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CBS News
5 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
Transcript: Sen. Rand Paul on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," June 1, 2025
The following is the transcript of an interview with Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on June 1, 2025. MARGARET BRENNAN: And we go now to Republican Senator Rand Paul, who joins us from Lexington, Kentucky this morning. Good morning to you. SEN. RAND PAUL: Good morning, Margaret. MARGARET BRENNAN: You just heard the Treasury Secretary say a number of things, dismiss the potential price increases that could come from the tariffs when it comes to retailers. He also played down the cost of this tax and border bill that just passed through the House. Do you agree with his math? SEN. PAUL: Well, the math doesn't really add up. One of the things this big and beautiful bill is is it's a vehicle for increasing spending for the military and for the border. It's about $320 billion in new spending. To put that in perspective, that's more than all the DOGE cuts that we found so far. So, the increase in spending put into this bill exceeds the DOGE cuts. When you look just at the border wall, they have 46.5 billion for the border wall. Well, the current estimate from the CBP is 6.5 million per mile. So, if you did 1,000 miles, that's 6.5 billion, but they have 46 billion. So they've inflated the cost of the wall eight fold. So, there's a lot of new spending that has to be counteracted. But essentially, this is a bill by the military industrial complex advocates who are padding the military budget. There's going to be a lot of extra money. Look, the President has essentially stopped the border flow without- without new money and without any new legislation. So, I think they're asking for too much money. And in the end, the way you add it up to see if it actually is going to save money or add money, is how much debt are they going to borrow? 5 trillion over two years, an enormous amount. MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. That- that was the number that the Secretary was quibbling over. The President has taken note of some of your skepticism, and he did tweet yesterday saying that if you, Rand Paul, vote against his massive border and tax bill the people of Kentucky will never forgive you. Do you consider that a threat, and do you know if you have three other Republicans who will join you to block it from passage? SEN. PAUL: I had a very good conversation with the President this week about tariffs. He did most of the talking, and we don't agree exactly on the outcome. But when I come home to Kentucky, I talk to the Farm Bureau, which is opposed to the tariffs. I talked to the bourbon industry which is opposed to the tariffs. I talked to the cargo companies, UPS, DHL, all their pilots are opposed to it. I talked to the hardwood floor people. I talked to the people selling houses, building houses. I have no organized business- business interests in Kentucky for the tariffs. So I think it's worth the discussion, and it's worth people remembering that the Republicans used to be for lower taxes. Tariffs are a tax. So, if you raise taxes on the private sector, that's not good for the private sector. MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you know, we hear from other senators who also get complaints from their people in their districts, but they're falling in line. Do you have three other Republicans who will stand with you to block this bill? SEN. PAUL: I think there are four of us at this point, and I would be very surprised if the bill, at least, is not modified in a good direction. Look, I want to vote for it. I'm for the tax cuts. I voted for the tax cuts before. I want the tax cuts to be permanent, but at the same time, I don't want to raise the debt ceiling 5 trillion. So, I've told him, if you take the debt ceiling off the bill, in all likelihood, I can vote for what the agreement is on the rest of the bill, and it doesn't have to be perfect to my liking. But I can't be- if I vote for the $5 trillion debt, who's left in Washington that cares about the debt. We will have lost it. The GOP will own the debt once they vote for this. MARGARET BRENNAN: But that the leader, as you know, is sort of in a tight spot here. He needs a vehicle to raise that debt ceiling. Otherwise, you have to turn to Democrats to get that done. What was the White House response when you asked that to the President? SEN. PAUL: Well, historically, the debt ceiling has always gone up and will always go up, and I'm not proposing that it doesn't, but the people who should vote for it are the people who vote for the spending. Historically, all the Democrats vote for raising the debt ceiling, and about 15 big government Republicans vote for it. This will be the first time it's voted on just by Republicans. This will be the first time that Republicans own the debt. They already own the spending. In March, we continued, not me, but most Republicans voted to continue the Biden spending