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During the Supreme Court hearing that will likely determine whether or not Donald Trump is tried before the next presidential election over his attempt to steal the last one, Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked a question that should alarm everybody.

Speaking of President Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, Kavanaugh correctly noted that it was “very controversial in the moment” and probably why Ford lost the 1976 presidential election. Then Kavanaugh claimed that the pardon is “Now looked upon as one of the better decisions in presidential history, I think by most people.”

Actually, there’s a good argument that it was one of the worst. If nothing else, it has allowed Trump and the MAGA Supreme Court to stall the prosecution of his coup attempt and gotten us into the exact pickle we are in today.

Journalist Garrett M. Graff wrote in a New York Times column that there’s “clear evidence” Ford’s pardon “seems to have paralyzed a half-century of prosecutors.” He noted that while Department of Justice policy makes presidents immune from prosecution while they’re in office, the pardon has made them “politically untouchable” after they leave the White House. As an example, he cites Robert Mueller’s report that investigators could not conclude there had been no criminal conduct from Trump, yet no prosecutor has picked up the Russia investigation since. “Everyone seems afraid to be the first to make the first move and break the Nixon precedent,” he wrote. Graff went on to suggest that if Nixon had gone to prison, and Trump knew he could very well have met the same fate for breaking the law, he may well have behaved differently.

Or maybe not. But at least Trump probably would not have been able to delay his trial by claiming he’s immune from prosecution and have that seriously considered by the Supreme Court.

During Thursday’s hearing on Trump’s immunity issue, Kavanaugh used the Nixon pardon to suggest that Trump deserves at least some immunity. It signaled Kavanaugh wants to grant Trump a defacto victory either by causing a delay while the high court determines how much immunity he should be granted or telling the trial court to figure it out, thus opening the door to further delays by Trump’s inevitable appeals.

Kavanaugh argued that if Ford had been subject to prosecution, he might not have granted that pardon because he would have had the worry of being investigated for obstruction of justice “on the theory that I’m interfering with the investigation of Richard Nixon.” That’s probably another good argument for why Trump’s immunity claim should be immediately denied, but I digress.

Of course, there’s no sure way to know how the Supreme Court will rule. But this was not a good omen.

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After 15 months of trying to pull a Biden family crime spree out of thin air, lead impeachment zealot James Comer has watched his dreams of MAGA glory crumble into dust. Comer, the House Oversight Committee chair, told a Republican colleague that he’s ready to be “done with” the whole fiasco, according to CNN. 

“Comer is hoping Jesus comes so he can get out. He is fed up,” another GOP lawmaker said.

There’s just so much humiliation one man can take, I guess. The effort by Comer and co-zealot Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee, to find dirt on President Joe Biden and his son Hunter has ended up with the two coated in mud. It’s become so pathetic that even Sean Hannity has stopped propping it up.

But how did it come to this? 

Start with the fact that a full year ago, even Comer had to admit that there wasn’t any evidence of Biden crimes. But that didn’t stop him and Jordan from plowing on and making it all more ridiculous. They brought in IRS whistleblowers who produced nothing but hot air. The biggest news story to come out of that hearing was extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s porn stunt, displaying nude photos of Hunter Biden—not the usual C-SPAN fare.

Despite those early fiascos, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy decided he’d try to save his own bacon by making the impeachment effort official. (The extent to which that didn’t work is a whole other story.) The first official hearing proved to be another complete farce. 

“Through the course of the day, not only did Republicans showcase their lack of interest in facts, they also demonstrated that they are absolutely terrified of anything that looks like a fact witness,” Daily Kos’ Mark Sumner wrote.

It didn’t get any better for Comer and Jordan. They were played by Hunter Biden when he showed up to testify on camera despite their efforts to do it in secret. Comer still plowed on with the hearings only to be embarrassed again in the infamous Russian mole and sawdust debacle. He then tried moving the goalposts, suggesting that impeachment wasn’t their goal after all. Rather, they were gathering evidence for future prosecutions in a would-be Trump administration, Comer claimed.

