From the Washington Post's "The Plum Line" column by Erik Wemple.
Trump and Republicans should fear the immigration debate
Indeed, it’s Trump and Republicans — and not Democrats — who should have the most to fear politically from the immigration debate right now. First, we are learning horrifying new details about the family-separations fiasco. The Associated Press reports that the policy “sowed confusion from the start,” due to a “lack of coordination among some of the government agencies involved in the process” rooted in the fact that, to the administration, “how or whether families would be reunited wasn’t much of a concern.”
What’s more, this isn’t going away. As Politico reports, the courts may soon decide that Trump cannot detain families indefinitely, as he wants to do, now that he has ended family separations, which may tempt him to want to restart them. House Republicans say they won’t pass a fix to that problem unless Trump endorses it. But he’s likely to insist on his wall money as part of any fix. And Politico also reports Republicans fear he’s likely to insist on his wall again this fall, creating more turmoil for them right before the elections. Republicans can’t pass Trump’s nativist and xenophobic immigration agenda; they can’t pass protections for the “dreamers,” which is leaving moderate Republicans exposed; and they can’t pass a fix to the latest huge mess he has created. This will continue.
The Trump administration is presiding over a moral and logistical disaster of gargantuan proportions. The explicitly declared rationale for the policy’s cruelty was that it would deter people from crossing the border — including desperate refugees fleeing other horrors. That cruelty is now being exponentially maximized by blundering and disastrous incompetence. As Jill Lawrence says, this is Trump’s “Katrina,” or even worse. Are Democrats really not able to win this argument? Seriously?
