Senate Republicans are furious they were forced to vote against a border bill they like again

The reason why Senator. James Lankford (R-OK) is angry today, it’s very complicated, so bear with me.

A few months ago, Lankford was one of the few Republican senators willing to publicly criticize his colleagues for rejecting a bipartisan immigration bill he helped negotiate that would have increased security measures at the border, among others. He was killed at the request of Donald Trump.

Trump asked Senate Republicans to reject the bill — which had broad bipartisan support — because he did not want to give Democrats an electoral victory. The perception of a “crisis” along the border was, he said, good for the presidential candidacy of an immigration extremist like himself. So Trump demanded that his party’s senators do nothing to resolve the crisis they had consistently said they were so alarmed about. On command, Senate Republicans collapsed.

At the time, a frustrated Lankford was one of the few to publicly call Trump the force behind the bill’s defeat. He was even criticized for visibly signaling his agreement with President Biden during the State of the Union address, nodding as the president described some provisions of the bipartisan bill that Lankford’s colleagues had just introduced .

As we inch closer and closer to Election Day, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is doing what any majority leader would do in office: taking advantage of his party’s majority in the upper chamber to hold votes on bills representative of key issues Biden and Democrats are campaigning on this fall, like abortion and access to contraceptives.

Schumer also chose to re-emphasize Republican hypocrisy: On Thursday, the border security bill that Republicans killed in February came up for a vote again — and Republicans rejected it again. Only Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted with Democrats in favor of the measure. Some progressive Democrats also voted against the proposal.

And Lankford is crazy now – criticizing Schumer for using the bill as a “prop” during an election year and forcing Republicans to reject a bill they actually like for a one-year period. second time.

“This bill today is a prop, it’s a pure voting message and a fundraising tool so Democrats can say, ‘See, we want to keep the borders secure and these ne’er-do-wells Republicans don’t want to do it.’ which is absolutely absurd,” Lankford (R-Okla.) told Newsmax on Thursday.

“We need to come together, put a stop to the Democrats’ politics, messages and fundraising emails that are being put out about this, and let’s actually solve the problem,” Lankford said.

Sad 🙁

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