levels. So you remember the campaign, everybody is talking about Bidenomics and Biden inflation and Biden spending levels. Well, the Republicans all voted to keep the Biden spending levels, and that's why the deficit this year is going to be $2.2 trillion this year. MARGARET BRENNAN: So, you think this is bad politics for Republicans. Some of your Republican colleagues, like Josh Hawley, are saying that changes to Medicaid are bad politics for America's working people and for your party. SEN. PAUL: I think it was a bad strategy. I think the tax cuts are good for the economy. When we passed the tax cuts in 2017 the economy grew like gangbusters. We had lowest unemployment historically. It was the great achievement of Trump's first administration. They should have been satisfied by just doing the tax part of this and not getting involved into the debt part of it. MARGARET BRENNAN: The last time you were with us in March, you talked about conversations you had with Elon Musk, as you know, he's just left his work with the administration. You had proposed a rescission request, a claw back about $500 billion of money Congress had already signed off on. We know now that the White House is going to ask Congress this week for some rescissions. Sounds like it's just $9.4 billion and it's- it's PBS, it's NPR and it's foreign aid. Is this really the best strategy? And do you think 51 Republican senators are on board with it? SEN. PAUL: First of all, I will vote for spending cuts. The more the better. This is very, very small to put it in perspective, if the deficit this year is 2.2 trillion, if you cut 9 billion, the deficit is going to be 2.191 trillion. It really doesn't materially change the course of the country. We should do it by all means. And it is the low hanging fruit. This is the money that was pointed out that was being spent for sex change operations in Guatemala, trans-opera in Columbia, all this crazy spending. Yes, it should be cut-- MARGARET BRENNAN: -- Sesame Street.-- SEN. PAUL: -- I had an amendment about a month- Excuse me-- MARGARET BRENNAN: It's Sesame Street. It's PBS and NPR. SEN. PAUL: Yeah. And I think, yeah- you're right. We'll see if there's the votes to cut it. I don't think we necessarily need government programming anymore. We have so many choices on the internet and so many choices on television, but my preference has always been, in the past, to cut a little bit of everything, rather than cut a lot of something. So what I've done in the past is propose a penny plan budget where we cut a certain percentage of everything, but it includes entitlements, or it doesn't really work. Once you exclude the entitlements, there isn't enough money to cut so you can never achieve balance by not looking at the entitlements. MARGARET BRENNAN: The budget director on another program this morning said they may not need to use this rescission, this claw back, because the White House has other tools. Do you think they need to go through Congress? Is this overstepping? SEN. PAUL: Well, they- well, they absolutely have to use a recession- the rescission, and it is done by simple majority, by Republicans only. There is no filibuster of it. So, it's a great tool to cut spending. If they don't use, it will be a huge wasted opportunity. But I will tell you, they tried in the first Trump administration. It wasn't their fault. They sent a tiny one, 16 billion, and it failed because two Republicans went the other way. So, we'll see what happens on this. But if we can't even cut welfare that we're giving to other countries, if we can't cut foreign aid welfare, I feel bad for the country. You know, interest rates are rising. We're having trouble selling our debt. We've got a lot of problems. MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator Rand Paul, we'll be right back.
Fox News
27-05-2025
- General
- Fox News
Tom Homan: "Big, Beautiful Bill" Crucial for Border Security
President Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, joins Fox Across America With Jimmy Failla to champion the administration's work tackling illegal immigration, and to urge the Senate to advance the 'big, beautiful bill' to help secure the border. 'I'm being non-partisan this I don't care what party you're in. There's no downside to a secure border We need money to finish the great job we've done in southern border to make it permanent, right? We need more border wall. We need we need more technology in areas we can't put a wall. We need more technology and the existing law that Biden stopped, even though we had some wall built, Biden stopped building the wall. But he also stopped putting the technology in the wall that we built, which allows us to know when someone approaches a wall, climbs the wall, digs under the wall.' Tom Homan On Trump Understanding Importance Of Border Security Jimmy and Homan also discuss how Democrats have flipped on the issue of illegal immigration through different administrations. The border czar also grades how Jimmy spent his Memorial Day Weekend. Listen to the podcast for the full conversation!