That was after they tried to pivot the story to a classified documents scandal, featuring a report on Biden’s old age, which was another total flop. They even tried to impeach a Cabinet secretary in another debasing disaster for Republicans.

All of which has served primarily to turn extremist Republicans against Comer for not working hard enough at impeaching Biden. 

“I feel like this was slow-rolled, and it’s been very frustrating for me as a new member because I feel like there’s way more that we could have done, and it just hasn’t been done in a timely fashion,” a frustrated GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna told CNN.

“I don’t even want to talk to you. … If you don’t think they were influence-peddling, there’s nothing to say. My God,” Comer responded to CNN. 

Officially, a House Oversight Committee spokesperson says that “the impeachment inquiry is ongoing, and impeachment is 100% still on the table.” Uh-huh.

All Comer has gotten out of this is the animosity of colleagues and showing himself to be a fool in front of a national audience. Oh, and the unearthing of a few of his own little scandals. 

The perfectly hilarious cherry on top of all of this? The Kentucky Republican’s dream of redemption.

“Comer, a five-term congressman, has another matter on his mind: ambitions to run for higher office one day,” CNN reports, “including potentially running for governor, according to lawmakers who have spoken to him.” 

Sure, dude. Sure.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.

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For those rightly concerned about the timing of Donald Trump’s federal Jan. 6 trial, Thursday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court gave plenty of reasons for worry. Moreover, the court’s conservative majority seemed inclined to define presidential immunity from prosecution in a way that could undermine some of the charges in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment.

Much of the court’s questioning went well beyond the immediate issue of Trump’s immunity for the criminal acts alleged. The court’s conservatives focused almost exclusively on abstract questions of immunity for future presidents rather than the charges against the former president. Even the more moderate members of the conservative majority seemed preoccupied with the difficulty of drawing the line between official and unofficial acts, assuming that the former deserve extensive protection from prosecution.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett read a litany of acts from the indictment and asked Trump’s lawyer whether they were official or not. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. indicated that the line between public and private presidential conduct is hard to draw, saying he was concerned that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals “did not get into a focused consideration of what acts we’re talking about or what documents we’re talking about.”

At best, the court’s questioning augurs an opinion setting out general principles of immunity and necessitating a remand to the lower courts to apply the justices’ guidance. As Justice Neil M. Gorsuch put it, “We’re writing a rule for the ages.” That would add further delay to a schedule that already seems to be putting a trial shortly before or beyond the November election.

And that wasn’t even the most serious implication for Smith’s case.

The conservative justices’ questioning of Michael Dreeben, the special counsel’s well-regarded Supreme Court specialist, was sharp and fast. And their questions to both sides suggested they might conclude that inquiring into a president’s motives for certain acts would violate the constitutional separation of powers. That would point to a decision requiring the courts to set aside all evidence of a president’s malign intent.

If motive has to be disregarded in determining whether the president’s actions are official or not, it could undermine much of the case against Trump — including, for example, his brazen attempt to strong-arm the Department of Justice into falsely informing Georgia officials that the state’s election results were flawed.

Such a limitation might even provide immunity in the hypothetical extreme proposed during arguments before the D.C. Circuit: a president ordering Navy Seals to assassinate a political opponent. The force of that example is that it shows how an official act could have a patently malign motive.

As Justice Elena Kagan interjected in reference to the implications of her colleagues’ questions and Trump lawyer John Sauer’s response: “You’re asking us to say that a president is entitled … for total personal gain, to use the trappings of his office.” Exactly right.

Gorsuch threw another lifeline to Trump’s lawyer, asking whether he would accept a definition of official acts like the one in the D.C. Circuit’s opinion in Blassingame vs. Trump, which concerned presidential immunity from civil suits. That case drew a distinction between Trump’s acts as an officeholder and as an office-seeker. Applying it to the criminal case would likely immunize Trump for some of the conduct in the indictment, in particular his allegedly corrupt use of the Justice Department, though he would presumably remain on the hook for political conduct such as organizing false electors.

