Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee has long ago sold his soul to Trump. Not only was he one of the first out of the pen to start screaming for the defeat of the border security/Ukraine aid package, he demanded McConnell be fired over it as well: “I cannot understand how any Republican would think this was a good idea— or anything other than an unmitigated disaster. WE NEED NEW LEADERSHIP— NOW.” That he hadn’t read the bill, didn’t stop him for a nanosecond from rushing off to social media. Nor was he the only one. Lauren Boebert, who can hardly read at all, claims to have digested the whole 370 page bill in less than 3 minutes— and we all thought handjobs in public theaters was her only superpower— and tweeted “This so-called border ‘compromise’ bill reads like a compromise between the cartels, the human traffickers and Alejandro Mayorkas. They are all salivating reading this thing. No Republican should support this absolute amnesty monstrosity that fails to actually secure the border.” Luckily she doesn’t have to answer any followup questions from anyone.
The cult leader used his own social media platform to spin his lies, although that was hardly the first attempt at gaslighting the bill for his devoted fans. Sunday, he was on Fox News with that Maria Bartiromo shill, suggesting “falsely that Latin American governments were picking the citizens they didn’t want and shipping them to the U.S. border, resurrecting a claim that was central to his 2016 campaign. He also accused the Chinese Communist Party— without providing any evidence— of orchestrating illegal immigration into the United States, and said he believed China would try to interfere in the presidential election, adding that he liked President Xi Jinping ‘a lot.’ Asked on Sunday Morning Futures by the interviewer, Maria Bartiromo, whether he thought ‘military-aged men’ from China were ‘being directed by the Communist Party to come here,’ Trump said: ‘I believe so.’”
Sheer nonsense for the sheep eager to be shorn. But the GOP has quadrupled down on it in their attempt to smear Tom Suozzi, a border security hardliner, as an open borders politician, counting on voters in Nassau and Queens to be low info and low IQ. We’ll see if that works a week from today. Yesterday, Suozzi released a press released emphasizing that “The Senate’s bill is the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border our country has had in decades. It would make our country safer, make our border more secure, and treat people fairly and humanely while preserving legal immigration, consistent with our values as a nation. Yet Pilip called this bipartisan legislation: ‘the legalization of the invasion of our county.’ During the press conference, Suozzi underscored that the reason Pilip is opposing the bill is because she’s completely beholden to the national Republicans. And like them, she’s only interested in playing politics with people’s lives instead of actually working to solve problems. ‘It’s incomprehensible to me that a candidate can claim that her number one priority is securing the border yet takes a dead-on-arrival approach on the only compromise border bill that has had a chance of passing our Congress over the past 30 years,’ said Suozzi… ‘She’s aligned with some of the most dangerous members of the Republican Party, who are all also on board with opposing this bipartisan border deal because they think it will help them politically, even if it’s at the expense of the people. People are sick of these political games that Mazi Pilip and her DC handlers are playing, and I will work with whoever it takes to get people to come together to actually get stuff done and fix our border.’”
There are 2 trains of thought here: border security and Ukraine aid— an alliance between Trump and Putin is what ties them together, Putin desperate for U.S. aid to Ukraine to end and Trump desperate for the border to remain an explosive campaign issue. (Putin’s propaganda team has jumped into the fray on social media, pushing for an American civil war. “The ongoing controversy at the border in Texas,” wrote Caroline Bueno, “has dominated the headlines recently— not only in U.S. newspapers, but also in Russian propaganda outlets, which have published dozens of inflammatory articles calling the border dispute a ‘constitutional crisis’ and an ‘unmitigated disaster,’ and warning of, or possibly cheering for, civil war. But that’s not the only evidence of Russia’s involvement in inflaming tensions over border-related issues— there has also been a sudden surge of Russian-language tweets promoting the ‘Free Texas’ secessionist movement, which was heavily promoted by the notorious Internet Research Agency during Russia’s 2016 election interference campaign. Taken together, this points to a possible ongoing and coordinated disinformation campaign being waged by Russia against the American public, raising concerns about potential on-the-ground activities in Texas as well as Russia’s intentions for future information operations targeting the upcoming presidential election. Russia has a long history of targeting immigration-related issues in the U.S. and Europe, largely because immigration is a polarizing issue that can be used to sow divisions and portray Western democracies as unsafe, incompetent, and hypocritical. This is part of Russia’s hybrid warfare strategy, which seeks to undermine and destabilize democratic processes through a variety of means, including and especially information warfare. During Russia’s 2016 election interference campaign, immigration took center stage, with a particular emphasis on border-related conflicts and inflaming anti-immigrant sentiment. As part of this campaign, Russia was also found to have organized anti-immigrant rallies and protests in Texas and other states in the lead-up to the 2016 election.”)
