If you’re on speaking terms with any MAGA dopes, you know they’ve been spun up into a frenzy about the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. Republican demagoguery on the issue has been a constant for decades, despite St. Ronnie of Rancho del Cielo committing amnesty. It reached new heights with Trump.
Simultaneously stirring panic about “migrant caravans” and refusing to entertain solutions makes sense for Republicans because immigration is a stick they can use to beat Democrats. There’s no political incentive for them to seriously address it, which is why Republicans haven’t acted on the issue aside from performative cruelty stunts for decades.
The bad faith is clear as day. But now GOP House Speaker Johnson has basically admitted out loud that his caucus is cynically using the border as a political weapon by flatly refusing to take up any immigration reform bill unless a Republican is president. Via TPM:
The White House, as you know, has been under immense pressure to offer concessions to address the continuing large number of migrants coming to the US-Mexico border. Now there’s a bipartisan compromise bill in the Senate. Last night Majority Leader Steve Scalise said that bill in DOA in the House. But Speaker Johnson said something more specific and revealing. He refused to bring up the bill and according to Jake Sherman of Punchbowl said “Congress can’t solve border until Trump is elected or a republican is back in the White House.”
Two things to note here. First, Johnson isn’t saying they won’t consider this bill. He’s saying they won’t consider any bill until Trump is elected. Sherman appears to have accepted the GOP wording – that “Congress can’t solve [the] border until Trump is elected.” But there’s more here. Johnson is saying openly that they won’t pass any bill until Trump is elected. In other words, however out of control they claim the border is they want to keep it that way through November to use it as a political issue. There’s a bipartisan deal but House Republicans are rejecting it out of hand. That’s not terribly surprising. But your political opponents seldom state it so openly. It’s an opening for the White House. Let’s see if they take it.
My guess is Democrats will unwrap that unexpected present, but they’ll have to go around the political media to get the message to voters. That won’t be easy, but I thank Speaker Johnson for handing me a quote I can use next time one of the Republicans in my life raises the issue. Also, I’m starting to think Johnson is bad at his job. Who could have guessed?
Open thread.
Alison Rose
I hate Republicans.
JoyceH
Blah blah blah believe them the first time.
JoyceH
@Alison Rose: me too! I’m so old that I can remember a time when I merely disagreed with Republicans. Now I hate them – all of them. Anyone with an ounce of integrity and humanity would have left the party by now.
Scout211
Open thread?
We won’t have
TapiocaTacopina to kick around anymore.Fired by Trump for being a loser? Trump refused to pay a loser? Trump didn’t want the loser to file the “beautiful” appeal? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Almost Retired
Immigration certainly demonstrates a crack in the Republican coalition.
The odious base wants immigration halted to return the country to an imaginary white man’s paradise.
The rapacious corporate component wants increased immigration to address a “labor shortage” with more compliant workers.
All they have in common is that they’re all awful people, but in different ways.
Glidwrith
One could connect the dots with TX governor saying he wants to murder people crossing the border and SFB being elected: the GOP wants to solve the border problem by mass slaughter.
lowtechcyclist
@JoyceH:
It’s hard to keep up when they keep outdoing themselves.
Another Scott
I still think it was a very smart move for Biden to roll border funding and increased staffing in the Ukraine/Israel/Far East supplemental. He called their bluff, and it’s good policy, and it makes them tie themselves into knots trying to explain why they aren’t doing anything.
If nothing can happen with the GQP trolls at the checkpoints, then at least make it clear to the pundits and the press and the voters who is standing in the way. Don’t be afraid to call them out.
Cheers,
Scott.
Alison Rose
@JoyceH: I guess I’m a bit lucky in that by the time I was old enough to be aware of politics, they’d already made it clear the party was heading straight into the maw of hell. I was 12 when Clinton was first elected and Newt and his cronies really ramped their shit up, and I was like…oh these people are monsters. Got it.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Alison Rose: @JoyceH:
Come sit by me.
Butch
Wouldn’t the ideal immigration solution involve trying to help address the problems that are causing people to flee these countries (and problems that in some cases the U.S. helped create)? I guess I’m being silly. It wouldn’t matter to the GOP anyway.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … DW.com:
(Much more at the link.)
Yet another reason to be really, really happy that Biden is in the White House.
Lots and lots of things depend on having sensible people in office.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
waspuppet
As usual with Republicans, it depends on what you think his job is.
trnc
Just my luck. I’ve been waiting months for a chance to reference Taco Penis again.
