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This past spring, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott captured headlines for his plan to bus migrants to Washington, D.C. He said he was concerned that there would be an influx of migrants crossing the states border with Mexico in light of President Bidens decision to cease a public-health order from 2020 authorizing federal officials to turn away migrants at the border even those seeking asylum.

Many, including the Biden administration, chalked up Abbotts actions to a publicity stunt. After all, illegal immigration is something that has long motivated Republican voters, especially when a Democrat is in the White House. The fact, though, that so much attention is paid to illegal immigration misses how the debate on immigration policy is changing in the U.S. namely, Republican politicians are increasingly blurring the lines between illegal and legal immigration and targeting not just illegal immigration, but legal immigration too.

Over the past two decades, support for increasing legal immigration has climbed steadily overall, although Democrats have primarily driven that uptick, as the chart below shows. In fact, per 2019 polling from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Republicans are not only less likely to support increasing legal immigration but also more likely to support reducing legal immigration. Almost half of Republicans (47 percent) said legal immigration should be decreased, compared with just 16 percent of Democrats.

The distinction between legal immigration and illegal immigration is often not clear-cut, though. Consider that only a minority of unauthorized immigrants, 38 percent, entered the country without proper documentation in 2016, according to research conducted by the Center for Migration Studies. Instead, the majority of unauthorized immigrants who entered the U.S. that year, 62 percent, overstayed their temporary visas, meaning they initially arrived in the U.S. legally but proceeded to remain illegally with expired paperwork. Moreover, the Pew Research Center looked at 2017 data from the Department of Homeland Security and found that almost 90 percent of those who overstayed their visas were from neither Mexico nor Central America.

Regardless, this doesnt change the fact that a lot of media attention remains focused on illegal immigration, especially in the context of the southern border. Republicans are also still probably more concerned over illegal immigration than over legal immigration. When Gallup asked Americans in March how personally worried they were about illegal immigration, 68 percent of Republicans said a great deal 27 percentage points higher than the overall share of Americans who said they were worried a great deal and 50 points higher than the share of Democrats who said the same.

And its this overwhelming concern around illegal immigration regardless of its accuracy that helps explain why Republican politicians still give the topic so much oxygen in their campaign materials. They know illegal immigration is a huge flash point for their voters at the very least, this is something Ive found in researching the platforms of various Republican primary candidates running for state and federal office. And yet, Ive also found that when you look at the actual immigration policies Republican politicians have successfully enacted, efforts to curb legal immigration have been much more successful than policies meant to restrict illegal immigration.

Take former President Donald Trump. While illegal immigration was a central pillar of his campaign, especially in 2016, his administration proved much more adept at implementing policies that limited legal immigration than illegal immigration. A week after he took office, he notoriously signed an executive order that initially limited immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries. Moreover, throughout his four years in office, Trump also pursued a number of measures to uproot the process for asylum seekers, from banning certain situations in which people were eligible for asylum to introducing new protocols that made the asylum process longer. And later, the coronavirus pandemic unleashed a series of travel restrictions from the Trump administration in early 2020 that contributed to an 18 percent decrease in the average number of monthly green cards and a 28 percent decrease in non-immigrant visas compared with President Barack Obamas second term. Meanwhile, Trumps early campaign promises to collect and deport all undocumented immigrants never panned out, and his infamous wall at least how he envisioned it has yet to be built.

Trumps policies may present obvious examples, but the former president is not the only one proposing policies that limit legal immigration. Republicans in Congress have also started to take up legislation that whittles down such pathways. For instance, when Republicans controlled the Senate in 2019, Sens. Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley and then-Sen. David Perdue reintroduced the RAISE Act, which proposed restricting family-based immigration policies in addition to instituting a host of other caps. (An earlier version, which specifically outlined halving the number of green cards issued annually, had previously failed to come to a vote in 2017, when Cotton and Perdue first proposed it.)