We’ll come back to the border security aspect in a moment, but I want to focus on Ukraine aid for a minute. When Neville Chamberlain promulgated his catastrophic policy of appeasement towards Hitler, no one— at least that I could find— accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer. There were certainly individuals and groups who opposed Chamberlain's approach and accused him of being too lenient or accommodating toward Hitler and the Nazis, arguing, correctly that appeasement was naive and misguided and that it emboldened Hitler to pursue further aggression. Among Chamberlain's political opponents, particularly within the Labour Party and among more hawkish members of his own Conservative Party, there were voices that accused him of being too soft on Nazi Germany. They called for a more robust response to Hitler's actions and advocated for stronger measures to contain or confront Nazi aggression, but no one accused him of being unpatriotic. That’s different with Trump and MAGA, who are being credibly accused of being unpatriotic and in cahoots with Putin. McFaul, for example, was Obama’s ambassador to Russia… and he had a message for MAGA Mike yesterday:
Russo-Republicans, like Marjorie Traitor Greene and J.D. Vance, in thrall to Trump and Putin, are the loudest voices against the bill. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the treasonous Tucker Carlson has been in Moscow all week.
Reporting for NBC Sahil Kapur, Scott Wong, Julie Tsirkin and Julia Ainsley wrote that “The $118 billion package includes a series of provisions aimed at reducing record high crossings at the southern border and tightening an asylum system that has been overwhelmed by migrants fleeing their homes to seek refuge… But the deal is mired in election-year politics, and it’s unclear whether it has the support to pass the Senate, where it will need at least 60 votes to defeat a guaranteed filibuster. Conservative senators have been mobilizing against the deal, egged on by Trump, who has told Republicans to reject it if it isn’t ‘perfect.’ He has also falsely suggested that the bill would allow 5,000 illegal border crossings per day as he seeks to wield border chaos as a political weapon in a likely 2024 rematch against President Joe Biden, who quickly endorsed the bill. The deal was met with near-immediate rejection by House Republican leadership as well as several members of the House Freedom Caucus and other conservatives in Congress. Speaker Mike Johnson tweeted Sunday night: “If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival.”
The bill includes a new emergency authority that would allow the Department of Homeland Security to, as Biden has put it, “shut down” the border if there are too many migrants trying to cross.
DHS could close the border if Border Patrol encountered 4,000 or more migrants on average over seven days. The border would have to be shut down if those encounters reached a seven-day average of 5,000 or if they exceeded 8,500 in a single day.
The border couldn’t be shut down under this authority for more than 270 days in the first year. And the bill would give the president the power to suspend a border closure “on an emergency basis for up to 45 days if it is in the national interest.”
During an emergency closure, Border Patrol would still need to process a minimum of 1,400 migrants who try to enter the U.S. legally through ports of entry. Only unaccompanied minors would be able to cross between ports of entry. And any migrant who tried to cross illegally two or more times during a border emergency would be barred from the U.S. for a year.
That "consequence," Sinema said, represents "one key difference between the use of Title 42 and our new border authority. It will create disincentives for individuals who seek to cross illegally into the country during border closure.”
