When anti-abortion activists sued the Food and Drug Administration in 2022 in an attempt to overturn approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, they filed their suit in federal court in Amarillo, Texas, where it was almost certain the case would be heard by Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, an outspoken opponent of abortion.

Judge Kacsmaryk, the only federal judge in Amarillo, ultimately agreed with the plaintiffs that the drug was “unsafe.” In his ruling, he invalidated the drug’s 23-year-old FDA approval and opened a new front in the post-Dobbs reckoning over abortion rights.

The lawsuit – and the role of Judge Kacsmaryk, who is hearing the case 95 percent of civil cases in Amarillo – was one of the most notable recent examples of “forum shopping,” in which plaintiffs sought to pick sympathetic judges.

Now forum shopping is becoming increasingly difficult.

The panel of federal judges that sets policy for the rest of the federal judiciary on Tuesday announced a new rule intended to restrict the practice in civil cases with national consequences, such as the mifepristone lawsuit.

In such cases, where plaintiffs are seeking a sweeping remedy such as a nationwide injunction, the judge will be randomly assigned from across the district rather than defaulting to the judge or judges in a particular courthouse.

Forum shopping has been used for years by litigants across the political spectrum who file suit in districts and appellate circuits where they believe the pool of judges will play in their favor.

In challenging federal immigration policies, immigrant advocates have often turned to federal courts in California, reasoning that in a more liberal state the case is more likely to be assigned to a judge sympathetic to anti-government arguments.

In some cases brought by conservatives, such as the mifepristone challenge, plaintiffs have attempted to go even further with forum shopping, with the goal of having cases assigned to a specific judge who they believe will take a favorable view of their arguments.

Although some of the nation’s 94 federal district courts already assign cases randomly, most divide them into “divisions”: judicial subdistricts that forward cases to smaller groups of judges. In at least 90 of these departments, one judge handled more than half of the cases an article from 2018 in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. Eleven of those, according to the article, are in Texas, where conservatives have won nationwide injunctions against Obama-era immigration programs, transgender rights and labor policies. The rulings were subsequently largely affirmed by the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling was partially maintained by the Fifth Circuit, has been stayed pending review by the Supreme Court.

The effort to tackle forum shopping comes at a time when the federal judiciary faces increasing pressure to reform itself. After revelations that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had not made public lavish gifts and a forgiven loan based on his annual financial disclosures, the Judicial Conference tightened requirements for reporting free trips and gifts, and the Supreme Court passed a new law. code of conduct. Critics have said these self-imposed measures do not go far enough to ensure compliance.

Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr., head of the Administrative Office of the Federal Courts, said the new rollback of forum shopping “promotes the impartiality of the proceedings and strengthens public confidence in the federal judiciary.” Although the new policy takes effect immediately, it will be left up to district courts how and when to put it into practice, said Judge Jeffrey Sutton, chairman of the Judicial Conference’s executive committee.

Critics of forum shopping tend to focus on high-stakes political issues, but the practice also has far-reaching implications for more arcane areas of the law. In a Letter from 2021 Two U.S. senators expressed concern to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts a report that a single judge from the Western District of Texas handled 25 percent of patent cases nationwide. The senators alleged that the judge, Alan D. Albright, solicited cases from potential plaintiffs, calling the practice “improper and inappropriate.”

In his 2021 final report, Justice Roberts wrote that geographic divisions were beneficial insofar as federal judges were “tied to their communities,” but that they also needed to be “generalists capable of addressing the full range of legal issues.” Judge Albright did not respond to a request for comment sent to his courtroom assistant on Tuesday.

In the days following the mifepristone ruling in Texas, two Democrats in Congress introduced a bill that would have mandated arbitrary case assignment and reinstated a practice established between 1937 and 1976 whereby any lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a state or federal law challenge was heard by a three-judge panel.

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, also called on the Judicial Conference to make that change. “No judge should have the power to make sweeping decisions that could harm millions of Americans,” he said. “If a decision has national consequences, it must be heard by a panel of judges.”

