Vulnerable Democrats warn Biden about reopening asylum – By Jonathan J. Cooper, Anita Snow, Associated Press
The Biden administration's decision to end sweeping asylum limits at the border this May satisfied demands by prominent Democrats eagerly awaiting the end of a program created by Donald Trump in the name of public health.
But it creates thorny political challenges for border-region Democrats who face the likely prospect of an increase in migrants who have for two years been denied the chance to seek asylum in the United States.
In unusually harsh critiques of a president from their own party, some of the congressional Democrats with the toughest reelection prospects are warning that the administration is woefully unprepared to handle the situation. Previous rises in migration have strained law enforcement agencies and nonprofits on the border trying to provide security and shelter.
"This is a crisis, and in my estimation, because of a lack of planning from the administration, it's about to get worse," said Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Kelly and fellow Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema met Wednesday with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to press their case for the administration to better plan and coordinate a response. Last week, they wrote to President Joe Biden urging him to delay ending the pandemic rules until his administration is "completely ready to execute and coordinate a comprehensive plan that ensures a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border."
Sinema and Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn sent a similar letter to Mayorkas on Thursday. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, another top target for Republicans, were critical of the decision Friday.
Migrants have been expelled from the U.S. more than 1.7 million times under public health powers invoked in March 2020 that are designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Biden administration announced plans Friday to end Title 42 authority — named for a 1944 public health law — by May 23. Near the height of the omicron variant in late January, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had extended the order to this week.
The announcement comes after mounting pressure from many prominent Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to end a Trump-era program they cast as an excuse to wriggle out of obligations under U.S. law and international treaty to protect anyone fleeing persecution.
Kelly, Sinema and other skeptical Democrats say the emergency powers must go away eventually, but they say the federal government has failed to develop and share plans to minimize the impact on communities near the border and the local religious and nonprofit groups that help migrants there.
"I've worked really hard to make it very clear to them that this situation is unacceptable, and they seem to get the message," Kelly added. "It's more challenging to get them to turn this into an actionable plan."
Kelly, elected from once-solidly conservative Arizona, is among the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate. He's aggressively targeted by Republicans in what is already a tough year for Democrats who are fighting to hold onto their razor-thin majority in the Senate.
Kelly declined to discuss the impact of the decision on his tough reelection campaign, saying he's focused on his job as senator.
"They know the realities of Arizona and its history, especially as a border state," Mike Noble, a Phoenix-based pollster who used to consult for Republican campaigns but now focuses on nonpartisan polling, said of Arizona's senators. "If they want to maintain their seats, they have to be tough on immigration, and if not, they could find themselves out of a job."
Republicans see rising numbers of migrants as a winning issue with swing voters, particularly in border states like Arizona. An AP-NORC poll conducted in January found just 39% of Americans approve of how Biden is handling immigration. Eighty-seven percent of Republicans said they disapprove, but so did 34% of Democrats.
"The entire country sees the failure of the Biden administration and the laughing matter that this is to Kamala Harris, the self-appointed czar," said Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, the co-chair of the Republican Governors Association, which raises money to elect GOP governors. "They're gonna pay a hell of a price at the ballot box in November. In every state."
In Texas, Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, both of whom represent border districts, joined Republicans in the Texas congressional delegation this week in expressing concern about ending Title 42.
"I did tell the White House, you understand that there will be vulnerable Democrats," Cuellar said. "They acknowledge those concerns. But I think the White House has been under tremendous pressure by the immigration activists. They're very vocal."
Encapsulating internal divisions among Democrats, Cuellar's primary opponent, immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros, said on Twitter that Cuellar's support for keeping Title 42 amounts to "cruel and inhuman treatment of people whose stories and families resemble our own."
Advocates for immigrants and refugees in Arizona say it's long past time for the Biden administration to stop using public health rules to prevent people from claiming asylum.
Arizona's senators seem to be looking at the border issue through a national political lens, said Joanna Williams, executive director of the Kino Border Initiative, which works in the twin border towns of Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico.
"They are underestimating Arizonans," Williams said. "We really have a community of hospitality that can arise to the occasion and help people. The senators need to listen to what people here are saying. This isn't Texas."
Alex Miller, director of asylum seekers and families for the International Rescue Committee in Arizona, said with coronavirus positivity rates among new arrivals now at less than 1% "the justification for closing the border is gone."
