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Choosing governance over discontent hardly works in Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
Oklahoma’s James Lankford crafted the most conservative Senate immigration plan in decades after tortuous negotiations with Democrats, but the deal is coming close to collapsing on Monday, a day after it was announced. Even though it looks like this, we are learning this lesson.
“This is a very bad bill for his career,” the former president said Monday, ominously telling senators from red states who could be at odds with the White House and his political base if Trump wins the presidential election. issued a warning. 2024 Election.
President Trump’s remarks on The Dan Bongino Show caused whiplash in Washington, with Republican senators quickly rationalizing their political interests and peeling back their posturing. CNN sources said that by dinner time, a majority of Senate Republicans were determined to either oppose or defeat the bill, making it seem impossible to get a majority through the filibuster.
“I think this proposal is dead,” Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker said after a meeting in Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s office. House Speaker Mike Johnson had already said the deal was void once it reached the Republican-controlled House.
The showdown over the southern border crisis reflects President Trump’s growing power as he closes in on winning the Republican nomination, seeking to assuage President Joe Biden’s discomfort on the issue and incite immigration ahead of the November election. The president is openly trying to block any action in Washington that might weaken his own ability to do so. .
Trump is constantly seeking to foment chaos, but immigration is particularly integral to his political strategy. Immigration is a polarizing issue that was a driving force behind Trump’s political rise in 2015, and remains a driving force behind his political campaign. Even as the Republican-controlled House of Representatives took steps this week to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over immigration, there are some in the party that may be in the national interest, but that the past and perhaps future That’s why there is little appetite for legislation that could alienate the president. For Republicans, they join those who have misrepresented the bill as “amnesty” (a code word that has long drowned immigration compromises in Washington), even though conservative border protection unions support the bill. That’s much easier. And for pro-Trump parties that leverage synergies with conservative media, their primary motivation lies in Trump’s stunt style of politics rather than seeking bipartisan political compromise.
Mr. Lankford is not the only big-name Republican to realize that trying to offer even conservative solutions is dangerous in a party increasingly controlled by Mr. Trump’s whims.
Despite years of cozying up to President Trump, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy brought about his own political demise last September when he used Democratic votes to avert a federal government shutdown. A governance crisis would hurt millions of Americans. But it also could have caused the kind of chaos that President Trump has cited as justifying the return of strongmen wielding unrestrained executive power. After his ouster, the former chairman warned that the party had completely rejected the give-and-take politics that the nation’s founders saw as the only way for a rebellious nation to unite. “I don’t regret standing up because I chose governance over grievance,” McCarthy said at the time. “Our government is designed to find compromises,” added the California Republican, who has since left Congress.
Mr. Lankford, who will be re-elected to a new six-year term in 2022, is much safer than Mr. McCarthy. But he also faces similar problems. His compromises seem futile, even if they give Republicans much of what they typically demand. “My job is to solve border problems,” said the Oklahoma senator, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “His job is to run for president. My job is to serve my country,” Lankford said Monday, referring to Trump.
There is a strong political argument that Biden has taken too long to demonstrate recent urgency to address the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. This influx of migrants has created huge backlogs, overwhelming the system’s capacity and resources. Many Republicans argue that the president is not doing enough to enforce existing laws to deal with the influx of immigrants. But with his re-election hopes under threat and the issue emerging as a dangerous issue for Democrats across the country, Biden was prepared to embrace far tougher immigration measures than Democrats typically take. This is despite growing anger from Biden’s left in November, raising questions about the durability of his coalition.
For example, the new law does little to address the fate of Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children but have no legal status. In a striking change of tone, the president even said he would be willing to close the border if Congress gave him the authority to do so. A person familiar with the White House’s position on the bill said Monday that the bill is not intended to be a comprehensive policy like the one that failed under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, but instead focuses specifically on border issues. He claimed that he had guessed. Border security has traditionally been a top Republican concern. But even the toughest measures embraced by Democratic presidents in recent years weren’t enough.
Republicans, who have been demanding action on the border for months, now appear to be backing away.
“This is a humanitarian and security crisis of historic proportions, and Senate Republicans have been saying not just for months, but for years, that this urgent crisis requires action,” McConnell said Monday. said. The Kentucky native is a hard-line conservative and a thorn in the side of Democrats, but he has nonetheless attempted to govern at times during his long tenure as leader. However, recent immigration issues have highlighted President Trump’s declining control over him.
A compromise on the border would mean dramatic changes to immigration law, along lines long supported by many Republicans. The program aims to shorten the five-year or more asylum application process, which leaves many immigrants in the United States, to about six months. This raises the legal standard of proof to pass the initial asylum review. It would pump billions of dollars into Immigration and Customs Enforcement and states to deal with the influx of immigrants.
The bill would give the government the power to restrict border crossings if the number of encounters with migrants reaches an average of 4,000 per day in a week. If the average number of people entering the country exceeds 5,000 people per day in a given week, the Department of Homeland Security would be required to exercise authority, which would effectively result in DHS barring asylum seekers from crossing the border. It will be. Republicans seeking to stall the bill argued Monday that the bill would guarantee 5,000 migrant encounters per day. But that’s a misunderstanding. A person familiar with the White House position said the standard was envisioned as an emergency trigger, and other changes in the bill were designed to ensure the standard was never reached and would not create bottlenecks in future asylum processes. He said that
But for many Republicans, there is no room for compromise.
“There should be zero encounters,” Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday. “No one should be allowed into our country,” he said.
Johnson has been in close contact with Trump but insists he is not taking orders from the former president and is pushing for HR2 to pass. Critics argue that the bill would make it nearly impossible for immigrants fleeing persecution to seek genuine asylum, and would involve an open-ended refugee claim process. Detention of minors and families with essentially no access to lawyers or representation. HR2 only had Republican support when it passed the House, and everyone who voted for it knew it had no chance of passing a Democratic Senate and White House.
But it sent a powerful message to Republican voters and the former president, who has exploited the immigration issue in his campaign. Mr. Mayorkas’ impeachment effort would send a similar message to Trump’s base, but it would have zero practical impact on the crisis at the southern border and could force Republicans in battleground states to take tough votes.
The roots of the current drama lie not only in the border crisis, but also in the growing hostility of Republicans to sending aid to Ukraine (reflecting another position of President Trump) and in the House’s latest This is due to his refusal to support a $60 billion arms aid program for the country. “Any national security policy must start with the security of our borders,” Johnson said in December. “When we go back to City Hall, we will be asked a very important question: How can we secure foreign borders if we cannot secure our own?” These are questions that we need to help people ask. ”
The package on the table is part of the White House’s answer to that question, even if it’s not everything hardline Republicans are demanding.
But unless something changes, House Republicans have effectively decided not to spend money on either the U.S. southern border or Ukraine, two key priorities.
It leaves little doubt that President Trump has no interest in fixing the immigration issue before the election, taunting it to Biden on every campaign trail, and leaving the border open to hordes of invaders. Because it is inaccurately claimed. “Only idiots or radical left Democrats would vote for this horrible border bill,” the former president wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “This bill is a great gift to Democrats and a death wish to Republicans.” President Trump has previously argued that terrorists are coming across the southern border and pose a national security threat. Was. So it would be strange for someone running for commander-in-chief to leave things as they are until he hopes to return to power in January.
The failure of a new compromise on immigration could jeopardize Mr. Biden’s re-election, but his comments in recent weeks could at least turn the tide on Mr. Trump.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, one of the Democrats involved in compromise negotiations, announced one line of attack against the former president Monday night.
“When Donald Trump is back in charge of the Republican Party, this is chaos,” Murphy told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
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