Scout211
Be my guest!
gene108
I can’t remember if it was 2011 or 2013, but the Senate passed an immigration reform bill with, I think, 68 in favor. It would have easily passed in the House, with a majority of Democrats and some Republicans in support of it. Boehner refused to allow it to come to the floor for a vote.
A lot of what could’ve been bipartisan solutions died at Boehner’s hands. He only wanted bills that could pass with only Republican votes to come to the floor. Part of the reason was to completely freeze Democrats out of the legislative process.
Anyway, just a reminder asylum is a legal form of immigration and the U.S. has some treaty obligations to allow people to seek asylum. Republicans are trying to eliminate or significantly curtail a legal form of immigration and violate U.S. international obligations at the same time.
When Republicans say they’re only against illegal immigration, they’re lying. They’re fight against asylum is proof.
artem1s
@Scout211:
Another lawyer who decided he didn’t want to go down with the Trumptania? Maybe trying to avoid contempt charges and/or jail time?
brendancalling
@trnc: His father should have withdrawn too.
JoyceH
@Butch: the other problem is that we actually need those immigrants; we’ve got jobs waiting for them. That’s why so many Republicans are trying to make it legal for 14 year olds to drop out of school to work full time at the meat packing plant.
dmsilev
Shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone who has paid even a bit of attention to how the GOP operates (which excludes most of the professional political press…). They’ve torpedoed several attempts to reform immigration policy, including some which ostensibly met their demands (those demands always change, of course). The availability of a political cudgel is far more important to them than any sort of policy changes.
dmsilev
@Butch: Depends on the problem you’re trying to solve. For the GOP, the “problem” is that there’s a Democrat as President and another bunch of them in the Senate and the House.
Butch
@JoyceH: I don’t have a link any more but a high school kid up here was killed recently during his job at a local lumber mill. The company tried to say he was there on an “apprenticeship.” (Company is in Florence, Wisconsin.)
wjca
If he didn’t insist that TIFG pay him up front, he definitely qualifies as a loser. And a dumb one at that.
Hoodie
Funny, Congress didn’t solve the border problem when Trump was president and they controlled both houses of Congress. Guess they need more time to build internment camps after the wall is finished. Johnson gives me vibes of a cracker version of Heinrich Himmler.
lowtechcyclist
@Alison Rose:
I don’t hate anyone, but there’s no way around it: these are people who have chosen to be horrible.
I still can’t stop thinking about all those Republican governors – who I’m sure all consider themselves good Christians – refusing to accept Federal money so that poor kids in their states can have food to eat during the summer to take the place of their free school lunches that they get during the school year.
These people are despicable.
gene108
@Hoodie:
To me he’s like a Terminator cyborg scanning people to see who is in his kill or don’t kill programming. I think he really feels people are either worthy or unworthy of assistance and punishment.
lowtechcyclist
@gene108:
To me, he’s the perfect illustration of the banality of evil.
ETA: Not to mention, a perfect example of how evangelical Christianity has been twisted into the very opposite of anything remotely having to do with the teachings of Jesus.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Basically just another day ending in “y”. Actually, it’s unlikely they’d do it with a Repug prez.
These two pieces are helpful and yes, I know they’re sourced from the odious 3rd Way Clowns:
https://www.thirdway.org/memo/how-republicans-abdicated-on-immigration-reform
https://www.thirdway.org/memo/republicans-border-hypocrisy
NBC provides a quickie look back at the last 20 or so years:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/immigration-reform-failure-congress-timeline-rcna64467
And Brookings provides an overview of the last major immigration bill in 1986 with their spin as to why it’s not possible today:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/can-immigration-reform-happen-a-look-back/
gene108
@Another Scott:
I think the chattering classes have come to expect a Republican controlled chamber of Congress will be okay with hurting the country, in order to deny the Democrat in the White House any success.
I don’t see any real way this changes. It’s a game of who’s ahead in the polls to them.
Yutsano
So…
How’s that discharge petition looking?
Hoodie
@gene108: To me he gives off the aura of a pseudo-intellectual fanatic who would passionlessly inflict cruelty on others to effectuate the abstractions rattling around in his skull. All the covenant marriage, purity ball and porn buddy stuff is a dead giveaway. Imagine having this asshole as a dad.
Alison Rose
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t like feeling hatred for anyone, and I try not to, but the Republican Party’s entire raison d’être is to make life as difficult as possible, if not entirely impossible, for everyone who isn’t just like them. And they don’t give a single shit about the harm and turmoil they inflict. My hatred is for the ill they willingly put out into the world, and thus they are also a target of that hatred.
