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The Senate passed legislation Thursday targeting anti-Asian hate crimes after an uptick of incidents during the Covid-19 pandemic. Lawmakers approved the measure in a 94-1 vote. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., was the only member to oppose the bill. The legislation, introduced by Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, in March, would direct the Department of Justice to expedite the review of hate crimes related to Covid-19 that were reported to law enforcement agencies and help them establish ways to report such incidents online and perform public outreach. (Shabad, 4/22)

With Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) as the lead House sponsor, the legislation would assign an official in the Justice Department to review and expedite all reports of hate crimes related to the coronavirus, expand support for local and state law enforcement agencies responding to these hate crimes, and issue guidance on mitigating the use of racially discriminatory language to describe the pandemic. Meng, in a statement after Thursday’s vote, said the House is expected to take up the legislation next month. President Biden has vowed to sign it when it reaches his desk. (Kane, 4/22)

[Josh] Hawley, the senator who was seen raising a fist to pro-Trump insurrectionists just before the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, said he was against the bill because “it’s too broad.” “As a former prosecutor, my view is it’s dangerous to simply give the federal government open-ended authority to define a whole new class of federal hate crime incidents,” he said in a statement. (Harvey, 4/22)

A bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled legislation on Thursday to address the recent influx of migration to the U.S.-Mexico border by ramping up staffing at immigration agencies and streamlining immigration court proceedings. ... The bill would establish at least four regional processing centers along the border to speed up the government’s ability to process migrants arriving in the U.S. to seek protection. It would also call for migrants’ asylum cases to be prioritized in the current 1.3 million case-long backlog during “an irregular migration influx event.” The measure would ramp up protections for unaccompanied minors who are placed with sponsors, and increase staffing at the border, including 150 new immigration judges and related staffers and 300 additional asylum officers. (Monyak, 4/22)

Eighteen Republican doctors and health care providers in Congress sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asking when the COVID-19 restrictions will be lifted from the chamber, now that most members have been vaccinated. (Keene, 4/22)

Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Mike Braun, R-Ind., on Thursday introduced a bill that would force the Biden administration to declassify intelligence related to COVID-19 origins. Since April of 2020, experts have voiced concerns that the novel coronavirus may have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. More than a year later, the world has yet to determine exactly where and how the outbreak that killed millions around the world and devastated the global economy began. (Conklin, 4/22)