Morning Joe blasted for claim Biden ‘luring’ kids as Harris accused of laughing off crisis – live

Republican officials have criticised vice president Kamala Harris after video was released of her laughing when answering questions from reporters about the immigration crisis at the Southern border.

While speaking to reporters outside of Air Force One on Monday, Ms Harris was asked if she “plans to visit” the border, with the vice president responding: “Not today,” before laughing with the journalists.

The video circulated on social media and was quickly criticised by Republicans, with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy tweeting: “While VP Harris laughs off a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, Republicans are focused on securing the border and responding to the needs of our Border Patrol agents on the front lines.”

Arizona representative Debbie Lesko also weighed in, writing: “First, the Biden Administration refused to admit the situation at the border is a crisis, NOW Kamala Harris thinks this is a laughing matter.”

Ms Lesko added: “It isn’t a laughing matter for the border communities being deluged by illegal immigrants.”

The last three presidents have each had to grapple with a sudden arrival of thousands of unaccompanied migrant teenagers and children along the Mexico border, but the challenge facing Joe Biden in recent weeks is an unprecedented one. Never before have so many minors arrived so fast.

Over the last three weeks, the average number of teenagers and children crossing into the United States without their parents has topped 550 per day, according to the latest government data reviewed by The Washington Post. Border officials are on pace to take in more than 17,000 minors this month, which would be an all-time high.

The influx has overwhelmed the government’s ability to safely shelter and care for the minors before delivering them to family members and vetted sponsors living in the United States, a challenge complicated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Mexico as moved to reassure other Latin American countries that immigration facilities at Mexico City’s international airport are safe and hygienic, as it prepares a wider crackdown to cut the flow of illegal border crossings into the US.

Officials from Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) and the foreign ministry toured the airport’s immigration facilities with consulate officials from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay, the government said in a statement.

Mexican officials heard questions and concerns from the foreign representatives about the barring of their citizens, the statement said. The officials reviewed the hygienic conditions, ventilation and safety of the facilities.

The tour endorsed Mexico’s commitment to resolve the “problems that some foreigners have faced when going through the immigration filters,” the government said. It did not give further details.

Mexico is planning to clamp down at its southern border to stem a sharp increase in migrants illegally entering the country to head for the US.

Agents from the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were accused of watching as migrants drowned on the border.

According to a video from a life-long resident of the area, Jesús Vargas, the agents were seen standing-by as a woman and three teenagers struggled to swim across the Rio Grande river.

“You don’t have life jackets? They’re drowning these guys,” says Mr Vargas in the video, as first reported by Fox News 29 San Antonio.

The National Rifle Association bragged about the blocking of a ban on AR-15 rifles in Boulder a week before a gunman reportedly used one in a mass shooting to kill ten people on Monday.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has released images from inside border facilities where families and unaccompanied children are being held.

However, the Biden administration continues to prevent journalists from accessing these areas, so it is not clear whether the official images paint a true picture of conditions where people are being kept.

There are hundreds of children who have been in CBP custody for 10 days or more – a week longer than the law allows. Children should be moved into the care of the health and human services department after no more than 72 hours.

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The Senate judiciary committee is preparing to hold a hearing today on “constitutional and common sense steps to reduce gun violence”, after two high-profile mass shootings in less than two weeks.

In Boulder, Colorado on Monday, 10 people were killed at a supermarket, and in Atlanta, Georgia, last week, eight people died of whom six were Asian women.

The committee’s chair, the Democrat Dick Durbin, tweeted on Monday night: “In the week leading up to this hearing, two mass shootings have left the nation reeling.

“And it’s not just mass shootings: according to the CDC, on average, 109 Americans lose their lives every day to gun violence.

“It’s long past time to act on this nation’s gun violence epidemic.”

Republican representative Lauren Boebert reportedly sent a fundraising email encouraging supporters to say “Hell No” to gun control just two hours after a deadly mass shooting in her home state of Colorado.

Ten people, including a police officer, were killed on Monday afternoon when a man opened fire inside a King Soopers supermarket in the city of Boulder, Colorado, in what was the latest of several high-profile mass shootings in the state over the past 25 years.

A suspect, shirtless and covered in blood, was taken into custody by Boulder Police 30 minutes after the shooting began, as local officials paid tribute to the fatally shot officer and the nine other victims in the hours that followed.

Donald Trump has called an incident where Joe Biden stumbled up the stairs on Air Force One “terrible” and claimed it was “for the most part” ignored by the media.

Speaking in an interview on conservative TV station Newsmax, Mr Trump suggested his successor, who is 78, might soon be replaced by his vice president Kamala Harris.

“That tumble was terrible. It wasn’t really one, it was three, and it wasn’t mentioned for the most part in the lamestream,” lamented the former president. “The whole thing is incredible. There’s no longer freedom of the press.”

Even as millions of Americans lost jobs, housing and faced the deaths of loved ones, a think tank has calculated that American billionaires collectively grew their wealth by $1.3 trillion during the pandemic.

The report, released on Tuesday by the Institute of Policy Studies, found that billionaires in the US have grown their combined wealth by “nearly 45 per cent — or by more than $1.3 trillion — since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the nation last March”.

The institute tracked the net worth of the wealthiest Americans from 18 March 2020 to 18 March 2021 and found that at least 43 people had joined the billionaire ranks in the last year alone.