Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America take aim at three examples of egregious media bias. They start with the heroism of Dixon High School (Ill.) school resource officer Mark Dallas, who saved countless lives in a would-be school shooting this week, yet the media glossed over the story since there was no body count and they have little interest in highlighting the effectiveness of a resource officer willing to engage the shooter. They also slam the press for selectively quoting President Trump to make it seem he was referring to immigrants as “animals” when he was responding specifically to comment about the vicious Latin American gang MS-13. And they throw up their hands as Hamas admits most of the people killed along the Israeli border were armed Hamas members and not random civilians and the media show no interest in reporting it.
immigration
Uproar over Census Citizenship Question
Democrats in multiple states are planning to sue the Trump administration to stop the 2020 U.S. census from asking whether people living in the U.S. are citizens, a move that may find initial success in the courts but may also be based on false assumptions.
The citizenship question appeared on every census form from 1820 through 1950. From 1960 through 2000, it appeared on the long form sent to about one-sixth of U.S. residences. 2010 is the only census in the past 200 years not to include the question to anyone.
Nonetheless, left-leaning states like California and New York are headed to court to prevent the question from appearing on the census.
“Having an accurate Census count should be of the utmost importance for every Californian,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “The Census numbers provide the backbone for planning how our communities can grow and thrive in the coming decade. California simply has too much to lose for us to allow the Trump administration to botch this important decennial obligation.”
“This move directly targets states like New York that have large, thriving immigrant populations — threatening billions of dollars in federal funding for New York as well as fair representation in Congress and the electoral college,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
The concern from Becerra, Schneiderman and others is that people living in the U.S. who are either not citizens or not in the country legally will be far more reluctant to fill out the census, thus skewing the data received and depriving certain states the congressional representation they ought to have and the government spending it needs.
And while the U.S. census is under the control of the executive branch through the Commerce Department, don’t be surprised if the courts back the challengers.
“We’ll get a court to enjoin this. There’s no question. The reason for that is that if the Trump administration were to say the sky is blue, you could find a federal court at this point to enjoin that and say it’s not correct,” said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies.
“There’s just so many judges out there who have a deep suspicion of every motive and every action of the administration, that’s they’ll find a reason,” said Camarota, who says the likely verdict of the Supreme Court on this is less clear.
But while plenty of attention has been paid to the blowback from Democrats, why is the Commerce Department adding this question back into the census?
“It came at the request of the Justice Department, which said that we’d really like to have this question because it would be helpful in enforcing voting rights law,” said Camarota.
At issue is greater scrutiny of racial and ethnic gerrymandering and whether the drawing of legislative districts is putting certain people under a greater burden to get to the polls.
“You’re allowed to gerrymander for political reasons but you’re not allowed to explicitly try to dilute political power among different racial minorities. Or another example is the placement of a polling place. You can have a situation where minorities are all in one part of the area but the polling place is very far away and very inconvenient,” said Camarota.
“The same kind of thing could apply to naturalized citizens. Does the placement of polling places or does the gerrymandering tend to dilute or make difficult the voting of naturalized citizens. That’s why you would ask the question they’re planning on asking,” added Camarota.
While the reaction to the citizenship question is falling largely along party lines, Camarota says on the surface it is reasonable to wonder it will lead to fewer responses and less accurate data..
“The question is does the benefit you get by asking this question offset the risk that you might reduce the quality of Census Bureau data,” said Camarota. “I think it’s not an unreasonable concern. I think it’s an open question.”
That being said, Camarota says the best evidence suggests there probably would not be much of a drop off, if any, if the question is added to the census based on what we see with other surveys.
“Every year we do what’s called the American Community Survey. It shoots for about one and a half to two percent of the population and they ask all these detailed questions, several related to citizenship. The second survey we have is the Current Population Survey. It’s done every month. It’s where we get the unemployment numbers. It has also been asking about citizenship for many years now,” said Camarota.
