Senate Republicans threaten to block border security bill they negotiated
Senate Republicans threatened Monday to block a major, bipartisan border security and asylum package, endangering the immigration deal.
WASHINGTON — In a striking turn of events, Senate Republicans threatened Monday to block a major bipartisan package of border security measures and asylum restrictions, just one day after their chief negotiator signed off on it.
GOP senators left a special closed-door meeting in the evening predicting that their party would not provide enough votes to move forward with the package Wednesday, saying they agreed they need more time to discuss changes to the bill in the form of amendments.
“I would anticipate Wednesday the cloture vote does not pass,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., the lead GOP negotiator in the border talks, told reporters after the meeting. “People are saying, 'Hey, I need a lot more time to be able to go through this.'”
Former President Donald Trump has pressured Republicans to kill the deal that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had advocated for.Getty ImagesThe Republican uneasiness could be devastating to the package, which House Republican leaders have already said is "dead on arrival" in the lower chamber. Proponents hoped that strong bipartisan support in the Senate could force the House's hand.
Donald Trump is demanding that Republicans sink the agreement, which they struck with Democrats and is now backed by President Joe Biden, as Trump, the likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee, seeks to wield immigration as a political weapon in the fall election. Trump tore into the bill on social media, calling it “nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border, just in time for our most important EVER Election.”
Rating: 5