The White House is ratcheting up its attacks on House Republicans over migration at the border, aiming to turn their opposition to a deal to address the crisis into a political anvil for them.

In a memo expected to be released Wednesday, White House officials took aim at House Speaker Mike Johnson for holding up the administration’s border funding requests in the past as well as undermining the Senate effort now.

“Despite arguing for 6 straight years that presidents need new legal authority to secure the border, and despite claiming to agree with President Biden on the need for hiring more Border Patrol agents and deploying new fentanyl detection equipment, Speaker Johnson is now the chief impediment to all 3,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates wrote in a strategy memo first obtained by POLITICO.

Some rank-and-file members have “outright admitted [to blocking a deal] for political purposes, after hearing from former President Trump,” he said.

The memo marks a significant uptick in rhetoric from administration officials. Immediately after former President Donald Trump came out against the Senate talks, the White House stayed largely silent in hopesof salvaging a bipartisan compromise.

The White House and House speaker now appear engaged in an effort to put responsibility on the other for failing to address the surge of migrants at the border. It’s come amid an uncertain fate for a potential Senate deal that would tie border policy to significant funding for Ukraine and Israel. Polls show Republicans have typically done better with the public on questions of which party has a better response to the border and immigration.

Johnson’s camp has blamed President Joe Biden for reversing Trump-era border regulations that led to an uptick in migrants crossing the border.

Bates in his memo listed four moments in which House Republicans have opposed Biden’s border asks, including fiscal 2022 and 2023 funding requests and two supplemental funding requests.

In response, Johnson’s office pointed to its own early January memo, arguing that, despite House Republicans providing plenty of funding for border security, Biden’s policies are the problem.

“In a desperate attempt to shift blame for a crisis their policies have induced, they have argued it’s a funding problem,” wrote spokesperson Raj Shah in that memo. “Clearly, they have no facts to back up their claim.”

Johnson said the package doesn’t do enough to address the border and rejected the idea that he’s opposing it because Trump does.

The Senate has yet to unveil details of their negotiations, but Johnson last week declared the measure “dead on arrival” in his chamber based on his knowledge of the proposal. The White House is now trying to take advantage of the GOP’s opposition.

Johnson and other Republicans, including former president Trump, say legislation is not needed to resolve the border crisis and that Biden has executive authority he is not using. But Trump, as president, requested similar authorities that Biden is asking for now. And the House GOP position a few weeks ago was that the Senate should take up the House’s conservative border legislation, H.R. 2.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the lead Republican in the negotiations, has blasted members of his own party for opposing a potential border agreement because of politics.

“Republicans four months ago … locked arms together and said, ‘We’re not going to give you money for this. We want a change in law,’” Lankford said on Fox News Sunday. “A few months later, when we’re finally getting to the end, they’re like, ‘Oh, just kidding. I actually don’t want a change in law because it’s a presidential election year.’”

Johnson’s promise that any Senate border deal would die in the House has all but sealed its fate. But it has also undermined what tenuous Republican support existed in the Senate, making it uncertain that any agreement would reach that chamber’s floor.

The Senate plan — the text of which has not been released — is expected to speed up the asylum process as well as require the U.S. to close the border if more than 5,000 migrants cross on any given day.

Graham to Zuckerberg: ‘You have blood on your hands’

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George Santos’ campaign committee still owes more than $150,000 to over a half-dozen vendors after the former New York congressman was expelled in December.

Newly filed campaign finance reports also show the disgraced Republican used campaign cash for more than $1,300 on meals at the Capitol Hill Club just days after he was kicked out of Congress.

Santos was expelled from Congress last month after facing a barrage of scandals, including allegations that he lied about much of his life while campaigning, made unauthorized charges on campaign donors’ credit cards and fraudulently claimed unemployment benefits during the Covid-19 pandemic. He has been indicted on more than 20 charges, and has pleaded not guilty.

His former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, pleaded guilty to fraudulent reporting last fall.

Leaving Congress has hardly ended Santos’ campaign finance woes, however, and his campaign committee remains active although he is not seeking election this year.

The committee’s latest report, filed Wednesday morning, underscores the financial mess that Santos’ campaign wrought. The campaign reported that it owes more than $16,000 to WinRed, the online payment processing platform, a debt not listed in his previous filings. In total, the campaign reported owing $155,000 to the platform, a handful of former staffers, legal and fundraising firms and an Italian restaurant in Queens.

The report also continued to list $715,000 that is owed to Santos by the campaign. Prosecutors have alleged that Santos never loaned his campaign that money to begin with.

Expenses reported by Santos’ campaign in the fourth quarter included nearly $2,200 spent at the Capitol Hill Club, a private social club for Republicans located next to the Republican National Committee’s headquarters, over three visits, including the more than $1,300 spent on Dec. 4, after he was expelled. Other expenses were largely for compliance consulting and payments to WinRed.

Santos’ campaign also reported taking in a bit more than $11,000 over the fourth quarter, but indicated that contributions designated for the 2024 general election had since been refunded to the donors. Several of the contributions appeared to be from recurring online donors.

A special election for Santos’ seat, which spans from northern Queens to the North Shore of Long Island, will take place next month, with former Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat who held the seat before Santos, facing Republican newcomer Mazi Pilip.

More than 100 congressional offices are already using artificial intelligence for everyday tasks — such as writing constituent correspondence, handling member scheduling and drafting legislation.

And lawmakers and staff alike are hungry to find more ways to harness AI.

That could include ways to ease the workload of overburdened staffers, help with research, write bills and summaries and extend constituent outreach capabilities. Essentially, the Hill is eyeing ways to build staff capacity without actually expanding the payroll.