"There is just no excuse for denying people fleeing from terrible abuse from getting asylum," she said. "We have a moral responsibility to help these people."
New Mexico launches cannabis sales within Texans' reach – By Morgan Lee, Cedar Attanasio, Associated Press
New Mexico brought recreational marijuana sales to the doorstep of Texas, the largest prohibition state, as the movement toward broad legalization sweeps up even more of the American West.
Anyone 21 and older can purchase up to 2 ounces of marijuana — enough to roll about 60 joints or cigarettes — or comparable amounts of liquid concentrates and edible treats. First-day sales reached about $2 million by early Friday evening.
Sales surpassed $2 million on the first day of legal recreational cannabis sales. That's according to New Mexico Political Report, citing figures from the Cannabis Control Division, a division of the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department.
New Mexico has nurtured a medical marijuana program since 2007 under tight restrictions. Friday's launch still represents a sea change for local law enforcement, taxation officials, commercial growers and residents who thought full-blown legal access to pot would never come.
At a Santa Fe dispensary, customers said they were thrilled to buy openly and cut black market ties.
"When they legalized it here, I didn't need my guy anymore," said Devin Killoy, a painter and handyman in clothes speckled with white.
Antonio Rodriguez, a 38-year-old grocery worker, said he was content to pay taxes on recreational cannabis: "I want everyone to be legit, even if it's more expensive."
Would-be marijuana farmers are bidding for water rights and learning to raise the crops, as experienced medical cannabis producers ramp up production and add retail showrooms.
New Mexico is among 18 states, including neighboring Arizona and Colorado as well as the entire West coast, that have legalized pot for recreational use, with implications for cannabis tourism and conservative Texas, where legalization efforts have made little headway.
A marijuana decriminalization bill won U.S. House approval Friday, but is unlikely to pass the Senate. Republicans said potent pot is impairing users, and characterized marijuana as a gateway to opioids and other dangerous substances.
In Clovis, a high plains New Mexico town of about 40,000 residents less than 10 miles from Texas, Earl Henson and two business partners pooled resources to convert a former gun shop and shooting range into a cannabis store and companion growing room at a Main Street address.
"I can't explain how happy I am," said Henson, a former real estate agent who says his affection for marijuana was a burden. He is harvesting the first crop for a store called Earl and Tom's. "These cities that are near Texas, for the next two years it is going to change their economies."
In the state capital of Santa Fe, marijuana is on sale across from the city's newly built visitors center on a block lined with galleries, clothing boutiques and restaurants.
LeRoy Roybal, manager of a downtown Santa Fe store for producer and dispensary chain Minerva Canna, hopes pot stigma quickly fades.
"We're liberating a lot of hearts and souls," he said. "It's going to be like getting a cup of joe at Starbucks."
Supportive lawmakers hope legalization will eliminate black markets, boost employment and provide stable new sources of government income.
Consumers initially will rely heavily on 35 legacy marijuana businesses that took root over the past 15 years. Regulators have issued more than 230 new marijuana business licenses to growers, retailers and manufacturing facilities for extracts and edibles.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who toured a busy store Friday, says legalization responds to popular demands and is generating small business opportunities.
"This is what consumers want," said Lujan Grisham, up for reelection in November. "We have the potential for 11,000 more workers, jobs in places where young people can work and stay, like Torrance County and Texico and Tucumcari and Raton."
Local governments can't ban cannabis businesses entirely, though they can restrict locations and hours. Public consumption carries a $50 fine.
Business licenses for cannabis cafes or lounges haven't been requested yet — leaving people to indulge at home or designated hotels, casinos and cigar shops.
In Sunland Park, flanked by the Rio Grande and U.S.-Mexico border fencing, Mayor Javier Perea says marijuana retailers can set up across the small city of just 17,000 residents. He said about 30 businesses have sought authorization, banking on tourism from nearby El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.
Perea hopes the industry creates economic opportunity and tax income to bolster city services. Local governments will receive a minority share of the state's 12% excise tax on recreational marijuana sales, along with a share of additional sales taxes. Medical cannabis is tax-free.
"The one thing that we are going to struggle with is, we are going to run out of buildings" for new businesses, he said.
Legal experts warn that New Mexico customers who return home to other states could risk criminal penalties, arrest and incarceration — most notably in Texas.
