I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, April 19th.

Next week, President Biden will hit his 100th day in office. He has surprised many people with how bold some of his economic

proposals have been. The letters FDR and LBJ are being spoken a lot these days, right?

But on Friday, the president disappointed and frankly shocked many progressives by not proposing

to raise the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. in the next year

from the historic low that President Trump had plunged it to,

just 15,000 people at a time of so many refugees in the world.

Biden campaigned by citing our recent history of taking in 125,000,

even 250,000 in a year. That was during Cold War.

In February, his administration floated the number 62,500 refugees for this year. Then Friday,

he announced he would keep the cap at Trump's 15,000, but the backlash from advocates for refugees was so swift and so strong that on Saturday he flipped and said it would be more than

15,000, more than that. After all, he explained the initial low number to reporters like this. He said, problem was the

refugee part, problem with the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up at the

border with young people. We couldn't do two things at once. But he said, now we're going to

raise the number. So conservatives are seizing on the fact that he

used the word crisis to describe the current situation at the border. Washington Post-National

correspondent, Philip Bump, sees the roots of the situation in the way Biden defines unity.

And we'll begin there as Washington Post National correspondent Philip Bump joins us now. Hi, Philip,

always great to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you very much. You really make an interesting

distinction that I think many people haven't thought about. Biden says he is striving for unity.

We hear that all the time from him, but that's different than saying

striving for bipartisanship. A lot of people conflate them. What's the difference as Biden sees it?

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