Congress may be notorious for lagging behind as the world embraces new technology — from then-Sen. Ted Stevens calling the internet a “series of tubes” back in 2006 to lawmakers’ slow-footed approach to adopting email back in the 1990s.

But lawmakers are determined that when it comes to AI, things will be different.

“AI won’t replace humans,” Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), the House Administration Committee chair, said in an interview. “But humans that use AI could replace those who aren’t using AI.”

Still, even lawmakers who favor innovation know AI comes with risks. There are concerns that an overreliance on AI could lead to cybersecurity problems, from national security risks to looser restrictions on private constituent data. Officials admit it may be a while before AI can be leveraged for anything involving sensitive or personal information.

“We’re talking about balancing the risks that come with any new technology to make sure we have appropriate safeguards in place and to make sure we’re leveraging the benefits of AI and protecting ourselves from any downside risk,” Steil said.

To that end, Congress is working to build early guardrails for AI use. The House’s Chief Administrative Office is expected to unveil a draft policy for AI use across the House in the next two to three months, according to Deputy CAO John Clocker, who said at a committee hearing Tuesday that while AI has “transformative potential,” offices have to be “extraordinarily cautious before we integrate AI tools.”

“Adversaries will also use these tools to try to harm the House,” Clocker warned the Administration Committee.

The House’s policies will be based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework, but tailored by CAO for what Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) referred to as the “very complicated ecosystem” of the House.

While the House may adopt broad guardrails for AI usage, management of each office will remain up to individual members and their appetite for innovation, experimentation and risk. Some lawmakers already have ideas for ways to harness it for themselves and their staff.

Rep. Morgan Griffiths (R-Va.) envisions being able to listen to audio versions of reports or bill text on his drive to Washington, he said at the committee hearing. Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) wants to know how AI can help her district staff to wade through overwhelming loads of constituent casework while protecting people’s personal information.

Congressional use of AI is in early stages, but so are major AI programs outside the public sector. The current plans to take advantage of it for lawmakers represent a rare example of Congress adopting a technology while it’s still being honed and developed.

“It does hallucinate,” Clocker said of AI’s inconsistencies. “It is confident, even though it is hallucinating.”

Already, more than 200 staffers in 150 House offices, plus committees, are participating in a pilot program using Chat GPT+ for everyday tasks, such as scheduling, constituent correspondence and bill summaries.

Currently, the most popular use of ChatGPT+ is to produce a first draft of testimony, a statement or a speech, before staffers bring it to its final form — editing the AI version to integrate voice and verve that AI can’t yet achieve.

While the House has been in talks with other generative AI platforms, including Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the only company so far that has made a commitment to protect House and member data. That includes commitments to not use that data in training their models or sharing it with other customers.

The CAO’s office is evaluating other providers. But without accepting the House’s terms for data protection, the paid license version of ChatGPT+ is the only House-approved AI provider.

The Senate is not as far along in its experimentation with AI use, though the upper chamber did establish a working group late last year and has issued some guidance to offices involved in pilot efforts. The chamber’s top cybersecurity officials determined that OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s BARD and Microsoft’s Copilot stand a “moderate level of risk if controls are followed.”

For now, Senate officials have limited use of the technology to research and evaluation purposes — and only using non-sensitive data.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Former U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan, who became the first female senator to represent Missouri after she was appointed to replace her husband following his death, died Tuesday. She was 90.

Carnahan, a Democrat, was appointed to the Senate in 2000 after the posthumous election of her husband, Gov. Mel Carnahan, and she served until November 2002, having lost a special election that month to Republican Jim Talent.

“Mom passed peacefully after a long and rich life. She was a fearless trailblazer. She was brilliant, creative, compassionate and dedicated to her family and her fellow Missourians,” her family said in a statement.

Her family did not specify the cause of death but said Carnahan died after a brief illness.

Carnahan was born Dec. 20, 1933, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the nation’s capital. Her father worked as a plumber and her mother as a hairdresser.

She met Mel Carnahan, the son of a Missouri congressman, at a church event, and they became better acquainted after sitting next to each other at a class in high school, according to information provided by the family. They were married June 12, 1954.

Jean Carnahan graduated a year later from George Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in business and public administration, and they later raised four children on a farm near Rolla, Missouri.

She served as first lady of Missouri after her husband’s election as governor in 1992 and through his two terms.

On Oct. 16, 2000, the governor; the couple’s son, Roger (also known as Randy); and an aide, Chris Sifford; died in a plane crash on the way to a campaign event. The governor’s son was flying the twin-engine plane, and a subsequent federal probe found that he became disoriented while trying to fly through rain, darkness and fog.

After Mel Carnahan was elected posthumously three weeks later over incumbent Republican Sen. John Ashcroft, acting Gov. Roger B. Wilson appointed Jean Carnahan to fill the seat left vacant by her husband’s death.

“They were a team,” Wilson said in announcing his intention to appoint her. “There is really no other person that has been near all of the critical issues as much as she has.”

She served from Jan. 3, 2001, to Nov. 25, 2002. In 2002, Carnahan drew 48.7 percent of the vote in the special election to officially fill out the term to Talent’s 49.8.

”Most people get to Washington by winning something,” she was quoted in the New York Times in 2001 about serving in the Senate. ”I, of course, ended up there because I lost something. But I can tell you I’m getting along just fine. People come up to me, strangers even, and give me a big hug and tell me, ‘You can do it.’ And I’ve found I can. And I enjoy it and I’m proud and honored to serve.”