Paul Armento, deputy director of the drug policy group NORML, said Texas is among the leading states for marijuana-possession arrests, and that having concentrates there is punishable by up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Marijuana possession, use or sale also remains federally illegal — a standard that applies across vast tracts of federal land and Indian Country in New Mexico.
New Mexico's cannabis industry, still reliant on cash to avoid running afoul of federal law, is gaining access to banking services through an alternative certification system for credit unions and banks supported by state attorneys general.
The state also plans to underwrite $5 million in low-interest loans to small cannabis businesses that can't access traditional credit.
Lawmakers have sought to reverse harm from marijuana criminalization on minority communities and poor households by automatically dismissing or erasing past cannabis convictions, encouraging social and economic diversity in employment and reducing financial barriers for startup businesses.
The state's micro-business license to cultivate up to 200 plants for a flat $1,000 fee is attracting first-time commercial growers, such as recently retired U.S. Marine Kyle Masterson and wife Ivy, a Hispanic Army veteran with business consulting experience. They are raising three children and making a mid-life career shift into cannabis.
The Mastersons, residents of suburban Rio Rancho, searched more remote areas for an affordable building to cultivate high-grade marijuana under lights, settling on a vacant former movie theater in tiny Cuba, a village near the Jemez Mountains.
"It felt right, it felt good and out of a vision of what we could do," said Kyle Masterson, who served in four combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. "We're used to working out of austere environments without much direction and doing our best."
Judge upholds Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking conviction – By Tom Hays, Larry Neumeister, Associated Press
A U.S. judge refused to throw out Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking conviction Friday, despite a juror's failure to disclose before the trial began that he'd been a victim of childhood sexual abuse.
Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted in December of helping the millionaire Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse several teenage girls.
U.S. Judge Alison J. Nathan declined to order a new trial weeks after questioning the juror under oath in a New York courtroom about why he failed to disclose his personal history as an abuse survivor on a questionnaire during the jury selection process.
The juror had said he "skimmed way too fast" through the questionnaire and did not intentionally give the wrong answer to a question about sex abuse.
"I didn't lie in order to get on this jury," he said.
In an opinion certain to trigger a higher court appeal, Nathan said the juror's failure to disclose his prior sexual abuse during the jury selection process was highly unfortunate, but not deliberate.
The judge also concluded the juror "harbored no bias toward the defendant and could serve as a fair and impartial juror."
Had the juror answered the questions correctly, Maxwell's lawyers had said they potentially could have objected to the man's presence on the jury on the grounds that he might not be fair to a person accused of a similar crime.
The U.S. attorney's office declined comment Friday. Messages were left with Maxwell's attorneys.
Maxwell, 60, was convicted of sex trafficking and other charges after a monthlong trial that featured testimony from four women who said she played a role in setting them up for abuse by Epstein.
Epstein killed himself in August 2019 as he awaited trial at a federal jail in New York on related sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell says she's innocent.
After the trial's conclusion, the juror, identified in court papers only as Juror No. 50, gave interviews with several media outlets describing deliberations, and disclosing that he'd been abused as a child. He said he persuaded some fellow jurors that a victim's imperfect memory of abuse doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Potential jurors in the case had been were required to fill out a 50-page questionnaire including a question that asked: "Have you or a friend or family member ever been the victim of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, or sexual assault?"
The juror checked "No."
The juror said in one of the interviews that he didn't remember being asked that question, which was No. 48 on the form.
Defense lawyers for Maxwell asked the judge to immediately order a new trial, but she said she could not do so without questioning the juror.
After Nathan questioned the juror in early March, lawyers on both sides submitted written arguments. Prosecutors said the juror made an "honest mistake" and that it was "crystal clear" that Maxwell received a fair trial.
Maxwell's lawyers disagreed.
"Excusing Juror 50's false answers because he believes his concealed history of sexual abuse did not affect his ability to serve as a fair and impartial juror does not satisfy the appearance of justice," they argued. "Only a new trial would."
But Nathan rejected that reasoning, writing that the juror's claims that he remained impartial toward Maxwell rang true.
When questioned about it, he answered "frankly and honestly, even when the answers he gave were the cause of personal embarrassment and regret," she said. "His tone, demeanor and responsiveness gave no indication of false testimony."
NY bail law fight emblematic of Democrats' debate on crime – By Michelle L. Price, Associated Press
It's hard to find anyone on board with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's plan to toughen the state's bail laws, two years after they were retooled to keep people from being jailed because they are poor.
