Will Republicans Pay At The Ballot Box For Abandoning National Security To Kiss Trump's Ass?

An Anti-Red Tsunami Is What's Called For

"The Triumph Of Death" by Nancy Ohanian

It will be amusing to hear Trump accuse the Wall Street Journal editorial board of being a bunch of RINOs. On Monday, they defied him, writing that “By any honest reckoning, this is the most restrictive migrant legislation in decades. Previous immigration talks have involved trading security measures for legalizing more immigration. There is little of the latter in this bill— nothing for nearly all of the Dreamers who were brought here illegally as children, no general pathway to citizenship or green cards for most illegal immigrants already in the U.S. This is almost entirely a border security bill, and its provisions include long-time GOP priorities that the party’s restrictionists could never have passed only a few months ago. Republicans demanded border measures last year as the price for passing military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Pacific allies. Democrats resisted at first but later agreed to negotiate and have made concessions that are infuriating the open-borders left. Will Republicans now abandon what they claimed to want?”

Under current law and practice, migrants cross the border, turn themselves in to border patrol agents, and claim asylum. If they pass the deliberately low bar for claiming “credible fear” of persecution, they are given a date for a future asylum hearing and released into the U.S. The wait can take years, and many never show up. This is the policy that has become known as “catch and release.”

The new bill raises the bar for that initial border screening for credible fear to a “reasonable possibility” of persecution. Toughening the asylum standard was a priority of the Trump Administration, but a statutory change is needed to make it permanent. Migrants will have to show they couldn’t have moved elsewhere in their own country to avoid persecution before seeking refuge in the U.S. 

…GOP critics of the bill are pointing to the bill’s modest expansion of legal visas—about 50,000 a year for employment and family visas. But these immigrants aren’t pouring over the border willy-nilly. They are following legal rules. Republicans claim to oppose illegal immigration, but this complaint shows that some really oppose all immigration.

The Senate bill is a major improvement over the status quo, as the Border Patrol union said Monday in endorsing it. The bill would go far to reduce the incentives for illegal migration and provide new tools to the executive branch to control it. Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, who negotiated for the GOP, deserves thanks for digging into the policy nuances and writing a bill that Mr. Trump never came close to getting when he was President.

Yet the signs are that many Republicans in Congress may heed Mr. Trump’s current orders and reject this policy victory. They will point to this or that detail to justify opposition, all of which are minor in the context of these consequential reforms. House Republicans could also work to improve the bill, but it appears they may not even allow a vote. 

If Republicans reject this bill, they will hand Democrats an argument that the GOP wants border chaos that they can exploit as a campaign issue. The chaos will continue for at least another year. Republicans may think they can write a better law if Mr. Trump wins in November, but don’t count on it. Democrats will again demand much more in return. If Republicans pass up this rare chance at border reform, they may not get a better one.

Dan Pfeiffer reminded his readers that “House Republicans said they would not approve any aid for Ukraine until border security was addressed. Linking these two issues is an absurd form of hostage-taking that could help put Russian forces on the border of a NATO country. Nonetheless, Senate Democrats and Republicans who believe in stricter border control and in supplying more aid to Ukraine have accepted the premise of the House GOP’s demands… Even before the text of the Senate deal was released, Donald Trump and his allies were trying to kill the bill by spreading lies about what it would include.” 

No one will admit it— except Bernie— who said he was voting against the shitty xenophobic bill, but many congressional Democrats are relieved they won’t be forced into helping pass a Republican bill they detest. “Sometimes,” wrote David Frum yesterday, “a negotiation produces a deal. Sometimes, a negotiation reveals the truth… The deal delivers on Republican priorities. It includes changes to federal law to discourage asylum seeking. It shuts down asylum processing altogether if too many people arrive at once. Those and other changes send a clear message to would-be immigrants: You’re going to find it a lot harder to enter the United States without authorization. Rethink your plans… The Democrats traded away most of their own policy wish list. In return, they want an end to the mood of crisis at the border, plus emergency defense aid for Ukraine and Israel. Yet Republicans in the House seem determined to reject the draft agreement. They appear poised to leave in place a status quo that one senior GOP House leader has described as an ‘invasion’ and an ‘existential and national security threat.’”

Republicans don’t really care all that much about the situation at the border. A real “existential threat” cannot wait for some later date. People who perceive an existential threat don’t delay. In fact, a good many Republican legislators are very happy to allow a continuing flow of laborers across the border.

Consider that Florida’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work eight-hour days during the school year. Or that the Republican governor of Arkansas has signed a bill that relieves the state of having to certify that teenage workers aged 14 and 15 may work. Or that Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature may soon pass a law allowing 14- and 15-year-olds to work as late as 9 p.m. on school nights. Or that Republican legislators in Wisconsin are pushing to allow 14-to-17-year-olds to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants. Consider also that all of these changes are written with teenage migrants very much in mind: Almost 40 percent of recent border-crossers have been under 18, a fivefold increase since the late aughts.

Those teenagers are traveling both alone and in family groups. They are coming to the U.S. to work. When state legislatures relax the rules on employing under-18s and under-16s, they’re flashing a giant WE’RE HIRING sign to job-seeking teenagers around the world. The legislators know that. The teenagers know it. American voters should know it too.