The Alabama Legislature is expected to pass legislation Wednesday that would allow fertility clinics in the state to reopen without the specter of crippling lawsuits.

But the measure, which was hastily written and expected to pass by a huge bipartisan margin, does not address the legal question that has led to clinic closures and set off a stormy, politically charged national debate : or embryos frozen and stored for possible future implantation have the legal status of humans.

The Alabama Supreme Court made such a ruling last month, in the context of a claim against a mobile clinic brought by three couples whose frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed. The court ruled that these embryos should be considered human under Alabama law and that the couples were entitled to damages for the wrongful death of a child.

Legal experts said the bill, which Gov. Kay Ivey has indicated she will sign, would be the first in the nation to create a legal moat around embryos, blocking lawsuits or prosecutions if they are damaged or destroyed.

But while the measure will likely bring enormous relief to infertility patients whose treatments were abruptly suspended, it will do so in exchange for limiting their ability to sue when embryo mishaps occur. Such restrictions in an area of ​​medicine with limited regulatory oversight could make the new law vulnerable to legal challenges, the experts said.

Here you will find answers to some important questions:

What does the measure do?

It creates two levels of legal immunity. If embryos are damaged or destroyed, direct providers of fertility services, including doctors and clinics, cannot be sued or prosecuted.

Others who handle frozen embryos, including shippers, cryobanks and manufacturers of devices such as storage tanks, have more limited protection, but it is still significant. Patients can sue them for damaged or destroyed embryos, but the only compensation they can receive is reimbursement for costs associated with the affected IVF cycle.

Does the law benefit patients beyond allowing clinics to reopen?

It may have some advantages. The legal shield protecting providers of fertility services also includes individuals who “receive services,” which appears to extend to patients undergoing IVF

Patients in Alabama will have “a cone around how they do IVF and how they treat their embryos,” including donating frozen embryos to medical research, throwing them away, or choosing not to be implanted with embryos with genetic abnormalities, said Barbara Collurathe president of Resolve, a national group representing infertility patients.

That could be particularly important given the recent state Supreme Court ruling.

“Until now, no state has ever declared embryos human. And once you declare that they are human beings, much more compensation becomes available,” he said Benjamin McMichael, an associate professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, specializing in healthcare and tort law. “So this is the first time we have needed such a bill, because we have always treated embryos as property at best.”

Does the measure prevent a patient from suing a fertility provider for negligence?

The law does not cover everyday medical malpractice. If an infertility patient has a dangerous ectopic pregnancy because a doctor accidentally implanted an embryo in her fallopian tube, she can still sue for negligence, Mr. McMichael said. But among her damages, he said, she cannot claim the destroyed embryo.

“The bill does not establish liability or provide an opportunity for injured parties to hold other people liable,” he said. “It just gives immunity.”

Other legal experts said the lines drawn by the legislature were open to question. Judith There, the dean of Northern Kentucky University Salmon P. Chase College of Law and an expert in reproductive law, gave the example of an embryologist who switches or otherwise mishandles embryos.

“This bill says there is no recourse for patients for reproductive negligence,” she said. “I don’t think that was the intent, but the plain language of the statute would certainly produce such a result.”

Until now, she said, patients haven’t always won such cases, “but here they don’t even have the option to file a claim.”

The measure is very much a doctor protection bill, she added. “I’m not condemning that, but it doesn’t really meet the needs of patients and in fact seems to deprive them of their rights,” she said.

To the extent that the threat of legal consequences can modulate behavior, she says, “this bill certainly gives providers more permission to worry less about caution because there is no liability at stake.”

Are the wrongful death cases that led to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling now moot?

No, these things can continue. The new legislation exempts all embryo-related lawsuits that are currently being litigated. However, if patients have not yet filed a claim based on the destruction of their embryos, they will not be allowed to file one once the bill is passed.

Does this legislation do anything to resolve the personality controversy?

