Donna, Texas. "Please give dignity to the people. Please give dignity to the people. … Please respect the people, the rules,” the staffer told Cruz, standing in front of him to block his video. Cruz confronted the woman. "So you work for the commissioner, you’re a senior adviser, you were hired two weeks ago and you’re instructed to ask us to not have any pictures taken here because the political leadership at DHS does not want the American people to know it," said Cruz, referring to the Department of Homeland Security. And then Cruz let loose. "Your policies are unfortunately trying to hide them," said. "These are the pictures the Biden administration doesn’t want the American people to see. This is why they won’t allow the press."

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4. No Pictures II

John Moore/Getty Images   Meanwhile, a Republican senator claimed that a Biden official "asked that he delete his photos" he took as he toured one of those jam-packed facilities. Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) told The Washington Examiner that a Biden aide involved in the tour "asked that he delete his photos. Like others on the trip, he didn’t." "There was one of Biden’s representatives," he told the Examiner. "I felt sorry for the lady because she actually talked to me about deleting a picture, but by the time she got to me, all those other pictures were taken, and that shows you the hypocrisy. None of us would have gone down there if we were going to be muzzled.” Braun added that Border Patrol also asked that no photos be taken, but that “they were telling us that because they had to." "I know why President Biden doesn’t want the media to be here — because we do have an open border," Lankford said on Friday. "If you were an unaccompanied minor, you were sent over to the Donna facility, which we went over and visited. That facility is designed for 80 people in a pod, and they had 709 people… literally wall to wall in every one of the little plexiglass cells that they have, and people flooding out into the hallway.”

5. Trump Jumps Into The Fray

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images   Former President Trump this week said that he'll likely visit the U.S.-Mexico border in the next few weeks. "A lot of people want me to" visit the border, Trump told Judge Jeanine Pirro in an exclusive interview that aired on Fox News's "Justice with Judge Jeanine." Trump called Biden's decision to overturn the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) — also known as the "Remain in Mexico" policy — a "very bad decision." "Thousands and thousands of people are coming up right now as we speak. And you're going to have millions of people pouring into our country. And it's going to destroy our country," Trump said, adding that Mexico is now "very angry at us." "We're not getting along with Mexico any longer. You have a great president of Mexico who was fantastic to me," Trump said.

6. Spend, Spend, Spend

JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images   Biden this week formally announced his $2 trillion infrastructure plan, giving the first official glimpse of a massive proposal he proudly declared would be the largest “investment in American jobs” since WWII. The plan would allocate $621 billion for transportation-related infrastructure, $300 billion for drinking water-related infrastructure, broadband and electric grids, and $300 billion for affordable housing and upgrading schools. Furthermore, $400 billion would reportedly go toward care for elderly and disabled Americans, and $580 billion would be used for domestic manufacturing, job training, research and development. Biden said his economic vision contains two parts — the American Jobs plan, which is part of his infrastructure bill, and the American Families plan, which he plans to speak more about in coming weeks. It’s unclear if he wants them as part of the same package. “I’m proposing a plan for the nation that rewards work, not just rewards wealth. It builds a fair economy that gives everybody a chance to succeed, and it’s going to create the strongest, most resilient, innovative economy in the world," Biden said. "It’s not a plan that tinkers around the edges; it’s a-once-in-a-generation investment in America, unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago. In fact, it’s the largest American jobs investment since World War II."

7. Meme Of The Week

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