Texas Republican irritated he wasn’t invited to join Biden at border

Rep. Tony Gonzales said Sunday he was frustrated that the White House told him he couldn't be part of President Joe Biden's planned trip to the Southern border .

"I’m not this crazy extremist Republican. I’m jumping up and down, pushing against my party when I think it’s right," said Gonzales (R-Texas), who represents parts of El Paso, on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Gonzales, who said he asked Biden to visit the border seven months ago, said he didn't know why he wasn't invited.

The congressman's comments came shortly before Biden was expected to touch down in El Paso for his first trip to the border since becoming president. Last week, Biden unveiled a new immigration policy aimed at curbing illegal crossings, following widespread criticism from Republicans about his administration's handling of the southern border.

The members invited on the trip were Texas Reps. Veronica Escobar, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez — all of them Democrats — along with local leaders, according to the White House.

Asked Sunday on "Face the Nation" why her Republican colleagues weren't invited, Escobar avoided the question. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On his trip, Biden needs to hear from local leaders about how immigration challenges "have grown exponentially" in the face of "an historic refugee crisis in our Western Hemisphere," Escobar said.

Escobar said she has worked with the Biden administration, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, but that policy has hit a "brick wall" in Congress.

"Many of my colleagues felt — why are we, you know, basically working on all this immigration work when we have a 50/50 Senate and no Republicans willing to work with us?" Escobar said. "I'm hoping things change."

Mayorkas, for his part, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that he had no plans to step down, following threats of impeachment from newly elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

A bipatisan group of senators is expected to also visit the border this week, led by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), according to a Friday press release from Sinema.

"I hope they see what the president will see today, which is opportunity, but also long overdue work," Escobar said of the Senate group.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who was not among those listed on the release as visiting the border this week, said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation" he was "delighted" Biden is making the trip.

“He should have gone sooner, in my view," King told host Margaret Brennan.

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House Freedom Caucus leader sees better days under McCarthy

"Nancy Pelosi ran Congress like a prison camp," Rep. Scott Perry said Sunday in saying why he thinks Congress will be better now with Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.

Speaking on ABC's "This Week," the head of the House Freedom Caucus made the statement about the former House speaker in explaining why he had switched his vote to backing McCarthy after repeatedly rejecting him. McCarthy was elected speaker late Friday after overcoming opposition from Perry (R-Pa.) and other Republicans that had persisted over several days.

"Let me start with this," Perry told host George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, "Frederick Douglass, who knew something about power, said power concedes nothing without a demand, never has and never will. This is never about Kevin McCarthy; this is about power for the American people and, with all due respect, Nancy Pelosi ran Congress like a prison camp with no accountability."

For her part, Pelosi said last week that she saw the whole battle as damaging to the institution that she led in two four-year stints.

"All who serve in the House share a responsibility to bring dignity to this body," she tweeted on Jan. 4. "Sadly, Republicans' cavalier attitude in electing a Speaker is frivolous, disrespectful and unworthy of this institution."

Perry has been under investigation in relation to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and other efforts to keep former President Donald Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election; the House select committee on Jan. 6 referred Perry for a review by the House Ethics Committee. He was one of 19 Republicans who opposed McCarthy from the outset, though all 19 (as well as two others who stopped voting for McCarthy at some point in the process) ultimately got out of the way of McCarthy's election so that the California Republican could be elected on the 15th ballot.

The Douglass quote that Perry cited is attributed to an 1857 speech the former slave made in New York state while fighting for the abolition of slavery. He added: "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both."

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Serbian request to deploy troops in Kosovo denied by NATO

Belgrade sought NATO's authorization for deployment after a string of violent confrontations.

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Travelers rush to take advantage of China reopening

BEIJING — After years of separation from his wife in mainland China, Hong Kong resident Cheung Seng-bun made sure to be among the first in line following the reopening Sunday of border crossing points.

The ability of residents of the semi-autonomous southern Chinese city to cross over is one of the most visible signs of China’s easing of border restrictions imposed almost three years ago, with travelers arriving from abroad no longer required to undergo expensive and time-consuming quarantines.

That comes even as the virus continues to spread in China amid what critics say is a lack of transparency from Beijing.

“I’m hurrying to get back to her,” Cheung, lugging a heavy suitcase, told The Associated Press as he prepared to cross at Lok Ma Chau station, which was steadily filling with eager travelers.

Those crossing between Hong Kong and mainland China, however, are still required to show a negative Covid-19 test taken within the last 48 hours — a measure China has protested when imposed by other countries.