No. It completely sidesteps the question of whether a frozen embryo is a person. That ruling, at least in the context of a wrongful death claim, still stands in Alabama. Instead of tackling the issue, which has caused a political storm across the country, lawmakers are “trying to cut through the liability side of it and come up with some very complex and counterintuitive measures,” Ms Daar said.

Resolve’s Ms Collura said the proposal solves an immediate problem but leaves the bigger issue hanging. “The status of embryos in Alabama is that they are persons. But what is the mechanism by which clinics can open and patients can receive care?” she said. “Is this the best way? No. Will it open clinics? Yes. Does it create other unintended consequences? Yes.”

Emily Cochrane reporting contributed.

President Biden’s climate ambitions are clashing with political and legal realities, forcing his administration to recalibrate two of its most important tools to reduce planet-warming emissions.

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would delay a regulation requiring gas-fired power plants to reduce their carbon emissions, likely until after the November election. The agency is also expected to slow the pace at which automakers must comply with a separate regulation designed to sharply limit tailpipe emissions.

Michael S. Regan, the EPA’s administrator, said Friday that changes to the two key regulations would not jeopardize the administration’s ability to meet its goal of roughly halving U.S. emissions by 2030. in line with a global commitment to avert the worst effects of a warming planet.

“We are well on our way to achieving the president’s goals,” Mr. Regan said in a telephone interview from Texas. “I am confident that the choices we make are smart choices that will continue to curb climate pollution.”

But experts said the Biden administration is making significant concessions in the face of industry opposition and unease among the American public over the pace of the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy, as well as the threat of legal challenges in conservative courts.

“There are two key factors: the Supreme Court and the elections,” said Jody Freeman, director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program. and a former Obama White House official. “Both require some adjustments,” she says. “You need to make sure these final rules are legally defensible, and you need to make sure you’ve done enough for stakeholders to have support for the rules.”

Together, cars and electric energy generate more than half of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. That makes the rules designed to curb pollution from these sources the most important tools the EPA can use to address climate change.

In May, the EPA unveiled what would have been a groundbreaking plan to curb power plant emissions. It called for sharp emissions cuts from plants that burn coal or gas, which together produce most of the electricity in the United States. To comply, large gas-fired power plants would have to capture or eliminate at least 90 percent of their greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. Coal-fired power stations should meet these requirements by 2030.

Almost immediately the pressure on the gas was intense.

The utility industry argued that technology to suck carbon emissions from the atmosphere is expensive and logistically challenging, and that the EPA’s timelines were unrealistic. Swing state Democrats said they were concerned the plan would result in higher electricity bills for voters and cause power outages.

Some environmental leaders said they were concerned that regulating large gas plants would increase pollution at smaller facilities known as “peaker plants,” which pollute heavily and are often located in poorer or minority communities.

On Thursday, the EPA said the final version of the regulation would apply only to existing coal-fired power plants and future gas-fired power plants, and not to gas-fired plants currently in operation. The agency said it would write a separate regulation to reduce emissions from gas-fired power plants currently in operation, a delay that will extend at least until after the November election.

Mr Regan said on Friday that his decision was based solely on concerns that the original rule could harm marginalized communities. He said the message from those communities was: “don’t pursue climate goals at our expense.”

“The way we see it, we have actually strengthened our climate approach to power plants,” Mr Regan said. “We are absolutely moving forward with some of the strongest regulations that existing coal and new natural gas will face.”

But several people familiar with the discussions within the EPA said the agency initially had no intention of regulating gas-fired power plants and agreed to do so under pressure from environmental groups and climate experts within the White House. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

In recent months, some within the agency have been concerned that a regulation regulating existing gas-fired power plants could be successfully challenged in court, these people said. Officials worried they didn’t have enough evidence that power plants could effectively limit their pollution by using cleaner fuels or installing new technology that captures carbon dioxide before it leaves the smokestack.

Carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously warming the world.

