Congress
The MAGA loyalist working to grow the foreign guest-worker program
CAMBRIDGE, Maryland — On Capitol Hill, Rep. Andy Harris is one of the most uncompromising advocates of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. On the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, the Maryland Republican is seen as a hero for securing foreign labor to power his state’s commercial seafood industry.
The 69-year-old lawmaker, who chairs the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and the subcommittee that funds the Department of Agriculture, has leveraged his influence as one of Washington’s most prominent hard-liners to lobby the White House in favor of a robust influx of temporary foreign workers.
That meant convincing the Trump administration earlier this year to max out the number of guest workers allowed for the season, helping businesses throughout the country — including seafood producers in his district, who bring in workers from Mexico to hand-pick meat from the region’s blue crabs.
“I’ve been in long enough to know how to get things done, and we got it done,” Harris told Jack Brooks, owner of the J.M. Clayton crab company, on a recent afternoon outside his facility along the Choptank River.
It’s not just a parochial priority for Harris, who has grander ambitions to increase the number of seasonal workers who flow in and out of the country. He’s driving a debate within the Republican party about whether the president’s “America First” agenda means aggressively stemming the number of foreigners who enter the United States — both legally and illegally — or helping the U.S. economy with regulated foreign labor.
Harris told Brooks he plans to build on his success by working to guarantee longtime H-2B employers get the positions they seek regardless of their luck in a yearly lottery.
“We appreciate you out there battling on our behalf, for sure,” Brooks said to Harris. “I know you’re just one guy.”
The H-2B visa program Harris wants to expand is distinct from a separate temporary visa program for migrant farmworkers. It’s instead aimed at nonagricultural jobs such as landscaping, construction and, in this case, “crab picking.”
There is no conflict, Harris argues, between his endorsement of the president’s aggressive approach to illegal immigration and his support for more temporary foreign workers who return to their home countries each year.
At the same time, Harris — the son of immigrants from Central Europe — also consistently rails against amnesty policies that would create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
“This is not an immigration issue — this is a temporary foreign worker issue,” Harris said in an interview. “Once we control the uncontrolled border crossing, let’s talk about how we can bring a foreign workforce in to boost the economy where it needs to be boosted.”
Under the “Buy American, Hire American” agenda Trump has pursued throughout his first and second terms, his administration has often resisted calls to issue the maximum number of H-2B visas Congress allows. This year, however, Harris traveled down Pennsylvania Avenue at a crucial moment to persuade the White House otherwise — quietly locking in roughly 65,000 positions for workers with H-2B visas for the current season, about 30,000 more than what the Trump administration had announced it would allow.
The White House’s decision to boost the number of visas followed the termination of work documents for 1.3 million undocumented immigrants, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. The Trump administration’s No. 1 priority, she said, “is protecting American jobs and wages” while meeting the demands of the president’s “rapidly growing economy.”
Harris pitched Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in recent weeks on his ideas for embracing an influx of temporary foreign workers as Trump promises “a Golden Age of American agriculture” and a renaissance for U.S. manufacturing amid record tariffs and new Republican-led tax perks.
“I think they realized that — as we bring work back — we are going to have to provide the labor here,” Harris said.
The congressman also wants to impose a “buy American” mandate for SNAP food assistance to ensure the roughly $100 billion in federal aid each year is used to purchase food grown and produced in the United States. “But that means that you’re going to have to have workers here,” Harris explained.
Asked about the Trump administration’s reception of Harris’ ideas, a spokesperson for USDA said in a statement that the president “is putting America First” by “streamlining” visa policy and “prioritizing fixing programs farmers and ranchers rely on to produce the safest and most productive food supply in the world.”
To close followers of visa policy debate in Washington, it’s clear that Harris is “the ringleader” of the push to expand the pool of temporary foreign workers, said Daniel Costa, a director at the Economic Policy Institute, a group that is critical of the way workers are treated under the H-2B program.
While Harris’ stance is not “a paradox,” Costa said in an interview, it’s certainly in conflict with the MAGA vision of top Trump advisers, including Stephen Miller. Harris’ lobbying effort is reminiscent of the “fracture in the Republican coalition” last year when Elon Musk pressed the president to boost a separate visa program for high-skilled workers against the guidance of other close Trump allies, he added.
Back in Harris’ district, seafood processors on the Eastern Shore have for decades struggled to fill key gaps in their workforce. “Crab pickers” began moving into manufacturing and other jobs in the mid-1990s, forcing business owners in the region to start seeking seasonal foreign workers.
At that time, there were more than 50 crab producers in the area. Those businesses that didn’t bring in foreign employees quickly closed, followed in later years by those that had bad luck in the visa lottery. Local crab producers still standing estimate there are fewer than a dozen remaining.
