Does Biden need a new law to 'shut down the border'? With migrants overwhelming Border Patrol — and causing an election-year headache for President Biden — the president has said he needs a new law, now being negotiated in the Senate, to "shut down the border." Former president Donald Trump, his apparent rival for the White House this year, and House Republicans such as House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) counter that Biden already has enough executive authority to halt border crossings. As president, Trump issued a raft of executive orders designed to stem illegal immigration — relying on a provision of current law that says the president can "suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens" whose entry he finds "would be detrimental to the interests of the United States" — but many of his actions were struck down or altered by the courts. Whether Biden acted too hastily to unwind Trump's patchwork of fixes and whether Trump's actions were effective — or ineffective and cruel — is a matter of opinion. As a reader service, we reviewed the legal landscape to explain what the president can do by himself and whether new laws are needed. You can read our full report by clicking this link. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Biden vs. Trump on electric cars When Biden addressed the United Auto Workers last week — and accepted its endorsement — he claimed Trump ignored China's push into electric vehicles and lost auto industry jobs during his presidency. Trump, in turn, issued a video in which he attacked Biden's green energy policies designed to promote broader acceptance of electric vehicles, saying these policies will eliminate auto manufacturing jobs because China is going to dominate the market anyway. We took a look at how the presidential records match up. Biden is technically right when he says "tens of thousands of auto jobs were lost nationwide during Trump's presidency" — if you include auto retail jobs. Those jobs declined 78,000 from February 2017 to February 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Auto and auto parts manufacturing jobs saw a slight increase — 300 jobs — in the same period. But the White House job statistic for Trump includes 2020 — when the world was gripped by the coronavirus pandemic. The numbers change significantly if you date Trump's job record from February 2017 to February 2020, just before the pandemic crashed the U.S. economy. That shows a gain of 34,100 auto manufacturing jobs and 36,400 auto retail jobs — for a total of more than 70,000 jobs in three years. Biden now has been president almost as long as Trump was when the pandemic emerged. The most recent BLS data is from December 2023, and Biden so far fares much better in a direct comparison of the first three years. Almost 125,000 auto manufacturing jobs have been created and 129,000 auto retail jobs, for a gain of nearly 254,000 during Biden's presidency. There's much more in our report, which you can read by clicking the link below. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) or Facebook. We're also on TikTok. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. About the cats: It's a Friday and sometimes our fact checks deal with heavy subjects. So we hope to bring a smile to your face. Scroll down to read other election-related fact checks | 
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