Some industry lobbyists described the shift as a case of the Biden administration’s ideals colliding with reality. “They propose too much to appease activists, but when they have to make the rules, reality draws them back in,” said Frank Maisano, senior director at law firm Bracewell, which represents energy industry clients.

Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor at Harvard University, said the Biden administration’s EPA is focused on ensuring the rules are “as tight as possible” because they are sure to face legal challenges that could be heard in unfriendly courts treated.

The change in strategy has divided activists. Frank Sturges, an attorney with the Clean Air Task Force, said he was disappointed in the EPA’s decision, noting that gas plants produce more than 40 percent of electricity emissions. “We are losing time in the fight against climate change by delaying regulation of a significant portion of energy sector emissions,” Mr Sturges said.

David Doniger, a senior strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, defended the EPA, saying the agency would still achieve “unprecedented greenhouse gas reductions” with both the auto and power plant rules that would ultimately be easier to defend in the future. court.

“If you can get a rule that benefits 90 percent or more of the proposal, and has more proponents and fewer opponents, that’s a path to a more legally sustainable rule,” he said.

The Biden administration on Friday issued new rules to prevent disasters at nearly 12,000 chemical plants and other industrial sites across the country that handle hazardous materials.

The regulations, for the first time, require facilities to explicitly deal with disasters, such as storms or floods, that could lead to an accidental release, including threats related to climate change. For the first time, chemical sites that have previously suffered accidents will have to undergo an independent audit. And the rules require chemical plants to share more information with neighbors and first responders.

“We are implementing important safeguards to protect some of our most vulnerable populations,” Janet McCabe, deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters ahead of the announcement.

Government officials called the stricter measures a step forward for safety at a time when hazards such as floods and wildfires – made even more extreme by global warming – threaten industrial sites across the country. In 2017, severe flooding from Hurricane Harvey knocked out power at a peroxide plant outside Houston, causing chemicals to overheat and explode, prompting local evacuations.

Some safety advocates said the rules don’t go far enough. They have long advocated for rules that ensure facilities switch to safer technologies and chemicals to prevent disasters in the first place. The new regulations eschew such requirements for most facilities.

The lack of stricter requirements was particularly disappointing, advocates said, because President Biden as a senator advocated similar measures to strengthen national security.

“If we simply need facilities that store or use large quantities of chlorine or other hazardous chemicals to transition to inherently safer technologies where possible,” Mr. Biden said at a hearing from the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in June 2006: “we could, in effect, eliminate all or most of the known threats to our communities.”

“He was a leader in this area, but now that he is in charge, that is no longer the case,” said Rick Hind, an environmental consultant and former legislative director at Greenpeace.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment Friday morning.

The EPA estimates that more than 130 million people live within three miles of sites that handle hazardous chemicals covered by the new rule. In a “worst case scenario” accident, more than 2,000 of these locations could endanger 100,000 people or more, according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service report. Eighty-three of these facilities could put more than a million people at risk in a worst-case scenario, the report said.

Facilities include chemical plants and wholesalers, oil refineries, natural gas plants, wastewater treatment plants, fertilizer distributors, many of which are critical infrastructure but also pose a risk to nearby communities.

Former President Barack Obama had tried to tighten the rules by proposing safety measures after a deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas in 2013 killed 15 people. The Trump administration rolled back most of these rules before they went into effect, part of a slew of environmental and safety rules it unraveled. In 2021, the EPA announced plans to reinstate the rule.

Since then, a coalition of environmental groups and experts, as well as national security experts and former military officials dealing with terrorist and other threats to chemical sites, have urged the EPA to require hazardous sites to use safer chemicals.

“Using inherently safer alternatives is the only surefire way to prevent worst-case scenarios from becoming catastrophic disasters,” said Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and EPA administrator under George W. Bush, urged in a 2022 letter co-signed by several retired army generals.

