Trump Bullies GOP into Opposing Bipartisan Border Solution

UPDATE: August 2024 - As a key part of her platform, Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris re-iterated her support for the bipartisan border bill that Donald Trump forced his GOP allies in Congress to walk away from. (See our original story below for details on what the bill contains and how, by opposing it, Mr. Trump is again putting his personal interests first, above the best interests of the country.)

This legislation, which Vice President Harris and President Biden helped forge in partnership with many conservative Republican Senators, is the toughest border bill generated by Congress in decades. But it's for just that reason that Mr. Trump opposes it: he thinks its passage will hurt his chances in this fall's election.

We hope you keep these facts in mind as you decide who you will be voting for this fall.

P.S. - Despite what you may hear from many Republicans these days, Vice President Harris never was put in charge of border security and she never received the title of border czar. The assignment she was given by President Biden was to work with Mexico and Central American countries in an effort to eliminate the root causes (economic struggles, gang violence, corruption, food insecurity, and human rights) that have led so many of their citizens to come to the United States. Border security always has been, and continues to be, the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security.

February 2024 - You always know when it's an election year because the Republicans and the right-wing media start flooding the airwaves with stories (which usually contain exaggerations, if not outright lies) about our southern border. Of course, few of those folks actually have tried to secure the border. They'd rather continue using it as a campaign issue every election cycle.

This pattern of complaining and doing nothing has been going on at least since the George W. Bush years when Mr. Bush tried to pass the first comprehensive immigration reform legislation since the Reagan presidency. That attempt also failed because too many far right Republicans, even back then, preferred to demagogue the issue, rather than to solve it.

Surprisingly, though, it looked like 2024 actually might be different. A bipartisan group of Senators hammered out a border bill that would provide over $20 billion in funding to do the following:

• Add more than 1,500 Customs and Border Patrol agents
• More than quadruple the number of Asylum Officers to expedite initial asylum screenings
• Increase Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention beds from 40k to 50k
• Add 100 more Immigration Judges and staff to adjudicate asylum cases
• Install 100 cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect fentanyl at Southwest border ports of entry
• Give the President the authority to impose sanctions on foreign nationals knowingly involved in significant fentanyl trafficking

(The Border Patrol union supports the bipartisan bill)

So Mr. Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, plus all the other Trump lackeys in both the Congress and the media began shouting from the rooftops that the bill was no good (without giving any specifics as to why, of course) and said the House should not and/or would not consider it.

All this political posturing and bluster began even before any of them knew what was in the bill. We know that because copies of the legislation hadn't even been released yet!

As the far-right opposition mounted, lead Senate negotiator James Lankford (R-Ok) repeatedly asked his colleagues to "read the bill" before commenting on it. For those of you unfamiliar with Senator Langford's record, he is about as conservative a Republican as you'll find in the Congress (and, consequently, we have had numerous policy differences with him over the years), but at least he is a Republican who is making an attempt to work in a bipartisan manner and to get things done for the benefit the country.

(Senator Lankford image from cbsnews.com)

"It is interesting: Republicans, four months ago, would not give funding…for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy…And now… a few months later, when we're finally getting to the end, they're like, 'Oh, just kidding, I actually don't want a change in law because it's a presidential election year."

Senators like Mr. Lankford are the types of Republicans we need more of, instead of the types who knuckle under to whatever Donald Trump wants to do. Which, as most objective observers have stated, is doing whatever benefits Donald Trump, rather than what benefits the country.