RE: paywall, can't access. here's a very objective view, I

Posted on: September 28, 2024 at 11:29:58 CT

Pity poor Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who on Thursday was humiliated into voting against his own border security bill.

Last fall, you might recall, Republican lawmakers refused to pass funding for Ukraine and Israel unless Democrats agreed to “tough” border security measures. Lankford, one of the Senate’s more conservative members, negotiated on the GOP conference’s behalf, and he drove a hard bargain.

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Lankford got President Biden and Democrats to agree to revive a version of the controversial Title 42 border expulsion policy, which would shut down much of the asylum system without even the fig leaf of needing a “public health emergency.” It also included more personnel for Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (one reason the major Border Patrol union endorsed it) and a stricter, faster process for adjudicating asylum claims. Progressives decried many of the asylum measures as inhumane.

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Notably, the deal contained none of Democrats’ standard immigration priorities, such as providing permanent legal status for “dreamers,” the young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. So it was pretty much a clean sweep for Republican priorities in exchange for aid to Ukraine and Israel.


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We all know what happened next: Former president Donald Trump realized the bill might be too effective at addressing border issues, which the presumed Republican presidential nominee hoped to continue exploiting for political gain heading into the election. So he told his followers to kill their own deal.

Sometimes, alas, a problem is more valuable than its cure.

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When Senate Democrats tried to force a vote on the legislation back in February, Republicans blocked it from proceeding. Lankford was one of a handful of Republicans to vote to move the legislation forward at the time and made an impassioned plea for his colleagues to reconsider. He decried misinformation that right-wing pundits had spread about the legislation. He reiterated that a change in law was necessary for dealing with strain on the border and reminded his fellow Republican lawmakers that they had all been sent to Washington to “solve problems.”

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As a reward for these problem-solving efforts, Lankford was subsequently censured by party leaders back in his home state.

Later on, Congress passed the Israel and Ukraine aid, unbundled from Republicans’ border demands. So Democrats decided to call Republicans’ bluff, again: On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) held another vote on the border deal, this time with no Democratic quids offered for the Republican quo. Astoundingly, only one Republican senator (Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) voted to advance the bill, despite continued protestations that the border remains in “crisis.”

Ahead of the vote, Republicans explained their objections.

Democrats “own this issue,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the minority whip, of ongoing border problems. “I think it’s very clear in people’s minds, this is a Biden problem enabled by Senate Democrats, and therefore [voters are] going to hold Senate Democrats accountable.”

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In other words: It’s Democrats’ problem to fix, but I’ll be damned if they try.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who a few months ago had backed the Lankford-negotiated deal and told his conference to vote for it, voiced similarly cynical opposition. He said he told Biden, “You caused this problem. There is no legislation that allowed the problem to be fixed. Why don’t you just do what the previous administration was doing?”

McConnell neglected to mention, of course, that unlawful border crossings had also spiked under Trump. In 2019, they reached their highest levels in more than a decade, a surge that receded only when a pandemic temporarily disrupted global migration patterns.

More importantly, Biden can’t “just do what the previous administration was doing” on immigration. That’s because Trump’s immigration policies were often illegal.

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This is not my own legal judgment. As a regulatory challenge database from the New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity shows, 94 percent of major Trump-era immigration agency actions that faced legal challenges ultimately did not survive litigation (that is, in 33 out of 35 cases). Either a judge ruled against the agency responsible for the policy, or the agency withdrew the policy after being sued.

In any event, even Lankford voted against advancing his own problem-solving legislation this time. Bizarrely, he blamed Democrats for allegedly forcing his hand, even though it was his own party who had despoiled his bill’s chances of passing.

“It’s trying to score political points rather than actually trying to solve a problem,” Lankford said of Democrats’ attempt to turn his own proposals into law.

You know you’re a great negotiator when you wring concessions out of your opponent and then refuse to accept them.