Democrats in full retreat on immigration
If you were waiting for Democrats to capitulate on the issue they claimed during Trump’s last term was dearest to their heart, his hostility to immigrants, you didn’t have to wait long. A bill called The Laken Riley Act is zipping through Congress, already approved in the House and moving quickly in the Senate. Congressional reporter Pablo Manriquez filed the dispatch below for us.
(Pablo is not just a reporter, but also an oil painter. He painted the portrait I use as my Twitter avi back when I had more hair. I did not ask him to do this.)
You can expect to see more of Pablo in these pages as we track the transition of this second MAGA movement from campaign to reality.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democrats in Congress are in full retreat on immigration. On Tuesday night, the GOP-controlled House passed the Laken Riley Act by a vote of 264-159, doing so with the support of 48 Democrats, a surge in anti-migrant voting that caught immigrant rights lobbyists in Washington off guard. The Senate stands to follow suit.
The bill is named after a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered while jogging at the University of Georgia last February. The convicted perpetrator, José Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented migrant from Venezuela, had been charged with shoplifting at a Walmart in Ithaca, New York, six months before the incident.