The bill also explicitly linked legal immigration to the economy with its focus on highly skilled immigrants, which it defined as immigrants who could help with improving the fiscal health of the United States without jeopardizing jobs that could otherwise be held by American citizens or as protecting or increasing the wages of working Americans.

Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of race and ethnicity research at Pew, told me that Americas immigrant population has changed significantly since the 1980s and 1990s, which in turn, has influenced immigration policy debates. Lopez said that for a long time, immigration policy focused on security at the border and illegal immigration but that now its also about employers, student visas [and] attracting certain workers in agriculture or tech.

Though the three senators legislation had Trumps backing, the bill did not pass. But notably, evidence suggests that at least some parts of the idea were popular among Republicans. For instance, 42 percent of Republicans, including those who lean Republican, told Pew in a 2020 survey that immigrants living legally in the U.S. mostly fill jobs that U.S. citizens would want to take on, which was 10 points higher than the share of Americans overall who said the same.

Eli Hiller / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Looking ahead to the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election, both legal and illegal immigration continue to be important Republican talking points with a number of high-profile GOP figures from Abbott to GOP Senate nominees like J.D. Vance and 2024 aspirants like former Vice President Mike Pence doubling down on immigration in their campaign rhetoric and platforms. And its once again a blurring of messages, with legal and illegal immigration often used interchangeably and Mexico blamed as the source of all illegal immigration.

For instance, Vance, Trumps endorsee for Ohios open Senate seat, buckets all of his immigration policy legal and illegal under Solve Southern Border Crisis on his campaign website. He also has leaned into especially inflammatory rhetoric, running an ad ahead of his primary in which he asked voters: Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans? as a way to suggest it is the media responsible for such perceptions although in the same ad, Vance said immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border were primarily responsible for illegal drugs pouring into the country.

Meanwhile, Katie Britt, another Trump endorsee who won the Republican nomination for Alabamas Senate race, splits up legal and illegal immigration in her campaign materials at least more so than Vance, but she still often muddles the two by suggesting, for example, that all visa issues fall under legal immigration reform and by treating Mexico as the primary source for illegal immigration in the U.S. Moreover, Britt also calls for reducing legal immigration and blames a major immigration bill from 1965 that ended discriminatory practices, like regional immigration preferences and quotas, as responsible for driving down the wages of Alabamians. This is notable, because it marks a huge shift in how GOP politicians have historically talked about legal immigration.

Pence, who has not-so-secret 2024 ambitions, has also talked about immigration in recent speeches. Notably, too, despite having had a fraught relationship with Trump since the end of their term, Pence recently said in a speech in Arizona that he supported curbing family-based migration or the legal framework that allows American citizens to sponsor visas for extended family members while also championing a crackdown on illegal immigration at the southern border. Other presidential hopefuls who, similar to Pence, arent fully in Trumps inner circle have also made immigration a part of their pitch, like former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. While those more squarely in Trumps orbit, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, continue to lean into the illegal immigration rhetoric.

As The Washington Posts David Byler noted on Wednesday, how Republicans talk about immigration has changed dramatically post-Trump, and thats made it harder to distinguish the differences between legal and illegal immigration, which, in turn, has obscured the nuances of immigration issues. As Lopez told me, the immigrant population in the U.S. is just really diverse, with a lot of different components comprising legal immigration versus illegal immigration. These broad umbrellas are helpful in some ways to think about broad categories, he said. But theres so much diversity within each one that they end up masking a lot of what is happening around immigration policy, as well as the experiences of people who come to the U.S. as immigrants navigating either one of these pathways.

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When Republicans Talk About Immigration, They Dont Just Mean Illegal Immigration - FiveThirtyEight

Arizona's Republican voter base continues to shift further to the right, as reflected in the candidates they've chosen in the primaries. Here, GOP supporters cheer on Kari Lake, their gubernatorial nominee, during her speech at Trump's 'Save America' rally, July 22, 2022, in Prescott, Ariz. | Ross D. Franklin / AP

TUCSONPrimary Day left Arizona Republicans in some disarray.The elections demonstrated that there are still some old-style corporate Republicans left, but the majority are divided between fascists and fascists lite. And Im not using the word fascist loosely.