It got worse for the prosecution. More or less out of nowhere, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh suggested that one of the charges against Trump, conspiracy to defraud the United States, relies on a statute that is so broad and vague that it could be misused by future prosecutors against future presidents. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. jumped in to second the suggestion, taking up a criticism of the prosecution that Trump’s lawyers hadn’t even raised.

Since the court just heard arguments in a separate case that could invalidate two of the four charges against Trump — those under a federal obstruction statute — an opinion invalidating another charge could force Smith to soldier on with only one remaining charge against Trump, conspiracy against rights. That charge relies on the electorate’s right to have votes counted, which is a somewhat indirect approach to accountability for Trump’s pernicious post-election conduct.

That’s not all. Kavanaugh also raised the Trump team’s suggestion that perhaps Congress should have to make a “clear statement” of intent to apply any criminal law to the president, a stratagem the court previously conjured to deal with separation-of-powers concerns. Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that it would in effect excuse a president for violations of most of the federal code.

Dreeben hardly had time to make his points until the end of the nearly three-hour argument, when Kagan gave him some room to do so. Kagan also asked the special counsel’s representative a friendly question getting at the possibility that the court could limit its decision to the charges against Trump to permit the trial to go forward expeditiously. But the odds that the court will take that guidance now look extremely slim.

Going into Thursday’s showdown, the critical question was whether the court’s opinion would permit the trial to go forward without further proceedings. In the wake of the arguments, that seems more unlikely than ever. Indeed, the court’s questions raised the additional alarming prospect that it could confer the kind of expansive presidential immunity that would further weaken the constitutional principle that a president is not a king.

Harry Litman is the host of the “Talking Feds” podcast and the Talking San Diego speaker series. @harrylitman

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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan briefly stunned John Sauer, Donald Trump’s attorney, by asking if the president could stage a coup.

The confrontation came Thursday during oral arguments before the high court about whether Trump enjoys presidential immunity for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump is fighting charges of election interference from special counsel Jack Smith.

Sauer repeatedly argued that the president could not be charged unless he was first impeached and convicted by the Senate.

“Well, he’s gone,” Kagan proposed. “Let’s say this president who ordered the military to stage a coup, he’s no longer president. He wasn’t impeached. He couldn’t be impeached. But he ordered the military to “That’s immune?” Kagan pressed.

“I think it would depend on the circumstances whether it was an official act,” Sauer said cautiously. “If it were an official act, again, he would have to be impeached…stage a coup, and you’re saying that’s an official act.”

“What does that mean: depend on the circumstances?” Kagan asked. “He is the commander-in-chief. He talks to his generals all the time, and he told the generals, I don’t feel like leaving office. I want to stage a coup. Is that immune?”

Sauer argued there was a “very low risk” of the president staging a coup.

“If it’s an official act, is it an official act?” Kagan asked again.

“If it’s an official act, it’s impeachment,” Sauer stated.

“Is it an official act?” Kagan demanded.

“On the way you’ve described that hypothetical, it could well be,” Sauer remarked. “I just don’t know.”

“That answer sounds to me as though it’s like, yeah, under my test, it’s an official act, but that sure sounds bad, doesn’t it?” Kagan observed.

“Well, it certainly sounds very bad, and that’s why the framers have a whole series of structural checks that have successfully, for the last 234 years, prevented that very kind of extreme hypothetical,” Trump’s attorney said.

The question was met with silence from Trump’s normally fast-talking lawyer.

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Courtesy of TP USA, Killer Kyle Rittenhouse has been doing a tour of campuses to talk about something, but no one was sure quite what it was he wanted to speak about because he kept getting run off of campus, time and time again.

