When President Joe Biden announced his executive order to curb the ability of border crossers to claim asylum earlier this week, he claimed the new policy wasn’t about shifting politics.
But for most Democrats, those who agree with Biden on the policy and those who don’t, politics may best explain whether they supported or opposed the executive order. Specifically, how Democrats in Congress viewed Biden’s executive order — at least those who represent a border district — seemed to come down to how Democratic their district is.
For Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat who represents the Rio Grande Valley and who has a Partisan Voting Index rating of D+9 — meaning the district leans toward Democrats by 9% — Biden’s action was “long overdue.”