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As Republican hardliners tossed Speaker Kevin McCarthy out of office and attempted to dictate his replacement, one word kept recurring in their complaints about existing GOP leaders: uniparty.

The term crystallizes an idea widespread on the MAGA right: that too many Republican politicians and especially leaders are, on key issues, aligned with Democrats and the Washington establishment, and working against Donald Trump and the right.

Right now, we are governed by a uniparty that Speaker McCarthy has fused with Joe Biden and Hakeem Jeffries, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said last month, as McCarthy seemed set to keep the government funded and avoid a shutdown. This was the justification Gaetz gave for his push to oust McCarthy (though he may have had personal reasons as well). And since enough other House Republicans were dissatisfied with McCarthys handling of the spending battles, Gaetz succeeded.

One key outside ally for Gaetz was Steve Bannon, the former Trump aide and now commentator. Bannon frequently deploys the uniparty epithet, as hed done for years. Hes long tried to purge the GOP of its more conventional members, replacing them with hardliners who will more loyally back Trump and far-right causes.

In many ways, the idea that Kevin McCarthy was indistinguishable from a Democrat seems self-evidently absurd. The two parties are deeply polarized and locked in seemingly eternal partisan warfare. The GOP has moved far to the right on abortion, immigration, trans rights, gun rights, environmental regulation, and other issues while backing Trump ever more fervently.

Indeed, uniparty is an exaggerated, sloppily conceived concept thats often deployed as a way to blame the rights own failures to achieve a conservative policy paradise on some sort of dastardly conspiracy against them by their own leaders.

And yet sometimes its not entirely off-base.

Thats because there are important issues where many Republican elites have long thought the MAGA rights preferences are wrongheaded or downright dangerous and where those elites work, either openly or subtly, to ensure Trump and his acolytes dont get what they want.

These range from major foreign policy questions about the USs role in the world, to preferences about tactics in government spending battles, to issues at the heart of American democracy such as whether elections that Donald Trump loses should be certified.

Now, Trump and Gaetz are declaring the election of Mike Johnson as speaker of the House as a win for MAGA Mike. But will Johnson be able to transform the speakership? Or will he inevitably be drawn, by the institutional incentives of the job, toward governing more like McCarthy? Maybe you either die a MAGA hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the uniparty.

Politicians and political commentators have long loved a good rhetorical flourish that pits them as plucky underdogs fighting for the interests of the common people against a dastardly, powerful cartel.

Depending on who is using the term, this cartel can be called any number of things: the deep state, the swamp, the special interests, the Blob, the Cathedral, or simply Washington. The commonality is the suggestion that theyre the people who are really in control, and who are therefore responsible for all the problems the country faces.

But uniparty is useful for those who want to say theres something rotten with the party theyd typically prefer. In 2000, that was leftist supporters of presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who complained that the Democratic Party had become functionally indistinguishable from the GOP. As Ben Zimmer wrote for Politico Magazine, online supporters of Nader disparaged the corporate UniParty, and Nader himself used the term in a book.

Conservatives, meanwhile had long slapped moderate Republican politicians with the label RINO, Republican in Name Only. That has a similar vibe to uniparty. But by the mid-2010s, many on the right felt frustrated and disillusioned with the GOP establishment. Complaints included GOP leaders openness to immigration reform and free trade, foreign policy failures exemplified by the Iraq war, the failure to drastically cut spending under President Barack Obama, and a general sense that the party simply didnt fight Democrats hard enough.

Trumps presidential campaign became the vessel for these frustrations. So commentators affiliated with the populist right, like Ann Coulter and Breitbart editor-in-chief Alexander Marlow, began denouncing Republican Trump critics (of which, back then, there were many) as the uniparty. In Coulters telling, this included the Republican Brain Trust, the Washington Establishment, the Insiders, ... the lobbyists, the consultants, the think tanks, [and] the pollsters.

Trump himself preferred to talk about the swamp and, once in office, the deep state likely because disparaging the Republican Party made little strategic sense for him once he was the leader of that party.

But once Bannon was ousted from Trumps White House, he started using the term again to denounce all the GOP establishment squishes who were undermining the MAGA agenda. Hes still doing so today and so, now, is Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted in July that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantiss primary campaign was the Uniparty vs. Trump & MAGA.

The framing of Trump as inexorably opposed to a hostile GOP establishment is oversimplified and out of date on many issues. As president, Trump happily embraced conventional Republican policies on many issues (tax cuts, judicial appointments, rolling back regulations) while the GOP establishment moved in his direction on others (party elites largely abandoned their longtime support for immigration reform and free trade deals). Trump is perfectly comfortable with big business and big donors, and did little during his presidency to challenge their power. Many, if not most, leading Republicans now see themselves as fully on the Trump team.