But when Killer Kyle went to Kent State – the most offensive of his stops thus far – the campus cooperated by shutting down the voices of the students that actually go there in favor of the emotionally stunted social outcast. And thus, the purpose of his campus tours was revealed and, honestly, if it wasn’t so funny, it would be just sad.

Kyle was trying to recruit students to join in in Hitler’s Youth, er, I mean, TP USA. He was also pushing the usual NRA talking points on why we should all go back to the 1800s and the wild, wild west days:

At Kent State, Rittenhouse implored students to fight to be allowed to carry guns at school.

“We have these blue boxes that are on the campus – we’ve all seen them, you push a button, it calls the police, and you get connected to a dispatcher,” he said. “How long does it take a cop to show up, though? When somebody is trying to kidnap you or somebody is threatening your life, is that the quickest option to be able to protect yourself?”

He encouraged students to join conservative groups like Turning Point USA and said elected officials don’t care about them.

“What makes me really scared, and I get really upset that people, especially young campus students, aren’t allowed to carry firearms, just because I’m scared that what happens if these Hamas, Palestinian terrorists come to the U.S. and try to attack us?” Rittenhouse said. “Are we supposed to be left defenseless? Are you supposed to be left defenseless because you’re not allowed to have a gun in your dormitory?”

Does Killer Kyle understand that his presence on campus is a greater threat than any number of imgainary Hamas terrorists running around targeting accounting students.
We all know that Killer Kyle killed two men and injured a third in an effort to kill him. I have not heard of any reports of Hamas taking credit for wiping out an Accounting 101 class.

And while we’re talking about being a danger, please, for pity’s sake, surrender your dog before you hurt or kill it too.

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For decades, the abortion wars have centered on whether a woman should be able to decide when and if she has a child. But with increasingly strict restrictions on reproductive rights being enacted across the United States, these debates are charting new, unfamiliar territory — medical care for women who have had miscarriages.

Up to one in four women who know they are pregnant will miscarry, according to the National Library of Medicine. Although most miscarriages resolve naturally, some require medical intervention that is similar to an elective abortion.

Democrats, who believe abortion led to strong outings in the 2020 and 2022 elections, are now showcasing the dangers of miscarriages as another reason to support abortion rights — and Democrats.

A seven-figure April ad buy in battleground states by President Biden’s reelection campaign highlights the story of a happily married pregnant Texas woman named Amanda Zurawski.

“At 18 weeks, Amanda’s water broke and she had a miscarriage,” the ad reads, with white lettering against a black background. “Because Donald Trump killed Roe v Wade, Amanda was denied standard medical care to prevent an infection, an abortion.”

The 60-second ad concludes “Donald Trump did this,” after showing Zurawski and her husband, Josh, looking through a box of items that they had bought in anticipation of the birth of their first child, including a baby book and the outfit they planned to dress her in to bring her home from the hospital.

The Biden campaign launched this ad a day before the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating back to 1864, a ruling that former President Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee, Arizona Senate hopeful Kari Lake and other Republicans have struggled to explain as they simultaneously celebrate the U.S. Supreme Court overturning a federal right to abortion.

But the ad also reflects a reframing of how abortion is discussed as a moral issue. Democrat Bill Clinton famously said the procedure should be “safe, legal and rare” during his successful 1992 presidential bid.

But now even liberals say the emphasis on “rare” failed to recognize the medical necessity of some abortions, such as those performed after a miscarriage. Clinton’s framing also carried a connotation of shame for a woman seeking an abortion, whatever the reason.

“That framework was harmful and perpetuates stigma,” said Kelly Baden, vice president of public policy at the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research organization that supports abortion access. “Every situation is complex and every situation is unique. People would rather err on the side of having government stay out of it all together rather than have politicians practice medicine.”

“Everyone knows someone who has been pregnant or loves a pregnant person,” she added. “To think that somebody’s health might not be protected even in a wanted pregnancy really cuts through some of the stigma abortion has had to face in the last 50 years.”