Fox News
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Republican AGs visit US-Mexico border wall as Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' clears expansion funding
YUMA, ARIZ. – Republican attorneys general from 11 states visited the U.S.-Mexico border wall in remote Yuma, Arizona, this week, touting a more than 90% decrease in illegal crossings since President Donald Trump began his second term. Their visit came a day before the House narrowly passed Trump's "big, beautiful bill," which in part allocates $46.5 billion to revive construction of the wall, which at its current stage covers just a quarter of the approximately 1,900-mile-long stretch separating the United States from Mexico. In Yuma, a city of just 110,000 people, local officials briefed the Republican attorneys general of Kansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Alabama, Montana, Iowa and Indiana on how an average of 1,500 people were illegally crossing the border a day during the first six months of the Biden administration. That's dropped to about four daily illegal crossings since Trump took office. In addition to the border wall itself, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach -- chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association – told Fox News Digital the administration needs other "force multipliers," especially with the task of carrying out the "largest interior removal since the Eisenhower administration." He announced an additional three GOP states entered into 287(G) agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which means local and state deputies and officers are trained to exercise federal law enforcement powers, including making immigration-related arrests, initiating removal processes, conducting investigations and tapping into ICE databases. "The thing the Trump administration needs the most right now is force multipliers," Kobach said. "Even if we doubled the number of Border Patrol agents at ICE stations, we still wouldn't have enough. This border wall, which I'm looking at, is one force multiplier at the border. The other big force multiplier is state and local law enforcement signing 287(g) agreements and then helping ICE in the interior. And that's where the red states are leading the way." South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said 540 kilograms of fentanyl and 850 kilograms of cocaine were trafficked into the Palmetto State, originating from Mexican drug cartels. One kilo alone is enough to kill half a million people. "This is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night. I have two teenage kids in high school. When you hear about parents losing a kid in an overdose, it really strikes at your core. And so it's not just about law enforcement, it's about national security," Wilson told Fox News Digital. "As a 29-year veteran of the Army, an Iraq war veteran. I think in terms of national security, as well as law enforcement. This right here, what happens here, President Trump's policies here have empowered local law enforcement and local and state prosecutors like myself to be able to more effectively combat the illicit activity, starting with Mexican drug cartels and gangs like Tren de Aragua." Wilson said it is important to fortify a "digital border," noting how Mexican drug cartels, Chinese nationals and other illicit criminal organizations launder the proceeds of human and drug trafficking and other crimes using platforms such as WeChat. Wilson has partnered with North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a Democrat, and attorneys general from four other states in a bipartisan effort to target the Chinese app allegedly linked to the international fentanyl trade. The 11 Republican attorneys general in Yuma highlighted the importance of making the trip to the southern border despite their home states not directly bordering Mexico. Under the Biden administration, the Republicans argued that every state became a border state with the trafficking of fentanyl and other deadly drugs, as well as people across the border. "In the dark days of the Biden administration, this part of the border saw 1,500 illegal crossings a day. Today? Just four. That's leadership," Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said. "In Kentucky, we lost 1,400 lives last year to drugs coming over this border. That's not abstract—it's empty chairs at kitchen tables. I'm here to thank the men and women who wear the badge, who've made this border secure again." "Alabama may not be a border state, but we've seen the cost of an open border – fentanyl deaths, rising crime. The difference now? It's not the law that changed, it's the leadership," Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said. "Border encounters are down 93%, gotaways down 95%. That's the result of letting immigration enforcement do their jobs. We're no longer the last line of defense—we're partners in restoring the rule of law." "When federal officials can't do their jobs, every state becomes a border state—even Indiana," Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said. "We were the first non-border state to sue the Biden administration over its lawless immigration policies. Now, under new leadership, morale at the border has skyrocketed. I'm here not just for our law enforcement, but for the teachers overwhelmed by the fallout, for the parents and professionals caught in a broken system. Enough is enough." A stop on the tour included seeing pallets of $2 million worth of border wall supplies paid for under Trump's first term that the Biden administration prevented federal contractors from erecting – something Kobach categorized as "dereliction of duty" and "deliberate efforts to keep our border open." The Republican attorneys general also heard from the local hospital system, which incurred $26 million in unreimbursed care costs during a six-month period between December 2021 and May 2022 primarily due to treating migrants. At the peak of the crisis, approximately 350,000 illegal aliens crossed the border through the Yuma sector in a single year under the Biden administration. The surge caused $1.2 million in losses to three family farms in the region, as migrants camped out and defecated around crops. Local officials underscored the national food security risks, given that Yuma produces 2,500 semi-loads of leafy greens per day during peak season. The Marine Top Gun School brings thousands more U.S. Marines to Yuma every six months, but live-fire drills had to be shut down due to the surge in illegal crossings near ranges, local officials told the attorneys general, highlighting how military readiness was also impacted due to the Biden border crisis.
