Politics

The White House could make the move as early as next week

President Barack Obama is poised to unilaterally overhaul American immigration policy, according to several reports Thursday, in a long-anticipated move that would ignore his Republican critics and could allow up to 5 million undocumented immigrants to stay in the country.

Citing unnamed administration officials, the New York Times reports that Obama intends as early as next week to announce plans to substantially refocus immigration enforcement involving some 12,000 agents and reduce the risk of deportation for millions of immigrants.

As many as 3.3 million parents of children who are American citizens or legal residents would be able to obtain legal work documents under the plan, the Times adds. Many immigrants with high-tech skills or who came to the United States as children could also be affected by the plan.

Obama has infuriated Republicans by pledging executive action on immigration if Congress does not pass a comprehensive reform bill. TIME’s Alex Altman wrote this week on the widely expected move, as well as the likely push-back from the soon-to-be Republican-controlled Congress:

The pressure on Obama to delay executive action is likely to build. Republican leaders say that skirting Congress to go it alone would ignite a controversy that jeopardizes the chances for cooperation between the President and the new GOP Congressional majority on a host of issues. “It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull,” Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said. Immigration will be a touchstone in confirmation hearings for Loretta Lynch, Obama’s pick for attorney general. Tea Party conservatives in the Senate signaled they plan to use the hearings to press Lynch on her views of the President’s executive authority on immigration.

Enacting sweeping changes to immigration law just weeks after the party was rebuked by voters at the polls could spark a blowback from voters. In one recent survey, conducted by Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, 74% of respondents said they preferred Obama to work with Congress to retool a broken immigration system rather than maneuvering around the legislative branch.

Even some seasoned Democrats seem a bit skittish about the idea. Over a sea bass lunch Friday with Congressional leaders in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House, Obama told Boehner that his patience in waiting for the House to act on immigration had run out. At that point, according to a source familiar with the meeting, Vice President Joe Biden piped up to ask how long Republicans would need to craft immigration legislation—prompting the President to shoot Biden a look that closed the discussion.

Read more about Obama’s plan to overhaul immigration at the New York Times

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The Louisiana Democrat's move may be too little too late

Democrat Mary Landrieu’s attempt to force President Barack Obama to authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline is the latest in a political thrust-and-parry exchange between the three-term Senator and GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy, her opponent in next month’s Senate run-off election in Louisiana. But Landrieu’s gambit may be too-little-too-late, election watchers say.

The frantic maneuvering started Wednesday morning when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised Cassidy a spot on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee if Cassidy beats Landrieu in the December runoff. Landrieu chairs the committee and has touted her tenure there as a symbol of her influence on Capitol Hill.

In response, Landrieu took to the floor of the Senate and gave a nearly three-hour speech calling for the body to take a vote on her bill, which would require Obama to clear the final bureaucratic and regulatory obstacles preventing construction of the pipeline.

The next move came from across the Capitol building, when House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy fast-tracked Cassidy’s three-page bill to authorize the pipeline straight to the floor of the House, bypassing the committees that normally would have weighed the proposal. Cassidy’s bill (which matches the Senate language) will get a House vote on Friday.

When the Senate votes as early as Tuesday on Landrieu’s bill, it will be the first time in six years that both chambers of Congress will vote on the pipeline, according to the Washington Post.

“It’s been a dizzying 24 hours for a supposed lame duck legislature as it relates to Louisiana,” says Joshua Stockley, an associate professor of political science at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Landrieu’s gambit may help her re-election chances, but it comes at a cost. Forcing a Keystone vote in Congress will give McConnell and Boehner an unexpected win on the list of issues they want to tackle when the GOP takes control of both chambers of Congress early next year. White House press secretary Josh Earnest signaled Wednesday that the President would oppose the legislation, as he has in the past.

“We have indicated that the President’s senior advisors at the White House would recommend that he veto legislation like that,” said Earnest. “And that does continue to be our position.”

And it’s not even clear how much Landrieu’s push will help her chances. “Landrieu’s task is continuing to separate and distance herself from the President,” says Stockley. “Does Keystone help make that argument? Yes, but I would argue that’s been somewhat neutralized. Cassidy is going to be able to come back and say, ‘My language, my bill, I voted on it too.’”

“She’s going to have to do something more significant than the Keystone pipeline to beat Representative Cassidy,” he added.

In last week’s race, Landrieu nabbed the top spot with 42% of the vote, compared to 41% for Cassidy and 14% for Tea Party candidate Rob Maness. She is facing an avalanche of ads and outside spending she can’t match (she lost the financial support of the group designed to get her elected, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) and an opponent bolstered by Maness conservatives. As TIME’s Denver Nicks notes, Landrieu’s team believes she’s got a shot if she wins 30 percent of white voters, up from just 18 percent she received in the general election last week. Of course, Landrieu has won runoffs before, in 1996 and 2002, and has expressed hope for pulling out another victory.