Reform advocates say the system should be left alone. Police leaders and even some of the governor's fellow Democrats say the proposal doesn't go far enough to roll back what they consider soft treatment of criminals.
The debate over bail in New York is emblematic of a fight taking place elsewhere in the U.S.
A spike in violence during the COVID-19 pandemic has Democrats eager to show they're tough on crime ahead of this year's midterm elections, from the White House on down, but the party is struggling to find a common message with progressives pushing the need for police reform and moderates focusing instead on rising crime rates.
Hochul's attempt to stake out a middle ground has provoked criticism from all points of the political spectrum.
"I think that's a sign that you're in the right place," she said of her plan in March. The proposal would continue to limit instances in which people would be required to post bail, but make more crimes eligible for detention and give judges more discretion to consider a defendant's criminal history.
New York changed its bail laws in response to public outcry over prisoners accused of minor crimes being held in jail for extended periods while awaiting trial because they couldn't afford to pay bail — a system where a person puts up cash as a guarantee that they will return to court.
The state's answer was to eliminate cash bail for many nonviolent offenses — a reform that frustrated some law enforcement officials who warned that people released back to the streets would commit new crimes.
But with violent crime up across America, crime rates have been an easy target and longstanding bogeyman for Republicans, who have wasted no opportunity to make it a campaign issue in races around the U.S., including governor's races in Illinois, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
Democrats, bracing for tough midterm elections, are eager to prove they're responding, in some cases emphasizing efforts to provide more money to police departments while making scant mention of reforms they embraced a few years ago.
In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz is up for reelection and has been touring the state promoting his $300 million public safety plan. He has not focused on the reform measures he signed after police killed George Floyd in the state almost two years ago.
Wisconsin's Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who is also running for reelection this year, has been hammered by Republicans over crime and like Hochul, is facing bipartisan pressure to toughen bail laws.
A record-setting spate of homicides in Albuquerque has ratcheted up pressure on New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, including from some fellow Democrats. The first-term governor has joined efforts to ban pretrial release for certain violent crimes, though some legislators in her own party have balked at rolling back reforms that largely ended money bail.
President Joe Biden in his budget this week highlighted funding for police — for body cameras, crime prevention strategies, drug treatment, mental health and criminal justice reform.
This winter, he made a trip to New York City to stand with the city's new mayor, Eric Adams, a former police captain.
"The answer is not to defund the police," Biden said. "It is to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be protectors and know the community."
In comparison, while campaigning for president, Biden instead spoke more about criminal justice reforms and the need to reverse some of the toughest measures of the 1994 crime bill he helped write.
In New York, the fierce debate over bail has been one factor that caused legislators to miss an April 1 deadline to pass a new state budget.
Hochul initially said she didn't want to touch the state's bail laws until she saw data indicating the reforms were responsible for a crime spike. Democrats who control the state Legislature likewise said they were uninterested in unwinding reforms.
A recent report from New York City's fiscal watchdog found that the percentage of people who committed new crimes after being released from jail hasn't budged since the bail reform measure passed.
But now, some Democrats have joined Republicans in calling for a repeal. They include U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi of Long Island, who is challenging Hochul in the governor's race; Adams, who has made cracking down on crime in New York City a top priority; and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has started criticizing the bail reforms he signed as he contemplates running for office again.
At some point in recent weeks, Hochul changed her mind and drafted a plan to tweak the law. She avoided talking about it publicly, though, for days after it leaked to the media.
Nearly a week later, Hochul defended the plan in an op-ed, saying that while the state's bail laws were not the main cause of a rise in shootings during the pandemic, they needed to be changed.
Democrat Jumaane Williams, New York City's public advocate who is also challenging Hochul in the governor's race, said the governor "should show courage and leadership on this issue, or at the very least pick a side between fearmongering and facts."
It's unclear if Democrats controlling the statehouse will meet the governor somewhere in the middle as they continue negotiating, but the pressure has ratcheted up in recent days.
New York City's police commissioner visited Albany to press for reforms. Defenders of the current law were arrested for demonstrating outside the governor's office and one lawmaker, Democratic Assembly Member Latrice Walker of Brooklyn, was on day nine Thursday of a hunger strike to protest any rollbacks as negotiations continued.