House Democratic leaders are facing sharp pushback from rank-and-file members on plans to deliver billions of dollars to help ease the migrant crisis at the southern border, threatening to drag out another border funding fight with President Donald Trump.

Leaders of several groups, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, have told top Democrats they oppose sending Trump one more dollar for the border without a slew of strict conditions — complicating any deal with Republicans.

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But Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her deputies are under intense pressure to deliver money before the Fourth of July recess, or risk being accused of starving the government’s refugee programs. It’s forced Democrats into another agonizing debate on immigration that could expose simmering tensions across the caucus.

The president in early May asked Congress for $4.5 billion in emergency aid to help address the flow of Central American migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, including $3.3 billion for humanitarian assistance.

Democratic spending leaders have said any funding would be limited to humanitarian aid, mostly for families and unaccompanied minors. But a majority of the 38-member Hispanic Caucus say they are deeply skeptical that the Trump administration would use the funds for the humanitarian crisis instead of enforcing the White House’s border policies, and still want the House to take a harder line against Trump.

“There’s got to be guard rails around any money so that it’s used for humanitarian relief, and it’s not diverted toward Trump’s deportation machine,” Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said in an interview.

Pelosi’s team is working directly with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to resolve the border issues, with the aim of passing a bill this month. Leadership staff has planned a meeting with CHC staff Wednesday afternoon, according to multiple sources.

Castro already met with Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), the No. 4 House Democrat and House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) this week, and has plans to sit down with Pelosi herself before a floor vote, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus members have also asked to hear directly from officials who would be responsible for the money, chiefly, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan.

Yet one of the biggest hurdles for Democratic leaders is convincing CHC members that the Trump administration actually needs the money.

“That supplemental is a political accommodation,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a border state Democrat, who said he sees no rush to deliver money to Trump’s border officials.

Grijalva said he and other Democrats have already worked to halt the funding package, which he called a “Christmas tree of enforcement provisions” for the White House.

House Democratic leaders, however, say they take the Trump administration at its word about the growing sense of desperation at detention facilities on the border. “We assume they are being forthright,” one Democratic aide said.

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), a border state lawmaker who sits on the House’s homeland security funding committee, said he feels pressured to deliver cash as nonprofits and churches along the border are forced to provide assistance to migrant families to make up the gap in services.

But he said some Democrats have balked at sending money because they fear it would go to Border Patrol or ICE.

“In my opinion, we do have to come up with some money,” Cuellar said. “But we’ve got to convince our more progressive friends that this is not ICE, this is not deportation, this is to take care of kids.”

Cuellar, who is a member of the CHC, is an exception within the caucus. Most members of the Hispanic Caucus say they won’t agree to a plan unless it includes strict rules for the White House’s policies, particularly on shelters for undocumented minors, which they fear could be turned into long-term detention facilities.

“There is some fear that if the [Office of Refugee and Resettlement] ramped up their beds, will they also try to keep kids in detention longer,” one Democratic aide familiar with discussions said.

Some CHC members argue that Congress already handed billions to the White House for border issues just four months ago, though appropriators point out that the money went to a different program that can’t be used for unaccompanied minors.

This week, leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the CHC and the Congressional Asian and Pacific Islander Caucus began circulating a letter urging appropriators to cut funding for immigration detention facilities for the upcoming fiscal year.

“It is past time for Congress to hold DHS accountable,” they wrote in the letter, which was obtained by POLITICO, condemning ICE’s “rapid detention expansion” and its decision to flout Congress’s prior funding restrictions.

The White House’s border funding request was left out of an earlier disaster aid package the House approved Monday due to an impasse over Trump’s immigration policies. Democrats say they had already ruled out funding for more detention beds, but both parties got stuck on an issue that would allow agencies to share data on undocumented migrants — language that Democrats, including the CHC, have fiercely opposed.

Pressure is likely to mount as border crossings continue to surge this summer. Already, White House officials argue they’re running out of cash for the program that cares for unaccompanied migrants. Without action, they say salaries would be cut and social services would be curtailed.

