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Friday, March 1, 2024

3/1 WAKE-UP CALL: Dueling Events At U.S.-Mexico Border

President Biden and Donald Trump both traveled to southern Texas today to use the border with Mexico as a backdrop for their push to convince voters that they would best handle the recent surge in migrants crossing into the U.S. The day offered a split-screen preview of a debate that is likely to continue in the months leading up to November’s presidential election. Recent polls showed voters’ views on immigration have shifted to the political right, including one that found that Americans are most likely to say that immigration is the country’s top problem. Biden, who has in recent months changed his tune on immigration and begun to favor a border crackdown, visited Brownsville. He met with border officials there and delivered a speech criticizing Republicans for blocking a recent bipartisan immigration bill and daring Trump to team up with him in tightening border security.


Biden travels to the Southern Border, where over 7 million migrants have crossed over illegally since he took office, and starts talking about the "Climate Crisis." Donald Trump is talking about Laken Riley, a young woman who was killed last week by one of these…

➤CHAOS AS AID TRUCKS ARRIVE IN GAZA: Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinian civilians as chaos erupted around a convoy of aid trucks in Gaza, the Israeli military and enclave health officials said. The two sides gave starkly different accounts after dozens were killed, and Hamas paused cease-fire talks. Aid deliveries to Gaza have become dangerous missions as law and order have broken down in some parts of the enclave after almost five months of war and as the population grows increasingly desperate with supplies of food and medicine running short. 

Police working for Hamas have largely vanished from the streets.

➤POLL: U-S DIVIDED ON UKRAINE: As Russia makes battlefield advances and Ukrainian soldiers run short on ammunition, U.S. adults have become fractured along party lines in their support for sending military aid to Kyiv, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 

Democrats are more likely to say the U.S. government is spending “too little” on funding for Ukraine than they were in November, but most Republicans remain convinced it’s “too much.” That divide is reflected in Congress, where the Democratic-held Senate — with help from 22 GOP senators — passed a $95 billion package of aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan earlier this month. But the bill, which includes roughly $60 billion in military support for Kyiv, has languished in the Republican-held House as Speaker Mike Johnson has so far refused to bring it up for a vote. President Joe Biden, along with top Democrats and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, passionately urged the Republican speaker during a White House meeting this week to take up the foreign aid package, but Johnson responded by saying that Congress “must take care of America’s needs first.”

➤U-S SENATE PASSES GOV'T FUNDING: The Senate followed the House in passing a temporary extension of government funding on Thursday, sending the measure to President Biden's desk after a bipartisan vote that once again averts a government shutdown.  The Senate voted 77 to 13 to approve the short-term extension that funds some government agencies for another week, through March 8, and others until March 22. The House passed the bill earlier in the day by a vote of 320 to 99. The president has said he will sign the legislation.

Congressional leaders had announced a deal to keep the government open Wednesday evening, saying they "are in agreement that Congress must work in a bipartisan manner to fund our government."  Six of the 12 annual spending bills will now need to be passed before the end of next week. The leaders said the one-week extension was necessary to allow the appropriations committees "adequate time to execute on this deal in principle" and give lawmakers time to review the package's text. 

➤TRUMP REMAINS ON ILL BALLOT..FOR NOW:  An Illinois judge is extending a hold on a Wednesday decision barring Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, keeping the delay in place until the suit is fully resolved on appeal. The ruling issued Thursday is a procedural win for Trump because it extends the delay from just a few days to until the challenge plays out on appeal, which could take months. That means a similar case out of Colorado could be resolved by the US Supreme Court first, potentially negating the Illinois challenge. Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter, who kicked Trump off the ballot, has agreed to extend the pause past Friday after Trump appealed her ruling Wednesday night.

➤POLL: BIDEN TOO OLD: Swing-state voters across every major demographic group describe President Joe Biden as too old, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll has found, showing that concerns about his age have permeated even the most reliable constituencies of the Democratic party. Overall, eight in 10 voters in crucial states said Biden was too old, when asked to think about the frontrunners in the 2024 election. The survey was taken after a special prosecutor’s report that cast the 81-year-old president as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” In contrast, less than half of respondents said his almost-certain rival, 77-year-old Donald Trump, was too old. Still, Trump faces his own vulnerabilities with swing-state voters, with a majority saying the former president is dangerous.

