In a televised address this evening, President Trump is expected to announce his nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is retiring from the bench at the end of July. The upcoming nomination fight could overshadow almost everything in Congress this summer.
Congress returns this week after its July Fourth recess last week.
The Senate on Thursday effectively failed to move forward with any of four immigration proposals put forward today. This included a Republican proposal backed by President Donald Trump that would grant 1.8 million “Dreamers” a path to citizenship and provide $25 billion for a border wall and security improvements.
The action came on a 39-60 vote to limit debate on an amendment by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-IA), to an unrelated bill (HR 2579) related to the Administration’s “Four Pillars” proposal Sixty votes were needed to invoke cloture.
Grassley’s proposal mirrored Trump’s framework to provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers brought to the United States as children in exchange for border security funding. It would also end family-based immigration or “chain migration” and phase out a diversity lottery program. Democrats considered the restrictions on family-based immigration a nonstarter.
The Senate earlier rejected three other immigration proposals, including a bipartisan deal by 16 mostly centrist Senators, calling themselves the “Common Sense Caucus,” that Trump threatened to veto because it did not do enough to limit family-based immigration.
All amendments failed this afternoon.
There was no clear path forward in the House for any of these proposals.
On Monday, a panel of judges in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a version of the Trump Administration’s third travel ban to take effect. The proposed ban, which was originally slated to take effect last month, sought to bar many kinds of travelers from eight countries, including those from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Before itcould take effect, suits were filed against the Administration in the Fourth Circuit and the Ninth Circuit.
In their decision, the judges ruled that the government could implement the ban but not on those individuals with “a bona fide relationship with a person or an entity in the United States.” The appeal in the Fourth Circuit has not yet been heard.
Read more here.
The Department of Homeland Security has released several documents related to this morning’s announcement that DACA is being rescinded. These include:
Earlier this morning, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the DACA program is unconstitutional and is being “rescinded” by the Trump Administration. During his remarks, he added that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has started the “orderly wind down” of the program.
DHS has posted the following memo on the steps that it is taking to end DACA.
Federal Relations will continue to provide updates.