He says Trump’s campaign and presidency seem to have little or no impact on the response rate.
“The argument is that there’s a kind of Trump effect, that in the new context of increased immigration enforcement, now we’re really going to see people respond (at different rates). You don’t really see it.
“With the American Community Survey, Trump ran for office and won office in 2016, but the share of people who refused to take the survey didn’t change between ’15 and ’16, which is what you’d expect if people were reluctant to answer these questions,” said Camarota.
He says the rate of response is trending down but that development began long before Trump’s political rise. In addition, the same pattern can be seen on the monthly surveys.
“You’d think they’d be really reluctant to answer the question and you can do an analysis to see if in fact people are not answering that question, leaving it blank or what have you. There’s been no rise.
“Even if you try to put on a graph the months in which Trump did well – he announced his candidacy, or won the nomination, or won the presidency – and then look at several months after, there’s just no change in the continuity of the data,” said Camarota.
According to Camarota, the evidence just isn’t there to suggest returning the question to the census will skew the results.
“That would tend to undermine the idea that putting this question on is going to make much difference one way or the other. I think it is harder and harder to gather data. I think that has to do with the decline in trust for government. It has to do with the decline in civic mindedness. People don’t see it so much as their civic responsibility anymore.
“I think those things are true, but I don’t think it has much to do with the citizenship question,” said Camarota.
Immigration Stalemate
The U.S. Senate rejected multiple attempts at immigration reform legislation, suggesting it is unlikely Congress can reach a deal this year that tightens up the nation’s immigration system and also clarifies the future for those holding legal status under the expiring DACA program.
President Trump announced last year that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program would expire in March 2018. DACA is the 2012 initiative taken by President Obama to grant legal status to people in the U.S. who were brought here illegally as children. Roughly 700,000 enrolled in DACA.
In announcing the end of DACA, President Trump made it clear he wanted Congress to address the issue through legislation and use the opportunity to make changes in immigration law such as ending the visa lottery and significantly reducing chain migration, by which family members can be sponsored by new citizens to come to the U.S.
Democrats want nothing to do with that approach, insisting only a “clean” DACA fix of simply granting legal status and a pathway to citizenship is acceptable.
In January, Democrats ended a brief government shutdown after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to allow debate on the issue in the weeks to come. That promise was kept last week, but no bill was able to get the 60 votes needed to end debate and proceed to a final vote.
There is little likelihood that stalemate will be broken anytime soon.
“It’s unclear what will happen now, probably not much,” said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Only 39 senators voted for the bill most closely resembling President Trump’s wish list. He wants a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million people, which includes DACA recipients and those who qualify but never enrolled. Trump would also scrap the visa lottery and limit the chain migration policy to spouses and minor children.
He also wants $25 billion to secure the border and begin constructing major portions of a border wall.
The highly-touted “bipartisan” bill sponsored by Republicans Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., fell six votes short of the 60-vote threshold. It kept the 1.8 million number in place as well as $25 billion in border security.
However, Camarota says it fell far short in reforming the legal immigration system.
“It did not have any ending or phasing out of the chain migration categories. And it had other things, like how priorities on enforcement would move forward and it seemed it was going to make it more difficult to enforce the law in some other areas. So while the border might be more secure, the interior might be less secure,” said Camarota.
So why did the bill Camarota considers weaker than the Trump-backed measure get 15 more votes in a GOP-controlled Senate? Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says many in his party are now to the left of Barack Obama on immigration, at least compared to the parameters Obama imposed on DACA.
Camarota sees Cruz as hyperbolic in that comparison given that Obama wanted legal status and a pathway to citizenship for 10-11 million people in the U.S. illegally. But he says Cruz does bring up an important point.
“His basic insight is not ridiculous. If you’re the party of enforcement against amnesty, the president was agreeing to a pretty generous amnesty of 1.8 million.
