US Politics In 60 Seconds

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:

What role will immigration play in the midterm elections?

Immigration has been in the news a lot this week, and not because the US recently hit a record number of border encounters at two million. Several border state Republican governors, including those in Arizona and Texas, have started to charter buses to send immigrants from their states to the northeast, in the states and cities that are typically run by Democrats, who have generally embraced a more lax policy towards immigration, yet have not had to try and absorb the new migrants into the population in any significant numbers like the border states have. This practice has been going on for a while. Here in Washington, DC, the city has welcomed hundreds of migrants over the last several weeks. But the heat really got turned up to 11 earlier this week with a controversial stunt pulled by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who flew 40 Venezuelan migrants from Texas to the exclusive islands of Martha's Vineyard.