mike: good evening, welcome to washington. i m mike emanuel in for bret baier border crossing set another record. highly total ever recorded for december. with the new year combings new laws. we will tell you where minimum wage is up and which states are implementing new gun restrictions and bret baier takes a look at the rise of internet use and data centers have increasing number of those facilities are impacting the electric grid. but, first, breaking tonight, president joe biden says his favorite memory of the year is bringing jobs back to the u.s. he also says the country is in a better position to lead the world than any other nation. the president s new year s message comes amid low approval numbers u.s. handling of the war in israel and the crisis at our southern border. the first family scheduled to return tomorrow to washington after a week long caribbean vacation. lucas tomlinson is travel with the president and reports from st. croix. good evening, lucas. mike
74 million people are under heat alerts. we re talking temperatures up to 25 degrees above average in some places. and right now, texas is bracing for what was just named the first tropical storm of the season, tropical storm alberto, heading toward the gulf coast. and fast. meantime, out west, those deadly wildfires rage on with firefighters battling that relentless heat, and we have team coverage this morning with nbc s sam brock in galveston, texas, nbc s maya egoland in coney island and we have your meteorologist standing by with your forecast. storm prep is already under way there. this is now tropical storm alberto. what is the latest, sam? reporter: sam, we re having a hard time with your mic. let s work on getting that. let s turn to maya who is here in new york, one of the places experiencing these extreme temperatures. how are people coping, maya? reporter: hey, ana, as you can see behind me, some people are coping by taking a dip in the water, but it is ext
incident to police. that does it for us this hour. our coverage continues with katy tur reports, right now. good to be with you. i m katy tur. what is president biden hoping to get out of today s executive order allowing him to seal the southern border? he made the announcement just a few minutes ago saying the influx of migrants is unsustainable. quote, for those who say the steps i ve taken are too strict, i say to you be patient. the goodwill of the american public is wearing thin right now. doing nothing is not an option. we have to act. he also said that without immigration reform, specifically the immigration bill which was crafted by a bipartisan team of senators and leaned conservative, by the way, signing an executive order was his only remaining option. that order is definitely going to go to the courts. the aclu has already said it plans on suing. and a number of progressive lawmakers including the congressional hispanic caucus are crying foul, saying this isn
immediately though likely there will be certain court challenges and lawsuits as you mentioned that they are already bracing for. but this is the president who has come a long way on immigration, saying i promised certain things as candidate joe biden, i ran on rolling back former president trump immigration policies, but the fact of the matter is as he said he couldn t do nothing. that was not an option. and he said that he is hearing from democratic governors and mayors all the time about the need to do something to crack down on this. so this is his answer. and this authority would have been a part of that bipartisan border bill. it would have been enshrined in that and it would have given him permission to do this same thing at the border. but because that was torpedoed he said he also had to go this route though he would have preferred to reach across the aisle and work with republicans. now, we have to point out that essentially if crossings fall to 1,500 a day, right now the thr