U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appeared to issue a challenge to far-right Senate Republicans and most of the House GOP conference Friday as he announced the text of the Senate’s bipartisan border and Ukraine aid bill has been finalized and will be released by Sunday night, if not earlier.
“Republicans said the border is a priority and we should craft a bipartisan bill to help control the border,” Sen. Murphy, the Democrats’ lead negotiator on the legislation declared, throwing down the gauntlet. “We did that. We have a deal.”
“This weekend we will release the bill and vote next week,” Murphy said, although some reports state it could come as soon as Friday evening. “It’s decision time.”
The majority of the U.S. Senate had been strongly behind the border bill and funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan – all of which is covered in the legislation. But increasingly Senate Republicans have been taking their cue from far-right House Republicans, and more recently directly from Donald Trump, leading to some GOP Senators peeling away.
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Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, once a stalwart supporter of aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, last week told his members the “Politics on this have changed,” and he no longer thought passing the legislation he publicly supported — jointly with Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer – would be possible.
“We don’t want to do anything to undermine” Donald Trump, McConnell told his members.
“This is a big about-face for McConnell,” Punchbowl News had reprinted, noting the Minority Leader had “said Congress needs to pass the border security bill and unlock billions of dollars in new Ukraine aid.”
“In effectively backing away from the border-security-for-Ukraine construct that Hill Republicans clung to for the last few months, McConnell is acknowledging Trump’s continued stranglehold on the GOP. He referred to Trump as ‘the nominee’ during the closed-door session,” Punchbowl added.
Trump has repeatedly and very publicly denounced any border legislation that is not “perfect,” because he wants to have the issue of the border, illegal immigration, and immigrants to run on, just as he did when he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015.
This week, after noting the text of the bill had not been released, Trump then went on to tell Fox News Business’ Maria Bartiromo that any Republican who votes for the bill “should be ashamed” because “it’s a very weak deal,” without the text of the bill having been released.
U.S. Senator James Lankford (R-OK) a hard core conservative, was the Republican lead on the bill.
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David Rothkopf, the noted foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator made clear the stakes.
“This border bill will be a real moment of truth for the party that doesn’t know the meaning of the word,” he wrote, referring to Republicans. “Do they step up and take action to help solve what they have long said is America’s number one crisis or do they cynically punt to ‘help’ Trump politically?”
Last month Sen. Murphy laid out the stakes of the crisis in Ukraine and at the border.
Watch below or at this link.