There are examples of chemical manufacturers who quickly adopted alternatives. In 2009, The Clorox Company announced that it would phase out the use of chlorine gas, a particularly dangerous chemical used as a chemical weapon in World War I, in all its factories. Three years later, the company said it had accomplished that task.

And after the September 11 attacks, a wastewater treatment plant in Washington, DC, just miles from the White House and the US Capitol, removed hundreds of tons of explosive liquid chlorine and sulfur dioxide from its facilities within weeks.

In comments submitted to the EPA during the rulemaking process, the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s largest lobbying group, pushed back against the measure, saying that safer technologies were “not easy to identify or implement.” Overall, the rules burden affected industries by requiring them to undertake extensive new training, adjustments and analysis, none of which will result in a reduction in accidental emissions, the industry group said. Furthermore, “natural hazards are inherently difficult to predict, and complete protection may be unachievable.”

Qingsheng Wang, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University who specializes in process safety, said switching to safer alternatives was a no-brainer for new facilities that could start from scratch. “But for existing facilities, adapting processes can be very difficult,” he said.

Still, the goal should be to “minimize, replace and simplify certain chemicals,” he said. “If we can do that, it’s a good way to improve safety.”

Already struggling to contain persistent crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, the United States is also grappling with a standoff in the Balkans over a gas pipeline to Bosnia, an issue that carries major geopolitical stakes.

The project, backed by both the United States and the European Union but blocked by the ethnic feuds that have long gripped Bosnia, aims to loosen Moscow's stranglehold on gas supplies to a fragile nation caught between East and West to break through.

The proposed pipeline, which would bring natural gas from neighboring Croatia, a member of NATO and the European Union, would be just 100 miles long and cost about $110 million, a pittance next to the $15 billion needed to build the Nord Stream . gas connection between Russia and Germany.

But it would seriously reduce Moscow's influence in a highly volatile region. Russia frequently used its control over energy supplies as a weapon against Ukraine in the years leading up to its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and has since used it to undermine European unity by offering sweetheart energy deals to countries like Hungary and Serbia.

Russia has no territorial claims on Bosnia or other Balkan countries, and its main goal has been to prevent them from integrating with the West.

The stalled pipeline “is much more important than just Bosnia and Herzegovina or the future infrastructure in a small Balkan country,” said Vesna Pusic, a former Croatian foreign minister who helped her country enter the European Union in 2013.

“This is about closing the avenues for Russia's destabilizing influence in Europe,” Ms. Pusic said in an interview. “The big road is of course Ukraine, and this is a small one. But if it is not closed, it will grow” and radiate instability across and beyond the Balkans, she added.

Unlike other European countries that diversified energy supplies after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Bosnia has remained completely dependent on Moscow for its natural gas.

Without alternative supplies from the West, James C. O'Brien, the US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said in a telephone interview: “Bosnia is in danger of falling behind and becoming particularly vulnerable” to Moscow's pressure .

Mr O'Brien visited the Bosnian capital Sarajevo this month as part of US efforts to get the pipeline moving from Croatia, draw politicians out of their domestic feuds and weaken Russian influence. “This is a vulnerability that needs to be closed,” Mr O'Brien said.

Bosnia's main energy sources are hydropower and local coal. But while natural gas from Russia makes up less than 5 percent of the country's total energy mix, it helps power a major aluminum factory and the heating plants that keep Sarajevo warm in winter.

The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a fragile amalgam of areas inhabited by Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Christian Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats, few of whom are religiously faithful. The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina has lurched from crisis to crisis since 1995, when the Dayton Peace Accords ended years of bloodshed in the country. the former Yugoslavia.

The peace deal ended wars in the early 1990s that killed some 100,000 people, but left Bosnia with an extensive and highly dysfunctional political system. The country is divided into two largely self-governing 'entities': a Muslim-Croat federation and a predominantly Serb area called Republika Srpska.

This rickety, disjointed structure is headed by a weak central government with three presidents, one for each ethnic group, who are supposed to share power but whose political leaders thrive on fomenting division.