“I think the reason he did that, and this is the way politics works and you have to decide what you think of it. He thought it was the only way he could get the things that he wanted, like the reform of the legal immigration system and the wall. The hope was that this trade-off would go through, but some of his own party and the Democrats didn’t want it,” said Camarota.
And what do the Democrats want?
“The Democrats are pretty unified that they want to keep immigration (numbers) as high as possible, letting the most number of people in and increase it. (They want) as expansive an amnesty as possible and tend to not want to spend more on enforcement. There are a lot of Republicans who tend to support that agenda,” said Camarota.
While the Center for Immigration Studies likes Trump’s efforts to limit chain migration, Camarota says the group has major misgivings about the president’s willingness to place the so-called Dreamers on a path to citizenship.
“One of the reasons you want to reform the chain migration system or give citizenship to DACA members is that pretty quickly it means they might be able to sponsor their parents, and the parents are the ones who brought them here.
“The whole idea of a DACA amnesty was that we’ll do this for people who aren’t to blame, but eventually it means amnesty for everyone who is to blame unless you end those categories. Don’t allow people to sponsor their parents to come in or don’t give citizenship to the DACA recipents,” said Camarota.
With just two weeks until DACA is rescinded, Camarota says the courts may end up having a critical say in how this debate plays out.
“Although the DACA program is ending so people will not be able to renew, more than one judge as ruled – crazy as it may sound – that although it was a discretionary policy and that’s how it was sold, that the administration can’t end the program,” said Camarota.
“If, which seems likely, the administration can overcome the ridiculous judicial activism that says they can’t end the program, then it would put more pressure on Democrats and then we might see some meaningful reform,” said Camarota.
Space X Success, Big Spending Republicans, Pelosi on Race & Immigration
David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America pause to cheer the Falcon Heavy rocket launch by Space X this week and David hopes it sparks more aspirational innovation that our nation so sorely needs. They also grimace as Republican majorities are preparing to jack up spending significantly over the next couple of years, even though some positive elements are included in the budget bill. And they sigh as Nancy Pelosi uses part of her marathon floor speech on immigration policy to say her young grandson blew out his birthday candles and wished he could look like his friend from Guatemala.
Clinton Crony Looms Large, Trump Embraces Shutdown, Parades & Priorities
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America relish enjoy watching the credibility of the Steele dossier implode even further now that disreputable Clinton fixer Sid Blumenthal is being implicated for feeding information to Steele. They also shake their heads as President Trump says he would love a government shutdown unless he gets his way on border security just weeks after Republicans successfully convinced Americans that funding the government should not be contingent upon passing an immigration bill. And they have no problem honoring the U.S. military with a parade as President Trump wants to do, but Jim says there are more pressing national security concerns, including long-term funding and pay raises.
Trump Blasted from Right Over Immigration Blueprint
Immigration policy conservatives are giving President Trump’s immigration reform blueprint a thumbs down after the plan moves to the left on two key issues, leaving activists fearing a more timid final bill and no end in sight to the dangerous flood of illegal immigration into the United States.
The Trump framework focuses on four key areas: spending $25 billion on border security including additional portions of a wall, extending legal status and a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants who either enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or are eligible for it, limiting chain migration to only spouses and minor children, and ending the visa lottery.
The Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS, sees two major problems with Trump’s more moderate approach: a sudden embrace of amnesty and a refusal to tighten the screws enough on chain migration.
CIS Research Fellow Andrew Arthur says Trump’s offer of a pathway to citizenship goes far beyond the DACA recipents and will ultimately include way more than 1.8 million.
“We’ve seen similar proposals in the past. There have been amnesties floated, amnesties passed. Inevitably, the number of people who end up being granted is higher than the number that was anticipated.
“Inevitably there is going to be a certain level of fraud in this process. Logically, you’re going to have to identify that you’ve been in the United States since a [certain time] and the documents you can offer are generally fairly vague,” said Arthur.
And by including illegal immigrants who are not part of the DACA program, Arthur says Trump is inviting a bureaucratic nightmare for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.
