Republican presidential frontrunner compares undocumented migrants to Hannibal Lecter: ‘We don’t want ’em in this country’

Reaching for racist rhetoric bizarre even for him, Donald Trump compared undocumented migrants to the US to Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer and cannibal famously played by Sir Anthony Hopkins in the Oscar-winning 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs.

“They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums,” the former president and probable Republican presidential nominee claimed in an interview with Right Side Broadcasting Network on Monday. “You know, insane asylums, that’s Silence of the Lambs stuff.

Dueling border visits of 2024 contenders 300 miles apart shows that immigration has become a central issue in the White House campaign

It might be seen as the first US presidential debate of 2024. Two candidates and two lecterns but 300 miles – and a political universe – apart.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump spent Thursday at the US-Mexico border , a vivid display of how central the immigration issue has become to the election campaign. Since it is far from certain whether official presidential debates will happen this year, the duelling visits might be as close as it gets.

Joe Biden has promised a humane approach to migration at the border but struggled to deal with a surge in crossings; Donald Trump , however, has long promised to implement draconian policies

• ‘There is no crisis’: Biden will find calm not chaos at Texas border visit

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Joe Biden and Donald Trump will both be in Texas today to visit the US border with Mexico, amid public frustration over undocumented migrants crossing into the country. The visits by the current and former president come after a bargain to implement hardline policies meant to keep migrants out coupled with new military aid to Ukraine and Israel fell apart in Congress, leaving the fate of these national security priorities uncertain. Yet all signs point to continued public anxiety about the state of the southern border – this week, Gallup released polling that showed immigration was the top problem on the public’s mind.

Trump has long promised to implement draconian policies against undocumented migrants, and did so during his presidency. Biden, meanwhile, promised a more humane approach, but struggled to deal with a surge in border crossings that began after he took office, and the Republican attacks that accompanied them. We’ll keep an eye out for what the two men may say when they arrive in Texas. The president gets there this afternoon.

Lloyd Austin , the defense secretary, will discuss the secrecy around his hospitalization during an appearance before the House armed services committee beginning at 10am ET.

The race to replace Mitch McConnell as the Senate’s top Republican will start heating up after he yesterday announced plans to step down. Reports say Trump’s allies would like a rightwing alternative to the three senators thought to be in the running – all of whom are named John.

The government probably will not shut down, after congressional leaders released a deal on funding yesterday. This afternoon, the House will vote on a short-term measure to keep the money flowing, while passage of the broader funding compromise is expected in the near future.

Pramila Jayapal and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accuse president of behaving like Trump, saying ‘we must not buckle on our principles’

Progressive lawmakers and advocates on Thursday pushed back strongly against Joe Biden amid reports that the White House is weighing unilateral action to sharply restrict access to claim asylum at the US-Mexico border – comparing the move to the hardline strategies of Donald Trump when he was president.

The leading progressive congressional representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal criticized the US president for considering such executive action, while legislative efforts are stalled on Capitol Hill amid Republican resistance, after CNN first reported that Biden was considering the unilateral move.

White House considers using various aspects of federal immigration law to unilaterally initiate a crackdown on migrants crossing into the US from Mexico

Joe Biden and his White House team are considering using various aspects of federal immigration law – that were repeatedly utilized by Donald Trump during his hardline, anti-immigrant presidency – to unilaterally initiate a sweeping crackdown on migrants crossing into the US across the Mexico border uninvited, according to multiple reports.

The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that the US president could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks told the Associated Press last night.

Joe Biden is strongly considering taking executive action to crack down on undocumented migrants crossing the US-Mexico border to request shelter in the United States, according to multiple reports.

With Congress stalled on legislative action to reform immigration laws and toughen asylum rules at the southern border, the White House is now reportedly weighing unilateral action.

The US president is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by Donald Trump during his hardline presidency, but Biden would be likely to run into immediate legal challenges from immigrant rights groups and outrage on the left of his party.

Irregular immigration is a huge election year topic and opinion polls show that a strong majority of American voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of migration issues at the US-Mexico border.

Reverberations are widening from the Alabama court decision to declare that frozen embryos used in IVF are human babies and to destroy them would be a crime. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has weighed in behind the ruling but it’s thrown the healthcare sector and would-be parents into a conundrum.

Joe Biden called Russian president Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB” (son of a bitch) during a fundraiser in San Francisco, warning there is always the threat of nuclear conflict but that the existential threat to humanity remains the climate crisis .

Fernando Gonzalez Ortega’s arrest shows clergy has not uprooted all molesters despite reform calls, abuse victims and advocates say

A Roman Catholic priest near the US’s border with Mexico is facing criminal charges on allegations that he sexually molested a child, according to authorities.

Fernando Gonzalez Ortega’s arrest for sexually abusing a minor and of trafficking of persons demonstrates that US Catholic bishops have not yet rooted out all molesters under their command despite reform prompted by the worldwide church’s decades-old clergy molestation scandal, abuse victims and their advocates have argued.

Harold Holzer discusses his new book, a timely study of how the 16th president tackled a perennial American problem

“I’ve had a great time with Lincoln,” Harold Holzer says. “I’ve managed to write all these books.” He has written, co-written or edited more than 50 , most concerning Abraham Lincoln, the 16th US president who steered the union through the civil war, ended slavery in 1863 and was killed two years later. Holzer is a familiar face on television and has curated exhibitions and works for the stage. In 2008, George W Bush gave him the National Humanities Medal.

And yet Holzer is not a full-time historian. Once a Democratic operative, he was also a newspaper reporter and editor and an executive in public TV and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before he became director of Roosevelt House, a public policy institute at Hunter College in New York.

Congress unlikely to approve more funding for Ukraine before end of year after GOP demanded stricter border regulations

The Senate has blocked a supplemental funding bill that included financial aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as provisions aimed at bolstering border security. The vote, which fell mostly along party lines, increases the likelihood that Congress will fail to approve more funding for Ukraine before the end of the year, as the White House has warned that Kyiv is desperately in need of more aid.

The vote was 49 to 51, as every Senate Republican opposed advancing the legislation. Sixty votes were needed to take up the bill. Republicans in both chambers of Congress had demanded stricter border regulations in exchange for their support, and they said the bill failed to meet their requirements.

Court to decide whether to remove them as Greg Abbott and other Republican governors defend militarization of border with Mexico

A federal judge heard arguments on Tuesday about whether state authorities should remove huge buoys installed to stop migrants crossing the river that divides Texas from Mexico.

The court hearing in Austin came a day after Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, and a group of hardline Republican governors gathered on the riverbank to defend local militarization of the US-Mexico border – while also acknowledging that the 1,000ft (305-meter) floating barrier had been adjusted after complaints that it had mostly drifted into Mexican territory.