And yet its still true that a core of Republican elites has major temperamental, tactical, and substantive differences with Trump and the right sometimes to the point where they really do seem more aligned with Democrats, and to be working against the right either openly or subtly.

Foreign policy: These differences are perhaps most intense on foreign policy. Trump has made clear that he supports massively overhauling US foreign policy. Hes talked frequently about withdrawing from NATO, pulling back US troops from deployments abroad, and generally playing a less active role in world affairs. The latest flashpoint for this clash of visions is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the MAGA right becoming intensely opposed to aiding Ukraine further.

The traditional hawkish Republican elite has fiercely resisted these changes. While Trump was president, his defense secretaries regularly delayed or slow-walked his troop withdrawal orders. If Trump had actually tried anything like withdrawing from NATO while in office, he would have seen major resignations of top officials (though former Trump national security adviser John Bolton warns it may happen if he is elected to a new term). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has loudly championed Ukraines cause, and Kevin McCarthy has reportedly tried to find a way to get more Ukraine aid through the House despite right-wing opposition.

(It should be noted that a leftists conception of uniparty foreign policy would be rather different theyd point out hawkishness toward China, high levels of military spending, and support for Israel as areas where theres now little difference between the two parties. And Obama aide Ben Rhodes viewed that administrations foreign policy on Iran and the Middle East as an effort to push back against a Blob of entrenched establishment thinking. But the rights concept of a uniparty is just about issues where the establishment disagrees with them.)

Election theft: When Trump tried to steal the 2020 election from Biden, the Republican Party did not act in a disciplined, unified way to help him to do it much to his chagrin. Yes, many elected Republicans claimed to doubt Bidens wins in certain states and said they wanted them thrown out, and most who knew better did little to stop Trump. And several, including the new speaker of the House, actively tried to help him.

But key Republicans with positions of authority to affect the results governors, state legislative leaders, state election officials, Justice Department officials, judges, and the vice president overwhelmingly didnt use their formal powers to help Trump pull off the steal. The uniparty united around the shared belief that respecting the results of American elections and the peaceful transfer of power is important. Trump would like to stop that from happening again.

Government spending battles: Even before Trumps rise, many conservatives have long resented what they see as the GOP establishments willingness to cave to Democrats on spending policy, when they want far greater cuts. (Trump himself never staked too much on these fights while he was president when he brought on a shutdown, it was instead over trying to get more money for his border wall.)

After one such government spending deal in 2013, Angelo Codevilla, who would become a leading intellectual voice of the pro-Trump right, wrote: The Republican Partys leaders have functioned as junior members of Americas single ruling party, the UniParty. Whatever differences existed between then-congressional leaders, Republicans John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he said, got worked out behind closed doors.

GOP establishment leaders in Congress and on the appropriations committees generally profess that theyd love to cut spending more, but that the activists demands and their understanding of politics are simply absurdly unrealistic. They argue that the level of cuts demanded by the right would be deeply unpopular, that theres no way to force Democrats to cave when they control key levers of government, and that a prolonged government shutdown would hurt Republicans politically.

But the hardliners suspect all this is cover for a comfort with the status quo, and a lack of desire to truly disrupt Washington. And Gaetz used the latest government spending agreement between McCarthy and Democrats as a pretext to oust McCarthy from the speakership.

In a sense, the uniparty idea is an attempt to answer a question: Why are so many Republican elites still so resistant to following Trump or the base on key issues?

One theory, pushed by Bannon and Codevilla before him, is that its about the people: The wrong Republicans, lacking sufficient loyalty to Trump and the cause, are in these jobs. So if Trump is returned to power, his appointees should be more carefully chosen for loyalty to the MAGA cause, not just the GOP. Purportedly uniparty-aligned elected officials should be primaried and replaced with MAGA-friendly candidates.

Replacing McCarthy with Johnson a longtime conservative and Christian right activist who helped Trump try and steal the 2020 election is, in this thinking, a major step forward.

That surely has some truth to it, but its not the whole story. Because another view is that the supposed uniparty politicians are often responding to the institutional incentives and pressures of their roles and that even MAGA diehards in those roles will face the same incentives and pressures.