Republika Srpska, led by a militant Serbian nationalist, Milorad Dodik, has repeatedly threatened to secede, a move that would risk a new round of bloodshed. Mr Dodik, a regular visitor to Russia, most recently on Wednesday, before meetings with President Vladimir V. Putin, is pushing for a separate pipeline project that would increase gas supplies from Russia. His fiefdom has its own gas company, Gas-Res, controlled by ethnic Serbs, and a Russian-owned oil refinery that relies on Russian crude.

Bosnia's ethnic Croat leader Dragan Covic says he supports the proposed western pipeline but wants it to be placed under the control of a company run by ethnic Croats rather than Bosnia's existing pipeline operator. BH Gas, which is based in Sarajevo. and run by Bosnians. The company that Mr Covic wants to set up would be based in the Bosnian city of Mostar, an ethnically mixed city but long a stronghold of Croatian chauvinism.

The bickering prompted an unusually blunt intervention from Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken last month. In letters to the foreign ministers of Bosnia and Croatia, Mr. Blinken blasted Mr. Covic for obstructing “a critical project.” His demands for a new, ethnic Croatian company, he said, “are ambiguous, economically unviable and endanger the entire project.”

“Such blatant corruption and self-dealing could jeopardize Bosnia's hopes of one day joining the European Union,” Mr Blinken added.

Mr. O'Brien, the assistant secretary of state, declined to say whether the Croatian and Bosnian foreign ministers had responded to Mr. Blinken's broadside, citing diplomatic confidentiality. Both ministers declined to be interviewed.

Mr Covic, who also declined to be interviewed, has said he only wants to protect legitimate Croatian interests and not block Bosnia's path to the European Union.

Nihada Glamoc, director of BH Gas, acknowledged that most of her company's executives and employees were Bosniaks, but said there was no need for a new Croatian-led pipeline operator.

“It's all purely political,” she said, noting that her only interest was ensuring a “diverse and stable energy supply.”

Muris Cicic, an economist and president of the Bosnian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Sarajevo, described the bickering over the U.S.-backed pipeline and Mr. Dodik's efforts to build an alternative to bring in more Russian gas as “a model of Bosnia's dysfunction. ”

“Everything in this country is based on ethnic differentiation, even gas,” he said, adding: “Our politicians have divided everything that could possibly be divided and placed every part under their command. It defies all economic logic.”

The row has not only hampered joint action in the interest of the entire country, Mr. Cicic said, but also created fertile ground for Russia to advance its interests.

“Bosnia is the dividing point between East and West – the point where Russia can easily cause instability through people like Dodik,” Mr Cicic said.

Mr Dodik, he added, may be the most open in expressing his desire to redraw Bosnia's borders and keep the country out of the European Union, but he is not the only one who is bigoted about ethnic and often promotes corrupt interests, with the risk of causing tensions and even corruption. violent conflict.

“Unfortunately, we have a lot of Dodiks here,” he said.

The European Union accepted Bosnia as a 'candidate country' in 2022, as part of its efforts to weaken Russian influence in the Balkans following the invasion of Ukraine. But formal negotiations have not yet begun and the European bloc's executive branch arrived in November gave a bleak picture of the prospects for Bosnia, saying the country had made “no progress” in the fight against corruption and was delaying the “socio-economic reforms” demanded by Brussels.

The idea of ​​building a pipeline to bring gas from neighboring Croatia has been around for almost fifteen years, since Russia cut off gas supplies through Ukraine to the Balkans in 2009 and Sarajevo shivered in sub-zero temperatures for days.

“We were very scared by the 2009 shutdown and realized that we had no energy security,” recalls Almir Becarevic, director of BH Gas at the time.

For years, Gazprom, Russia's energy giant, seemed like “just a normal company selling gas,” but “it became increasingly clear that Gazprom was playing political games.” Gas, he added, “grew into a big geopolitical thing.”

