Border Spending, Attorney General Move Through Congress (Video)
- Congress clears wall money, but Trump wants more funds
- New attorney general poised to shape immigration policy
Congress cleared a sweeping spending bill this week to fund through September nine federal government departments, including the Department of Homeland Security and $1.4 billion for new border fencing demanded by President Donald Trump.
Bloomberg Government reporter Michaela Ross reviews the developments in the below video:
Trump will use executive powers to declare a national emergency and line up more funds for the project, for a total of about $8 billion, White House officials told reporters Friday. Many Senate Republicans had vehemently opposed that move over the past several weeks. Still, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell flipped his position Thursday and said he’ll support it.
The Trump administration’s immigration policy might have an even more effective advocate in William Barr, who was confirmed by the Senate to be attorney general on Thursday. Barr arrives amid a judicial landscape with 85 more conservative judges, including two U.S. Supreme Court justices, confirmed since Trump took office. Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions, also paved the way for Barr to use a case review tool to set administration-wide immigration policy.
The Department of Homeland Security’s top cybersecurity official told a House panel Wednesday that the shutdown impacted his agency’s election security efforts, but they should be back on track soon. Chris Krebs said auditable voting systems should be the nation’s top investment priority before the 2020 election, and states should use voting machines that leave paper trails.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michaela Ross in Washington at mross@bgov.com
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Hendrie at phendrie@bgov.com; Jonathan Nicholson at jnicholson@bgov.com