The bill would also end the practice of “catch and release.” If passed into law, the bill would allow migrants who come to the border through lawful ports of entry and families to enter the U.S. under federal supervision for 90 days while they complete asylum interviews. Those who pass would receive work permits as they await adjudication of their claims. Those who fail would be removed from the U.S. and repatriated to their home countries or to Mexico.
The bill would mandate detaining migrants who try to enter the U.S. outside of official ports of entry, pending any asylum claims. Those who fail would also be removed.
The bill allocates funding for repatriation flights up to 77 per day.
Current and former DHS officials had told NBC News that the emergency shutdown provision in the bill would cause chaos and might not be effective unless Mexico agreed to take more migrants turned away from the U.S. The bill doesn’t include new cooperation from Mexico.
The bill also raises the “credible fear” standard during interviews for asylum claims, largely by front-loading consideration of whether migrants have disqualifying criminal histories, whether they lived safely in third countries before trying to cross into the U.S. and whether they could safely relocate within their own countries.
The bill doesn't address the children of undocumented people, known as "Dreamers," long a priority of Democrats. It would change immigration laws to allow the children of people with H-1B visas to get work authorizations and freeze their legal ages while waiting for green cards, rather than face deportation once they hit age 21. While they wait, those children would be able to have work authorizations. These changes would affect about 250,000 children in the U.S., Sinema’s staff told reporters on a call Sunday night.
The bill would also provide a pathway to conditional, lawful, permanent residency for vetted Afghan nationals who were admitted or paroled into the U.S. after July 2021. The Afghan allies, many of whom worked directly with American forces during the war, and their families would be exempt from immigration quota limits and could apply for naturalization.
And the bill would add new flexibility for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol to make new hires, seeking to address staffing shortages. The changes in hiring authorities are all set to sunset in the next few years and would have to be renewed.
The bill hands $7.6 billion to ICE, most of it earmarked for deportations and detentions (about $6 billion), more than ICEs entire current annual enforcement budget. It could fund significant crackdown. This is a pure giveaway to the GOP, certainly not something Democrats approve of. Democrats, however, understand what the word “compromise” means; Republicans think it means “my way or the highway.” Lankford and McConnell were pushing the bill, but with Trump so adamantly opposed, it is hard to imagine there are enough congressional Republicans who will back it under any circumstance, even if most of them think it’s a great deal. McConnell has now flipped on the bill as well and announced he's opposing it. Lankford has said he may vote against it as well! Señor Trumpanzee said “This is a very bad bill for his career.” By Monday night the bill was dead meat. “The rapid collapse in support in the Senate reflects the upside-down politics of the border deal among Republicans that began several weeks ago, when Trump began slamming it. The staunchly conservative union for Border Patrol officers endorsed the deal on Monday, saying it would ‘codify into law authorities that U.S. Border Patrol agents never had in the past.’ And immigrant and refugee rights groups, including Amnesty International USA, blasted the legislation as containing ‘the most extreme anti-immigrant proposals this country has seen in 100 years.’ But a growing number of Republicans on Capitol Hill have painted the legislation as too soft.”
Andrew Desiderio, John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman wrote that “the bill’s release Sunday night was like pouring gasoline on the fire that is the Senate GOP internal war. Senators and aides publicly and privately questioned whether a majority of the Republican Conference would back it, a key metric. There were even calls for an immediate leadership change from some GOP senators and conservative outside groups… During a press call Sunday evening, Lankford said those criticizing the proposal had already come out against it before the text was released, so he didn’t expect them to reverse course. ‘If we have a crisis on our southern border, and we do… we should address that and do what we can to be able to solve that problem— not just hope that the problem gets better or hope that an election solves the issue,’ Lankford said… Schumer reiterated Sunday night that the first procedural vote will be on Wednesday. This will be a critical test. We expect several progressives to oppose the plan as well. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) did so on Sunday due to the Israel funding. Hispanic lawmakers and pro-immigration groups such as the ACLU are already taking aim at the changes to immigration policy. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) called it a ‘new version of Trump-era policies that will cause more chaos at the border.’”
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