“If it was simply the 690,000 DACA people, USCIS already knows who those people are and can do a one to one match. When you’re talking about an additional 1.1 million individuals, that’s going to require brand new files being opened, documents being reviewed, and the fact is USCIS just doesn’t have the bandwidth to do that work right now,” said Arthur.
Arthur is generally pleased with the movement to limit chain migration, keeping it to spouses and minor children, as opposed to current law which allows adult children, siblings, and parents. However, he says Trump is making a big mistake in how he wants to implement the plan.
“The problem is that the framework will also make these changes prospectively, not retroactively. It’s going to process through the four million people who are currently in that backlog, people who have had petitions filed on their behalf and who are awaiting a number in order to apply and go through the process of being vetted,” said Arthur.
“That’s a pretty big concern of ours because of course you’re going to end up potentially giving an additional four million people status,” said Arthur.
But while some conservatives are wary of Trump’s plan, most Democrats are greeting Trump’s policy retreat with full condemnation.
“Dreamers should not be held hostage to President Trump’s crusade to tear families apart and waste billions of American tax dollars on an ineffective wall,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who says Trump is reaching for a hardline immigration agenda on the backs of young people.
Arthur is not surprised.
“That’s just plain sanctimony. I could have anticipated what Dick Durbin was going to say and I could have written it myself,” he said.
Democrats and liberal immigration activists accuse Trump of clamping down on legal immigration because of his efforts to limit chain migration and kill the visa lottery. But Arthur says there’s a very good reason for imposing limitations.
“The proposals set forth in the framework are necessary changes that we need in order to ameliorate the problems that got us here to begin with. The fact is there are huge loopholes in the law that allow unaccompanied alien children to show up at a port of entry. They don’t even have to enter illegally.
“Once in the United States, United States government officials complete the work of the smugglers that brought them to the border to begin with and reunite them with family members or friends or other individuals in the United States who will take care of them. This is a huge problem and it’s a huge magnet that draws minors to the United States,” said Arthur.
Why is that a huge problem? Arthur says that magnet leaves kids vulnerable to unspeakable horrors at the hands of their smugglers so long as the parents of those kids think their children are virtually guaranteed a chance to live in the U.S.
“The people who engage in these activities don’t simply smuggle people for money. The fact is they rob, they rape, they hold people ransom for money. They do that with children as well. Turning off that magnet is an absolutely crucial element of any plan that’s going to grant any kind of amnesty to any population of DACA people,” said Arthur.
Arthur sees positives and negatives for the political path forward on immigration. He’s deeply concerned that Trump’s willingness to compromise at the outset will ultimately lead to a far worse bill.
“Inevitably, bills like this are a race to the bottom. If you say (you’re going to allow) 1.8 million people who got here on X date, why not people who got here on X date plus one year, or (if we accept) people who came here below the age of 16, why not people who got here below the age of 18,” said Arthur.
At the same time, he says some House conservatives are not happy with Trump’s plan and may be able to improve it.
“There are some individuals in the House who are vociferously opposed to any plan like this. You can anticipate that those individuals will attempt to pare back the amazingly generous proposal that the president has made,” said Arthur.
While he has serious problems with Trump’s concessions, Arthur says Democrats are foolish to demonize a major outreach on Trump’s part.
“Quite frankly, if the Democrats don’t take this deal and end up scuttling it, this is going to be on their heads,” said Arthur.
House Judiciary Chairman: There Is No DACA Deadline
The author of the House of Representatives bill to clamp down on illegal immigration and address the fate of people brought to the U.S. illegally as children says there is no reason for lawmakers to rush immigration legislation and says his goal is to make sure the nation never faces an illegal immigration crisis again.
Senate Democrats tried to attach immigration legislation to efforts to keep the government funded past January 19. Three days later, they agreed to fund the government in exchange for a promise that an immigration debate would begin prior to the next funding deadline of Feb. 8.
