CNN town hall with President Biden

President Biden explained his administration's stance on immigration and its policy for asylum seekers, saying that people should not come to the US to seek refugee status, but instead to do so from their home countries.

Biden said that his administration has significantly increased the number of officers who can hear immigration cases to see whether or not asylum seekers qualify under the law to come to the US as a refugee.

"That's what we've done," Biden said.

Biden noted that his administration is looking to bring in more immigrants from Afghanistan by providing visas to those Afghans tho assisted US military during the war and are now in danger from the Taliban.

"So, we're providing for them to be able to see whether they qualify to meet this special requirement to be able to come to the United States as a refugee and as ultimately earning citizenship here," the President said.

President Biden tonight cited his own son's recovery from drug addiction in calling for more federal resources to be dedicated for Americans who find themselves with their own addictions. 

"I am damn proud of my son who overcame being addicted and he did it and he's doing it and he's in good shape, thank God," said Biden of his son Hunter. 

"We have to deal with the idea of addiction by providing for what we all know: it's a disease of the brain... and has to be treated as such," he said.

Drug overdose deaths rose by close to 30% in the United States in 2020, hitting the highest number ever recorded, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week.

More than 93,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2020, according to provisional data released by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. That's a 29.4% increase from the 72,151 deaths projected for 2019.

President Biden blasted efforts by Republican legislators to curb voting rights during a CNN town hall Wednesday, calling it “Jim Crow on steroids,” while still maintaining his support for the legislative filibuster which stands in the way of Democrats passing federal legislation on a party-line basis. 

“With election officials across the board that they're deciding to push out of the way, and if in fact tomorrow, as they say, we're running last time and these laws had been in effect, that are these changes, in Georgia, the Georgia legislature says, ‘Oh, Biden won by multiple thousand votes,’ they could say, ‘We don't think it was legit,’ and the state legislature votes, ‘We're gonna send electors up to Congress to vote for Trump, not Biden’ — That’s never ever ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever been tried before. This is Jim Crow on steroids, what we're talking about,” Biden said. 

The President pointed to what he described as “the abuse of the filibuster,” calling the use of the filibuster “pretty overwhelming."

Pressed by CNN’s Don Lemon, the President maintained that, despite the severity of the threat to voting rights, he would not support nuking the legislative filibuster. 

“I want to make sure we bring along, not just all the Democrats, we bring along Republicans who I know know better, they know better than this,” Biden said. “And what I don't want to do is get wrapped up right now, and the argument was that this is all about the filibuster, or look, the American public, you can't stop them from voting.”

“There's no reason to protect [the filibuster], other than you're going to throw the entire Congress into chaos, nothing will get done, right? Nothing at all will get done, and there’s a lot at stake,” Biden added.

Some more context: State lawmakers have enacted nearly 30 laws since the 2020 election that restrict ballot access, according to a new tally as of June 21 by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

The 28 total laws in 17 states mark a new record for restrictive voting laws since 2011, when the Brennan Center recorded 19 laws enacted in 14 state legislatures.

President Biden is being asked about the latest legal blow to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy (DACA), the Obama-era program shielding certain undocumented immigrants from deportation.

A federal judge in Texas on Friday ruled that DACA is illegal and blocked new applicants.

The ruling from Judge Andrew Hanen would bar future applications. It does not immediately cancel current permits for hundreds of thousands of people — though it once again leaves them in devastating legal limbo and is a reminder of the uncertainty they face.

DACA, created in 2012, was intended to provide temporary reprieve to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children — a group often described as "Dreamers" — many of whom are now adults.

But almost a decade since the program was established, DACA is still one of the only signs of potential relief for undocumented immigrants looking to remain and work in the US.

Hanen, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled that Congress had not granted the Department of Homeland Security the authority to create DACA and that it prevented immigration officials from enforcing removal provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

But he noted that DACA is part of the current American fabric.

"Hundreds of thousands of individual DACA recipients, along with their employers, states, and loved ones, have come to rely on the DACA program," Hanen wrote in a separate ruling Friday night. "Given those interests, it is not equitable for a government program that has engendered such a significant reliance to terminate suddenly."

President Biden on Saturday called the ruling "deeply disappointing" and said the US Department of Justice intends to appeal the decision.

Congress remains the only body that can provide a permanent solution for DACA recipients through legislation, but immigration legislation has been stalled for years and Democrats immediately called for action given Friday's order.

Read more about the ruling here.

President Biden said that he doesn't believe the filibuster has to be completely removed for voting rights legislation to move forward.

Biden acknowledged that abuse of the filibuster has been "pretty overwhelming" recently and that he would like to revert back to the rule of where lawmakers had to "maintain the floor" in order to use it.

Pressed by CNN's Don Lemon on how the filibuster has been historically used to disenfranchise people of color and if the filibuster is more important than protecting people's voting rights, Biden said, "No, it's not."

