Sure they're safe-- if the Democrats abolish the legislative filibuster, in effect a veto super power by the minority in the Senate. When conservatives like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema talk about giving the minority a voice, what they really mean is giving the minority a veto. Yesterday the House, by a vote of 228-197-- 9 Republicans joining every Democrat-- passed Lucille Roybal-Allard's American Dream and Promise Act. If McConnell weren't laughing at Schumer and preparing to refuse to allow a vote on the bill, it would would allow more than 2.3 million "Dreamers"-- unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors-- to gain the kind of legal status (for 10 years) that can lead to U.S. citizenship. To access the legal status, immigrants will have had to have earned a college degree or enrolled in a bachelor's program for two years or have served in the military for two years or more or prove that have worked in the U.S. for a three-year period.
The House also passed Zoe Lofgren's Dan Newhouse's Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which-- if Sinema and Manchin didn't insist that McConnell have veto power-- would allow immigrant farmworkers to apply for a temporary and renewable immigration status if they have worked at least 180 days in the U.S. during a 2-year period. They can request a green card after completing either 4 or 8 years, depending on how many years they have already done agricultural work.
When the bill passed the House in 2019, almost two dozen Republicans voted for it. "This time," reported Nick Fandos, "30 Republicans, many representing agriculture heavy districts, joined nearly every Democrat to vote in favor." Maine Blue Jared Golden was the one Democrat who voted against it. The final voted was 247-174.
In moving swiftly to consider both bills, House leaders wagered that singling out relatively narrow but publicly popular immigration fixes could shake up a deadlocked policy debate after years of failed attempts at more comprehensive immigration legislation, and deliver for a key constituency.
“This House has another chance to pass H.R. 6 and once and for all end the fear and uncertainty that have plagued the life of America’s Dreamers, who have become an integral part of the fabric of American society,” Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California and an author of the Dreamer bill, said during a hard-fought debate inside the Capitol. “It is an issue about who we are as Americans.”
But after colliding with a wave of hardened Republican opposition in the House, the bills face steep odds in the evenly divided Senate. While some Republicans there have pledged support for Dreamers in the past, their party is increasingly uniting behind a hard-line strategy to block any new immigration law as it seeks to use the worsening situation at the border as a political cudgel against Mr. Biden and Democrats.
“There is no pathway for anything right now,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a key player in past bipartisan immigration pushes, said this week.
That means the immigration measures will join a growing pile of liberal agenda items, as well as broadly supported measures on pressing national challenges, that have passed the House but are destined to languish or die because of Republican opposition in the Senate. They include a landmark expansion of voting rights, new gun control measures, the most significant pro-labor legislation in decades and the Equality Act for L.G.B.T.Q. people.
Democrats in favor of eliminating or altering the filibuster believe the accumulating pressure could help break the dam in the months ahead, allowing them to change Senate rules to do away with the 60-vote requirement and let legislation pass with a simple majority.
And meanwhile, in the alternative universe of the 30%, Jason Lemon reported a very different kind of story, one where self-styled evangelical prophet Jeff Jansen claims that the military is in the midst of a coup to reinstate Señor Trumpanzee. In Trump/Jansen-world Trump is still the legitimate president and the military will soon be evicting Biden from the White House. "A number of Christian pastors and so-called 'prophets' predicted ahead of the 2020 election that Trump would win reelection, claiming that was God's will. When that prophecy did not come to fruition, some apologized and admitted they were wrong. Others, like Jansen, have found creative ways to justify the current reality in the U.S. 'You have to realize what's taken place in our nation has been a hostile takeover, and just because there was a fake inauguration [of Biden]…for optics and for posture, let them have their day in the sun,' Jansen, the founder of Global Fire Ministries International based out of Tennessee, said during a Tuesday episode of the Elijah Streams YouTube program... 'It's a tale of two presidents and right now in America-- because President Trump has never conceded, he never agreed to anything, never stepped away, never conceded,' Jansen continued. 'He basically stepped aside momentarily, while things are being sorted out.' The evangelical minister said Trump's effort to stay in office by overturning the elections results in the court was stymied by 'corrupt' courts and judges... 'The last defense is military. So the military, actually the military is in control right now.'" Watch Jansen before he's committed to an insane asylum.