Notably when Trump was president, he regularly caved to the supposed uniparty. He could have overridden his appointees and forced quicker troop withdrawals, but he often didnt. He could have forced bigger fights about cutting spending, but he generally didnt. As president, with his political future and a whole agenda at play, he had to weigh priorities and calculate political blowback.

In government, its often said that where you stand depends on where you sit. Appointees to head government agencies typically become champions of their particular agencies priorities. Similarly, if youre a right-wing media commentator or a representative in a deep red district, your only real priority is to please a far-right audience, and you have no real responsibility to govern or achieve anything.

But if youre speaker of the House, you have different priorities. You have to manage the concerns of the vulnerable swing-district members on whom your majority depends. You have to cultivate big-money donors who fund your effort to keep that majority. And you actually have responsibility over policy.

One major tell about how this works will be seen in how Speaker Johnson approaches Ukraine aid. As a little-known Congress member in a deep red district, he frequently criticized aid to Ukraine. In May 2022, he said, We should not be sending another $40 billion abroad when our own border is in chaos, American mothers are struggling to find baby formula, gas prices are at record highs, and American families are struggling to make ends meet, without sufficient oversight over where the money will go.

But now, as speaker of the House, he was playing a different tune. We cant allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine because I dont believe it would stop there, Johnson said on Fox News Thursday. Were not going to abandon them. The uniparty may have life in it yet.

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Why right-wingers think a uniparty controls Congress - Vox.com

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., speaks to media after a Senate Republican policy luncheon, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

PARKERSBURG Congress can move forward now that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has chosen a new speaker, U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Thursday.

Thats welcome news from my perspective, Capito, R-W.Va., said.

Republicans in the House Wednesday voted for Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., who led the efforts to overturn the election results in four key states where President Joe Biden won.

The House has been without a speaker since Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted on Oct. 3.

Peppered by the infighting amongst Republicans in the House, Johnson was the fourth nominee for speaker following Reps. Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise and Republican Whip Tom Emmer.

The House and Senate can now address the business of the nation including aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and to address illegal entry at the southern border with Mexico.

Lets get back to work, Capito said.

Any funding bills have to include efforts to seal the southern border, which doesnt necessarily mean throwing money at the problem, Capito said. Capito spoke to reporters from West Virginia in a press briefing on Thursday from Washington.

The most migrants ever tried to cross into the United States from Mexico in the last fiscal year, according to Capito. About 270,000 migrants attempted to cross, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.

Terrorists may be coming to America through the southern border, Capito said. The flow has to be stopped at the point of entry, she said.

While barriers appear to impede illegal entry, the illegal immigration issue isnt just money, Capito said. The United States could require those seeking asylum to remain in Mexico while their cases are pending, a remain-in-Mexico policy, which worked under Donald Trump and which President Joe Biden can impose, but chooses not to, she said.

We need immigration reform, Capito said.

Other topics included the hydrogen storage hub in West Virginia, which is proposed in Washington, W.Va., and the military blockade against promotions caused by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. The hub will be part of the nations efforts toward cleaner energy, she said.

Tuberville is blocking the promotions over Pentagon abortion policies.

Capito has opposed Tubervilles methods, but deferred comment on a resolution working its way through the Senate to move on the promotions. The senator also said she was reluctant to make rule changes.

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Capito: Election of New House Speaker 'Welcome News' - Wheeling Intelligencer

Amy Torres, Executive Director of New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, joins Steve Adubato for a conversation about the ending of Title 42, our nations asylum crisis, and the need for immigration reform. Recorded 6/20/23

Steve Adubato asks Amy Torres about the state of Title 42 and immigration enforcement. Torres responds, I think its really important to understand that colloquially we use words like refugee and asylum seeker to describe people who are fleeing for their own safety, trying to protect themselves, trying to protect their loved ones. Its important to understand that in U.S immigration policy these words refugee, asylee, theyre very restrictive coded definitions that change over time and we saw that with title 42 right. There was a real restriction on the internationally recognized right to asylum, there were barriers put in place that made it very difficult to file for asylum. We saw it again when title 42 ended and the Biden Administration proposed their own new restrictions that in many ways went further than title 42, to make it even more difficult to file for asylum, to come to the U.S and stay here and seek safety. I think weve heard a lot over the last few months about a border crisis, or a migration crisis. Really what were facing in the United States is a policy crisis. We have a deeply broken immigration system that means that its more difficult than ever to try to come to the United States, and even more difficult once youre here to be able to legally stay here.

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Examining The State of Immigration Reform and the Nation's Asylum ... - InsiderNJ

It is difficult to find an issue that more exemplifies the dysfunction of American government today than immigration.