“There is a backlog with the children right now because [Health and Human Services] is struggling with their bed capacity,” Mark Morgan, recently installed as acting director at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told reporters this week. “Think about that. We are begging. We are asking Congress to please help us.”

Ted Hesson and Heather Caygle contributed to this story.

Donald Trump’s campaign is itching to take on Joe Biden over his pro-free trade past and his comments downplaying the China threat — an issue Republicans see as especially potent in critical Rust Belt states where Trump is struggling and the former vice president has strength.

But in interviews with POLITICO, several current and former Biden aides said his recent rhetoric calling fears of China’s rise overblown was no gaffe. They say Biden relishes going to battle with Trump over China, certain that his message of confidence in American might will prevail over Trump’s alarmist rhetoric and tariff-driven trade war with Beijing.

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“Trump’s erratic and impulsive approach to China is causing families economic pain,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager. “Joe Biden would rally our friends and allies to hold China accountable.”

How to manage the rise of China is one of the trickiest and most important foreign policy issues in the 2020 race, one that affects voters’ wallets while also speaking to grander, even existential questions about America’s global standing. It has caused divisions within both the Democratic Party and the GOP, pitting protectionists against free-traders.

Biden is in a unique spot. He has spent significant time with China’s leaders, and his long foreign policy track record as a senator and vice president offers lots of fodder — sometimes the same fodder — for friends and foes alike on China. His nuanced message also has made it easy for critics to take liberties with his words.

This week, conservatives blasted Biden after he appeared to blow off the China threat by telling a New Hampshire audience: “Our workers are literally three times as productive as workers … in Asia. So what are we worried about?”

Afterward a Fox Business commentator called Biden “either massively naïve or deliberately trying to be provocative.”

And last month in Iowa, Biden seemed to dismiss Beijing by saying, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man! …They’re not competition for us.” Trump slammed Biden’s comments as “very dumb” and some of Biden’s 2020 Democratic primary competitors piled on, too.

“It’s wrong to pretend that China isn’t one of our major economic competitors,” tweeted the Bernie Sanders’ campaign, which has criticized free trade deals Biden supported while serving as No. 2 to Barack Obama.

Aides to Biden insist his comments have been taken out of context.

Biden believes without question that “China presents a real challenge, real competition,” one aide said. But he won’t play on people’s fears that China is taking over the world or that America’s heyday is over, the person said. And instead of just talking about the need to be tough on China as Trump does, Biden will cast himself as “tough but smart.”

“Vice President Biden doesn’t bet against America,” a different Biden aide said.

The advisers say Biden can point to some of his past face-offs with the Chinese to prove his mettle.

In 2013, Beijing declared the creation of an “air defense identification zone” in the East China Sea, infuriating the U.S. and allies such as Japan. Biden traveled to China with a stern message: the U.S. wasn’t going to recognize the zone. In fact, U.S. military aircraft had already flown through it without Chinese permission and would keep doing so.

“No one should underestimate or question [America’s] staying power” in the Asia-Pacific, Biden said later in South Korea, after his private sessions with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“His message to Xi in Beijing was, ‘We’re going to show you and the world it doesn’t count,’” a former Obama administration official close to Biden recalled. “You guys shouldn’t be doing this kind of thing because we’re going to …operate as though it doesn’t exist.’”

“It was interesting because Xi didn’t know what to say. Biden, in a way, dictated the pace,” the former official added.

Another example of a Biden-driven success, advisers said, was his lesser-known role in a 2015 deal between China and the U.S. to curb cyber espionage on private companies, attacks that often saw China stealing trade secrets from U.S. firms.

Biden helped persuade Xi that such commercial spying was a separate issue from the more traditional, and more acceptable, political espionage both governments have long carried out, aides to the former vice president said.

Biden also spent many hours with Xi as part of the Obama administration’s efforts to “rebalance” U.S. foreign policy to focus more on Asia and China in particular. So the Democrat can say he knows exactly who he’s up against were he to win the White House.

Biden aides declined to give specifics about the Democrat’s plans on the highly sensitive issue of trade; the campaign is expected to roll out a trade agenda in the coming months.