“Are you a lost cause?” NBC’s Kasie Hunt asked Landrieu Wednesday. “I don’t believe I am,” she replied.

The progressive leader joins the Democratic leadership in a newly created role

The Senate Democrats voted in new leadership on Thursday, including progressive standard-bearer Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who will take on a newly created role.

Following an hours-long leadership vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters he expects “Elizabeth Warren to be Elizabeth Warren” in her new role as the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee’s strategic policy adviser. The role, several outlets are reporting, was created specifically for Warren.

The addition of Warren brings some star power to the Democrat’s senior ranks, though it’s not clear how much clout will come with the new position.

Reid was chosen to continue leading Democrats in the Senate, though at least two of his peers, Sens. Claire McCaskill and Joe Manchin, told reporters they did not cast votes for anyone, according to the Washington Post.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Jon Tester of Montana will also take on leadership roles for the Democrats. Klobuchar will chair the Senate Democratic Steering Committee, and Tester will now chair the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Reid praised Tester’s victories in two tough elections in announcing the Montanan’s selection to lead the DSCC ahead of the 2016 election. In a statement released by the DSCC Thursday, Tester said he’s accepting the position to “recruit and support candidates who understand the issues facing regular, working Americans.”

The new Democratic leadership team includes four women and three men. When asked about the number of women who now serve beside him in the leadership, Reid said Thursday, “I have seen this institution change for a lot of reasons, but one reason it has changed for the good is because of women.”

How the Republican Senate will tackle the Keystone XL pipeline, carbon emissions, renewable subsidies and more

Just hours after winning Senate control, the incoming leader, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, left no ambiguity about his top priority. “We haven’t had an energy bill in seven years,” he told a group of reporters in Louisville. “When you say energy these days, people think of the Keystone pipeline, but that’s only part of it.”

Consider that a starting gun on the coming season of energy debates, when everything is likely to be placed once again on the legislative table: pipeline development, oil and gas exports, carbon regulation, renewable energy and drilling on public lands, to name a few issues. Polls show strong support for increased domestic production, and environmentalists are playing defense after a near rout at the ballot box. Perhaps their only big winner on election night was Democratic Governor-elect Tom Wolf in Pennsylvania, who supports cap and trade. McConnell, not surprisingly, plans to seize the moment.

Near the top of his to-do list is bringing the Keystone XL pipeline to a vote. Climate activists have made a priority of killing the proposed pipeline from oil sands in Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, but it may soon become their Alamo. With the cooperation of a handful of centrist Democrats, the GOP could have a filibuster-proof majority on the question, forcing President Obama to approve or veto the project. Either way, he will be forced to show his hand on a question about which he’s been coy to date. “They can force the President to have to make some hard decisions,” says Philip Wallach, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. Obama’s willingness to go to the mat on the issue is anything but certain. “I’ve always felt the President was keeping Keystone around as something he could trade for something else,” Wallach says.

One item the President may trade for is continued support for renewable-energy subsidies like the solar-investment and wind-production tax credits, key components of his “all of the above” energy strategy. Those incentives–which help stimulate demand for pricey home solar panels, for instance–remain a lifeline for America’s nascent renewables industry. “Our energy sector is booming, and I’m happy to engage Republicans with additional ideas for how we can enhance that,” Obama said at a press conference after Election Day.

The return of Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe to chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will also be a factor. A longtime bogeyman for environmentalists, he has made himself the face of opposition to taking action on climate change. Like McConnell, who campaigned as a champion of the Kentucky coal industry, Inhofe has in his sights recent Environmental Protection Agency rules that limit greenhouse-gas emissions. “Pretty much no Republican officeholder has supported the clean-power plan the way it’s been proposed,” Wallach says. “They’re going to gear up for a pretty bruising fight on that.”

Obama will try to hold his ground. Polls indicate broad support at a national level–though certainly not in places like Kentucky–for power-plant-emission limits. “If Senator McConnell moves to prevent the President’s climate agenda, he would be siding against the American people,” warns Jeff Gohringer, spokesperson for the League of Conservation Voters, a deep-pocketed environmental group and one of the biggest spenders this cycle.

There are likely to be areas of relatively easy compromise as well, on issues like speeding up permits for facilities to export liquefied natural gas (LNG). The issue cuts neatly across partisan lines: both Colorado’s Senator-elect, Representative Cory Gardner, and the man he defeated, Senator Mark Udall, for instance, proposed nearly identical LNG-export bills.

It’s a place to start. The Senate hasn’t flexed its bipartisan muscles for nearly a decade. Now comes the big test of whether the old skills of compromise can be remembered. As McConnell said on his victory lap, deploying more than a bit of hope, “I think we have an obligation to change the behavior of the Senate and to begin to function again.”