A second truth concerns what Republican priorities really are. When Mike Johnson was elevated to the House speakership, he claimed that he genuinely wanted to help Ukraine but that aid had to wait until Congress passed new laws to harden the U.S. southern border. He wrote to President Joe Biden as recently as December 5 that further aid to Ukraine was “dependent upon enactment of transformative change to our nation’s border security laws.” When Senate negotiators produced exactly what Johnson said he wanted— a transformative bill that Congress could enact— he responded by reversing his demands. Johnson no longer wants any law at all. But one thing is constant: no aid to Ukraine— which suggests that “no aid to Ukraine,” not “defend the border,” is the true priority here.

Make Russia Great Again

A third truth is suggested by the angry reaction of House Republicans to the work of Senate Republicans: The very act of negotiation is mistrusted. Along with their speaker, House Republicans radically altered their position from “there must be a new law” to “there must be no new law,” and from “the president must sign our bill exactly as we wrote it” to “the president must act unilaterally by executive authority only.” How does anyone negotiate with a House majority that can so abruptly and totally pivot? The true goal revealed is failure and chaos.

And this points to a fourth truth, maybe the most important one of all. Donald Trump has sold his supporters the dangerous fantasy that democratic politics can be replaced by one man’s will. No need for distasteful compromises. No need to reckon with the concerns and interests of people who disagree with House Republicans. Just somehow return Trump to the presidency: He’ll bark; the system will obey.

Of course, such fantasies have no basis in reality. As the Cato Institute reported last November:

The Biden Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has removed a higher percentage of arrested border crossers in its first two years than the Trump DHS did over its last two years. Moreover, migrants were more likely to be released after a border arrest under President Trump than under President Biden. In absolute terms, the Biden DHS is removing 3.5 times as many people per month as the Trump DHS did.

Altogether, about 1.1 million unauthorized border-crossers were released into the United States during the Trump presidency and not removed by the end of his term. Glowering and yelling do not in fact accomplish much. But to many Trump supporters, glowering and yelling are the whole of it. They don’t care how little gets accomplished, so long as that little is done in the most offensive manner possible.

…[Republicans] going to arrive only at no— no for America, and no for Ukraine. But no is what they want.

Or “no” is what Putin wants-- and what Putin wants is what Trump demands. Congressional Republicans don’t have what it takes— the courage, the historical perspective, the moral fiber— to stand up to Trump and put the national interests ahead of Trump’s and MAGA’s narrow partisan objectives. November shouldn’t just be a blue wave; it should be an anti-red tsunami. A blue wave means goodbye to Mike Lawler (NY), John Duarte (CA), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Michelle Steele (CA), Maria Salazar (FL), Lori DeRemer-Chavez (OR), Nick LaLota (NY), David Valadao (CA), Anthony D’Esposito (NY), Tom Kean (NJ), Jen Kiggans (VA), John James (MI), Brandon Williams (NY), Ken Calvert (CA), Juan Ciscomani (AZ), Zach Nunn (IA), Marc Molinaro (NY), Young Kim (CA), Derrick Van Orden (WI), Don Bacon (NE), Monica De La Cruz (TX), David Schweikert (AZ) and Mike Garcia (CA). That’s a blue wave— 23 defeated Republicans. Nice.

An anti-red tsunami includes all of that plus candidates the DCCC will never seriously target, like… Mike Turner (OH), Scott Perry (PA), Cory Mills (FL), Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Kevin Kiley (CA), Eli Crane (AZ), Elise Stefanik (NY), French Hill (AR), Jay Obernolte (CA), Rob Wittman (VA), Aaron Bean (FL), Andrew Garbarino (NY), Nancy Mace (SC), Ashley Hinson (IA), Bill Huizenga (MI), Tony Gonzales (TX), Bryan Steil (WI), Stephanie Bice (OK), Andy Ogles (TN), Anna Paulina Luna (FL), Ann Wagner (MO), Max Miller (OH), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), Brian Mast (FL), Bob Good (VA), Mike Carey (OH), Nicole Malliotakis (NY), Laurel Lee (FL), Beth Van Duyne (TX), Joe Wilson (SC), Chuck Edwards (NC), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA), Carlos Giménez (FL), Troy Balderson (OH) and Mark Amodei (NV). That would rise to the historic occasion call for— over 50, including real villains like Scott Perry, Bob Good, Elise Stefanik, Beth Van Dyne, Andy Ogles, Joe Wilson and Anna Paulina Luna, not just a bunch of mainstream conservatives.

Former Reagan advisor Francis Fukuyama wrote this a couple of weeks ago: “American foreign policy has been sucked totally into the dysfunction of our domestic politics, with devastating results for the future world order. Let me put this simply. Ukraine, after fiercely resisting the Russian full-scale invasion for two years, is now in the process of losing the war. The Ukrainian military has simply been running out of ammunition because the United States has cut off further military assistance. Europe is having a similar problem filling the gap because of the opposition of one EU member country, Hungary. President Putin is now confident that he will outlast the West and win not just the current war, but future ones as well.”