Lindy’s Seafood, another producer on the Eastern Shore, was not awarded any foreign workers in this year’s initial federal lottery. But the company lucked out when the Trump administration opened up the supplemental visas Harris helped secure.
“It’s a scary thing to go through, when every year is kind of tossing the dice,” said Aubrey Vincent, the company’s owner.
Other Maryland lawmakers have tried to help. Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks have joined with lawmakers from states with big seafood industries to push a bipartisan bill that would exempt seafood processors from the cap on H-2B visas.
“It’d be nice to have the Trump administration support this effort,” Van Hollen said in an interview. “But regardless, we’re going to push very hard to get it done.”
Maryland’s Democrats don’t have the same sway right now as Harris, the sole Republican in his state’s 10-member congressional delegation and the only Marylander on Capitol Hill who has the ear of Trump administration officials mostly disinterested in working across the aisle.
Before Harris was elected to Congress in 2011, Maryland’s crab producers had another powerful advocate: then-Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who later chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee. After the limit on H-2B visas was first imposed in 2005, Mikulski succeeded in excluding returning workers from the visa cap.
But when Mikulski retired in 2017, Senate support for that policy died. “As soon as you lost the bicameral advocacy for it, it just became difficult,” said Harris, who pushed the policy in the House while Mikulski championed it in the Senate.
In 2016, appropriators started adding language to the annual funding bills allowing DHS to issue about 65,000 extra H-2B visas per year — the quota Harris got the Trump administration to fulfill this year.
Now Harris is working alongside the Senate funding panel’s current chair, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, to advocate for the visas, which she argues are essential to “temporarily fill the seasonal roles that many inns, restaurants, and hotels rely on” during the summer tourism boom in her home state, whose license plates read “Vacationland.”
For the upcoming fiscal year, Harris wants to add what he calls “certified employer” language to a full-year funding bill for DHS. That means businesses that have used the H-2B visa program to hire temporary foreign workers for several years could go through a process to guarantee they get the same number of seasonal employees each year.
Some of Harris’ colleagues suggest waiting for a comprehensive immigration overhaul package to make changes to the H-2B visa program, rather than tackle it piecemeal. But Congress hasn’t been able to achieve such a feat in 40 years, and Harris isn’t interested in waiting.
“It’s not going to be anytime soon,” Harris said. “So let’s just deal with the issue now.”
NEW YORK — With just five days to go until the primary election in New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a stark warning to members of Congress who believe “incumbency is a substitute for action”: Watch out.
“People often ask me what I think of the state of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said to the crowd at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn as he boosted his endorsed congressional candidates. “This slate here today is our answer. The Democratic Party must change.”
The democratic socialist framed Tuesday’s election as much more than what that means for New York, though. In recounting how people also ask him about the 2028 presidential election, he put it bluntly: “It starts now. It starts on Tuesday.”
“For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people,” Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. And frankly, it will lose in South Carolina and New Hampshire. It will fall short of 270 electoral votes, because the party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”
Mamdani, joined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, urged his supporters to show up for his endorsed candidates “the way you showed up for me.” They include former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s challenging two-term Rep. Dan Goldman; state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who’s vying for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat; and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, who’s trying to unseat five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Mamdani’s endorsed slate of legislative candidates were at the rally, too.
The rally featured standard stump speeches from the candidates, highlighting the need to support working class New Yorkers and immigrants. Speakers called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group that has loomed over many of these primaries — despite no evident spending from its independent expenditure arm. Sanders also emphasized his call to ban super PACs, which have reshaped primaries across the city.
Taking place just hours after the massive ticker-tape parade celebrating the Knicks’ historic championship, there were also Knicks references galore.
“I hate to break it to you, but OG Anunoby is not here to save the day,” said Mamdani, who was wearing a Knicks jersey under his suit. “The only hands we can count on are ours.”
Sanders, who is wildly popular in New York, previously endorsed Valdez and Lander. Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and are backed by the city chapter in their bids. Sanders had not officially endorsed Avila Chevalier prior to the rally.
“Why are progressives and socialist candidates winning elections all across this country?” Sanders asked. “The answer in my view is not complicated. The working class of America understands that our current economic system is rigged, that it is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful.”
Polling has shown Lander with a lead over Goldman, and a tight race for Velázquez’s seat. Public polling is scarce in the Espaillat race, but recent internal surveys suggest Avila Chevalier is posing a real challenge to the incumbent. Mamdani endorsed her just weeks ago, much later than Lander and Valdez, but his engagement in the race has significantly elevated its profile.