They indicated, however, that Biden will point to the many trade-related disputes the Obama administration won against China through the World Trade Organization as an example of how he would be tough and use existing tools to hold Beijing accountable. Biden also will call for major new investment in U.S. infrastructure, education and more to ensure that Americans retain a competitive edge over the Chinese.

Perhaps above all, Biden plans to emphasize that, unlike Trump, he will rally other countries to America’s side to present a united front against China.

Emphasizing alliances also gives Biden an avenue to defend the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the massive multi-national trade agreement that the Obama administration helped craft in part to counter China. Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the TPP and many progressive Democrats oppose it as well.

Biden aides argue that Trump’s go-it-alone approach to Beijing undermines his blunt talk about holding Beijing accountable for its aggressions on trade and other fronts, especially because the president has little to show for it.

If Trump’s tariffs stay in place, the trade war continues and prices keep going up for Americans, Biden aides expect even Trump’s support in rural areas will fade by this time next year. If Trump does strike a trade deal with China, Biden aides are betting they can poke holes in it.

But Republicans see weaknesses in Biden where his aides see strength. They note that China never rescinded the air defense identification zone and point to reports that the cyber agreement is falling apart.

Biden may think the Obama administration outsmarted the Chinese, but the Chinese probably believe otherwise because they are thinking long term, said a Republican who served in the George W. Bush administration. “Their approach on things like the … air defense zone is incrementalism,” he said.

Even some critics of the Obama-Biden approach to China said they deserve credit for recognizing that the rise of China required a “rebalance” in U.S. foreign policy.

But attitudes toward China are hardening within both parties as the scale of China’s ambitions become clearer and Trump’s willingness to confront the Chinese head on has gained resonance. Defending the Obama team’s more cool-headed approach could be more difficult in this environment.

The Trump campaign certainly intends to use Biden’s record against him.

“Donald Trump is the first president to stand up to China’s decades-long record of cheating and unfair trade practices,” Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said in a statement. ”Joe Biden, incredibly, dismisses China as an economic competitor, so it’s little wonder that while Biden was in office he welcomed China’s rise and sat back and watched as the Chinese ate America’s lunch.”

Biden may have another weak spot on China: questions about his son Hunter’s business dealings there. A lawyer for Hunter Biden has dismissed allegations of wrongdoing, according to media reports, but that doesn’t mean Trump won’t use his megaphone to talk about them.

Democratic strategists and others who watch the U.S.-China relationship closely say that Trump’s support in states such as Iowa has yet to degrade in any meaningful way, possibly because the president has promised billions in bailouts to farmers battered by the trade war.

But if Biden wants to gain votes beyond his base, he will need to fine tune his message, and show a little more teeth against Beijing, some said.

“I would suggest that Vice President Biden probably is a little bit off target when he says they’re not a major competitor,” said Kirk Leeds, chief executive officer of the Iowa Soybean Association.

But he and others said what could really move votes toward Biden is if he offers detailed plans about his strategy toward China. That includes how the U.S. plans to recapture parts of the Chinese market it may lose as the trade war keeps up.

“Farmers do not want bailouts from the government,” said Jeff Link, an Iowa Democratic strategist. “They want to have access to a market. And they want certainty that they’ll have access so they can plan.”

Biden aides agreed with that assessment.

“We have the most divisive president in modern memory,” one said, “but people are really not so interested in fighting, they’re interested in fixing.”

President Donald Trump is barreling toward an epic clash with members of his own party as he prepares to hit Mexico with escalating tariffs that could damage the U.S. economy — and aides insist he isn’t bluffing even as some hold out hope for a last-minute deal.

Trump has repeatedly rebuffed efforts by Senate Republicans to persuade him to back down. He’s publicly said he’s serious about the tariffs, and suggested Tuesday that he expects them to go into effect. And White House aides said privately this week they believe the tariffs are a foregone conclusion, barring a dramatic gesture from Mexican officials.

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“Congress has not acted and Mexico has not acted, so the president is now acting,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said during an interview on CNN Wednesday morning.

Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other senior administration officials are meeting Wednesday afternoon with top Mexican officials, who will make a last-ditch pitch to avert the tariffs.

White House officials have laid out three criteria for avoiding the tariffs: stopping Central American immigrants from crossing into Mexico from Guatemala; breaking up the transnational gangs that profit from the illegal immigrant trade; and keeping asylum seekers on their side of the border. It remains unclear how the Mexican government could satisfy those requirements before Monday, when the 5 percent across-the-board tariff on all Mexican imports is scheduled to go into effect.

But Navarro suggested Wednesday that a deal averting the tariffs is possible. “We believe that these tariffs may not have to go into effect precisely because we have the Mexicans’ attention,” he said during the CNN interview.

Despite the insistence of White House officials that Trump is “deadly serious” about the tariffs, some opponents of the idea are still quietly holding out hope that the president will back down, noting that he’s publicly backtracked before.

The self-proclaimed master deal-maker has a long history of bluffing his way through the business world, and he’s brought that same style to Washington, infuriating fellow Republicans and other allies who don’t know when to take the president seriously.

Mexican officials, for their part, remain optimistic. Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard put the chances of persuading the administration to hold off on the tariffs at 80 percent. He said he’ll make the case at Wednesday’s meeting that the Mexican government is already taking steps to stem the flow of migrants into the U.S.

Some in the White House expect the first tranche of tariffs to go into effect next week, after which the U.S. and Mexico will continue negotiating to find a way to lift the tariffs before they increase.

White House officials noted that Trump has grown sensitive to accusations that he’s not serious about the tariffs. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have suggested that Trump won’t go forward with his threats.

“Can you imagine Cryin’ Chuck Schumer saying out loud, for all to hear, that I am bluffing with respect to putting Tariffs on Mexico. What a Creep,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday night from Europe.

“There’s no way he’s bluffing,” a White House official told POLITICO Wednesday.

Pelosi has also been saying this week that Trump’s push for tariffs is meant to divert attention from special counsel Robert Mueller’s news conference, during which Mueller pointedly declined to exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice allegations.

“I don’t even think it rises to the level of policy,” she told reporters on Wednesday. “It’s a distraction from the Mueller report. And it’s served its purpose, right? Here we are.”

The tariffs would start off at 5 percent on Monday and increase on a monthly basis up to 25 percent. Experts have warned that the levies could dramatically damage the U.S. economy, which relies on Mexico for everything from car parts to avocados.

Trump’s tariff plan faced resistance from some of his advisers, including U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who expressed concern about how the move could derail efforts to persuade Congress to approve a new North American trade deal, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Mexican tariffs are being driven by the president and hard-line aides working on the immigration issue, including senior adviser Stephen Miller, with economic and trade officials taking a secondary role, people close to the matter said.

But the internal debate about the tariffs paled in comparison to earlier trade debates in the White House, which often degenerated into shouting matches between Trump’s protectionist and free-trade advisers. These days, Trump is surrounded by fewer senior advisers who are willing to aggressively challenge his instincts, and aides said they are resigned to the president moving forward.

White House officials are also deeply skeptical that Republicans in Congress will band together to block the tariffs, as some GOP lawmakers have threatened to do. For one thing, the White House has argued privately that the tariffs don’t require a new national emergency declaration, as many trade experts believe. Such a move would allow Congress to pass a disapproval resolution, undermining the tariffs. Trump previously employed the national emergency tactic to try and divert funds for his southern border wall, and he was forced to veto a formal congressional rebuke.

And even if lawmakers are able to pass a similar resolution this time, White House officials doubt lawmakers could muster enough votes to reach a veto-proof threshold, despite warnings from some lawmakers that that’s a possibility.

Even Pelosi on Wednesday said she wasn’t sure Congress had the votes to override a Trump veto, noting that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had said he would stick with the president on the subject.

“I don’t think they will do that,” Trump said Tuesday as he reminded lawmakers that he remains popular among Republican voters, adding, “If they do, it’s foolish. There’s nothing more important than borders.”