The Guardian
18-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump's new border wall will threaten wildlife in an area where few people pass
Donald Trump is forging ahead with a new section of border wall that will threaten wildlife in a remote area where many rare animals – but very few people – roam. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has invited private sector companies to bid for contracts to erect nearly 25 miles of barrier on the US-Mexico border, across the unwalled south of Tucson, Arizona, one of the most biodiverse regions in the US. Here, vast rolling grasslands stretch across high desert, hemmed in to the east and west by rugged, isolated mountain ranges known as sky islands because they rise abruptly and spectacularly out of the arid flatness. 'This is a crucial wildlife corridor,' said Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager for the Sky Island Alliance, a conservation non-profit, while driving along a dirt road towards the cottonwood tree-lined Santa Cruz River that flows towards Mexico. A nearby motion-triggered wildlife camera, one of 65 operated by the alliance just in this section of the border, where there is a lengthy gap in the barrier, captures thousands of images of wild animals, including bears, bobcats, pronghorns and mountain lions. 'Large predators and other animals move freely through this landscape,' said Harrity, as he replaced the batteries of a trail camera pointed toward the wide open-landscape that, on a map, would show the border with Mexico. Harrity assists in monitoring more than 110 cameras across a wider area for an alliance study that began in 2020 to record the effects of Trump's barrier on cross-border movements for local wildlife. 'That [movement] won't happen once the wall is complete,' he added of that stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border. That completion now looks set to become a reality. 'CBP is soliciting bids for construction of 24.7 miles of border barrier around International Boundary Monument 102 in the Sonoita Border Patrol Station area of responsibility,' a CBP spokesperson told the Guardian in an email, referring to the small stone obelisks, or monuments, that have traditionally been dotted along the international line. Outside the San Rafael valley, the stretches of border wall designed to keep people out of the US with 30ft-high steel posts spaced just four inches apart are impassable to anything larger than a jackrabbit, the speedy, long-legged hares typical of the area. Once this valley is walled, too, it will sever a critical wildlife corridor for animals migrating between Mexico and Arizona. Erick Meza, borderlands coordinator for the Sierra Club environmental advocacy group, said walling the valley would be 'catastrophic for the environment and wildlife'. On 27 April, the US House of Representatives homeland security committee unveiled its proposed budget, allocating $46.5bn to fund new chunks of barrier on the almost 2,000-mile US-Mexico border, where building a wall was a focus and highly vexed issue in the first Trump administration and is far from complete. The new push for more wall comes as unauthorized crossings by people migrating to the US through or from Mexico had been falling fast last year after Joe Biden tightened restrictions and have now reached historic lows. This was noted by CBP and trumpeted with inflammatory language by the Trump White House, even as the president spoke of 'invasion'. 'Even when numbers were the highest, people were crossing in areas that already had a border wall,' said Meza. 'San Rafael valley never saw those numbers.' Critics are furious. 'It's an expensive, unnecessary, and environmentally disastrous project,' said Harrity of the barrier, which can cost up to $30m per mile. 'If completed, this wall will sever a continent.' Successful legal challenges to federal actions on the border can be difficult, but opponents are intensively researching their options. And tall metal boundaries, which not only impede animals but, when under construction and being patrolled, cause huge damage and disruption, are not the only worry for wildlife advocates. Trump has also announced a plan to further use the military and take over vast swaths of public lands along the border. A presidential memorandum in April directed the transfer of a 60ft-wide strip of federal land running along the border in California, Arizona and New Mexico, known as the Roosevelt reservation, to US military control. That could mean new military bases and staging areas which, state actions in Texas have shown, create environmental havoc. Myles Traphagen, borderlands director for the Wildlands Network, is concerned that large military facilities could be constructed in the region, further enhancing the human footprint of an already militarized border. 'It's an invasion,' said Traphagen. 'An invasion of our public lands.' Mark Nevitt, an Emory University School of Law professor, said the president appeared intent on an unprecedented use of 'national security language associated with executive power, [such as] 'invasion' and 'under attack', that appears to expand the military's role in immigration enforcement'. He also fears that Pentagon funds will be funneled into more wall building on land to be designated as 'national defense areas'. Noah Schramm, border policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, called the intended step-change in militarization 'uniquely alarming' and warned that troops could be used to apprehend migrants and civilians alike for allegedly illegally entering a restricted military area In Arizona, 63% of the border has already been sealed off and the remaining open sections are critical for wildlife, with the San Rafael valley being one of the last intact expanses of Sonoran desert grasslands in the state. The area's rugged Huachuca and Patagonia mountains, part of the Sky Island range, serve as stepping stones across a harsh desert by offering a range of habitats, food sources and water for animals. 