
Biden turns storm devastation into disaster-zone sales pitch for legacy bills
CNN
President Joe Biden has a new and aggressive sales pitch for the ambitious domestic agenda that would define his place in history.
He is seizing on destruction wreaked by Hurricane Ida and its remnants to push for infrastructure and spending bills packed with funds to fight the climate crisis that could cement his legacy -- and which sit on a knife-edge on Capitol Hill. Trips by presidents to disaster zones are traditionally marked by familiar rituals, in which they offer a consoling shoulder to victims and photo-ops show them in charge while vowing support and government relief cash for local politicians. Biden did all that in New York and New Jersey Tuesday -- his administration has asked Congress for $24 billion for Ida relief and for victims of other recent weather disasters and storms. And he strolled streets filled with piles of debris of the storm, which slammed into the Gulf Coast last week and traced a destructive track across the country before swamping the Northeast.
Hundreds of Border Patrol officers are mobilizing to bolster the president’s crackdown on immigration in snowy Minneapolis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday, as tensions between federal law enforcement and local counterparts flare after an ICE-involved shooting last week left a mother of three dead.

Nationwide outcry over the killing of a Minneapolis woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent spilled into the streets of cities across the US on Saturday, with protesters demanding the removal of federal immigration authorities from their communities and justice for the slain Renee Good.

Since early December the US Coast Guard and other military branches have boarded and taken control of five oil ships that had previously been sanctioned, all either accused of being in the process of transporting Venezuelan oil or on their way to take on oil that has been subject to US sanctions since President Donald Trump began a pressure campaign against the leadership of the country during his first term.










