Republicans Attack in Waves, Democrats Turn on Immigration
Dem Demographer Michelle Vallejo: Replacing the Trump-Biden Immigration Law in Congress with the Protected Children of Aborigines
But progressive Democrats like Michelle Vallejo, who is running in another competitive House race in South Texas, say the party’s moderates have spent too much time focused solely on enforcement.
A spokeswoman with Mr. Kelly’s campaign said Mr. Kelly has sought to prioritize the needs of Arizonans ahead of either political party on the issue, while expressing support to provide legal pathways to citizenship and in-state tuition for immigrants brought into the country as children.
The issue was front-and-center with his administration’s hard-line measures, which included banning travel from several Muslim countries and ending protections for young immigrants who are in the country illegally as children. Mr. Trump used an old public health rule to expel asylum seekers.
Outrage over these policies seemed to push Democrats to the left on the issue, and Mr. Biden entered office promising to reverse Mr. Trump’s approach. As the number of immigrants arriving at the border increases, moderate and progressive Democrats have disagreements on how to respond. Mr. Biden’s proposal to overhaul immigration laws has stalled in Congress, and his administration has struggled to carry out a concerted enforcement strategy.
The president’s attempts to overturn the health rule angered congressional Democrats facing tough re-employment fights, including Mr. Gonzalez and Ms. Masto. The court ordered the blocking of the rollback.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia told CNN Monday he will vote to rescind a controversial Washington, DC, crime law – which critics argue is soft on violent criminals – when it comes up for a vote in the Senate, likely next week.
In Washington, while the White House and most Democrats in Congress came out in opposition to the Republican-led effort to block the District’s law, dozens of Democrats backed the proposal in the House, and momentum appeared to be building in the party’s ranks in the Senate as well. One Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, had already said he intended to back the legislation.
Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, the chief sponsor of the legislation to repeal the local law – as Congress is allowed to do in the federal district – called it a “common sense” approach in a city where many violent crimes are up. He compared it to the defund police issue and said that for centrist Democrats, he doesn’t think it will be very popular.
“It’s a raw nerve with a lot of the American people. They say that the cities are not safe. I think it’s a problem for Democrats to oppose something that would make some of our larger population centers more safe,” Thune said. My expectation is that some Democrats in the Senate will vote for it. Then it would be up to Biden about what he wants to do.”
Democrats do not want to overrule the DC law. They argue that the local officials should make their own laws free of congressional interference and that the Republicans are hypocrites because they promote state and local rights. The law was passed after the council overruled the mayor. Despite her opposition to the new law, she opposes Congress overturning it.
Complicating Democrats’ efforts to prevent the Republicans from passing their bill is the absence of Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, who is hospitalized for an unknown duration.
His turnabout came after Republicans seized on the law as a way to put Democrats on the spot about crime, an issue that the G.O.P. has been working to turn into a major liability for Mr. Biden and his party, portraying them as lax on enforcement. It was the most recent sign that such efforts have caused concerns among Democrats at a time when crime appears to be on the rise in the country. It was brought up most recently in Chicago’s Mayoral race, where many people were dissatisfied with the outcome of the election because of their concerns about crime and policing.
Mr. Biden’s shift eased the pressure on Senate Democrats who had been considering voting for the resolution, sparing them a vote that would defy a veto threat and potentially a wrenching decision on whether to override him.
After lunch, Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, said that he intended to support the effort to block the law, as others were expected to follow him.
The D.C. Virus has Revisited in Light of the Recent U.S. Carjacking and Other High-profile Crimes
The rewrite of the local criminal code in D.C. has come under fire because it lowered or eliminated mandatory minimum sentences for high-profile crimes like carjacking at a time when local residents have experienced a wave of such offenses. Overall, the police report that violent crime has fallen slightly in the District. Unlike other communities around the country, D.C. has been hit by a lot of crime during the H1N1 outbreak.
