Top Senate Democrat sees little chance of passing Biden plan for pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants
CNN
Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, the chamber's second ranking Democrat, said Monday that he doesn't believe there's enough support in this Congress to pass a full-blown immigration bill with a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants, a key pillar of President Joe Biden's immigration plan.
"I don't see a means for reaching that," Durbin, the Senate majority whip, told CNN when asked about the pathway to citizenship. "I want it. I think we are much more likely to deal with discreet elements." To move such a plan, the Senate would need 60 votes to overcome a likely GOP filibuster attempt, something that would be difficult given the roiling politics on immigration and ongoing problems at the border that Republicans are pointing to as a demand for far stricter policies. Some Democrats have pushed ending the filibuster in order to move legislation through the narrowly divided chamber, but without a unified Democratic caucus, it would be impossible for the party to change the filibuster rules.Over and over at a confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Democratic senators confronted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about controversial comments they said he had made in the past. And over and over, President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services either denied having said those things or said he wasn’t sure he had said them.
Investigators are intensifying their search into what caused the collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and an Army Black Hawk helicopter, with recovery crews still working to pull wreckage from the Potomac River and initial concerns already raised about the path of at least one of the aircraft.