'The biodiversity here is incredible,' said Meza, of the Sierra Club. As well as bears, mountain lions and wolves there are subtropical species such as the wild pig-like javelina, and rare big cats – ocelots and jaguars, with natural ranges of hundreds of miles between countries in search of food, water and mates. 'This is at the heart of all these different ecosystems coming together,' Meza added. As Harrity of the Sky Island Alliance drove his battered red pickup through the wilderness he passed a lone pronghorn, the strange, antelope-like creature that is the fastest land mammal in the Americas. The San Rafael valley was entering year three of a severe drought, he said. 'When it rains, it can look like Scotland,' he said. In dry times like now, the valley looks more like the African savanna, with rolling hills of native grasses awash in soft yellows, oranges and rusts. 'A study in browns,' he added, bouncing along toward the only greenery visible – cottonwood trees lining the Santa Cruz River. Harrity said that as the climate crisis exacerbates drought in the south-west, wildlife in the border region will need to range farther and farther seeking food and water. In 2021 a Mexican grey wolf known as Mr Goodbar paced 23 miles along the border wall searching for a place to cross into Mexico. After days, he finally gave up and returned to the Gila wilderness area in New Mexico. 'The last thing we should be doing right now is walling off corridors and severing connectivity,' Harrity said. The Santa Cruz River is a vital animal migration corridor that meanders into Mexico and back to Arizona. 'The river will now be walled on both legs of its journey,' said Harrity. A nearby wildlife camera recently captured a video of a mountain lion carrying its prize, a dead coyote, into Mexico. The valley is almost devoid of people. And it lacks the telltale signs of migration in the borderlands: ripped clothes on bushes, discarded backpacks and empty water bottles. In five years, a camera by the river has never captured an image of a migrant crossing into the US, even though it's one of the few parts of the valley with shade and water. On a hill above the river an agent in a white and green border patrol SUV looked on. Then in New Mexico, to the east, near the small town of Columbus, Traphagen of Wildlands Network pointed from a hilltop brightened by red-flowered ocotillo plants to the longest contiguous section of border wall in the US. Eighty miles of three-story-high posts cutting through sand dunes and volcanic hills like a giant serpent, all the way to El Paso, Texas. As the spring wind picked up, the steel pillars began to reverberate and hum. 'When the wind really gets going, it sounds like Tuvan throat singers,' said Traphagen of the central Asian singers who can produce a low vocal rumble and a high whistle-like tone at the same time. Many of the Wildlands Network's trail cameras are pointed toward 'construction anomalies,' said Traphagen, where posts have been mistakenly placed five or six inches apart instead of the usual four. Those extra 2ins do not affect human crossing but can allow animals, such as javelina and coyotes, at least, to pass through. That subtle difference would also reduce the number of posts needed to build the hugely expensive border wall. 'That's probably $30m worth of steel there,' said Traphagen, pointing in passing to an abandoned construction staging area from the previous Trump administration containing thousands of steel pillars stacked like the kids' building toy Lincoln Logs. Other trail cameras are placed near open floodgates, resulting from a 2023 lawsuit requiring the border patrol to open intermittent gates in the barrier to allow larger animals to pass. 'This camera has captured over 1,000 videos, and we have never seen a person crossing through,' said Traphagen. It points along a sandy wash marked with the paw prints of rabbits, coyotes and badgers. Of the eight cameras checked during one long outing at the New Mexico border, only one had captured any evidence of migrants. But in a 2024 study by the Wildlands Network and Sky Islands Alliance, motion-activated cameras along 100 miles of walled border showed an 86% decrease in wildlife crossings and a 100% reduction for animals such as wolves, bears, pronghorns, and jaguars. 'The Trump administration would rather score cheap political points and a favorable Fox News headline than solve a problem. Instead of wasting taxpayers' dollars, undermining military readiness and jeopardizing American families' safety, Trump and [Elon] Musk should focus on actually fixing our broken immigration system,' said Martin Heinrich, US senator for New Mexico and a Democrat. 'New Mexicans who live on the border want actual solutions, like creating new legal pathways for immigration, investing in effective border security for law enforcement, and addressing the root causes of mass migration,' he added. Back in the San Rafael valley, Traphagen noted that, on top of everything, parts of the original 1955 movie of the musical Oklahoma! were filmed in this beautiful spot. 'It will be a tragedy to see a pristine grassland … turned into a military zone,' he said.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Yahoo
Man falls of border wall in Sunland Park, New Mexico
EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — A man fell off the border wall in Sunland Park, New Mexico and was injured early Saturday morning, May 10, Sunland Park Fire said. Sunland Park Fire said they were called out just before 4 a.m. Saturday to a call about a man falling off the border wall at the end of Anapra Road. The man, only identified as being in his 30s, was taken by ambulance to a local hospital with what are being called non-life-threatening 'lower extremity' injuries. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
