From WNYC Studios.

I'm Brian Lerer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Tuesday, May 9th.

As the Biden administration ends the emergency COVID rules in the United States, most Republicans cheer that it's about time, right?

Long overdue, except there's one COVID rule that they want to keep in place.

It's known as Title 42, and it has allowed the United States government to block entry to the country

for countless thousands of asylum seekers at the

southern border on the grounds that they could spread the virus here. Now, normally anyone can

declare they are seeking asylum and have that claim evaluated from within the U.S. Republicans

want that one COVID policy to become permanent.

That won't happen by Thursday, so a big new wave of people seeking to apply for asylum is

expected immediately, especially from the desperate situations right now in Venezuela, Cuba,

Nicaragua, and Haiti. Countries other than Haiti run by left-wing dictators whose refugees, the Republican Party, used to embrace. Remember that? The Biden administration is looking to restrict asylum seekers in other ways, however, which will explain. Meanwhile, In New York City and vicinity, a conflict has erupted between

Democratic Mayor Eric Adams and the Republican Rockland County Executive Ed Day over the mayor,

having secured a hotel for 340 migrant men in the town of Orangeburg. That's about 25 miles north of the city. The population of

Rockland County is 340,000, adding 340 people for a few months in a paid-for hotel would create

a state of emergency. According to the county executive, he actually declared one over the weekend.

So COVID emergency measures to protect public health were too draconian, even as thousands of

people a week in America died from the virus.

But it seems like no amount of immigration from south of the border is too small for

Republicans to see an emergency in that.

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