At issue is the fate of roughly 700,000 people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. President Obama granted legal status for anyone who enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, through executive action in 2012. In September, President Trump announced the executive DACA program would end in March 2018.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., is author of the Securing America’s Future Act. He says despite some lawmakers waving frantically at the calendar, Congress does not need to race to get legislation done.
“We should take our time and not feel we’re compelled to do anything by any deadline. There is no deadline. February 8 is not a deadline to solve this bill. It is a deadline to keep the government funded but not to solve this problem. March 5, the deadline the president has set, can be changed if necessary,” said Goodlatte, who also notes a federal judge has ordered a stay on Trump’s order.
“We should use all the time that’s necessary to get this done right and not a minute longer,” said Goodlatte.
The Goodlatte bill and the Senate’s Gang of Six legislation differ significantly in many ways. It allows current DACA enrollees to receive legal status for three years, which they can renew in perpetuity. The bill does not offer them a pathway to citizenship, and it grants no legal status to people eligible for DACA but failed to enroll.
The Senate plan offers a pathway to citizenship to DACA recipients as well as the other so-called “Dreamers.” It also confers legal status on the very parents who broke the law to bring their families to the U.S.
Goodlatte’s plan would also greatly limit chain migration to only spouses and minor children, kill the visa lottery, authorize whatever is necessary to beef up border security, and make overstaying one’s visa a crime.
Goodlatte says his legislation comes from a very straightforward premise.
“We agreed we would negotiate on four points: security, chain migration, ending the visa lottery, and DACA. That’s what my bill does,” said Goodlatte.
He also explained his mindset in crafting the legislation. He wants “a fair way way to deal with the problem created by President Obama in this unconstitutional program and ended by President Trump.”
“But then [Trump] turned around and said these individuals need a solution and Congress should do it. We provided that in our bill,” said Goodlatte.
He also wants this to be the last time Congress has to deal with the immigration mess.
“We also are the only plan that addresses Speaker Ryan’s concern and that is that we not allow this problem to happen again,” said Goodlatte.
While the Senate and the media focus on the Gang of Six bill, Goodlatte says he has assurances from Republican House leaders that his legislation will come to the House floor. He says before that time, he plans to educate his colleagues on why all of the various enforcement mechanisms are required and why he thinks they will be effective.
Goodlatte is ready to defend his bill, starting with his refusal to grant DACA enrollees a pathway to citizenship.
“We don’t object to people who are DACA recipients finding an opportunity to get a green card and U.S. citizenship as long as they follow the existing law like anybody else who has followed the rules and come here legally,” said Goodlatte.
“Under our bill, DACA recipients would be allowed to live in the United States permanently with three-year renewables but indefinitely. [They can] work in the United States, own a business in the United States, travel in and out of the country and if they find a way under the normal law to qualify for U.S. citizenship that’s fine, but not a special pathway to citizenship,” said Goodlatte.
He says the parents who perpetrated the crime of illegal immigration should not be rewarded in any way.
“I am not unsympathetic to the situation, but it is a situation that their parents created for them and one we have to respond to with that in mind. In other words, take care of them but don’t give them an opportunity to petition for those same parents who were responsible for coming here illegally in the first place,” said Goodlatte.
In exchange for granting legal status for DACA recipients, Goodlatte’s bill clamps down hard on chain migration, ending the practice of an immigrant sponsoring many extended family members to come into the U.S. It also ends the visa lottery.
“The visa lottery is a crazy program that gives 55,000 people green cards every year, not based on family relations, not based on job skills, but based upon pure luck. That is totally unfair and it is a national security concern as well,” said Goodlatte.
When it comes to border security, President Trump has made it clear that there will be provision for a border wall or he will not agree to DACA legislation. Goodlatte says Republicans are in agreement on what that means.
“There is a need to repair fences, to extend the wall and build a wall in some places, particularly in high population areas and in high crime areas where there is a lot of smuggling going on. You do not need it where there are mountains, where there are large deserts, or where there are rivers,” said Goodlatte.
