This @DouthatNYT column urges Biden to accept an immigration deal with Republicans. But the piece largely erases GOP agency, not engaging with the ways the GOP itself is an obstacle to any deal. 1/
Rs want to gut Biden’s parole programs. But these provide an orderly alternative to seeking asylum at the border. Conservatives who want a deal should admit this demand is extreme and unreasonable. 2/
Rs want to give POTUS authority (i.e. Trump 2025) to end asylum. We all know Stephen Miller/MAGA are *the* obstacle to any deal that doesn’t slash legal immigration. Look at these demands! 3/
.@DouthatNYT cites a new paper to argue higher migration makes voters more conservative. He says the issue declined in salience during the Trump years (because he slowed migration), helping Biden win in 2020. I want to suggest a complicating factor.
First, here's Douthat: 4/
@DouthatNYT President Trump's polling on immigration was awful even when another crisis made the issue salient. Contra @DouthatNYT, here's my explanation for how it plays for voters: 5/
I don't claim the issue is good for Dems. It does hurt, especially now. But why did many leading restrictionist candidates lose in 2022? Yes, abortion, but still, those writing on this issue should engage w/the fact that it often isn't *that much* of a silver bullet for Rs. 6/
What does it mean that all eight senators in the key southwest states (AZ NV NM CO), ones where immigration is a big issue, now caucus with Dems, after Biden won all four in 2020?
It’s time to stop using 2016 as the only touchstone here. 7/
Biden’s $ ask = billions in border security, more detention, faster asylum processing, which Rs should like. Yes, Biden should want a deal. But Ds agree! They too want something done! 8/
I’ll go further: Ds should make more concessions. A real compromise is available. To those who demand Ds act on the issue: Do you see something like this below as acceptable? 9/9
NEWS --> Dem can redraw anywhere from 10-22 additional House seats for the party in time for the 2028 elections if they aggressively redistrict in 7 key states, a new Fair Fight Action report finds.
Dems can redraw 10 additional House seats for 2028 just in New York, Colorado, Oregon and Maryland, the new Fair Fight Action analysis finds. That's if Dems don't flip *any* state legislatures this cycle.
If Dems can flip a few state legislative chambers in places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota this cycle, a path opens to redrawing up to 22 additional House seats in time for 2028, the analysis finds.
News --> Paramount, Meta, and X won't say what happened to their huge donations to Trump's presidential library after Sen Elizabeth Warren raised questions about its fund getting dissolved. Dems say tens of millions remain unaccounted for.
First, let's note that the Trump library saga combines the worse of his imperial presidency all in one: his use of lawsuits to extort private entities for tribute; his garishly awful decorative and architectural taste; and his Nero-scale megalomania.
After the companies settled with Trump in his shakedown lawsuits, the money was pledged to his presidential library. But the fund was then dissolved. Senate Dems asked the companies where the money went. They have now replied. I obtained their answers:
Trump's threat to bomb "every" power plant in Iran is the key. That leaves no doubt he's threatening war crimes. The threat to destroy "a whole civilization" only hammers it home.
The key is what happens in the aftermath of bombing all those plants. 3/
Pete Hegseth just held a prayer service in which he appealed for God's help in killing our "enemies" with maximal violence and brutality. Hegseth's bloodlust and sadism are drawing sustenance from his brand of far-right Christianity. 1/
Hegseth appears to be a devotee of Christian Reconstructionism. As one religious scholar notes, this posits that "all authority belongs to God," which renders the state’s authority wholly subordinate to a "higher category of Biblical law." 3/
Remarkable: Trump's planned migrant prison camps are hitting deep resistance in red areas. In Virginia's partly rural Hanover (+26 Trump) opposition is intense. GOP leaders in other states are opposed.
These vast prison camps would allow for the detention of 80,000 more migrants, doubling Trump/Miller's capacity for deportations. Yet resistance is breaking out in red Virginia, reddish parts of New Jersey, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Utah, and more. 2/
Stephen Miller is employing state terror in service of the open goal of shifting the ethnic mix of the country. In numerous ways he's doing this at the expense of public safety.
First, his grandmother has written an unpublished history of some of his ancestors' immigration to the US. We are publishing it online for the first time. They were attacked in terms similar to those he uses today.
Some news on Trump's doling out of most refugee slots to white South Africans: Two former State Department officials tell us basic protocols designed to determine whether this group actually merits protection have simply been scrapped. It's just whim.