From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, February 5th.

Hey, guess who was working the weekend shift? The United States Senate. Did you hear? I guess they did not see their shadows on

Friday, so they did not go back into hiding for six more weeks of winter, six more weeks of

negotiation on a bill that seemed like it would never come on immigration. They actually

finalized the long-awaited bipartisan border deal. They actually finished it and announced it Sunday afternoon.

Maybe they wanted to be done on time to watch Sizzas sing-kill Bill at the Grammys.

Well, maybe not.

Well, maybe Tracy Chapman.

No, maybe not.

Okay, Johnny Mitchell, nothing wrong with that. But did they even stay up late enough

to see her? Did they even know that both sides now is not a song about both sides of the aisle

or criticizing both sidesism? Maybe. Anyway, the bill is out. As described on Politico, it would tighten the standard for migrants to

receive asylum, automatically shut down the southern border to illegal crossings if migrant encounters

hit certain daily benchmarks and send billions of dollars to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, as well as the border.

Politico says in addition to mandating a border shutdown at 5,000 daily encounters,

Republicans say that's too much, the bill would allow the president to invoke that authority

at 4,000 per day.

The bill may or may not have enough votes to pass in the Senate with the

60 votes required to stop a filibuster. Here's the main Republican negotiator, Senator James

Lankford of Oklahoma, urging his GOP colleagues to vote yes. If we have a crisis on our southern border,

and we do have a crisis on our southern border, that is a very real national security problem, we should address that and to do what we can to be able to solve that problem, not just hoping it's better or hope that an election solves an issue.

An election solves an issue. Remember, Donald Trump is already lobbying against the deal.

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