In the past year, more than a million people have entered the United States through the southern border, overflowing shelters and straining public services. Most of the newcomers claim asylum, a status that allows them to be in the country legally but leaves them in limbo. They often must wait years for their cases to be heard, and it can be a lengthy process to obtain legal permission to work.

This nation has long drawn strength from immigration, and providing asylum is an important expression of Americas national values. But Congress has failed to provide the necessary resources to welcome those who are eligible and to turn away those who are not. Instead, overwhelmed immigration officials allow nearly everyone to stay temporarily, imposing enormous short-term costs on states and cities that the federal government hasnt done enough to mitigate.

Vice President Kamala Harris and others have correctly identified corruption and instability in Central and South America as reasons many people continue to flee their homes, and the United States should do what it can to help countries with these challenges. But that is not an answer to the disruption that this recent wave of people is causing in American communities right now.

The federal governments negligence is fueling anger against immigrants and stoking divisions. The question is whether Congress, mired in dysfunction, can stir itself to enact sensible changes so the nation can reap the benefits of immigration.

Neither party has come up with a solution that is both practical and compassionate. Many in the Republican Party want to return to the Trump-era policies of strictly curtailing refugee and asylum admissions and requiring many people to stay in Mexico while their asylum cases are heard. Some Republicans still embrace the fiction that building a huge wall would solve everything, despite abundant evidence that it would be ineffective in stopping people from coming to the border. On Thursday the Biden administration moved to expand that wall as well.

Some lawmakers on the left have tried to ignore or downplay the extent of this challenge. Illegal border crossings by families, while they are a small portion of the total number of people entering the United States, are rising. The consequences of allowing huge numbers of asylum seekers to enter without sufficiently providing for them are real. The result is not only relentless pressure on the immigration system at the border and elsewhere but also a devastating failure to protect people from smugglers, who have made sneaking people into the United States a big business, or from exploitation after they arrive.

Congress can raise the level of legal immigration by increasing the quotas for employment visas and other categories that allow people to come to the United States legally and have the chance to become permanent residents and then citizens. Those targets have been too low for too long, particularly for people who can fill gaps in the labor market. In July there were more than two million open positions, for example, in construction, hospitality and retail, and the current system keeps out many engineers, computer programmers and scientists. To change that, Congress would need to act and to establish new quotas that more accurately reflect the level of immigration that Americans want and can reasonably accept.

The country has already seen the consequences of keeping legal immigration artificially low. The Trump administration, even before the pandemic, dramatically decreased its annual quota for refugees and made many other forms of legal immigration much harder to get. Even worse, the administration removed children from their parents in a cruel attempt at deterrence. That inhumane policy also didnt work, as people continued to travel north to present themselves at the border to make asylum claims. Those numbers rose every year of Mr. Trumps presidency, with the exception of 2020, and the result was chaos.

While the Biden administration has mostly ended the policy of family separation, it has been slow in resettling refugees, has not pushed for raising quotas for most other forms of legal immigration and has offered no sustainable, long-term solution to the challenge of illegal immigration. Last year the administration ended the remain-in-Mexico policy and tried to make it easier for people to apply for asylum from their home countries. Nevertheless, the number of asylum seekers has continued to soar. The asylum program was never meant to be a vehicle for large-scale immigration and still needs an overhaul, as this board has argued.

Then there is the question of how to support those who have already arrived in the United States. Its also difficult to find political heroes here.

There were the cynical tactics deployed by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and others who decided to transport thousands of immigrants to Democratic-led cities and states to see if they would maintain their longstanding posture of openness in the face of a sudden surge of newcomers. As despicable as this ploy was, it worked.

More than 145,000 people have traveled to New York State from the southern border over the past year, and the scale of this latest round of immigration has tested New Yorks fortitude and its historic embrace of newcomers; as of 2021, about one in three people in New York City was born in another country.

The current crisis has shown how difficult it can be to absorb waves of new people without adequate processes or the resources to back them up. Many of the new immigrants have come without family or other community ties, and the surge of people without a place to stay has strained the citys shelter system, when the New York region already was struggling with a shortage of affordable housing. A right-to-shelter mandate dating back four decades requires the city to provide a bed to anyone who needs one, and of the more than 115,200 people in city shelters, about half are asylum seekers.

Mayor Eric Adams has responded to this challenge with increasingly sharp, ominous statements. This issue will destroy New York City, he said on Sept. 6. Every community in this city is going to be impacted, he continued. The city we knew, were about to lose. Demonizing populations of people is dangerous and will not help the city respond to their needs, even if the mayor is right to raise the alarm and insist on more federal aid.

