Nancy Pelosi suffered a stunning defeat in her party’s latest border battle with Republicans.
Months after she and fellow Democrats outmaneuvered President Donald Trump on immigration reform in a government shutdown, Pelosi agreed this week to support a Senate bill to address the border crisis that progressives had urged her to reject. Democrats wanted Pelosi to insist on a House version of the bill that blocked funding for border enforcement, but the speaker cracked under pressure from moderate Democrats.
Caving to pressure
While Pelosi has endorsed open borders in everything but name — she famously declared borders “immoral” — her latest defeat shows just how untenable that policy is in practice. After ignoring what Democrats called a “manufactured” border crisis for months, the party’s matriarch set herself up for failure as the clock ticked this week to pass desperately needed funding for migrants in overcrowded shelters.
Progressives pushed Pelosi to pass a $4.5 billion House bill Tuesday that would replenish funding for migrants’ care. The bill included certain provisions on the treatment of migrants, would have limited the time undocumented immigrant children could spend at emergency shelters, and would have blocked money for immigration enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), border barriers, and asylum reform.
But Pelosi lacked the leverage to push her more radical bill through after the Senate passed a bipartisan $4.6 billion bill 84–8 on Wednesday providing funding for the crisis. With time running out before the July 4 recess and migrants in need of care, Pelosi told her caucus that she would support the Senate bill.
“At the end of the day, we have to make sure that the resources needed to protect the children are available,” Pelosi said. “Therefore, we will not engage in the same disrespectful behavior that the Senate did in ignoring our priorities. In order to get resources to the children fastest, we will reluctantly pass the Senate bill.”
The likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who has become known for taking a progressive stand against Pelosi, criticized the House speaker’s reversal and insisted on passing the more liberal House version of the bill. She was joined by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and others in alleging that the Senate bill did not include protections against the Trump administration misusing the money.
“If we’re not going to hold them accountable and say they have these set standards they have to abide buy, then how are we addressing the humanities crisis?” Tlaib said. “We’re just throwing money at folks and not telling them exactly what they’re supposed to be doing with it.”
Drawing the line
With Pelosi’s reluctant blessing, moderate Democrats joined House Republicans 305–102 on Thursday to pass the Senate bill, which now heads to the president’s desk. The White House had threatened to veto the House version.
Pelosi’s surrender exposed a divide within her party between progressives hell-bent on tearing down immigration enforcement and more pragmatic moderates. A total of 129 House Democrats voted in favor of the bill — about 55% Pelosi’s caucus — and 95 voted against it.
While progressives blasted their colleagues’ effort as “entirely insufficient to protect vulnerable children in our care,” moderates faulted the radicals for holding up much-needed funding to care for migrants. House Democrats also blamed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for failing to oppose Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who insisted on the “clean” Senate bill.
Schumer stood by Pelosi in their party’s battle against Trump’s border wall late last year, when the two leaders declared Trump’s claims of a border crisis “manufactured.” But it looks like reality has caught up with them both, as they passed McConnell’s funding bill without much of a fight.
Meanwhile, the situation at the border has grown steadily worse, as an influx of migrants has overwhelmed immigration authorities. A whopping 144,000 migrants were apprehended at the border in May alone, and media reports of migrants dying at the border and suffering in squalid conditions have forced Democrats to acknowledge a crisis they once denied.
But while Pelosi and Schumer have come around to embracing open borders in everything but name, they are moderates who will do what is politically expedient at the end of the day — and holding up funding for immigrant children would have been bad optics for the party.
Pelosi’s defeat this week is a contrast with her showdown with Trump earlier this year, in which she earned the respect of progressives for “throwing shade” at the president and denying him $5 billion for the border wall. But it looks like Pelosi’s refusal to fix the border crisis back then set her up for failure this time around.
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