Eight Reasons Democrats Shouldn't Cave To Trump's Latest Ploy
A plea to Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries
House Republicans insist they’ll shelve any bill that might help U.S. officials along the southern border process immigrants and asylum seekers in a more orderly manner. They want televisions to blare news and CCTV footage of shadowy foreigners sneaking into the country every day between now and November—or as they put it, they don’t want to do anything to help Joe Biden. They thus refuse to allow a vote on legislation that would mitigate that kind of thing.
But they’d really prefer it if Senate Republicans would do their dirty work for them—kill a new bipartisan border-security bill with a filibuster so that they never face pressure to stop being cynical freaks and let the House vote.
Their last-ditch plan thus aims to fracture the coalition in the Senate, making it too small to overcome a filibuster. Nominally, the idea is to advance stand-alone legislation to provide Israel with billions of dollars in military aid. But the bigger picture essentially entails hijacking U.S. foreign policy on Donald Trump’s behalf, and using it to buy off Republicans and jerk Democrats around.
DON, VETO
To review, Republicans initially conditioned their votes for aid to Israel on enormous cuts to the IRS enforcement budget They simultaneously held hostage other U.S. aid, including desperately needed military assistance to Ukraine and humanitarian relief for Palestinians in Gaza, unless Democrats agreed to enact a bunch of right-wing border-security concessions.
Democrats more or less called this bluff, with concessions to Senate Republicans that would severely tighten asylum criteria and facilitate deportation. Since then, House Republicans revealed it was all a ruse—they were only following Trump’s lead, and he wants border officials to be starved of resources for the remainder of the year, so that he can blame the ensuing disorder on Biden through the election.
But the Republican Party remains fully in bed with the Israeli hard right, and knows the U.S.-Israel alliance is currently ripping the anti-Trump coalition in half. So now they’ve decided: no border-security legislation, no aid to Ukraine, no aid to Palestine, but aid to Israel can advance without ransom demands.
On Saturday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the White House “strongly oppose[s]” the House GOP’s “cynical political maneuver,” and on Sunday, Biden promised to sign the Senate national security bill if it can clear both chambers. The only hope for it in the House now is for the plan Trump cooked up with Speaker Mike Johnson to fail, and for the Senate bill to become the only viable legislation (for Israel and for border security) on offer.
But given the pressure that will be brought to bear on members of Congress, a little clarity is in order: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer need to keep defections to a minimum, and Biden needs to threaten a sustainable veto of the House GOP’s bait-and-switch plan.
GVIR EYE FOR THE HATE GUY
It should be a no brainer: