Joe Biden

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and other "Morning Joe" panelists raised questions about misleading reports in right-wing media suggesting that president Joe Biden suffers from dementia.

The Wall Street Journal recently published a report quoting former House speaker Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans who questioned Biden's mental fitness, which were then aired on local broadcasts by Sinclair Media affiliates, while the New York Post and other conservative outlets pushed a deceptive video that appeared to show the president wander off from a gathering of world leaders.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will unveil Tuesday new protections for undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens and measures to make it easier for immigrants brought illegally as children to qualify for work authorization.

Undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens will have had to have lived in the country for at least 10 years to qualify for protections. Qualified spouses could apply for permanent residency within three years and be eligible for a three-year work permit in the country. Couples will have to have been married and in the country for 10 years by Monday. Roughly 500,000 people nationwide could be eligible.

Texas has about 1.6 million undocumented immigrants living within its borders, the second-highest total behind California.

Undocumented spouses can already apply for permanent residency but must often leave the country in order to do so. The latest action would allow them to apply in the country.

The measures would also expedite work visas for eligible immigrants who arrived as children, commonly referred to as “Dreamers,” if they have a U.S. college degree or a “high-skill” job offer.

The White House anticipates applications opening by the end of the summer.

“These measures will help keep American families together and allow young people to contribute to our economy and our country,” a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “These measures show that the administration is committed to taking action within its legal authorities to secure our border and ensure that our immigration system is more fair and more just.”

Still, the official continued, “we remain clear-eyed that only Congress can deliver the additional personnel, resources and policy changes that are needed to secure our border.”

The announcement comes days after the 12th anniversary of President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which gave immigrants who came as children protected status from deportation. Biden plans to commemorate the anniversary Tuesday at the White House. Over 95,000 DACA recipients live in Texas, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Protections for DACA recipients has been a priority for Texas Democrats since Biden first took office in 2021. Texas Democrats in Congress pushed for the Dream and Promise Act, which would codify protections for migrants who came as children. The bill passed the Democratic-controlled House in early 2021 but did not make it out of the Senate.

Border Democrats were often frustrated with their party leadership for not prioritizing immigration in the early days of the Biden administration when the party controlled both chambers of Congress. The Biden White House focused much of its attention at the time on passing legislation improving domestic infrastructure and combating climate change. The border, members were told, would just have to wait.

But as record numbers of border crossings overwhelmed border cities, Republicans made it an issue Democrats could not ignore. The border has emerged as the single biggest priority among Texas Republicans going into November’s general elections.

Earlier this month, Biden took executive action that effectively shut down asylum claims made between ports of entry at the border. Many Democrats and immigrant rights advocates criticized the move as capitulating to Republicans.

“If this executive order goes into effect, it’s likely that every future president, especially Republicans, will use and expand it to choke off immigration and the right to asylum,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said in a statement at the time. “The political pressure to keep the ban in effect will be too overwhelming.”

United Auto Workers members at an Ohio plant that produces battery cells for General Motors electric vehicles on Monday celebrated their overwhelming ratification of a contract that the union said "sets a new standard for the EV industry with strong wages and benefits and historic health and safety protections."

UAW Local 1112 members at Ultium Cells' Lordstown, Ohio facility approved their new local contract by 98% on Sunday. Under the contract, production workers will be paid $35 an hour by October 2027. Sunday's vote came after the workers at the plant—a joint venture between GM and South Korea-based LG Energy Solution—voted in December to unionize.

On Monday a U.S. district judge in Kentucky temporarily blocked the Biden administration's new Title IX protections for LGBTQ students in six states, bringing the total number of states the new rules will likely not go into effect August 1 to ten. Republican state attorneys general are fighting the Biden Dept. of Education policies that protect the minority students.

"U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves referred to the regulation as 'arbitrary in the truest sense of the word' in granting a preliminary injunction blocking it in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. His ruling comes days after a different federal judge temporarily blocked the new rule from taking effect in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana," the Associated Press reports.

When the Wall Street Journal published a report earlier this month claiming it had spoken with Democrats regarding President Joe Biden's mental decline, the paper faced backlash from The White House, veteran journalists like Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, and others.

According to Deadline, Biden representatives slammed the WSJ for including only "one on-the-record Republican source, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to claim that the president is slipping."

A right-wing outlet put out a story alleging President Joe Biden asked for special accommodations over his diminished capabilities in a CNN-sponsored presidential debate, set to take place with former President Donald Trump in 10 days.

But CNN quickly debunked the claim, Forbes reported.