Hong Kong has been hit hard by the virus, and its land and sea border checkpoints with the mainland have been largely closed for almost three years. Despite the risk of new infections, the reopening that will allow tens of thousands of people who have made prior online bookings to cross each day is expected to provide a much-needed boost to Hong Kong’s tourism and retail sectors.

On a visit to the station Sunday morning, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee said the sides would continue to expand the number of crossing points from the current seven to the full 14.

“The goal is to get back as quickly as possible to the pre-epidemic normal life,” Lee told reporters. “We want to get cooperation between the two sides back on track.”

Communist Party newspaper Global Times quoted Tan Luming, a port official in Shenzhen on the border with Hong Kong, saying about 200 passengers were expected to take the ferry to Hong Kong, while another 700 were due to travel in the other direction, on the first day of reopening. Tan said a steady increase in passenger numbers is expected over coming days.

“I stayed up all night and got up at 4 a.m. as I’m so excited to return to the mainland to see my 80-year-old mother,” a Hong Kong woman identified only by her surname, Cheung, said on arrival at Shenzhen, where she was presented with “roses and health kits,” the paper said.

Hong Kong media reports said around 300,000 travel bookings from the city to mainland China have already been made, with a daily quota of 60,000.

Limited ferry service also was restored from China’s Fujian province to the Taiwanese-controlled island of Kinmen just off the Chinese coast.

The border crossing with Russia at Suifenhe in the far northern province of Heilongjiang also resumed normal operations, just in time for the opening of the ice festival in the capital of Harbin, a major tourism draw.

And at Ruili, on the border with Myanmar, normal operations were resumed after 1,012 days of full or partial closure in response to repeated outbreaks blamed partly on visitors from China’s neighbor.

So far, only a fraction of the previous number of international flights are arriving at major Chinese airports.

Beijing’s main Capital International Airport was expecting eight flights from overseas on Sunday. Shanghai, China’s largest city, received its first international flight under the new policy at 6:30 a.m. with only a trickle of others to follow.

Since March 2020, all international passenger flights bound for Beijing have been diverted to designated first points of entry into China. Passengers were required to quarantine up to three weeks.

“I’ve been under isolated quarantine for six times in different cities (in mainland China),” said Ivan Tang, a Hong Kong business traveler. “They were not easy experiences.”

Ming Guanghe, a Chinese living in Singapore, said it had been difficult both to book a ticket and find somewhere to take a PCR test. Quarantine measures and uncertainty about outbreaks had kept him away from home, Ming said.

Shanghai announced it would again start issuing regular passports to Chinese for foreign travel and family visits, as well as renewing and extending visas for foreigners. Those restrictions have had a particularly devastating effect on foreign businesspeople and students in the key Asian financial center.

China is now facing a surge in cases and hospitalizations in major cities and is bracing for a further spread into less developed areas with the start of its most important holiday, the Lunar New Year, in coming days.

Authorities say they expect domestic rail and air journeys will double over the same period last year, bringing overall numbers close to those of the 2019 holiday period before the pandemic hit.

Meanwhile, more foreign governments are imposing testing requirements on travelers from China — most recently Germany, Sweden and Portugal. On Saturday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock urged citizens to avoid “unnecessary” travel to China, noting the rise in coronavirus cases and China’s “overburdened” health system.

The German regulation also allows for spot checks on arrival. Germany, like other European nations, will test wastewater from aircrafts for possible new virus variants. The measures come into force at midnight Monday and are due to last until April 7.

Apparently concerned about its reputation, China says the testing requirements aren’t science-based and has threatened unspecified countermeasures.

Chinese health authorities publish a daily count of new infections, severe cases and fatalities, but those numbers include only officially confirmed cases and use a very narrow definition of Covid-19-related deaths.

The National Health Commission on Sunday reported 7,072 new confirmed cases of local transmission and two new deaths — even as individual provinces were reporting as many as 1 million cases per day.

Authorities say that since the government ended compulsory testing and permitted people with mild symptoms to test themselves and convalesce at home, it can no longer provide a full picture of the outbreak. China’s vulnerabilities are increased by the population’s general lack of exposure to the virus and a relatively low vaccination rate among the elderly.

Government spokespeople insist the situation is under control and reject accusations from the World Health Organization and others that they’re not being transparent about the outbreak that could lead to the emergence of new variants.

The Health Commission on Saturday rolled out regulations for strengthened monitoring of viral mutations, including testing of urban wastewater. The rules called for increased data gathering from hospitals and local government health departments and stepped-up checks on “pneumonia of unknown causes.”

Criticism has largely focused on heavy-handed enforcement of regulations, including open-ended travel restrictions that saw people confined to their homes for weeks, sometimes sealed inside without adequate food or medical care.