But he cautions enforcement advocates that there is a lot more to preventing the influx of illegal immigration than just the wall.
“That is one tool but it doesn’t at all address the 40 percent of [illegal immigrants] who come into this country legally and them simply ignore the laws and overstay their visas. Nor does it address the people who come into the country illegally and are not trying to evade the border patrol but are actually going to them and turning themselves in,” said Goodlatte.
He says those people are then released into the U.S. and told to show up for a court hearing, which they rarely do.
Goodlatte’s bill is officially known as H.R. 4760.
Brat Discusses End of Shutdown, DACA Fight, FISA Memo
Senate Democrats abandoned their hopes of attaching an immigration bill to legislation to fund the federal government , but Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., warns a fierce fight over immigration policy is still coming that conservatives must win.
Brat also expounded upon why he and dozens of other House Republicans want to make public a FISA memo on FBI and Justice Department conduct in recent years.
However, the big story on Capitol Hill Monday was Senate Democrats agreeing to a GOP plan to fund the federal government through February 8 in exchange for a promise to start a debate on legislation to grant legal status and possibly a path to citizenship for people brought to the United States illegally when they were children.
Until Monday, Democrats has insisted upon immigration being tied to the funding, but Brat says reality smacked the minority party in the face since the government partially shuttered operations at midnight Saturday morning.
“I think they heard plenty of feedback coming back that said, ‘What are you guys doing?'” said Brat, noting the position of Democrats was tantamount to withholding pay for our military and funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program all for the sake of helping people in the U.S. illegally.
Brat says the untenable position of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and other Democrats even overwhelmed efforts in the media to paint Republicans as responsible for the shutdown since they control the White House and both chamber in Congress.
“It’s amazing that you have to have a debate on who shut the government down. You’ve got 95 percent in the House and the Senate on the Democrat side voting to shut it down. If you forego rationality and language in the public square, that’s a hint where your society is,” lamented Brat.
In addition to wanting legislation to provide legal status for 800,000 people enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, Brat says Democrats wanted the provision with no conditions.
“They got out way over their skis. They’re saying they want a DACA debate. We’re going to have a DACA debate. What they really mean is they want a clean, Democrat DACA bill and no border security,” said Brat.
It’s not just Democrats pushing for a generous DACA bill. The so-called Gang of Six includes Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo.
The legislation they crafted with Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., not only grants permanent legal status to the roughly 800,000 DACA enrollees but to all people here illegally who are eligible for DACA but never signed up for it. All of them would also be allowed to pursue a “pathway to citizenship.”
In addition, the parents of all of those people would also get legal status despite being responsible for the law-breaking to enter the U.S. in the first place. All told, some 10 million people could gain legal status as a result of the Gang of Six bill.
The offsets in the legislation amount to very little. The Gang of Six bill would tweak but not fundamentally change current chain migration and visa lottery policies and only allocate money to maintain existing border fencing.
Brat says that approach is reckless, and he is particularly frustrated about the lack of action on chain migration, which allows citizens to sponsor immediate and extended family members to come to the U.S. legally.
“You have all of the leading conspirators on the other side – Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Dick Durbin – all coming out against chain migration as early as five years ago. They’ve totally switched sides,” said Brat.
Brat says the progression of legalizing DACA recipients and their extended families results in an economic nightmare.
“If you allow the DACA piece to go through that will have a lot of unintended consequences like chain migration and extended families. That will lead to millions more, while we’re trying to get 20 million American citizens that have left the workforce back in the workforce,” said Brat.
“We’ve got to get all of our own citizens back in the labor force and then you see if you have a labor shortage. The other key piece is we’re trying to move towards a rational skills and merit-based immigration system instead of the familial piece that has gotten us in this boat in the first place,” said Brat.
Brat also says following the Gang of Six prescription will result in another huge bill to pay for a nation already more than $20 trillion in debt.