JoeyJoeJoe
The Biden campaign is not filled with idiots. Statements like these are going to show up in tv commercials and in emails/social media messages/etc. additionally, stuff like this is why it’s not good to take current polls as definitive statements about what will happen in November. When campaigns get more active and people pay more attention, information put out by the campaigns can have an impact. The Biden campaign is totally aware of that, I believe
Ruviana
@Glidwrith: GOP rank and file *want* that.
Jay
@Butch:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/child-labor-laws-wisconsin-sawmill-florence-hardwoods/
Betty Cracker
Sorry to assault y’all’s eyes with this hideous visage in the middle of a comment thread, but in the morning post, some of us were talking about how disheveled and wan Trump looked in the photos when he arrived in Iowa. Here’s further evidence.
Calling it now — he’s sick. The question is, can the MAGA dopes carry his bloated carcass to the nomination so he can get whupped one more time? Unclear!
TBone
@gene108: they are trying to start Civil War II and they have no idea what’s in the can ‘o whoopass they’re fucking with. Underestimating us will be a fatal mistake.
Baud
Does this mean I have to continue paying US wages for child labor?
Jeffro
yup!
If recent history is anything, Biden/Harris 2024’s ads are going to be about 75% clips of trump & Co spewing their garbage.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: come on JN.1, do your thing!
TBone
@Hoodie: spot on. Hope he meets a similar end.
Himmler was taken to the headquarters of the Second British Army in Lüneburg, where a doctor conducted a medical exam on him. The doctor attempted to examine the inside of Himmler’s mouth, but the prisoner was reluctant to open it and jerked his head away. Himmler then bit into a hidden potassium cyanide pill and collapsed onto the floor. He was dead within 15 minutes
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: I won’t say what my fervent prayer to God is every night. It is very unChristian.
Paul in KY
@Scout211: Sounds like a slang term for a really nasty disease!
wjca
And what do they do if, for example, he drops a week or two before their nominating convention. I predict they produce a weeks’ long circular firing squad, while struggling over who gets the poisoned chalice of replacing the god-king for the election.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: I hate him so much.
Paul in KY
@Hoodie: If you were up on heresy or something like that with Bishop Johnson up there judging, you knew your ass was gone.
TBone
I hope the Ozempic or whatever that cloaca is taking gives him gastroparesis.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: He looks old to me. Nick Saban said he was retiring from coaching because he couldn’t handle the grind at 72, and he’s relatively healthy. Trump at 77 probably struggles with the campaign grind (he has to work harder than he did as president), especially given how shitty his diet and physical conditioning is. He could also be riding the Wegovy train like DeSantis. At his advanced age, big time weight loss can make you look much older. Considering how bloated he was beforehand and the loss of skin elasticity, he’d shrivel up like a prune.
Brachiator
Oooh. This is such a great gift to the Democrats. It’s like getting a late Christmas gift.
Now all the Dems have to do is use it to their advantage. And yeah, they have to get around the traditional media, but that’s just the way we live now.
Baud
Seriously, isn’t this good news? Takes border control compromise off the legislative table. Obviously sucks if their gambit works, but gives our voters another reason to stop them.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: He looks a bit gaunt & blotched. Good.
Harrison Wesley
@Betty Cracker: I apologize for repeating an image I’ve invoked before, but remember the ending of El Cid? Re-worked this year – the screen will show a braying red-capped crowd marching behind a golf cart propelling the 6’3″/215-lb corpse of the Maximum Leader towards the Capitol.
Brachiator
@Scout211:
Very interesting. I hope this really hurts Trump.
TBone
King Montgomery to Memphis is on TCM @ 8pm EST.
Scout211
@Betty Cracker: It looks like in the same appearance, CNN quotes his words:
So he’s going after the voters on their deathbeds now. The short video posted (after a commercial) has him doing that sniffing thing again while he urges voters to vote and then it’s okay to die.
HumboldtBlue
@Almost Retired:
It’s also pretty hard for these GOP assholes to hide when we have them on record voting against border funding bills. The base won’t care, they’re fucking morons, but it can work in political ads.
Manyakitty
Mikey the hustler doesn’t realize that his role in this ridiculous Exodus parody is pharaoh, not Moses. Hope he leads the republican party into the sea and they all wash away.
Daoud bin Daoud
@Glidwrith: It’s their Final Solution to immigration.
Brachiator
@Baud:
A mixed bag. Reasonable people will get it. The MAGA crowd is only interested in simple false answers: a wall and deportation.
Tony G
@Almost Retired: Yup. And many members of the GOP base — in particular many farmers and many small businessmen — actually want BOTH, in a form of doublethink that would make Orwell proud. They hate and despise the caravans of swarthy “aliens” — but they also want to hire those same blood-poisoning vermin because they’re easy to exploit. Holding two or more contradictory thoughts at the same time is easy if you have no respect for facts or logic.
TBone
@TBone: I Am Not Your Negro is on TCM at 10pm.
P.S.A.
Another Scott
@Scout211: I saw that headline yesterday. When he was in office he was similarly praising people in Sir stories that said that they would die for him. It’s nothing new – the world and everything in it is for his glory and we should be thankful that he is here.
It would be nice if a huge majority started recognizing his many pathologies.
Grr…,
Scott.
Manyakitty
@Another Scott: or if his fans just started following that advice immediately. All of them.
TBone
Conversation with friend who got a DUI in Delaware for smoking too much in the car 😆 Her: brings up border, then starts complaining about “all” her Uber drivers being “foreign.” Me: laughed right in her dumb face and said you live in Delaware, thousands of miles from any border! ARE THEY SWIMMING? She started spluttering while I reminded her that her grandparents got off a boat from Italy.
West of the Rockies
@JoyceH:
You allude to something I have frequently pondered… if it was the Democratic party that housed a bunch of anti-science, misogynistic, homophobic, racist A-holes, I would leave the party. My loyalty is to ideals and goals, not the letter D.
Republicans are full-on cultists, beholden to fear and hatred.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: He looks to me like he might be losing weight. I mean on purpose.
Baud
@West of the Rockies:
We kicked them out slowly starting in the sixties.
Marcopolo
@Betty Cracker: Guess I just assumed he was on one of those new weight loss drugs. Isn’t this look what people mean when they say someone has Ozempic face?
trollhattan
@Scout211:
Their Lord and Master says, so it’s time to get your butt out of the house, granny.
Did you remember the snow tires last fall?
trollhattan
@Marcopolo: I can’t wait for the Paris Ozempics this summer!
Scout211
Ozempic? Wegovy? No way!
There definitely has been some speculation that he is taking one of those drugs, but I’ll have you know that sources say that it was Melania who made him stop eating all those desserts and now he’s lost 30 pounds! He stopped eating all those ice cream sundaes and the pounds just melted off! And it was all due to Melania making him stop eating all those sweets! He owes it it all to Melania.
And if you believe that . . .
TBone
@Scout211: bwahahahahaha!
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: JFC he looks like he fell asleep in a tanning bed.
The Golux
@JoyceH:
I like to say, there’s more dignity in being a registered sex offender than a registered Republican.
Hoppie
@Harrison Wesley: If he only weighs 215 lbs. my nephew is a monkey, and I don’t have a nephew.
trollhattan
@Scout211:
How many of these steps sound like something our Donny would do?
By my reckoning he’s 0 for 8.
Daoud bin Daoud
@Betty Cracker: Trump is a visibly rotting corpse. His voters would vote for a zombie who promised to eat the brains of their enemies.
zhena gogolia
@Scout211: Yeah, at his age, all you have to do is cut down a little bit, and you lose 30 lbs. like that! Not.
Jackie
@trollhattan: He was seen buying pizza last night and awhile later eating a slice of pepperoni pizza.
But it was a small slice.🙄
Daoud bin Daoud
@Tony G: Facts and logic are for woke wimps.
Scout211
But did anyone see him eat an ice cream sundae?
FelonyGovt
@Hoodie: Yeah, I’m 70 and in pretty good health, and I find I’m slowing down on some things. Unlike TFG, I’m at a good weight, eat well and exercise. He is and does none of those things. Hoping that photo is a sign of real decline, not just weight loss and tanning bed.
SomeRandomGuy
Don’t forget: the biggest reasons Republicans don’t want immigration reform, is, they want a lot of workers, who have no rights, and are easily exploited.
Molly Ivins loved to talk about how Republicans already know how to stop illegal immigration instantly: say that anyone who hires an undocumented worker will go to jail, from the nice lady who wanted a housekeeper or nanny, to the owner of the meat packing plant whose entire night shift is peopled with undocumented workers.
