President Joe Biden said Thursday that he doesn’t believe border walls work, even as his administration said it will waive 26 laws to build additional border barriers in the Rio Grande Valley amid heightened political pressure over migration.

According to a notice posted to the Federal Register Wednesday, construction of the wall will be paid for using already appropriated funds earmarked specifically for physical border barriers. The administration was under a deadline to use them or lose them. But the move comes at a time when a new surge of migrants is straining federal and local resources and placing heavy political pressure on the Biden administration to address a sprawling crisis, and the notice cited “high illegal entry.”

Biden – who, as a candidate, vowed that there will “not be another foot” of border wall constructed on his watch – defended the decision to reporters Thursday, saying that he tried to get the money appropriated for other purposes but was unsuccessful.

“I’ll answer one question on the border wall: The border wall – the money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t.

And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office.

Asked whether he believes the border wall works, Biden answered, “No.”

    • Poggervania@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Which has nothing to do with anything I said, but aight. In fact, the fact you had to defend your sexuality in a first-world country like the US is what’s so fucked up in the first place. The Netherlands were basically the first to make gay marriage legal in the 2000s, and a decent chunk of Europe also showed more support towards the LGTBQ community long before the US legalized gay marriage in all the states in 2015. Keep in mind that the places I mentioned tend to be actually left-leaning to a degree.

      My point is that the two US parties are more concerned with making sure the corporate owners get their way without too much hassle from the general populace - the far-right one just says the quiet parts out loud, while the center-right party gives you verbal support but most of the time doesn’t do shit because they like money, too. I mean, look at this actual topic here - building a border wall for Mexico has been a popular topic for Republicans… but suddenly the Democratic president can’t say no to this even though building this would bypass 26 different laws, which in other words, are 26 different reasons to not fucking do it if they didn’t want to like the president claims?

      Democrats want to keep the status quo and placate people with just enough bullshit (which, I’ll be honest, I 100% think they would be fine with not supporting LGTBQ communities if we, the people, would not fucking riot and oust them for stuff that should’ve been fine from the get-go decades ago), and the Republicans are now just trying to see how far they can push corpofascism before we, the people, decide to put a stop to that shit.