Evangelical leader Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, counters that focusing on potential restrictions on miscarriage care — or fertility treatments in the aftermath of an Alabama Supreme Court ruling earlier this year — are red herrings put forth by liberals.

“This is a strategy to try and change the subject and shift the narrative,” Reed said.

“I know the Democrats want to develop it as a talking point,” he added, “but I can’t imagine that pro-life laws are going to lead women to not be able to get treated for a miscarriage. I think that’s the talking point they are trying to develop because they don’t want to talk about their own position on abortion. And frankly, I don’t blame them.”

About 80% of miscarriages among women who know they are pregnant resolve by themselves within eight weeks, with the fetus passing through the woman’s body without medical intervention, according to a 2018 paper by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a 2019 report by KFF, an independent health policy organization.

But if the fetus or some of the tissue doesn’t pass, it needs to be removed to avoid potentially fatal medical complications for the woman, such as a sepsis infection, through drug-induced or surgical treatment.

Reproductive rights have been a political flash point for decades. But in addition to core ideological disagreements, both parties are hyper-focused on this issue this electoral cycle because of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that granted federal protection of abortion rights. Since then, several states have severely restricted abortion access, while others have enshrined such access in their state constitutions.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments in a case about whether the federal government can make hospitals that receive Medicare funding perform emergency abortions. Several justices appeared skeptical of an Idaho law that would make it illegal for physicians to perform such a procedure for a woman whose health was seriously jeopardized, but life not at risk.

Restrictions on reproductive rights are expected to be a pivotal issue among suburban, college-educated women, a key voter bloc in places like Orange County, as well as the suburbs of Philadelphia and Atlanta, critical regions that could determine control of Congress, and in some states, the presidency.

“Politically speaking, this is a big problem for Republicans,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. Still, Marson called on Republicans to support the 1864 anti-abortion law, even if it meant losing some elections.

“I have actually just started to say Republicans should embrace this law and go down with the ship,” he said. “Republicans should stand their moral ground. They have wanted to overturn Roe vs. Wade for generations. They finally have, and in Arizona, abortions are so limited, they literally only have one exception — the life of the mother. They should celebrate. That is horrendous campaign advice, but at least stick to your principles.”

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled recently that the 1864 law, which banned all abortions except to save the life of the woman and carried a two- to five-year prison sentence for abortion providers, could be enforced.

The Arizona House voted to repeal the law Wednesday and the state’s Senate is expected to vote to repeal it next week.

But even if repealed, the 1864 law would still go into effect for a period of time because repeals do not take effect until 90 days after the end of the legislative session. Then the state would revert to its prior restrictions on abortions after 15 weeks except for medical emergencies. (There is no exception for rape or incest.)

The uncertainty over legal restrictions on abortion and elsewhere is prompting women to seek out states where the procedure is still available.

Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, one of the nation’s largest abortion providers, has already seen women from Arizona and elsewhere seeking medical treatment here because they miscarried and couldn’t receive care in their home states.

“The impact of abortion bans extends far beyond what many people think of when they hear the word abortion,” said Sue Dunlap, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.

”We have seen multiple patients travel from out of state for miscarriage care,” Dunlap said. “In at least one example, a patient flew to Los Angeles because she was unsure of the status of her pregnancy and felt unable to access the care she needed in her local community.

“Ultimately, patients are traveling hundreds of miles for care that theoretically should be permissible in their home state but that, in practice, becomes impossible to access due to fear and legal confusion.”

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WASHINGTON — 

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices said Thursday they agree a former president should be shielded from prosecution for his truly official acts while in office, but not for private schemes that would give him personal gain.

They also suggested the case against former President Trump will have to be sent back to the lower courts to decide which parts of the pending criminal indictment can proceed to a trial.

Trump was indicted on conspiring to stay in office after losing the 2020 election, but the high court blocked the case from going before a jury to consider the ex-president’s claim of absolute immunity for his official acts while in the White House.

So far, Trump’s lawyers have been winning delays, and it appeared they may have done it again.