Once no one will hire an undocumented worker, immigration dries up. Problem solved.
It sounds like a cruel idea, right? Well, it is – if she were alive, I bet she’d say exactly that – that it’s cruel. Her point was: the solution is known. It exists, right here, you have to be blind to miss it. So why is everyone, who claims to hate undocumented immigration, not considering that very sensible (if cruel) solution?
Ans: they don’t want to stop undocumented workers – they just want them hated and treated with suspicion, putting them in an even weaker position against unsafe employers.
TBone
@SomeRandomGuy: bingo.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Scout211: there were witnesses but for obvious reasons [their own safety] they prefer not to come forward.
Ksmiami
@Alison Rose: not one of them is redeemable. And if we have to fight them, if it comes to that. I’m fine with it
Ksmiami
@TBone: I’d accept it from the GOP leadership…
Ksmiami
@TBone: I’d accept it from the GOP leadership…
Geoduck
Nobody even remembers who St. Ronnie was anymore.
Butch
Pretty late on this thread but the Daily Express US is reporting “health concerns” after Trump was seen “dragging his leg” at a recent event.
https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/124402/donald-trump-health-iowa-caucus-video
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: This insistence on asylum-seekers being “illegals” is a really effective lie that they seem to get absolutely no mainstream pushback for.
Matt McIrvin
@SomeRandomGuy: That was the status quo for a long time, but the mass roundups into detention camps that happened during the Trump administration suggested to me that true believers had taken over who didn’t actually care whether the supply of terrified cheap workers dried up.
For these Republicans, the point was that there was a class of people who we were allowed and even obliged to be cruel to. Inflicting as much cruelty as possible to them was the goal. Arresting their employers wouldn’t have furthered that as they weren’t in the target group.
gene108
Y’all know what else can cause weight loss? Stress.
I hope TFG’s under so much stress that he’s not eating much at all.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I’m less concerned with how unhealthy Trump’s body is than how unhealthy his ideas are.
RaflW
@Almost Retired: The business side of the GOP has completely lost control, and (unsurprisingly) cannot find any methods to exert influence. The MAGA choads don’t care. And money, it turns out, only does so much when the ideological frenzy is whipped to 100% froth.
And business can’t seem to tolerate working with Dems. Dems should be very cautious/charge a lot to ‘welcome’ them, and by charge, I mean extract major policy concessions.
Yes, there are billionaires who actively fund MAGA. But I mean that the ‘mainstream’ business community is utterly befuddled and moribund when it comes to effecting any change in Republican circles.
wjca
But suppose you were in California. With our primary system, the only place party registration makes a difference is the presidential primary. Being a registered Republican will let me vote against TIFG twice! Without changing anything else.
Geminid
@RaflW: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce started hedging their bets in the 2020 election cycle when they endorsed 20 Democratic Reps. for reelection. Two that I follow, Sharice Davids (KS) and Abigail Spanberger (VA), were on the list. Republicans griped about it to no avail.
Then, in the November of 2021, the national Chamber bucked Republican House leadership over the Infrastructure bill, and their lobbying helped persuade ~20 Republicans to vote for it.
But funding infrastructure and comprehensive immigration reform are two very different matters. Immigration reform has become something of a “third rail” within the Republican party. I think most big and medium business leaders want to see the millions of undocumented workers get legal status, and many small business owners do too, but they know that if they want it anytime this decade they’ll have to get it from the Democratic Party.
Gretchen
@TBone: so does your friend wish that all those Uber-driving foreigners had been kept out? Sure, she’d wait 3 days for the one American Uber driver to be available, but he won’t have an accent.
Gretchen
@Geminid: Sharice Davids is my representative. She’s great! She spends a lot of time in the district touring businesses, listening to what they need and touting what the Biden administration is doing for them. Her last opponent was loudly anti-abortion just after KS voted 57-43 to keep abortion protected.
dougcb68
Where can I find detailed information about the bipartisan compromise bill referred to in the post. My wife is threatening to vote for Trump because she says Biden is doing nothing about immigration. I need facts to support my argument.
Geminid
@dougcb68: One place to start is Joe Biden’s proposed $14 billion to enhance border security, in his larger $100 Supplemental Appropriation package.. These are specific initiatives.
As to the the “compromise proposal,” you might might find details by looking up news about Senators Lankford, Sinema or Murphy. They are the three Senators who worked it out and the substance of their compromise should be found in reporting about them.
dougcb68
@Geminid: Thanks. I will start there. Wish me luck.