Noem fast-tracks construction for water barriers in Texas along Rio Grande to keep migrants from crossing into US
Noem signed a waiver bypassing environmental laws so about 17 miles of 'waterborne barrier' technology could be built in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Thursday.
'A capability gap has been identified in waterways along the Southwest border where drug smuggling, human trafficking and other dangerous and illegal activity occurs,' the department said in a statement.
The project, which will be paid for with previously allocated funds, marks the sixth time Noem has used such a waiver.
It revives a strategy that was a source of controversy under the previous administration, when the Biden administration sued the state of Texas for putting a 1,000 feet of razor-tipped barriers in the Rio Grande, in a case that was ultimately unsuccessful on appeal.
Texas's much smaller floating barrier effort cost about $1 million, and Rep. Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, warned Border Report that the latest DHS version of a river barrier could cost vastly more.
'When you talk about constructing a fence it could be $30 million per mile. This water structure is going to be expensive,' he said.
Residents of the low-income, largely Hispanic region are divided over such border projects.
The Rio Grande Valley voted for Trump in 2024, but some argue the border build-up in the area has drained needed resources and led to profiling against Latinos.
'This is like a rights-free area,' Michelle Serrano, of the local advocacy group Voces Unidas RGV, told The Independent last year. 'We're talking about an area where they freely racially profile us. It feels like a separate but equal situation.'
In addition to expanding border construction, the second Trump administration has also transferred nearly 400 miles of border land to military control, as a means of expanding the use of troops in direct immigration enforcement, while deploying Marines and National Guard troops internally in response to anti-immigration raid protests in Los Angeles.
Prior to Trump returning to office, states like Texas embarked on their own border infrastructure sprees, erecting razor barriers, walls, and floating buoys.
As part of the Trump administration's Big, Beautiful Bill spending package, the federal government will spend over $13 billion reimbursing states like Texas for their efforts.
The Biden administration also waived environmental laws and continued the military-style security construction at the border, though at a lesser pace than the first Trump term.
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The following is the transcript of an interview with Kevin Hassett, National Economic Council director, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 6, 2025. WEIJA JIANG: We turn now to Kevin Hassett. He is the director of the National Economic Council and one of President Trump's top advisors. He's also very popular on that driveway where I'm usually alongside about a dozen reporters. So, Kevin, thank you so much for your time this morning. I want to start with trade, because there's a big deadline coming up on Wednesday. As you know, that 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs that the President announced back in April is set to end. So far, the US has announced a few deals; the UK, Vietnam, and you're inching closer to a final agreement with China. Do you expect to get any more deals done with America's biggest trading partners by Wednesday? KEVIN HASSETT: Yeah. First, I do have to take- take a pause and share your thoughts and prayers with the people of Texas. It's an incredible, heartbreaking story, and Kristi Noem and the President have instructed the federal government to throw everything they've got at helping the survivors and helping clean up that place. So, anyway, I'm really heartbroken today to see these stories, and I want you to know that in the White House, everybody is putting every effort they can into helping the people of Texas today. On trade, there's going to be quite a bit of news this week. And, I think, the headline of the news is that there are going to be deals that are finalized. There are a whole number that Jameson Greer has negotiated with foreign governments, and then they're going to be letters that are sent to countries saying, here's how we think it ought to go, because the deals aren't advanced enough. And the headline is going to be that countries are agreeing around the world to open their markets up to our products, and to allow us to put some kind of tariff on their products when they come into the US. At exactly what the numbers will be, will be things that you'll find out in the news this week,. WEIJA JIANG: Kevin, you said there are going to be deals. For those really important trading partners, if there's not a deal by Wednesday, is the President going to extend this pause? KEVIN HASSETT: You know, the United States is always willing to talk to everybody about everything that's going on in the world. And there are deadlines, and there are things that are close, and so maybe things will push back the dead- past the deadline, or maybe they want- in the end, the President's going to make that judgment. WEIJA JIANG: And you also mentioned those letters that will start going out tomorrow, according to President Trump. He said about 