Mr Becarevic and others began lobbying for a pipeline from Croatia to end Russia's monopoly, but made little progress even after the 2021 opening of a facility on an island off the Croatian coast to supply liquefied natural gas.

“For years there was nothing but blah, blah, blah,” Mr. Becarevic said. “But the war in Ukraine changed everything. The situation has now changed 100 percent.”

President Biden is considering executive actions that could prevent people who enter the United States illegally from seeking asylum, several people with knowledge of the proposal said Wednesday. The move would suspend longstanding guarantees that give anyone entering U.S. territory the right to request safe haven.

The order would implement a key policy in a bipartisan bill that Republicans defeated earlier this month, even though it contained some of the most significant border security restrictions Congress has considered in years.

The bill would have essentially closed the border to new arrivals if an average of more than 5,000 migrants attempted to cross unlawfully per day over the course of a week, or more than 8,500 attempted to cross on any given day.

The action being considered by the White House would have a similar trigger for blocking asylum for new arrivals, say the people with knowledge of the proposal. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

If implemented, the move would echo a 2018 attempt by President Donald J. Trump to block migration, which was attacked by Democrats and blocked by federal courts.

While such a move would undoubtedly come with legal challenges, the fact that Biden is considering it shows how far he has shifted on immigration since taking office, promising a more humane system after the Trump years.

Mr Biden has taken a much tougher stance as the number of people crossing the US-Mexico border has reached record levels and the chronically underfunded and understaffed asylum system is reaching a breaking point.

But even if Biden were to try to take unilateral action to reduce the number of people seeking asylum, a lack of resources would still be a huge obstacle to major changes at the border. U.S. officials have said they need a huge amount of money to hire Border Patrol agents and asylum officers and expand detention facilities.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans under discussion, said no decisions had been made.

But the people with knowledge of the proposal said Mr. Biden could invoke his authority to act under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which allows the president to suspend immigration for anyone determined to be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” Mr. Trump used the same authority to impose bans on people from several predominantly Muslim countries during his presidency.

Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who helped oppose Trump's efforts, said his group would challenge such a policy.

“The courts emphasized that the Trump administration could not deny asylum solely based on how someone entered the country,” Mr. Gelernt said. “Hopefully the Biden administration will not consider recycling this patently illegal and unworkable policy.”

But a legal fight, regardless of the outcome, could allow Mr. Biden to neutralize one of his biggest political vulnerabilities: the chaos at the southern border. Republicans have repeatedly used the border crisis to portray Mr. Biden as weak on enforcement. A legal battle would allow him to highlight Republicans' refusal to give him the power to crack down on the border through legislation.

The Biden administration has tried for years to curb migration, in part by limiting asylum for those crossing Mexico en route to the United States. That policy made it more difficult for migrants to obtain asylum if they crossed a third country on their way to the United States and did not apply for protection there.

But while the policy restriction raised the bar for migrants to gain asylum, U.S. officials cannot properly implement it without the kind of resources Biden had hoped Congress would approve. The failed bill would have provided billions in funding, including hiring thousands of asylum officers to process claims.

Some conditions at the southern border are far beyond the president's control, including historic migration across the hemisphere from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras and other countries experiencing instability, violence and natural disasters.

But Biden is under pressure from both parties, not just the usual Republican critics, to do something. And the crisis doesn't stop at the border itself: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has sent busloads of migrants to Democratic cities far north, saying he wanted to “bring the border to President Biden.”

Cities became overwhelmed as migrants – often without coats, or family members in the United States – arrived. Leaders in the president's own party began issuing cries for help.

That push has upended immigration politics in an election year, giving Mr. Biden much more room to back border measures once denounced by Democrats and championed by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Biden has directly blamed Mr. Trump for using his influence with the Republican Party to end the same bipartisan immigration deal that Republicans have been calling for for years.

Biden predicted in a speech earlier this month that Republicans would take action to block the bill. “Why? A simple reason,” he said. “Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump thinks this is bad for him politically.”

Jonathan Swan contributed reporting from Washington.