President Joe Biden is reportedly set to announce new executive actions on immigration this week, which should at least theoretically come as a surprise to anyone who has heard him insist — repeatedly — in recent months that he has exhausted his power to unilaterally do anything about the border crisis he’s caused. He and his team have been lying, quite obviously.
He’s done everything he can possibly do, you see, which is why there was no option left but for Congress to pass a flawed bill Biden suddenly decided was essential — after causing, denying and ignoring this historic crisis for years. But it seems that excuse has now met its expiration date.
“If he can do this now, why couldn’t he have done this two months ago while blaming the other party and saying he can’t? Feels like a simple journalism 101 question to ask and demand answers.”
That’s an obvious question that even remotely curious journalists should hammer away at. The White House’s entire blame-shifting deflection play for months has been to claim the president lacked any authority to use executive actions to mitigate the acute problem. They’ve never explained why they couldn’t simply undo any of the dozens of reflexive, ‘not Trump’ actions they took after gaining power (“we rescinded so many it would take so much time to list!”), but their explicit argument has been ‘we’ve done everything that we can.’ Suddenly, though, with the issue near the top of voters’ concerns and an election fast approaching, they’ve found a bunch of authority. What magic.