10 to 12 countries will receive them. Do you- can you tell us who's going to get one and what they say? KEVIN HASSETT: Because- because, again, the part of the letter that could be happening right is that we're close to a deal, we're not really satisfied with the progress that we're making at the deal, and so we're saying, okay, fine, we're going to send a letter, but maybe you get a deal at the last minute too. Until we see everything that plays out, I think that we need to just hold our fire and watch for the news this week. WEIJA JIANG: Is it fair to say that those notices are going to go to our smaller trading partners, as you negotiate with our bigger ones? KEVIN HASSETT: I think that it could be that it'll be both. But also, don't forget, that when we have great trade deals, our smaller trading partners could become much bigger trading partners. And that's, I think, one of the reasons why countries are racing to set deals up with us ahead of the deadline. WEIJA JIANG: I have to ask you about the deadlines, Kevin, to make these deals, because you just mentioned you're always open. The president said there's not really any flexibility left between now and Wednesday. Less than two weeks ago, the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that deals would be wrapped up by Labor Day. So, I wonder, you know, if- how can companies plan if the goal posts keep moving? How can countries negotiate if they don't even know how much time they have left? KEVIN HASSETT: Right. Well, the rough outlines of the deals are becoming clear to everybody, because we have some deals like the UK, and the Vietnam deal that are starting to be, you know, I guess, guidelines for what might happen. But, one of the things that we're seeing that's really interesting to me, is that people are just on-shoring production of the US at a record rate. As we've had record job creation, record capital spending, and this is even ahead of the Big, Beautiful Bill. And so, I think what's happening is that people are responding to President Trump's, you know, potential threats to have high tariffs on countries by moving their activity here into the US, which is creating jobs, more than 2 million jobs, since he took office, and raising wages. You know, wage growth is heading up towards the really, really high pinnacles that we saw in 2017. And so, I think there's a race right now to get activity into the US. And, in part, that race has been kicked off by President Trump. WEIJA JIANG: I remember after these reciprocal tariffs were announced, you told me that there were about 15 deals that countries were bringing to the President. How close, if you could give us any number at all, what number are we going to see this week? KEVIN HASSETT: Yeah, you'll have- you'll have to get that from Jameson and the President. I think that, you know, we've seen lots of deals that have been finalized by our negotiators, and then the President finds things that could make them better. And so, it's- I'm not going to get ahead of the President on the number of deals. WEIJA JIANG: Okay, thanks, Kevin. We'll look out for that. I want to move now to the One Big, Beautiful Bill that, of course, the President signed into law on Independence Day. You have it, and now you have to pay for it. And there's a consensus that this bill adds tremendously to the deficit. I know that you are so familiar with these numbers. The Yale Budget Lab estimates it will add $3 trillion to the debt. The Tax Foundation says this tax portion of the bill could also add $3 trillion to the deficit. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which factors in interest on the debt, says it could add up to $5 trillion over the next decade. And on this very program, even Speaker Johnson answered in the affirmative when asked if this bill would add over $4 trillion to the deficit. I know that the administration says the bill will actually shrink the deficit by $1.5 trillion. Help me understand why there is such a drastic difference between your number and all those others. KEVIN HASSETT: Well- well, first of all, let's remember that science is not democracy. Truth is not democracy. Our estimates are based on modeling that we used last time, when I was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to say what would happen if we had a bill, how much growth we would get. And we said, and we were criticized soundly, that we would get 3% growth. And we even had the really technical macroeconomic models that said that we would get 3% growth. We run the same models through this tax bill, it's even better. And what we're seeing is that if you get 3% growth again, then that's $4 trillion more in revenue than the CBO and these other bodies are giving us credit for. They have been wrong in the past, and they're being wrong again, in our belief. But, the thing that disappoints me is that if I put out a model and I say, hey, here's what's going to happen, we're going to get 3% growth. And then it turns out it's 1.5% growth, then, as an academic economist, as a scientist, then it's my duty to say, what did I get wrong? What did my model miss? These people aren't doing that. And that's the thing that I find disappointing, because we put peer-reviewed academic stuff on the table, said we're going to get that 3% growth, and then we got it right last time, and we believe we're going to get it