The news from the southern border gets worse by the day. Border Patrol officials have been releasing thousands of illegal migrants at San Diego, Nogales, and other cities near the border in recent days as their processing and holding facilities reach capacity. Local officials are, predictably, not happy.

Down the road at Eagle Pass, Texas, more than 2,000 people just walked across the border and turned themselves in to authorities overnight Sunday. That’s in a town of less than 30,000 residents.

The need for more restrictions at the border hardly seems debatable at this point. The Biden administration put the kibosh on President Trump’s border wall on Day One and has since started selling off sections of the wall that were already paid for but waiting to be installed. Hard-line House Republicans are demanding that the project be restarted as part of the ongoing budget showdown at D.C.

As an insurance policy against those Republican efforts to restart the project, Biden administration officials are turning to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency last week proposed adding to the endangered species list a speck-size springsnail, Quitobaquito tryonia, found only in one spring on the border in Arizona. Doing so would almost certainly doom any efforts to put up a wall in Arizona to years of delay and litigation from environmentalists.

Union Politics

Liberal lawmakers rushed to join the picket lines put up by the United Auto Workers over the weekend, expressing support for the union’s demand that members get paid more to work less by implementing a 32-hour work week along with 36 percent wage increases over the next few years. Senator Sanders suggested that the 40-hour work week is to blame for declining life expectancy in this country. “People in America are stressed out,” he said.

Another striking union, though, hasn’t benefited from the attention of Democratic lawmakers. Members of the Writers Guild — and their allies in the Screen Actors Guild — have been marching outside the big studios in Hollywood for weeks now, but there have been no senators hopping in their Broncos and driving 290 miles, as Senator Fetterman did, to join them.

The Election No One Wants

More brutal polls are out Monday for the two candidates currently favored to face off in next year’s election. Rassmussen reports that 38 percent of Americans would vote for a third party if given a chance in 2024, including 42 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of Republicans. Absent that option, the two frontrunners are essentially tied, with President Biden favored by 43 percent of voters and President Trump by 42 percent. 

Also Notable:

• Prime Minister Trudeau warns of new taxes on large grocery chains in Canada unless they do something to halt food price inflation.
• The Biden administration is trying to protect federal bureaucrats from being fired in the event of a Republican victory in 2024.
• Los Angeles built a licensed tent city for its homeless — at a cost of $44,000 a tent.
• The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, is floating the idea of city-owned grocery stores to replace the retailers fleeing the city.
• The U.S. military is searching for a missing F-35B in South Carolina after the pilot ejected yesterday and the jet kept flying.
• Senator Lee of Utah on Senator Schumer’s new dress code: “Police. Firefighters. Judges. Pilots. They all have uniforms. Ours is a suit and tie. We shouldn’t abandon it because it’s more comfortable to wear sweats.”