While the justices gave no hint they would endorse a total or absolute immunity for former presidents, they suggested that former presidents have an immunity for their official acts.

“Why shouldn’t we send [the case] back to the court appeals” to sort it out, said Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

If the justices follow that approach, it will almost certainly prevent Trump’s trial from taking place before the November election.

The court’s three liberal justices predicted grave danger if the president is free to use official power with impunity. What if the “president orders the military to stage a coup?,” asked Justice Elena Kagan.

But the court’s conservatives said they worried about future presidents being targeted by their political opponents and prosecuted after they leave office.

The Constitution does not explicitly shield former presidents from being prosecuted for crimes while in office, and the Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the issue.

During Thursday’s argument, the justices said they were more interested in that historic and far-reaching issue, and less interested in the specifics of Trump’s pending indictment.

But if the conservative majority hands down a ruling in June that puts off Trump’s trial indefinitely, the justices, all of them Republican appointees, are likely to face sharp criticism from Trump opponents.

In a separate case in March, the justices ruled 9-0 that states and their judges may not use a provision of the 14th Amendment to keep Trump off the presidential ballot for having allegedly “engaged in insurrection” after the 2020 election.

Trump’s claim of absolute immunity has been derided by legal experts and rejected by a federal trial judge and the U.S. appeals court in Washington.

Lower courts have had little to say about a president’s immunity for official acts, and the Supreme Court surprised many by agreeing to rule on Trump’s appeal.

It was clear Thursday that most of the justices believe a president cannot be prosecuted after leaving office for his official decisions and actions in the White House.

Roberts and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh served as White House lawyers, and they indicated they are wary of opening the door to former presidents being prosecuted after leaving office by the next administration. Both said they were concerned about politically driven prosecutions.

Veteran Justice Department attorney Michael Dreeben, who argued on behalf of special counsel Jack Smith, said the legal system has its own checks that would protect against partisan prosecutions, including grand juries that must approve indictments.

Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. scoffed at that.

“You know how easy it is to get an indictment,” Roberts said.

Kavanaugh pointed to the era of independent counsels, and said the system made it too easy for presidents to be subject to long investigations and possible indictments. As a young lawyer, Kavanaugh worked for independent counsel Kenneth Starr and his long investigation of President Clinton.

“This case has huge implications for the presidency,” Kavanaugh said.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch agreed. “I’m concerned about the future use of the criminal prosecutions to target political opponents,” he said.

The court’s liberals were more troubled about the prospect of future presidents being entirely shielded for the misuse of their power.

What about a president who “orders the military to assassinate one of his rivals?,” asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Trump’s lawyer John Sauer replied that may well be “an official act” that is shielded from prosecution. He agreed presidents can be removed from office through impeachment while insisting that later criminal prosecutions are forbidden, unless the president is impeached and convicted.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she too worried about a future in which presidents know they need not follow the law.

The “most powerful person in the world and no potential penalty for committing crimes. It could be turning the Oval Office into a crime center,” she said.

The special counsel had hoped the justices would rule quickly and clear the way for Trump’s trial to begin in the District of Columbia.

That seems quite unlikely now. The justices are likely to spend the next two months crafting an opinion that says a former president has immunity from being prosecuted for some official actions, but not for private and personal schemes that violate the law.

Both Roberts and Gorsuch said they favored sending the case back to the D.C. Court of Appeals so those judges could decide which parts of the Trump indictment can go before the jury.

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WASHINGTON — 

For the first time in decades, San Diego has become the top region along the southern border for migrant arrivals.

Migrant arrests in San Diego reached 8,989 for the week ending April 16, according to figures the agency posted on X. Meanwhile, Tucson — which previously had been the top region for crossings — had 7,500 arrests for the week ending April 19.

The numbers appear to be growing. San Diego Chief Border Patrol Agent Patricia McGurk-Daniel wrote on X that 9,513 migrants were arrested as of Tuesday, a 36% increase from two weeks prior.

