Trump’s wall hits barrier in Congress
Even conservative Republicans don’t want to pay for it. The standoff raises the risk of a federal shutdown.
WASHINGTON — It’s an open secret on Capitol Hill: President Trump wants a “big, beautiful” border wall, but few in Congress are willing to pay for it.
The standoff, between the White House and lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — has escalated tension toward a possible government shutdown at midnight Friday as Congress races to meet a deadline to fund federal offices and operations.
Cooler heads will probably prevail. Talks are underway for a stopgap measure to keep the government running for another week or so while negotiations continue.
But the stalemate over Trump’s signature campaign promise — that he would build a wall along the border to deter illegal immigration and that Mexico would pay for it — remains a political divide.
It’s not that Trump’s Republican allies in Congress, who are the majority, don’t support the notions underpinning a border wall. Most of them do.
They just disagree with Trump’s approach for a physical barrier when other deterrents may prove more effective at stopping illegal crossings. And they don’t view the huge expenditure – as much as $70 billion by the latest estimate — a top priority right now.
Sen. Ron Johnson (RWis.), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has called the wall a “metaphor” for border security, saying it’s one tool, among many, to protect the nearly 2,000-mile frontier.
Border state Republican Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Martha McSally (RAriz.) recently asked the Department of Homeland Security for more information about the wall project, saying they have “a number of questions.”
“Building a wall is the most expensive and least effective way to secure the bor-
VARNER, Ark. — Two inmates received lethal injections on the same gurney Monday night about three hours apart as Arkansas completed the nation’s first double execution since 2000, just days after the state ended a nearly 12-year hiatus on administering capital punishment.
Although the first inmate, Jack Jones, was executed on schedule, shortly after 7 p.m., attorneys for the second, Marcel Williams, persuaded a federal judge minutes later to brief ly delay his punishment over concerns about how the earlier one was carried out.
They claimed Jones gasped for air, an account the state’s attorney general denied, but the judge lifted her stay about an hour later and Williams was pronounced dead at 10:33 p.m.
Initially, Gov. Asa Hutchinson scheduled four double executions over an 11day period this month. The eight executions would have been the most by a state in such a compressed period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Arkansas said the executions needed to be carried out before its supply of one lethal injection drug expires on April 30.
The first three executions were canceled because of court decisions, and then inmate Ledell Lee was executed last week.
Arkansas’ last double execution occurred in 1999.
Jones was sent to death row for the 1995 rape and killing of Mary Phillips. He strangled her with the cord to a coffee pot.
He was also convicted of attempting to kill Phillips’ 11year-old daughter and was convicted in another rape and killing in Florida.
Jones said this month that he was ready for execution. Both men were served last meals on Monday afternoon, Arkansas Department of Correction spokesman Solomon Graves said. Jones had fried chicken, potato logs with tartar sauce, beef jerky bites, three candy bars, a chocolate milkshake and fruit punch. Williams had fried chicken, banana pudding, nachos, two sodas and potato logs with ketchup, Graves said.
In recent pleadings before state and federal courts, the inmates said the three drugs Arkansas uses to execute prisoners — midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride — could be ineffective because of their poor health.
Jones, 52, lost a leg to diabetes and was on insulin. Williams, 46, weighed 400 pounds and was diabetic.
In their court filing asking Supreme Court justices to block Williams’ execution, his attorneys wrote that his “morbid obesity makes it likely that either the IV line cannot be placed or that it will be placed in error, thus causing substantial damage” like a collapsed lung.
The poor health of both men, their lawyers said, could make it difficult for them to respond during a consciousness check after a megadose of midazolam. The state shouldn’t risk giving them drugs to stop their lungs and hearts if they weren’t unconscious, they told courts.
The last state to put more than one inmate to death on the same day was Texas, which executed two killers in August 2000.
Oklahoma planned a double execution in 2014 but scrapped plans for the second one after the execution of Clayton Lockett went awry.
Arkansas executed four men in an eight-day period in 1960. The only quicker pace included quadruple executions in 1926 and 1930.
Williams was sent to death row for the 1994 rape and killing of 22-year-old Stacy Errickson, whom he kidnapped from a gas station in central Arkansas.
Authorities said Williams abducted and raped two other women in the days before he was arrested in Errickson’s death. Williams admitted responsibility to the state Parole Board last month.
“I wish I could take it back, but I can’t,” Williams told the board.
In a letter this month, Jones said he was ready to be killed by the state.
“I forgive my executioners; somebody has to do it,” wrote Jones.
The letter, which his attorney read aloud at his clemency hearing, went on to say, “I shall not ask to be forgiven, for I haven’t the right.”
Including Jones and Williams, nine people have been executed in the United States this year, four in Texas, threein Arkansas and one each in Missouri and Virginia.
Last year, 20 people were executed, down from 98 in 1999 and the lowest number since 14 in 1991, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.