Henry Cuellar

The House cleared and sent to President Donald Trump the Senate version of supplemental aid legislation for strained border agencies dealing with a massive influx of migrants, ending a back-and-forth that threatened to upend lawmakers’ July Fourth recess plans.

The final vote was 305-102, with many Democrats joining Republicans in voting for the bill. The Democratic split was 129 in favor, 95 against; the Republican split was 176 for and 7 against.

Billions of dollars for resource-constrained border agencies that are rapidly running out of cash due to an unprecedented surge of migrants is in jeopardy as the congressional clock counts down to the July Fourth recess.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., warned Thursday his chamber wouldn’t consider revisions demanded by House Democrats to the Senate-passed border supplemental, including cuts to Pentagon and Immigration and Customs Enforcement accounts.

Republicans on both sides of the Capitol are generally unified in support of the Senate’s $4.59 billion supplemental relief bill for border agencies strained by record numbers of migrants crossing the southern border.

There’s just one problem: It’s not fully clear that President Donald Trump would sign the bipartisan measure, which was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on a 30-1 vote last Wednesday.

Longtime New York Rep. Eliot L. Engel is getting a primary challenger who has support from the progressive group that backed New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her bid for office.

Jamaal Bowman, 43, a public school principal from the Bronx, announced Tuesday he is challenging Engel in the Democratic primary for New York’s 16th District, a longtime bastion for the party.

Texas Rep. Henry Cueller, one of the more conservative Democrats in Congress, is getting a primary challenger who has support from the progressive group that backed New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her bid for office.

Immigration and human rights lawyer Jessica Cisneros, 26, who was an intern for Cuellar five years ago, announced her primary campaign Thursday to unseat the eight-term incumbent in Texas’ 28th District that stretches along the southern border with Mexico and reaches north into San Antonio.

Democrats have long touted the importance of raising small amounts of money from a large number of donors as a sign of political strength on the campaign trail and in Congress.

But recent campaign finance disclosures show some lawmakers — from both parties — raised next to no money from so-called small donors in the first three months of 2019 for their campaign accounts. The names of contributors giving less than $200 in the aggregate do not have to be included in reports to the Federal Election Commission, but the total received from all those “unitemized” contributions is disclosed.

Rep. Henry Cuellar has been sued by a former staffer who says she was fired after telling him she was pregnant.

The staffer, who filed a federal lawsuit in the Washington on Monday, said Cuellar’s actions were a violation of the Congressional Accountability Act. 

Proponents of a $15 minimum wage are bullish about the prospects of the House passing a bill to incrementally double the current $7.25 federal standard over five years, despite Democrats seemingly being short the votes to do so.

“We’re working to make sure that we have consensus, but we’re going to pass that bill with enough Democratic votes to make sure that it passes out of the House,” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer told reporters during House Democrats’ retreat in Leesburg, Virginia, earlier this month. 

Campaign consultants who face being frozen out tens of millions of dollars in contracts with the Democratic Party’s congressional arm are pushing back.

A new website called “The DCCC Blacklist” launched in response to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s newly stated policy that it will not grant contracts to pollsters, strategists and communications specialists working with primary challengers.

Updated 2:27 p.m. | President Donald Trump has found an alternative to his threat to shutter ports of entry at the southern border: He his now threatening to first slap tariffs on Mexican-made automobiles as a punishment for migrants and drugs coming into the U.S.

He demanded on Thursday that the Mexican government provide additional assistance in curbing the amount of undocumented migrants and illegal drugs moving into the United States from its soil. Trump and his team are eager to shrink the number of attempted border crossings and apprehensions, which have increased under his watch despite his hardline immigration policies.