“Six months ago, they told us this race was over before it started,” Avila Chevalier said at the rally. “They told us Adriano was untouchable, that he was an institution, that you don’t run against someone like him and win. That this district was his, and that we should wait our turn. And they said it with such confidence, like the outcome had already been written. Look around. Look at what we’ve built.”
Mamdani’s decision to get involved in congressional races is stress-testing how the new mayor navigates relations with powerful, well-respected party figures — many of whom he’s on the opposite side of.
Mamdani’s endorsement is expected to be a significant asset for his picks; he had dominant performances across these districts in last year’s mayoral primary. And that shine doesn’t seem to have dulled. Recent polling has shown that Mamdani has high approval ratings.
Goldman did not support Mamdani during last year’s mayoral primary or the general election, as Lander has often pointed out. Espaillat backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary, but supported Mamdani in the general election. Valdez’s opponents, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and city Council Member Julie Won, both supported Mamdani in the primary.
The mayor has been active on the trail for his congressional candidates of choice in the closing stretch of the campaign. And he touted them all in an advertisement that ran during the first game of the Knicks’ finals run.
Still, Lander has tried to keep some distance. When asked at a recent press conference why he would appear in that ad with Avila Chevalier, who attended a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in 2023 — the same rally Lander said he left the DSA over — he said it was an “opportunity to show New Yorkers that politics can be a team sport.” He also clarified that he has not endorsed candidates in any other congressional primaries.
Avila Chevalier told reporters that she went to that rally to “stand against” Israel engaging in “a response that is often disproportionate and creates a greater loss of life.” She added that she has “condemned Hamas” and does “not believe that celebrating the loss of anybody’s life is OK.”
Kings Theatre isn’t located in any of the districts these congressional hopefuls are trying to represent — though it neighbors the seats that Lander and Valdez have their eyes on.
It’s especially far from Espaillat’s district, which includes parts of upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
While handing out campaign literature to people walking out of the subway in Hamilton Heights, Blue Light News asked Espaillat if he had thoughts about Avila Chevalier appearing at the rally.
“I’m rallying right here in my district with my constituents — not in Brooklyn,” he replied.
Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.
Retirement groups are calling on Congress to investigate Meta over a wave of social media scams targeting older Americans.
In a letter sent Thursday to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the groups alleged Meta has been slow to take down fraudulent ads, leaving seniors vulnerable to financial loss. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was signed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Postal Workers Union Retirees and the American Federation of Teachers, among others.
“Fraudulent Medicare ads have proliferated on Meta platforms and too many seniors are getting scammed while Meta profits,” said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans. “We are calling on Congress to investigate how these scams are allowed to spread, what Meta knew about them, and why stronger protections are not in place. Seniors should not be left vulnerable while scammers and tech companies cash in.”
The letter’s demands follow a report published last month by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit advocacy group, which alleged that Meta has profited by leaving up fraudulent ads, many of which target Medicare recipients.
“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services and for years we’ve been one of law enforcement’s strongest partners in the fight against this type of online crime — identifying criminals, disrupting their crimes and helping bring them to justice.”
Stone pointed to several examples of Meta’s efforts to combat scams on its platform, including a recent collaboration with U.S. and Thai law enforcement to disrupt online scams.
It’s not the first time Meta has faced scrutiny over the scams: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) urged the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission to open an investigation into the company in November after Reuters reported that Meta in internal documents projected 10 percent of its 2024 revenue would come from fraudulent ads. And in February, a group of bipartisan lawmakers pressed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over its plans to prevent and combat fraud on its platforms.
Reps. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) also introduced bipartisan legislation earlier this year to combat predatory scam ads.
Congress is expected to send a landmark, bipartisan housing affordability bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by the end of next week as the Senate and House schedule action on the legislation in the coming days.
The Senate has teed up the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act for final passage on Monday, after completing all its necessary procedural votes this week.
The legislation will then move on to the House where GOP leadership plans to open debate on Wednesday, with a vote expected as early as the same day, according to six people familiar with the vote granted anonymity to discuss plans.
House leadership plans to suspend the rules, requiring a two-thirds majority vote, to speed up the bill’s path to Trump’s desk. Final passage could be pushed to Thursday depending on timing, the people said.
The housing bill aims to tackle housing affordability and boost homeownership and supply ahead of a midterm election dominated by cost-of-living concerns.
The four lawmakers leading the negotiations over the legislation — Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.), ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — came to an agreement Tuesday afternoon after months of back and forth on the bill’s contents.
The housing affordability legislation, which the White House supports, contains a provision limiting the role of large institutional investors in the single-family housing market, which was a key condition for Trump to sign the bill.
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