Anger was also vented over the requirement that anyone who potentially tested positive or had been in contact with such a person be confined for observation in a field hospital, where overcrowding, poor food and hygiene were commonly cited.

The social and economic costs eventually prompted rare street protests in Beijing and other cities, possibly influencing the Communist Party’s decision to swiftly ease the strictest measures.

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German police arrest Iranian man suspected of planning chemical terror attack

The man is suspected of procuring cyanide and ricin for an assault inspired by Islamic extremism, German police said.

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What History Tells Us About Kevin McCarthy’s Chances

This week’s meltdown in the House of Representatives, which has failed six times in two days to elect a new speaker, is rare, but it isn’t unprecedented. In the 19th century, contested elections for speaker often lasted days, and on one occasion, months, owing to extreme political volatility and party realignment in the lead-up to and aftermath of the Civil War.

But it’s been 100 years since a speaker’s election has gone to more than one ballot. In 1923, it took four days and nine ballots and considerable backroom horse trading before incumbent House Speaker Frederick Gillett, a Republican from Massachusetts, secured enough votes to retain leadership of the House.

The parallels between then and now are striking. As is the case today, Republicans in 1923 enjoyed narrow control of the House — 225 members, a majority of just seven. The caucus was also deeply divided, as it is today. And Gillett, though a two-term speaker and the nominal leader of his caucus, was a weak figurehead, incapable of containing internal discord and reeling in a restive progressive wing. It ultimately took a strong leader in Rep. Nicholas Longworth of Ohio to hammer out an agreement with progressive insurgents. (Unfortunately for the rebels, Longworth subsequently betrayed their trust and swung power to conservative Republicans in the decade that followed.)

Then as now, the speaker’s contest was as much about internal House politics — procedural power and legislative prerogative — as it was about ideology. It took a strong and dexterous leader to get done what a mere figurehead couldn’t accomplish on his own.

The real question, as we head into another round of balloting, is: Who in the new Republican caucus will emerge as a modern-day Nick Longworth and show the rebels an offramp, while restoring some semblance of order within the Republican caucus?

The roots of the problem stretched back to 1903, when GOP Rep. Joe Cannon of Illinois ascended to the speakership. Though Canon struck a big-tent posture — “I believe in consultin’ the boys, findin’ out what most of ‘em want, and then goin’ ahead and doin’ it,” he said — in reality, “Uncle Joe” ruled the House with an iron fist. “His delivery was slashing, sledge-hammery, full of fire and fury,” a reporter for the New York Times informed readers. Under Cannon’s leadership, a small number of conservative Republican committee chairs — as well as the Rules Committee, hand-picked by the speaker and armed with the authority to set terms of debate — dictated everything from process to legislation. When one constituent wrote to his congressman, asking for a copy of the House rules, the member simply mailed back a photograph of Speaker Cannon.

A stalwart conservative who deeply opposed his party’s rising progressive wing, Cannon, the former chairman of the Appropriations Committee, once famously quipped, “You may think my business is to make appropriations, but it is not. It is to prevent their being made.” From his powerful perch in the Capitol, he stymied President Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive domestic agenda, effectively killing bills to institute inheritance and income taxes, workers’ compensation, and an eight-hour workday. He once went so far as to lock the doors of the House chamber to block delivery of a presidential message.

Republicans lost control of the House in 1910 and would not gain it back until 1918. When they did, progressive members of the caucus — and even some conservatives who remembered Cannon’s dictatorial hold on Congress — were eager to ensure that the next speaker would democratize the House and allow individual members greater input over what went into a bill and what bills went to the floor for a vote. The contest for speaker came down to Gillett, whom the progressives deemed an acceptable compromise, and caucus leader James Mann of Illinois, a close ally of Cannon. When it emerged that powerful meatpacking companies had showered Mann with financial “goodies” in return for his continued opposition to health and safety legislation, the caucus swung its support behind Gillett, who in 1919 became speaker.

But Gillett was just a figurehead. Cannon’s “old guard” held enough power to create a “Committee of Committees” that empowered committee chairmen to choose the majority leader and majority whip and to appoint members of standing committees. The new super-committee immediately appointed Mann as majority leader, and for the next four years, the conservatives ruled the House, with Gillett as speaker in name only.

That was the situation in early 1923. The prior November, Republicans lost 77 seats, whittling their once-mighty majority down to seven. Progressives now held enough seats to demand meaningful reforms, and they did. Though Gillett was technically one of their own, reform-minded members of the caucus refused to reorganize the House until they wrested meaningful concessions from Mann and his rearguard colleagues.