Biden also said that he wants to sign federal voting rights with GOP support.

"What I also want to do, I want to make sure we bring along not just all the Democrats, we bring along Republicans who I know, know better. They know better than this. What I don't want to do is get wrapped up ... in the argument whether or not this is all about the filibuster," Biden said.

Biden added, "The American public, you can't stop them from voting. More people voted last time than any time in American history in the middle of the worst pandemic in history, more people did. And they showed up. They're going to show up again. They're going to do it again. But what I want to do is I'm trying to bring the country together. And I don't want the debate to only be about whether or not we have a filibuster or exceptions to the filibuster or going back to the way the filibuster had to be used before."

Watch the moment:

President Biden tonight suggested there is little he can do to address gun violence on a legislative level due to the partisan gridlock in Congress, but pointed to executive actions he is taking to address a rise in shootings across the nation.

He also pledged to launch probes into shadow gun dealers and weapons dealers who "are not abiding by the law."

"We are going to launch major investigations to shut those guys down and put some them in jail for what they are doing, selling these weapons," he said. 

As of the beginning of June, more than 8,100 people have died from gun violence in the US in 2021, according to the Gun Violence Archive, with over 240 mass shootings as of June 1. In May, the archive told CNN there has been a 23% uptick in deaths from gun violence this year.

Where things stand in Congress: The Democratic-led House of Representatives passed two bills on March 11 that would expand background checks on all commercial gun sales. The bills face a steep uphill climb in the Senate as Democrats hold a slim 50-50 majority and would need significant Republican support to overcome a legislative filibuster.

Read more about what Congress is considering on gun reform here.

CNN's Daniella Diaz and Jessica Dean contributed reporting to this post. 

President Biden continued to call for an investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, telling CNN's Don Lemon, “I don’t care if you think I’m Satan reincarnate, the fact is you can’t look at that television and say, nothing happened on the 6th."

Biden was asked at CNN's town hall his reaction to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulling his five GOP members from the Jan. 6 select committee after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of them earlier Wednesday.

"You can't listen to people who say: this is a peaceful march," Biden told the audience in Cincinnati.

Biden went on to criticize Republicans and conspiracy theories, referring to "venom" being spread and warned that the rest of the world is watching America and whether America is "really back."

The President also specifically referenced QAnon telling the audience, "The idea that the Democrats or Biden are hiding people and sucking the blood of children... we've got to get beyond this," adding, "this is not who we are."

Asked how he believes anything can done in Washington, when investigating the insurrection can't even be agreed upon, Biden showed optimism, telling the audience, "I have faith in the American people."

Some more context: Earlier Wednesday, House Republicans balked at participating in the House committee that's investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection on Wednesday after Pelosi rejected two of the five Republicans McCarthy had tapped for the panel.

Pelosi's decision to reject the two Republicans — and McCarthy's response to pull the rest his members — injected new fuel into the partisan fight over the select committee that's been raging since Democrats created the panel last month to investigate the circumstances surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

As the US economy attempts to recover following the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, President Biden suspects certain hospitality industries may continue to struggle.

The President was quick to point out that his administration had worked to keep restaurants afloat amid the pandemic, telling Lanni, "we kept you open. We spent billions of dollars to make sure restaurants could stay open."

As CNN's Don Lemon pressed the President on whether or not Americans were steering clear of securing gainful employment in favor of collecting more lucrative unemployment benefits, Biden challenged the notion.

"I see no evidence it had any serious impact on it," Biden said, suggesting instead that Lanni and others in the foodservice industry are struggling to fill roles only because Americans have opted to change careers.

"There's a lot of openings now in jobs and people are beginning to move. Beginning to move," the President said, adding "there's a lot of people who are looking to change their occupation. But I could be wrong."

President Biden, once again pointing to his history of compromise while working in the Senate and as vice president, said he still believes bipartisanship can produce results in Congress, but conceded that the Trump-era did severe damage to working across the aisle.

“And I still believe that's possible, but the well has been so poisoned over the last four years, and even now there's still this lingering effort,” he added.

The President said he has had Republicans privately tell him that they feel he is right, but if they were to vote with him, they would face a primary challenge. Despite that, however, Biden said he does sense a shift towards more bipartisanship.

“I think that's all beginning to move. I don't mean overnight, don't get me wrong, I'm not playing out some panacea here, but I think people are figuring out that if we want to… I've always found you get rewarded for doing what you think at the time is the right thing and people really believe you believe it's the right thing to do. And so I think you’re seeing it come together,” Biden said.

The President has faced calls to either blow up or overhaul the filibuster during his first six months in office as some of his major legislative priorities face Republican opposition, however he has thus far resisted those calls. Biden has however expressed a desire to return to the talking filibuster.