San Diego hasn’t been the top region for migrant arrests since at least October 1999, according to monthly agency figures. The last full year San Diego was the top region was 1997.

The shift is significant, said Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy organization.

It reflects changes in smuggling routes, which were consistent for many years but have begun to shift every few months since 2021, in part because of the post-pandemic increase in global migration to the U.S.

According to yearly agency data, San Diego saw the highest numbers of migrants from 1973 to 1997, then Tucson took the top spot until 2012.

The Rio Grande Valley in Texas saw the most migrants starting in 2013, and monthly agency figures dating back to 2020 show that trend continued until May 2022, except for a month when Del Rio had the highest numbers.

Since then, different regions along the border have received the most migrant arrivals every few months — Del Rio, then El Paso, then Rio Grande, then Tucson. If weekly trends continue, San Diego could become the fifth.

Isacson said smugglers used to tell migrants where to cross, based on relations with organized crime and corrupt officials. But that seems to be changing, he said.

The shift also has to do with the increase in cellphone usage among migrants, Isacson said. He said migrants get information from “TikTok and WhatsApp and what you hear in shelters along the way, what other migrants tell you on the road.”

“They’re getting news in a way that you couldn’t really get it before,” he said.

Texas’ share of arrests is the lowest it has been since October 2019, Isacson said. That’s in part because the government of Mexico has upped enforcement against migrants traveling atop freight trains through the country up toward Texas.

Mexican officials have a harder time disrupting migration to Baja California, said a senior Customs and Border Protection official who asked for anonymity to speak freely.

That’s because unlike many border towns across Texas, Tijuana is a prominent metropolitan area. Migrants use legitimate travel means to get there — some come by bus, others fly direct if Mexico doesn’t require a visa for people from their country of origin.

Crossings tend to take place inland, where it’s harder for Border Patrol to quickly respond.

The Department of Homeland Security — which oversees the border protection agency — is working to revoke visas or impose visa sanctions for charter transport companies involved in moving people toward the border, the official said.

The agency expects the trend to hold for weeks and is shifting personnel and other resources to the region in response, the official said. Some migrants are also being transferred to other regions that are seeing fewer arrivals and have more processing capacity.

The Biden administration recently allocated $45 million to California programs that help migrants who have crossed the southern border.

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TAIPEI, Taiwan — 

No matter who wins the U.S. election in November, for China it’s lose-lose.

With mistrust between the two nations deepening, both President Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump have sought to cast themselves as hard-line negotiators who will stand tough against China’s rise.

And with both candidates vying to prove their mettle on dealing with China, experts are divided on which would ultimately harm Beijing’s interests more.

“There’s no best-case scenario. There’s only the bad scenario and worse scenario,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank.

Biden has proved himself to be the more predictable president, which appeals to China’s penchant for stability. But steadier leadership in Washington could bolster its partnerships in the Asia-Pacific, at a time when Beijing feels increasingly penned in by U.S. allies such as Japan, Australia and the Philippines.

As the more capricious politician, Trump might undermine such alliances, providing a vacuum for Beijing to step in and strengthen ties with U.S.-friendly nations. However, his impulsive tendencies could trigger a rapid deterioration of the relationship between China and the United States.

“With the Biden administration, the Chinese side is concerned with the long-term power play,” said Minghao Zhao, deputy director for the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. “If we have a Trump presidency, we have to be worried about more turbulence.”

The Biden administration has made some efforts to improve frayed ties with China. In November, Biden and President Xi Jinping met in Silicon Valley and agreed to restart military-to-military communications, which China suspended in retaliation for then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022. Analysts said the pact was critical in preventing flare-ups from becoming broader conflicts.

“For two large countries like China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option,” Xi said.

Still, sticking points remain.

When Biden was asked if he trusted Xi, he invoked an old Russian adage popularized by President Reagan during the Cold War: “Trust but verify.”