right this time. But, if you think that 1.8% growth is what's going to happen over the next 10 years, then you should agree with the CBO number. But, there's another part of the CBO number that you need to worry about. And that is that if we don't pass the bill, that it's the biggest tax hike in history. And with that big tax hike, that of course, we would have a recession. The CEA says that we'd have about a 4% drop in GDP and lose 9 million jobs. If we had a 4% drop in GDP and we lost 9 million jobs, what would happen to the deficit? And so, I don't think that the CBO has a very strong record. I don't think these places have a very strong record. And what they need to do is get back to the basics of looking at macroeconomic models. There's a really famous macroeconomist at Harvard named Jim Stock. They should go back and read everything Jim Stock has written for the last 15 years, and fold those into their models, and then maybe we could talk. WEIJA JIANG: I want to talk too, Kevin, about another number that I know you and the President disagree with, but that Democrats and many Republicans are worried about, and that's the CBO's projection that as many as 12 million Americans could lose Medicaid coverage because of this law. What is the NEC's estimate for how many people could lose coverage? KEVIN HASSETT: Well- well, yeah. Let's- let's unbundle that a little bit. Because, first, on the CBO coverage, so what are we doing? So, what we're doing is we're asking for a work requirement. But, the work requirement is that you need to be looking for work, or even doing volunteer work, and you don't need to do it until your kids are 14 or older. And so, the idea that that's going to cause a massive hemorrhaging in availability of insurance, doesn't make a lot of sense to us. And then, if you look at the CBO numbers, if you look at the big numbers, they say that people are going to lose insurance. About 5 million of those are people who have other insurance. They're people who have two types of insurance. And so, therefore, if they lose one, they're still insured. And so, the CBO numbers on that side don't make any sense to us at all. But, on the other side, go back to 2017 when we had work requirements for Obamacare, they said that we lose about 4 million insured between 2017 and 2019, and about double that over the next 10 years. And, in fact, the number of insured went up. It went up quite a bit, by more than 10 million over those two years, because the bottom line is, the best way to get insurance is to get a job. And we've got a Big, Beautiful Bill that's going to create a lot of job creation and a lot of insurance, and the CBO is just not accounting for that. And again, they need to go back and look at all the things that they got wrong. You realize that they're underestimating Medicaid spending by 20%. They should look back at all the things they got wrong, and explain what they're going to do to get it right in the future, and to do a better job. And if they do that, we'll take them more seriously. But right now, I don't think any serious thinker could take them seriously, because they've done so wrong, and wrong for so long. Even back- if you go back to when President Obama passed Obamacare, they got every single number there wrong about how many people would get private insurance and how few people would get Medicaid, and so on. And so, their record in this modeling space is about as bad as it's possible to be. In fact, you could, kind of, roll the roulette wheel and come up with a better set of numbers, better history, track record than CBO. WEIJA JIANG: Kevin, what about the enhanced subsidies? Is that number wrong too? That the ACA allows about $705 for people to help pay for their health insurance. That doesn't sound like the waste, fraud, and abuse that I know you and the President have talked about eliminating. That just sounds like people who cannot afford coverage, and now it's going to be even more so with the subsidies gone. KEVIN HASSETT: Right. Well- well, if you're- if you're looking at the- the change in the tax on the providers, which is something that has been a key talking point for the Democrats, they say that that's going to close down rural hospitals. What has happened is that, rather than let the states- the states have this game where they give a dollar to a hospital and then the federal government matches the dollar, and then the state taxes some of the dollar away. In other words, that we have an agreement with the states that they're going to match, but then they have this they have this trick where they tax the hospitals after they give them the money, so really, it's the federal government giving them the money. And that's why we've been overspending Medicaid by 20% since this trick started happening. And so, what we've done is that we've put a haircut on that. But, we've also put $50 billion into a trust fund to make sure that the rural hospitals are there to treat the sick. So, I think this is a prudent form. It's sound budgetary politics. And I think that nobody's going to lose their insurance. WEIJA JIANG: Kevin Hassett, we will watch for how that ages. Thank you very much. Really appreciate -- KEVIN HASSETT: - And if I get it wrong, we'll check, and we'll talk about why I got it wrong. I promise. WEIJA JIANG: Thank you. We'll have you back. Thank you very much, Kevin.
