represents mesothelioma victims and their families. if you or a loved one who has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, call us now hey, on inside politics, border, crack down. president biden is unveiling his most aggressive move, yet to stop illegal immigration. it would sharply restrict asylum claims. the goal here is political protection, but so far the backlash is bipartisan plus, i will not be intimidated what words from attorney general merrick garland, who is testifying on capitol hill right now. he s pushing back on the republicans who baselessly accused him of quote weaponizing the justice department against republicans and guns, drugs, and explicit photos. the first way fitness is on the stand right now in the hunter biden trial, and we have new details on the prosecution s case and how personal and uncomfortable it s likely to get for the president s son. i m dana bash. let s go behind the headlines content inside politics we begin with breaking news, new deta
that s a matter of public record. yes. and he s a democrat, indy i m assuming the answer is yes. and henry cuellar, justice department indicted him. he s a democrat to its amount, matter of public record and dana this is a general oversight hearing. so what you re seeing in the room from republicans especially is a series of potpourri really of issues that they want to talk about, whether that is the biden administration does immigration policies. you also have had a series of members who had been asking garland about the release of the audio tapes from hur s interview with president joe biden. obviously that is something that they are continuing swing to push for something that they actually held garland in contempt of congress over the not releasing that tapes. so this is something that we are going to continue watching, but just a series of issues. some of them conspiracy theories coming from republicans as they continue to press the attorney general, dana.
are just doing their job. one of the first lines of questioning today in this hearing came from matt gaetz, who was going after merrick garland, asking him a series of questions about district attorney alvin bragg and the case up in new york where trump was just convicted and repeatedly what you heard from garland is that the justice department has nothing to do with that meanwhile, democrats are making clear that that is the case, and that this is not about political persecution. because if you look at a set of high profile cases that the justice department has been working on. it includes some democrats who are actually members of this body here in congress and that was the point from steve cohen a democrat from tennessee. here he is as far as weaponization of the department goes did the justice department indict senator menendez?
and jamaal bowman, i should say it s been among the most outspoken and he has definitely has a lot of support on some of the progressive side, but he has raised the ire of other democrats because he is using words like genocide. he was one of the first people to call for a ceasefire and he is now being challenged by somebody who is has the support of pro-israel democrats and republicans yeah. and you know, we can argue all we want about how much the israel-hamas this war is going to end up being a factor in the presidential election. but i think you look at a race that jamaal bowman is currently running and you see an example of a kind of district where that issue may actually end up being incredibly important. there s a ton of money pro-israel money that has already poured in to that race to poured his opponent and the fact that we are seeing this kind of fracture that s pretty unusual with his former
colleague came up with him together endorsing him. and in this kind of public way, yeah, it has been an ugly issue for just real quick. we re almost at a time just to emphasize monday or jones democrat is running to get back to congress against a republican, mike lawler, who has made among other things, made his allegiance and alliance to israel a big issue. yeah, and that s getting to a steady point like mandir jones is doing this to help mon deir jones. but as mj said, there s a lot of racist it is primary races that pro-israel money is trying to push is using to try to defeat some of these anti israel progressives in congress. he did grow up around large jewish communities. so not to make everything just about rob politics, not to say the very much involved here. thank you so much to all of you. thank you for joining inside politics, cnn news central starts to the break sometimes