WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden downplayed the recent surge of migrants at the border, using his first formal news conference on Thursday to assail Republicans for “sick” and “un-American” efforts to undermine voting rights.

“I make no apologies for ending programs that did not exist before Trump became president,” Biden said, portraying the policy of “ripping babies from mothers’ arms” to deter migration as a violation of international law and “human dignity.”

“My predecessor – oh God, I miss him,” he said at one point, after distancing himself from Donald Trump’s use of emergency public health powers to deny entry to asylum seekers. “There’s no easy answer.”

The border crisis has dominated much of Biden’s brief tenure, and it overshadowed his 62-minute session with the White House press corps — a formality he delayed longer than any president in six decades.

It even crowded out questions about the pandemic that has upended American life for a year, though Biden used the live TV time to announce that he has doubled the target for COVID-19 vaccinations to 200 million doses in his first 100 days.

The 78-year-old Biden, already older when he took the oath of office than Ronald Reagan on his last day as president, said he expects to seek a second term but shrugged aside the topic as premature. Nor would he prognosticate on whether Trump is the likely GOP nominee in 2024.

“I have no idea if there’ll even be a Republican Party, do you?” he quipped, referring to a post-Trump civil war that has roiled the GOP, as fallout and criminal inquiries persist from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

The White House had hoped Biden could use the televised bully pulpit to celebrate the quickening pace of vaccinations and a related legislative victory, the $1.9 trillion relief package.

But the border crisis – a term that Biden and top aides pointedly avoid – has proven impossible to ignore.

Biden insisted that much of the uptick is season, rejecting Republican allegations that he has embraced an open borders policy and triggered a stampede from Central America by halting construction of the border wall and allowing unaccompanied minors to remain in the country.

“I guess I should be flattered. People are coming because I’m a nice guy” and a “decent man,” Biden said, accepting the contrast with Trump while rejecting that explanation for the migrant surge.

At last count, 1,750 boys were being detained at the downtown Dallas convention center, one of several emergency shelters set up to ease pressure at overwhelmed border facilities.

Biden said his more humane approach has been hampered because Trump dismantled much of the immigration system, reducing detention space and leaving shortages in personnel and facilities.

He noted that Fort Bliss, in El Paso, will soon provide 5,000 beds – a comment that itself drew condemnation from critics, who viewed it as yet another signal for migrants to make the hard trek because they know he’ll let them stay once they cross the border.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Biden’s comments “a disaster for illegal immigration,” warning that he will trigger “a tsunami this summer” by ending a policy requiring would-be migrants to remain in Mexico while asylum claims are processed. “This is not a seasonal change.”

“What he did today is entice people to come, not deter them,” he said.

Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz are leading 17 other GOP senators on a visit to the border in McAllen on Friday to highlight accusations that Biden has triggered a crisis by easing Trump-era restrictions.

They’ve also blasted Biden for ending the “remain in Mexico” policy, and resuming “catch and release” at the border, which Trump ended.

Biden defended his approach to border security, insisting it’s both tough and humane and noting that only unaccompanied minors are being allowed into the United States.

“Tens of thousands of people who are over 18 years of age, and single people, are being sent back,” he said.

When a reporter mentioned a 9-year-old boy who had walked from Honduras to the U.S. border, Biden interjected: “Astounding.”

Forcing such a child to remain on the side of the Rio Grande “to starve to death” is not acceptable, he said. “No previous administration has ever done that, except Trump. I’m not going to do it.”

He called overcrowding at a Border Patrol facility in Donna, Texas, “totally unacceptable” but was evasive when pressed to commit to allowing in news media to document conditions faced by young migrants.

“You’ll have full access to everything once we get this thing moving,” he said, indicating that journalists would be kept out until the overcrowding subsides.

Cruz hit Biden for avoiding independent scrutiny of conditions for migrants in U.S. custody, tweeting that “actual transparency from Biden would be to immediately open the Donna facility to press that is at 1,556% capacity.”

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, illegal border crossings rose last summer and fall and spiked up sharply, from 78,442 in January to 100,441 in February. That’s about triple the total from February 2020.

Other crises

The border surge is hardly the only crisis weighing on the administration.

Mass shootings that left 18 dead in Atlanta and Boulder, Colo., this month have reignited a contentious debate over gun control. Biden quickly weighed in with demands to reinstate a ban on assault style weapons.

Speaking without a mask, and with reporters seated far apart in the East Room rather than the usual thigh-to-thigh, he talked tough on China, and indicated that he’ll likely miss a May 1 deadline in a deal the Trump administration struck with the Taliban to withdraw the last U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

But he said, it’s only a matter of time, and he “can’t picture” any still being there into 2022.

The White House and White House Correspondents’ Association have agreed to limit attendance during the pandemic. Just 30 reporters were on hand, plus photojournalists and technicians — a fraction of the typical roster for a presidential news conference.

Biden waited longer to hold a news conference than any new president since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. Thursday was day 65. By 60 day mark in his presidency, John F. Kennedy had held seven news conferences, the first just five days after his inauguration.

George Bush, Richard Nixon and Eisenhower held four solo news conferences in their first two months. Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton each held one – but sooner after taking office.

POLITICS

Cruz decries ‘shameless power grab’ in bill to curb state voter ID laws, let felons vote after release from prison

BY TODD J. GILLMAN

In Congress, Democrats are pushing the most sweeping legislation affecting voting rights since the 1960s-era civil rights measures shepherded by Texas’ Lyndon Johnson.

It’s a huge point of contention, with Republicans complaining of mandates that would make fraud easier and more prevalent while also boosting Democrats’ prospects in future elections – easing rules on voter ID and mail-in ballots, for instance, and forcing polls to remain open longer.

The legislation would stop GOP lawmakers in Texas and other states from rolling back expanded early voting and absentee balloting used during the unusual pandemic election of 2020 – moves that Biden called “un-American” and “despicable.”

“It’s sick. It’s sick. Deciding in some states that you cannot bring water to people standing in line, waiting to vote. Deciding that you’re going to end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off work” or ending the use of absentee ballots except in the most extreme circumstances, Biden said.

“This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle. I mean, this is gigantic,” Biden said.

The House approved a massive election overhaul bill on a 220-210 party line vote early this month but Democrats barely control the 50-50 Senate and the filibuster makes the prospects dim.

Progressives have been pressuring Biden and Senate Democrats to end the filibuster. He stopped short of embracing that position, saying it’s still possible to end abuses without eliminating it – a step that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed would end in “scorched earth” warfare.

“We should go back to a position on the filibuster that existed when I came to the United States Senate 120 years ago,” he said, joking about his age and longevity in Washington in a way that drew catcalls on social media. “It used to be you had to stand there and talk and talk and talk and talk until you collapsed. And guess what? People got tired of talking and tired of collapsing.”

He conceded that might not be enough, though, adding that “if there’s complete lockdown and chaos as a consequence of the filibuster, then we’ll have to go beyond what I’m talking about.”