“Who’s gonna pay the bill? That’s where you get the issue: health care, if you’ve got two kids in public schools that’s $26,000 a year. Every person in the country with a certain status is eligible for $40,000 of federal benefits a year. That’s one of the reasons we’ve got a welfare crisis right now,” said Brat.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to begin a DACA debate before government funding runs out again on Feb. 8. Given the easy passage of the Gang of Eight bill in the Senate in 2013, passage of the Gang of Six bill seems likely.
That would put immense pressure on the House and President Trump to go along, but Brat says 2013-2014 proves stopping a bad bill is not impossible.
Brat should know. His upset primary win over the sitting House majority leader in June 2014 was a major factor in derailing the Gang of Eight plan.
“It did blow up in the House. I think there was an election that had something to do with it in Virginia’s seventh district. I’ve heard rumors,” cracked Brat.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., is sponsoring a far different immigration reform plan. He would grant legal status to DACA recipents with no pathway to citizenship. He would also limit chain migration to spouses and children and ditch the visa lottery altogether. His bill would authorize border wall construction but fails to appropriate money for it.
Brat says commitment to Goodlatte’s approach and a President Trump veto as a backstop gives amnesty opponents plenty of firepower.
“We need to start off strong with the Goodlatte bill. Then you could have a debate between the Goodlatte bill and the Senate. Then the president is the ultimate veto threat, so a lot of it is going to depend on where President Trump comes down on this,” said Brat.
Brat is also one of several dozen House Republicans who have seen the FISA memo from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that GOP members describe as alarming “alarming” to “stunning” to sure to land people in prison. While specifics are still under wraps, the four-page memo focuses on alleged FISA abuses by the FBI and Justice Department during the 2016 campaign.
The top Democrat on the intelligence panel, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., says the memo should not be released because the American people will not be able to understand it without the supporting documentation.
Brat says the memo should be made public because the people have the right to make up their own minds about what’s in it and what the fallout should be.
“We’re a democratic republic. The people are our boss. We’re not the boss. Maybe he got his eighth grade civics upside down but I still believe in the good old school stuff where the people are my boss and I’m going to let them see the information, let them make up their mind, and then I’m going to represent them. That’s my job,” said Brat.
Despite the strong adjectives used by other Republicans, Brat says he is not worried about the memo being over-hyped.
“There’s something just very, very wrong at the highest levels of our Justice Department,” said Brat. “I’m not too worried about the over-hype on this. You cannot over-hype any corruption at all in the highest levels of government.”
Dems Feel Heat on Shutdown, FBI Loses Key Emails, Paul Attacker’s Bogus Reason
Chatting before the much-anticipated Senate vote to end the government shutdown, Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are glad to see Democrats feeling the heat on refusing to fund the government and taking some steps to get things fully up and running, but they also warn listeners what Democrats and some Republicans really want in an immigration bill to go along with reopening the government. They also don’t believe the FBI’s explanation that it somehow lost five critical months worth of text messages from Peter Strzok, the agent fired form the Mueller special counsel team and bragged about an “insurance policy” against a Trump victory. And they also call BS on the explanation from Sen. Rand Paul’s neighbor for attacking Paul, namely that the senator was assaulted from behind and had five ribs broken because he was stacking brush close to their shared property line.
Interior Removes Shutdown Theater, Dems’ Shutdown Hypocrisy, Memo Mania
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud the Interior Department for announcing open-air memorials and national parks not requiring staffing will stay open in the event of a partial government shutdown, a very different approach than the Obama administration barricading memorials to war veterans to make a political point. They also hammer Senate Democrats for planning to block a bill that would keep the government open and point out the blatant hypocrisy and deception being employed by the Democrats to justify their tactics. And they tell House Republicans that the FISA memo better be a massive bombshell or else the GOP is going to look pretty silly over the hype. They also tell the GOP that if they want it released to the public, they should just vote on it and be done with it.