Third day without House speaker after McCarthy blocked by Republican rebels – live | House of Representatives

President Joe Biden announced new border enforcement actions on Thursday, according to a statement released by the White House.

“These measures will expand and expedite legal pathways for orderly migration and result in new consequences for those who fail to use those legal pathways. They also draw on the success of the Venezuela initiative, which launched in October 2022 and has resulted in a dramatic drop in the number of Venezuelan nationals attempting to enter the United States unlawfully,” it said.

The Biden administration said that new consequences will be imposed onto individuals who attempt to cross the border unlawfully, including increasing the use of expedited removal.

“Effective immediately, individuals who attempt to enter the United States without permission, do not have a legal basis to remain, and cannot be expelled pursuant to Title 42 will be increasingly subject to expedited removal to their country of origin and subject to a five-year ban on reentry,” the White House said.

The Biden administration will also expand the parole process for Venezuelans to Nicaraguans, Haitians and Cubans. Up to 30,000 individuals from these countries who have an eligible sponsor and pass venting and background checks can come to the US each month for a period of two years and receive worth authorization.

Meanwhile, Mexico will also be accepting the return of 30,000 individuals per month from these four countries who cross the border unlawfully.

The Biden administration said that it also plans to welcome up to 20,000 refugees from Latin American and Caribbean countries during 2023 and 2024, in turn “putting the United States on pace to more than triple refugee admissions from the western hemisphere this fiscal year alone.”

There is now talk that Joe Biden will make his first visit as US president to the US-Mexico border, next week, where fraught immigration laws are causing misery for migrants crossing into the US hoping to seek asylum.

Republicans have been making political hay out of the policy mess and the dysfunctional immigration system, as the number of migrants crossing the border unlawfully are at record levels.

While human rights advocates decry some of the anti-immigration strategies that are essentially being carried over from the Trump administration, and pro-immigration advocates argue that more immigration is very good for US society and business, Biden wants to talk the language of security.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports the following:

The United States plans to accept up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela under a program paired with expulsions of people from those countries caught at the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. and Mexican officials said.

The expanded humanitarian program would build on a policy launched in October that allowed thousands of Venezuelans to enter by air if they applied from abroad and could demonstrate they had a U.S. sponsor, two U.S. and one Mexican official said on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Biden did not reply when asked which city he planned to visit although the news website Axios later reported he would visit El Paso, Texas, a border city that declared a state of emergency in December amid high levels of migrant arrivals.

Biden is scheduled to travel to Mexico City on Jan. 9 and 10 for the North American Leaders’ Summit, where he will meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Biden, who took office in January 2021, has struggled operationally and politically with record numbers of migrants caught crossing the US-Mexico border, and migration is expected to be on the agenda at the meeting.

Lauren Gambino

“Well, it’s Groundhog Day – again,” said Congresswoman Kat Cammack of Florida, nominating Republican leader Kevin McCarthy for speaker of the House on the sixth ballot.

But as he had five times before, McCarthy suffered yet another humiliating defeat at the hands of 20 hard-right Republican holdouts determined to block his rise.

McCarthy vowed to forge ahead. But it was clear Republicans were growing weary of the once-in-a-century spectacle that has already tainted the opening days of their new House majority. Despite three rousing speeches endorsing his candidacy on Wednesday, his prospects seemed dimmer than ever.

Congresswoman Victoria Spartz, a Republican from Indiana, changed her vote to “present” after supporting McCarthy on the first three rounds of ballots. She implored her party to “stop wasting everyone’s time” with endless rounds of balloting that were not changing any minds.

“Let cooler, more rational heads prevail,” pleaded Congressman Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio and a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, in a speech urging support for McCarthy.

Moments later, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, another member of the Freedom Caucus and a conservative rabble-rouser from Colorado, called on her “favorite president” – Donald Trump – to level with McCarthy. Trump, she said, should tell the Republican leader: “Sir, you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw.”

But McCarthy remained hopeful that a third day of balloting would yield a different result.

Read more of this report here.

California Republican representative Kevin McCarthy is about to enter the third day of voting and negotiations as he continues his battle to succeed Democrat Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.

He needs 218 votes, a majority of the House, to clinch the post and although his party holds the majority since their victory in last year’s midterm elections, McCarthy is being obstructed by up to 20 right-wing Republicans who either don’t want him as speaker or want to wring enough concessions out of him that they have huge power as rank and file lawmakers.

McCarthy has now failed to get a majority or even get closer to it in a total so far of six rounds of voting, on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Nothing like this has happened in the House for a century – previous speakers got their ducks in a row, more or less, to ensure they were elected in the first round of voting.

The obstruction to McCarthy is being led by far-right GOP representatives, from the group calling themselves the Freedom Caucus. Even though they are ostensibly ultra fans of Donald Trump, staunch “Maga Republicans” (Trump’s Make America Great Again presidential campaign slogan that now stands for his base of most loyal supporters), they are shunning the former president’s call for the House GOPers to support McCarthy for speaker.

Without a speaker, no other House business can commence, including swearing in its own members.

Voting is expected to continue today, McCarthy is negotiating with his own rebels and so far has refused to back down and allow someone else from his side, such as right-winger Steve Scalise, to take his place as frontrunner for the speakership.

Good morning, US politics live blog readers, as we set out on another day of high drama in Washington. Congressional Republicans narrowly won control of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections but have failed to agree amongst themselves who to elect as Speaker of the House, after two days of voting rounds where Kevin McCarthy did not get the necessary majority.

Stick with us as we cover today’s developments as they happen. Here is what’s on the political agenda:

• The House will go back into session at 12pm ET today and the battle to become Speaker will resume. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has now been through six rounds of voting since Tuesday afternoon and failed to win a majority despite the party having control of the chamber. This is unprecedented in at least a century of US politics.

• Kevin McCarthy is expected once again to hold frantic meetings this morning prior to the House session. The California Republican is going through an epic political trauma that is not only bad for him but makes the Republicans look useless as civil war rages in the party.

• No other House business can begin until the chamber has a speaker. That means lawmakers have not been sworn in for the 118th Congress that began on January 3, including all the brand new representatives elected for the first time in the midterms.

• McCarthy is still negotiating, hoping to offer enough concessions to the 19 or 20 rightwing rebels on his own side who refuse to vote for him. With the narrow GOP majority he can only afford to lose four GOP votes if the Democrats all continue turning up and voting for their guy, House minority leader and New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who took over the position from former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

• Elsewhere, at 11.15am ET, Joe Biden, accompanied by his vice-president Kamala Harris, is due to make remarks on the situation at the US-Mexico border, where confusion and tension about amid the upholding of the public health measure Title 42 that continues to act as a harsh anti-immigration tool and is causing misery for migrants on both sides of the border. Notably, instead of billing the remarks as focusing on humanitarian issues and improving the US’s dysfunctional immigration legal system, the White House has billed the remarks as being about “border security and enforcement.”