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- Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) on the daily struggle in the House of Representatives
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The bipartisan border deal snaking its way through Congress will test just how much Republican lawmakers will sacrifice on the altar of loyalty to disgraced former president Donald Trump. Unfortunately, we know the answer is “A lot”!
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Details of the blockbuster $118 billion Senate border bill were unveiled on Monday. The proposal contains major border security funding and legislation as well as monetary aid for Israel and Ukraine. So it’s a border deal, but like seemingly every major bill in Congress, it contains measures far outside of the scope of the central issue. For example, buried inside the package is a pathway to residency for tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who arrived in the United States in the chaos of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which would fulfill a long-held promise to those who aided American troops.
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Some Democrats have voiced opposition to the package because of the inclusion of what they call far-right border policies that they say will do nothing to fix America’s broken immigration system. Far-right Freedom Caucus types say the package doesn’t go far enough in limiting daily migrant crossings at the southern border, which they say should be zero. So what’s the actual immigration policy in the bill? For starters, $20 billion for additional enforcement of the U.S.-Mexico border, and activation of emergency powers for the government to refuse entry to migrants crossing the border, or to expel immigrants already here. These emergency powers would kick in whenever Border Patrol catches an average of at least 4,000 people crossing the border per day in a single week, and then the government would be required to use them when crossings surpass a 5,000-per-day average.
- The bill also includes $60 billion in additional aid to Ukraine, mostly in the form of weapons and military equipment, and $14 billion to Israel, including $5.2 billion for missile defense systems. It also strips funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which administers aid to Palestinians in Gaza, after Israel accused 12 of its 13,000 employees of being involved in the October 7 Hamas attack. There’s also another $5 billion for U.S. operations in the Red Sea and the Indo-Pacific. A key demographic left out of the immigration bill: the hundreds of thousands of people brought to the United States illegally as children, known as “Dreamers.” For years, Dreamers had been a top immigration policy priority for Democrats. But the question of their status and future was omitted from the proposal entirely.
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The bill needs support from 60 Senators to pass its first procedural vote on Wednesday, and it looks like it'll be a bumpy road to get there.
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave his support to the package, even going so far as calling on his caucus to pass it from the Senate floor. The National Border Patrol Council—the union of border patrol agents—said they support and endorse the border deal negotiated in the Senate. Their statement read, in part: “The Border Act of 2024 will codify into law authorities that U.S. Border Patrol agents never had in the past…While not perfect [the proposed deal] is a step in the right direction and is far better than the status quo.”
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But even McConnell’s public use of his political capital and the endorsement of the NBPC might not be enough in the face of opposition from the guy who actually runs the bingo in the GOP: Donald Trump. Even if this plan scrapes through the Senate, it faces even tougher prospects in the House, where Trump’s minions are lining up in opposition and Speaker Mike Johnson pronounced the bill “DEAD.” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), the GOP’s lead negotiator on the Senate’s border deal, is getting impatient with his shithead Republican colleagues. Lankford has been working for months to hammer out a deal to secure the border that Republicans have said needs to be handled immediately, but now they’re dragging their heels. Many conservative Senators loyal to Trump say they will oppose the bill, because Trump has been crystal clear about his desire to kill it. Passage of the bill would mean Trump couldn’t campaign on “Democrats want open borders,” and the classic demagogue line of “Only I can fix it,” and could possibly give Joe Biden a small boost in his ratings. That GOP lawmakers are allowing Trump to persuade them to keep the border “open” for the next year only for his personal gain by not passing the deal shows that their hysterics about the urgency of the border crisis were nothing more than contrivances.
Sen. Lankford went on Fox News to express his frustration and disbelief with his GOP colleagues, saying, “The key aspect of this, again, is, are we as Republicans going to have press conferences and complain the border is bad and then intentionally leave it open?” It’s a good question! We’ll find out on Wednesday when the Senate votes.
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Strict Scrutiny just released a BONUS episode on Friday! On Crooked’s legal pod, hosts Kate Shaw, Leah Litman, and Melissa Murray spoke to the woman awarded in Trump's defamation case, E Jean Carroll, and her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. You can listen to this episode, out now, only on the Strict Scrutiny feed.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday at the start of another Middle East tour. Blinken is hoping to further White House efforts to normalize relations between the Kingdom and Israel, which began before the October 7 Hamas attack. In Gaza, Palestinians sheltering amidst rubble and bombardment told Reuters they hoped Blinken’s visit would finally deliver a truce before Israel has the chance to carry out another assault on the enclave it has been threatening. The Secretary of State is also set to visit Israel, Egypt, Qatar, and the occupied West Bank this week to further conversations about a three-phase hostage deal. The United States has been carrying out retaliatory attacks on Iran-backed militias in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen in response to a drone attack in Jordan last week that killed three American soldiers and wounded dozens more. Blinken will also try to reinforce assertions that the Biden administration neither seeks war with Iran nor wants further conflict in the Middle East, despite calls from some Republican lunatics calling for the U.S. to “hit Iran now.” The Pentagon has also said it does not believe Tehran wishes for war, either, and the country has avoided any direct role in the conflict so far.
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Trump’s former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley still faces long (we’re talking LONG) odds against her old boss to win the GOP nomination, but she raised $16.5 million in January, her largest monthly fundraising haul to date.
California is experiencing record rainfall and flooding due to an El Niño weather cycle, which is also causing deadly fires in Chile.
Meta’s own oversight board criticized the company’s “incoherent” and “confusing” policies on manipulated media (“deepfakes”) after a deepfake video of President Biden appearing to touch his granddaughter inappropriately spread widely on Facebook. Someone please make a deepfake of him supporting a $20 minimum wage so we can get those poll numbers back up!
The United Kingdom’s King Charles has been diagnosed with cancer and will suspend his public-facing duties while undergoing treatment. Man, after 50 years waiting to become King you’d think he would catch a break (other than, you know, being born into unimaginable wealth and power).
In the 1970’s, meteorologists developed a system to categorize hurricane severity from one to five. Now, weather is getting so extreme they’re proposing Category 6. Excited to see how Republicans will try to convince people that worse hurricanes are a Lib op.
In related news: Amazon—the largest corporate polluter of the “big five” tech companies (Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft)—complained in a new filing that climate change might disrupt its business, including from “reputational damage resulting from perceptions of [the company’s] environmental impact.” In other words: “Our business might suffer in part because everyone found out that we’re personally dialing global warming up a few notches. Isn’t that sad for us???” Let me know when we can bring back public shaming in the town square.
A piece of a Cold-War era nuclear missile was found in a residential garage in Bellevue, WA on Thursday. Not to be outdone, my parents recently went into their garage and found my old field hockey stick.
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