Chaotic governance

 

Three thousand a day, is what I read.

This week, President Donald Trump admitted on Truth Social that his mass deportations are hurting farmers and the economy. Those removals are “taking very good, longtime workers away” from farms and hotels, Trump declared, adding that those workers are proving “impossible to replace.” To be clear, Trump was talking about his own immigration policies.

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In a new letter that’s gotten almost zero media attention, six [House Republicans] effectively reveal that they now see Trump’s deportations as a political problem. [...] Democrats who worry about taking on this issue should ask themselves: If even Republicans are showing fear on it, isn’t it time to drop the skittishness and engage already?

The letter [...] calls on ICE to redirect its deportation resources toward “convicted criminal aliens” and away from undocumented immigrants who are not convicted criminals.

Naturally, the letter goes through the motions of hailing Trump’s glorious toughness and infallibility on immigration. But these Republicans also state that they are “concerned” that Trump’s “limited resources may be stretched to pursue individuals that do not constitute an immediate threat to public safety”:

Every minute that we spend pursuing an individual with a clean record is a minute less that we dedicate to apprehending terrorists or cartel operatives.… We need to give absolute priority to every violent offender and convicted criminal illegal alien present in our nation. Diverting limited resources to other objectives puts our national security at risk.

Consider what this really means. These Republicans are admitting forthrightly that deportations that sweep widely—beyond convicted criminals—take resources away from pursuing the dangerous and violent, and that this makes us less safe, and that this is precisely Trump’s policy.

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Now, anyone who understands politics will get that these members are putting out this letter so their local papers will report on how “concerned” they are about removals hitting their districts’ local businesses. In the end, they’ll enthusiastically back whatever Trump does.

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[W]hat they’re really demonstrating is that Trump-Miller-MAGA propaganda is failing.

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If this weren’t becoming a major political problem, vulnerable Republicans would not have to distance themselves from all of it.

Which raises a question: If those Republicans fear the politics of mass deportations, then why can’t Democrats engage on them more vocally?

  New Republic

Could it be that Democrats in Congress are pussies?

This is puzzling because Trump’s admission repudiates MAGA ideology and politics at a very profound level. A core MAGA tenet is the idea that undocumented immigrants must be forcibly removed because their presence is taking jobs from Americans who are now forced to molder away in idleness and social stagnation.

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But Trump’s own admission—and to some degree that of these vulnerable House Republicans—undercuts that story. As Trump himself concedes, there is not a rush of Americans looking to fill vacancies left by deported immigrants.

He actually said if the "good" foreigners are removed, "bad" ones will replace them.

Indeed, Trump’s confession arguably undermines the broader zero-sum foundation of the MAGA worldview, which holds that any undocumented immigrant’s gain is an American worker’s loss.

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And as Andrew Egger notes, Miller appears to have quickly persuaded Trump to clarify that he isn’t backing off mass deportations; Miller clearly understood how damaging Trump’s admission truly was.

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Why can’t Democrats point this out? House Republicans in swing territory have openly demonstrated their vulnerability to these arguments. As they’ve revealed, in places like Miami and the suburbs of Los Angeles and Denver—home to those GOP districts, where control of the House will be decided—opposition to cruel and indiscriminate mass deportations is growing. Trump has unwittingly produced the perfect weapon to make the case. So what’s the holdup here, Democrats?