President Biden announced on Sept. 20 that his administration will extend temporary work permits to nearly half a million Venezuelans, a concession to intense pressure from Mr. Adams and other state and city leaders from his own party who find their communities overwhelmed.

That will help some businesses that are desperate for more workers. But Mr. Bidens reluctance is understandable; expanding work authorization without addressing Americas broken immigration system will do little to deter people from trying to cross the U.S. border unlawfully or to seek asylum, and it gives Congress a pass.

Some Republican leaders have stepped up to offer help. Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah and Gov. Eric Holcomb of Indiana wrote an essay in The Washington Post in February offering to sponsor immigrants, citing more than 300,000 job vacancies between the two states. In meaningful ways, every U.S. state shares a border with the rest of the world, and all of them need investment, markets and workers from abroad, they wrote. That border can remain an embarrassment, or it can become a big asset to us once again.

For that to happen, leaders in Congress will have to do their part. Its been a decade since Congress has seriously considered immigration reform. Both parties have missed opportunities to do so, the Democrats most recently at the end of 2022. The party had a narrow majority in Congress but failed to pursue a compromise bill that would have increased funding for border security as well as expanding capacity to hear and decide asylum claims quickly. The future of DACA, a program for those who were brought to the United States as children, is also in doubt, despite its broad public support.

The White House is limited in the actions it can take; Mr. Biden may have exhausted what he can do through his executive authority. Until Congress decides to take meaningful action, America will continue to pay a price.

Source photograph by Busara, via Getty Images.

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Opinion | The Cost of Inaction on Immigration - The New York Times

Periodically, American presidents have tried to release pressure from these systems by granting amnesty or temporary protection from deportation to large groups of migrants, as Biden recently did for Venezuelans. But these are short-term Band-Aids that do little to affect the ongoing causes of illegal immigration and still leave millions of workers vulnerable to abuse.

Congress, for its part, has proved itself incapable of passing the kind of legislation necessary to recalibrate the economic incentives. Though five major immigration reform bills have been brought to a vote since 2006, none of them made it through both the House and the Senate. To be fair, perhaps no single legislative act or executive order could ever change these dynamics. But some people have suggested targeted measures that could make unauthorized migration less chaotic, less exploitative and less profitable to unscrupulous actors.

The National Association of Immigration Judges has made a strong case for increasing the funding for immigration courts. There are now more than 2.5 million cases pending in these courts, and their average processing time is four years. To handle this backlog, the nation has fewer than 700 immigration-court judges. According to Mimi Tsankov, president of the association, this disparity between manpower and caseload is the primary reason many immigration cases, especially complex asylum cases, take years to resolve. To speed processing times, Tsankov explained, the courts need more judges but also more interpreters, legal assistants and law clerks. Improved efficiency would benefit those who merit asylum. Others say that it would also decrease the incentive to submit frivolous asylum claims in order to reside legally in the United States while waiting for an application to be denied.

Among academics, another idea keeps resurfacing: a deadline for deportations. Most crimes in America have a statute of limitations, Mae Ngai, a professor of history at Columbia University, noted in an opinion column for The Washington Post. The statute of limitations for noncapital terrorism offenses, for example, is eight years. Before the 1924 Immigration Act, Ngai wrote in her book about the history of immigration policy, the statute of limitations for deportations was at most five years. Returning to this general principle, at least for migrants who have no significant criminal record, would allow ICE officers and immigration judges to focus on the recent influx of unauthorized migrants. A deadline could also improve labor conditions for all Americans because, as Ngai wrote, it would go a long way toward stemming the accretion of a caste population that is easily exploitable and lives forever outside the polity.

One of the most curious aspects of American immigration politics is that Congress tends to invest heavily in immigration enforcement but not in the enforcement of labor laws that could dissuade businesses from exploiting unauthorized workers in the first place. Congress more than doubled the annual budgets for ICE and C.B.P. from 2006 to 2021. At the same time, it kept the budgets for the three federal agencies most responsible for preventing workplace abuse OSHA, the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board essentially flat. There are now only 750 Department of Labor investigators responsible for the countrys 11 million workplaces. As absurd as it sounds, the enforcement of labor standards is a very controversial thing to do in this country, David Weil, the former administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, told me earlier this year. The laws needed to protect the interests of workers are already on the books, he said; the Department of Labor just needs funding adequate to enforce them.

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Why Can't We Stop Unauthorized Immigration? Because It Works. - The New York Times