Trump’s address to House Republicans failed to win over skeptical conservatives.
House Republicans plan to vote Thursday on dueling immigration packages — but both are largely expected to fail, delivering a defeat to GOP leadership as the party struggles to address the family separation crisis at the border.
President Donald Trump appears to have been unable to convince wary conservatives to back a carefully-crafted immigration package with his address to GOP lawmakers Tuesday night. And an increasing number of GOP lawmakers are now urging their leaders to take up a narrow approach to prevent the Homeland Security Department from splitting migrant children from their parents.
Many on the far-right interpreted the president’s call to action as little more than lip service for a leadership-backed bill that includes a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, funding for Trump’s wall with Mexico and provisions to halt family separation.
They’re still wary of voting for a bill they fear will be viewed as “amnesty,” leaving GOP leaders with far fewer than the 218 votes needed to pass the plan.
“I don’t plan on supporting the second one,” House Freedom Caucus founder Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said of the “compromise” bill crafted by leadership, conservatives and moderate Republicans. Referring to a more conservative proposal from Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Jordan added, “A number of our guys have concerns with the second Goodlatte bill.”
The expected demise of both measures suggests that the president’s attempt to leverage his hotly-contested family separation policy to get his border wall and curbs to legal immigration will not work.
White House officials had sought to use the grim scenes at the border to force Democrats to the negotiating table and finally land Trump major immigration policy changes. But Trump can’t even get his own party on the same page, let alone Democrats.
“The president can reverse the policy of separating families today,” said Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, one of the first Trump allies in the House to publicly ask the administration to stop the practice. “If he doesn’t, Congress must vote to end it.”
And in a rare retreat, Trump said Wednesday that he would sign an executive order to keep families together, even as he said congressional action was still needed.
Just hours before Trump’s comments, Speaker Paul Ryan and GOP leaders were echoing White House talking points, telling reporters Wednesday morning that Homeland Security had no choice but to separate families under the current law — never mind that legal experts and a number of their own GOP colleagues dispute that notion.
House GOP leaders have not asked the administration to pause the policy, as some Senate Republicans have, but called for Congress to pass a broader immigration package. Ryan would not say whether he would take up a standalone bill to address the crisis.
House GOP leaders continued meeting with undecided Republicans, putting some in vans and sending them to the White House to meet with the president on the “compromise” legislation.
But Ryan is losing key rank-and-file members, including some who are very close to the president. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N. C.) is seeking a vote on his new, narrowly tailored bill to keep families together. He’s even reaching out to Democrats to find out how he can make his proposal bipartisan.
And Meadows is far from alone.
During a closed-door GOP conference meeting Wednesday, Rep. Keith Rothfus of Pennsylvania also pressed leaders to put something on the floor to fix the problem. He and several others mentioned Sen. Ted Cruz’s proposal to keep families together and double the number of border judges that adjudicate cases, which would ease the backlog and detainment time.
“A couple of members are individually saying, ‘Why don’t we take that up and pass it today?’” said Rep. Fred Upton, a centrist Republican from Michigan.
Coming out of the GOP conference meeting, several conservatives backed immediate action as well. Rep. Mark Sanford said, “I would support such a measure,” as did Jordan.
Meanwhile, the broader immigration “compromise” measure seemed to flounder.
Conservatives argued that if Trump wanted that bill to pass, he would have been more explicit in his endorsement Tuesday night.
Instead, the president said he supported that plan and the more conservative Goodlatte package, leaving conservatives thinking they could vote for just that one and still stay in Trump’s good graces.
Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to argue during the closed-door conference meeting Wednesday that Trump had meant to back the compromise bill completely — even if some didn’t take it that way.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an immigration hard-liner, also was making calls to conservatives in an effort to drum up support for the proposal, according to two Republican sources.
But other lawmakers said the president needed to weigh in further, whether through phone calls or a tweet.
After the Tuesday night meeting with Trump, GOP leaders whipped the bill and found that they were far short of the 218 votes need to pass the legislation. But they’ve still scheduled the votes for Thursday night.