The current administration’s focus on Chinese “overcapacity” in metals and electric cars signals more sparring over technology and trade and China’s impact on U.S. industries.

Last week, Biden called for the tripling of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from China to combat what he described as “unfair trade practices,” and a flood of cheap, low-quality products that have distorted the U.S. market.

The latest initiative builds upon the trade war that Trump launched in 2018, implementing 25% duties on billions of dollars of imports from China, such as cars, metals and machinery. In February, Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese imports to 60% or more if he became president again.

U.S. officials also have become more wary of Chinese software and the security risks it poses for U.S. users. On Wednesday, Biden signed into law a measure that would either ban or force a sale of the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok.

That same bill included about $8 billion in security assistance for Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its territory. The sovereignty of the self-ruled island is a particularly contentious impasse in U.S.-China relations, as Washington has strengthened ties with Taiwanese officials and China has increased military aggression.

China said it opposed the aid allocated for Taiwan and has accused the U.S. of enabling the island democracy to pursue formal independence. Biden has said publicly that the U.S. would send military assistance to Taiwan if China attacked, but the administration has clarified that U.S. policy has not changed — that the United States acknowledges Beijing’s claim to the island but does not endorse it.

The U.S. has warned China against providing aid to Russia in its war with Ukraine, and has considered sanctioning Chinese banks to deter support, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is expected to discuss Ukraine among other disputes during a visit to China this week, and issued a warning ahead of his arrival.

“If China purports on the one hand to want good relations with Europe and other countries, it can’t on the other hand be fueling what is the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” Blinken said Friday.

China said the U.S. was making “groundless accusations.” It also objected in a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization to recent U.S. legislation offering subsidies to incentivize domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles.

During the last election, some analysts had predicted that Biden would be softer on China compared with Trump. This time, it’s clear that neither candidate is likely to reverse a decade-long hardening against China, said Ho-fung Hung, a professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University.

That shift began with President Obama’s efforts to establish stronger economic and diplomatic ties in Asia, spurred by growing unease with Beijing’s military assertiveness, as well as complaints that Chinese competitors were unfairly squeezing out U.S. companies, Hung said.

Now, “the only difference between different presidents would be the details and approaches of how they implement the toughening policy,” he said.

Then-President Trump speaks as China’s President Xi Jinping, far left, listens during a bilateral meeting at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires in 2018.

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)

Both candidates have a history of angering China with public remarks. After their November meeting, Biden again referred to Xi as a dictator. And while Trump has been quicker to praise Xi, he maligned China during the outbreak of COVID-19, which he insistently referred to as the “Chinese virus.”

Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, said that stronger anti-China rhetoric among Republicans may inevitably beget harsher China policies under Trump.

“They’re being so tough on China, it might be difficult for them to climb down,” he said.

But Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said that since Trump doesn’t adhere to political conventions, Beijing may see more opportunity to negotiate with the former real estate mogul.

“Since Biden is tough anyway, it may be worth the risk to roll the dice and see what Trump might bring,” Chong said.

Some reports on Chinese disinformation campaigns also indicate a potential preference for a Trump presidency.

An April report from the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research organization, identified a network of Chinese government-linked social media accounts impersonating Trump supporters and propagating criticisms of Biden.

However, academics said attempts to spread information by Chinese actors are probably more geared toward sowing doubt in democracy and America rather than directly targeting Trump or Biden.

“I think they are more interested in showing that democratic elections are not an effective system,” Sun from the Stimson Center said. “In that sense, undermining credibility is more important for China than undermining a specific candidate.”

Commentators from Chinese state and social media have criticized both candidates as indicative of the flaws of democracy and America’s decline. An April commentary from China’s official state news agency said money, rather than voters, would ultimately decide the next U.S. president.

Sima Nan, a Chinese television pundit, said in a video on Chinese social media last year that a race between Biden and Trump would be a difficult choice — like picking between spoiled Coke or spoiled Pepsi.

Special correspondent Xin-yun Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.