In a sign of how top-of-mind Biden’s age and acuity are for swing-state voters, more than 1,000 poll respondents mentioned those themes even before they were asked about them directly. They referenced them in reply to an open-ended question about what they had seen, read or heard about the candidate recently.


FORMER U-S DIPLOMAT WAS CUBAN SECRET AGENT:  A former career U.S. diplomat told a federal judge Thursday he will plead guilty to charges of working for decades as a secret agent for communist Cuba, an unexpectedly swift resolution to a case prosecutors called one of the most brazen betrayals in the history of the U.S. foreign service. Manuel Rocha’s stunning fall from grace could culminate in a lengthy prison term after the 73-year-old said he would admit to federal counts of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government. Prosecutors and Rocha’s attorney indicated the plea deal includes an agreed-upon sentence but they did not disclose details in court Thursday. He is due back in court April 12, when he’s likely to be sentenced.

💸WE'RE SAVING LESS: Americans are socking away less of their paychecks each month so they have more cash to spend. The strategy has supported their purchases, and the economy, in recent months, but it’s bound to run out of steam this year as households look to beef up their stockpiles of cash, forecasters say. And that could mean weaker consumer spending along with an economy that’s more vulnerable to a slowdown or even a recession. Consumption makes up about 70% of U.S. economic activity. The personal saving rate, the share of income that Americans are squirreling away, was 3.8% in January, well below the recent peak of 5.3% last May and the roughly 7% share before the pandemic, according to data from the Commerce Department.


🏀CLARK DECLARES FOR WNBA DRAFT: Caitlin Clark, the sensational Iowa Hawkeyes basketball star, has officially declared her intention to enter the 2024 WNBA Draft. This announcement marks the end of her illustrious collegiate career, where she left an indelible mark both on and off the court 12. Clark’s scoring prowess is nothing short of remarkable. She entered the 2023-24 season with a mission: to break records. And she did just that. With a career-high 49-point performance against Michigan, she surpassed Kelsey Plum’s all-time women’s college basketball scoring record. Now, with one game remaining in her college basketball journey, she stands on the cusp of breaking Pete Maravich’s overall scoring record, which has stood since 1970.

⚾OHTANI SCORES WIFE: Shohei Ohtani gave a few more details on his new bride on Thursday after making a shocking announcement in the middle of the night that he had gotten married.  Ohtani, who has kept his personal life out of the spotlight despite being one of MLB’s biggest names, told reporters at the Dodgers’ spring training facility in Arizona that he had married a woman that he had known for about three to four years and went public to avoid future distractions, The Athletic reported.  While the dual-threat player didn’t say when he got married, the 29-year-old did reveal that the pair got engaged last year, and his now-wife lives in Japan but joined him in the United States for spring training, the Los Angeles Times reported.  The Dodgers star described her as a “normal Japanese woman” and not some type of celebrity. 

👶PATERNITY TEST FOR JONES: Jerry Jones will be required to take a paternity test after a judge upheld a decision in his legal dispute with 27-year-old Alexandra Davis, who alleged the Dallas Cowboys owner is her father. Dallas County judge Sandra Jackson upheld a court decision after Jones appealed. Davis claimed Jones was her father in a 2022 lawsuit that alleges that Alexandra was conceived during the mid-1990s during a relationship between Jones and her mother, Cynthia Davis.

⚾PHILLIES ENDING HOT DOG NIGHT: The Philadelphia Phillies are ending one of their proudest traditions — $1 hot dog nights. The move comes after fans threw hot dogs onto the field during a game last year. The promotion also caused long lines and was a holdover from the days when a much worse Phillies team had a harder time filling seats. "It wasn't just the throwing," one of the team's executives told AP. "But obviously, you know, the throwing was a little bit of a tipping point."

➤FRIDAY'S WEATHER MAP:




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