Enter Nick Longworth.

Longworth occupied an unusual position. Though ideologically aligned with the party’s conservative wing, in 1906, as a junior congressman, he married Alice Roosevelt — TR’s daughter — in a White House ceremony. Through association with his famous father-in-law, as well as his marriage to Alice, who was then an outspoken progressive, Longworth enjoyed the confidence of most factions within the GOP House caucus. (Few people knew that his opposition to progressive policies caused a major rift between Nick and Alice; so did her longstanding affair with progressive Senator William Borah.) Though a conservative, Longworth joined progressives in 1918 in championing a procedural democratization of House rules and was dismayed when Mann and his allies thwarted these attempts.

Both sides trusted Longworth, a convivial and consultative figure, and he was elected majority leader in 1922. It fell to him to hammer out a compromise. Ultimately, he persuaded a sufficient number of renegades that if they lined up behind Gillett, the House would maintain its current rules for 30 days, while a committee studied the progressives’ procedural demands. While there was no guarantee that the House would adopt them, Longworth assured the progressives a series of up-or-down votes on the floor.

“We are pleased to see that Mr. Longworth now concedes the necessity for such a revision,” the breakaway faction declared in a statement. The next day, they threw their votes to Gillett, who won a third term as speaker. One newspaper observed that “Mr. Longworth has distinguished himself by conducting a superb strategic retreat.”

And a strategic retreat it was. Though Longworth disapproved of the progressives’ proposals, he was true to his word and permitted the House to vote on them. The progressives won key procedural reforms, including a discharge petition process by which a supermajority of members could bypass conservative committee chairmen and move legislation directly to the floor.

Nevertheless, when Longworth himself became speaker in 1925, he punished members who had broken with their party and supported a third-party progressive candidate for president the year before — stripping them of committee assignments and consigning even senior congressmen to the back benches. He used his authority to kill liberal legislation and generally sided with the old guard.

Longworth’s genius was that he was no Joe Cannon. He assiduously cultivated friendships with individual members and even developed a warm relationship with the Democratic minority. He was effective because he excelled at relationships.

The differences between 1923 and 2023 are clear. Then, the renegade members were progressives who supported an expanded role for the federal government in promoting the health, safety and welfare of American citizens. Today, the renegades are ultra-conservatives who aspire to burn the government down to the ground.

But the fight over procedure — over who gets to run the House, and how — is much the same. As in 1923, today’s rebels want to weaken both the speakership and the party’s governing structure and transfer power to individual members.

The question is: Is there a latter-day version of Nick Longworth — an establishment Republican with sufficient good will and political dexterity to negotiate a superb strategic retreat? Can that person dangle a shiny keychain in front of the renegades, but then reclaim power and prerogative for the establishment? Maybe that figure is Steve Scalise, or Elise Stefanik. Perhaps even Jim Jordan.

We’ll soon know the answer.

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NYC, Chicago mayors urge Colorado governor to stop sending asylum seekers to their cities

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot demanded Saturday that Colorado Gov. Jared Polis stop busing asylum seekers to their cities, saying they are "over capacity."

"We respectfully demand that you cease and desist sending migrants to New York City and Chicago," Adams and Lightfoot wrote in a letter to Polis. "Since December of 2022, Chicago and New York City have received hundreds of individuals from Colorado."

Since Aug. 31, Chicago has seen 3,854 asylum seekers arrive from Texas and other states including Colorado, according to the letter. New York City has seen 36,400 asylum seekers arrive as of Jan. 4, the letter states.

The two mayors wrote that they wanted to work with Polis in pressing the federal government for a national solution.

"You must stop busing migrants to Chicago and New York City," the mayors wrote. "In the case of family reunification, let us work together to ensure that people are reconnected with their loved ones, however sending migrants to our cities whose systems are over capacity, where they may struggle to find shelter and other services is wrong and further victimizes these most vulnerable individuals."

The letter comes days after Adams laced into the federal government and Polisover the number of asylum seekers arriving in the city.

Polis told POLITICO in an earlier interview that around 70 percent of migrants arriving in Denver have final destinations elsewhere in the country, including New York, and that his office was working with Denver officials to help them on their way.

The influx of asylum seekers crossing the southern border intensified toward the end of the year as a Trump-era policy known as Title 42 was expected to expire. The Supreme Court, however, blocked that expiration in a ruling last week.

"It is apparent that the influx of asylum seekers has provoked consternation amongst states. Although we share the concerns of accommodating the flood of asylum seekers, overburdening other cities is not the solution," the mayors said.

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