On Tuesday, most Republicans in the state voted for candidates who support Trump and his attempts to overturn the 2020 elections.Almost every Republican candidate for major office spewed the same vile and fought for Trumps endorsement.Judging by what was just seen in the primary, an endless parade of hateful and racist commercials denouncing immigrants appears destined for television screens here for the next three months until Election Day. The Republicans have nothing else to offer the people of Arizona.

State Rep. Mark Finchem, who was at the U.S. Capitol during Trumps Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt, has won the nomination for Secretary of State. Its the office which oversees elections, and interestingly, he will be opposed in November by Adrian Fontes, who was Maricopa County Recorder in charge of supervising the 2020 electionthe election Finchem claims was rigged and which the Cyber Ninjas circus targeted. Maricopa County is home to two-thirds of Arizonans.

Apparent Republican nominee for Governor, Kari Lake, and for Attorney General, Abe Hamadeh, are Trump creatures, and then theres Tom Horne, who won the nomination for Superintendent of Public Instruction. The last time he held state office, a decade ago, he initiated an all-out attack on the teaching of Mexican American Studies. And the nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly has been won by Blake Masters, a protg of far-right billionaire Peter Theil. Masters, who had Trumps endorsement, defeated three other far-right candidates.

However, things are not as bleak as they may sound.The lurch from far right to further right will not necessarily appeal to Arizona voters, who have been moving in the other direction lately.The Democratic Party has nominated a solid slate of experienced candidates for the statewide offices, and some progressive candidates for Congress.

Congressional Progressive Caucus members Raul Grijalva and Ruben Gallego will face only token opposition in November.In the race for CD-6, for the open seat being vacated by retiring Ann Kilpatrick, progressive state legislator Kirsten Engel defeated State Rep. Daniel Hernandez.The latter was targeted by progressive forces for his coziness with special interests and organizations like AIPAC.The district includes half of Tucson and southeastern Arizona.

In CD-1, which takes in parts of Phoenix and the East Valley suburbs, a young African American community activist named Jevin Hodge won the Democratic nomination to oppose incumbent Congressman David Schweikert.Redistricting has tilted the district towards the Democrats, and Hodge seems to be mounting a well-organized campaign with heavy support from Arizonas labor movement.

The campaign for the legislature is especially crucial here, where the Republicans hold a one seat advantage in each house. Once again the Republicans have nominated 15 men and seven women, all of them white, in a state where almost half the population is people of color. The Democratic candidates for Senate are only half white, and a majority are women.

The Republicans have six candidates of color for the House of Representatives out of 53 nominated, but none are Native Americans, and only two are Mexican American, both of whom are incumbents appointed for openings during this last term.The Democratic House candidates reflect the states demographics.

Another interesting race is for mayor of the wealthy Phoenix suburb of Fountain Hills, where 90-year-old former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is trailing Democrat Ginny Dickey, whom he had outspent by 6 to 1.

Clearly, its time for the people of Arizona to clean house. We must stop the hate. We must elect officials who want to fight for school funding. We are tired of being last in education funding. We want to be in the top ten. We want to protect the Dreamers, work for comprehensive immigration reform, confront global warming, a national health care system, and more.

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Arizona Republicans shift even further to the right - People's World

Dick Cheney has branded Donald Trump the greatest threat to our republic, in a new campaign ad for his daughter, Liz Cheney, who is running for re-election in Wyoming.

In our nations 236-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump, said Cheney, who served as vice-president for two terms under George W Bush.

Cheney said: He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.

He is a coward. A real man wouldnt lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and deep down I think most Republicans know it.

Cheney went on to speak about how proud he was of his daughter for standing up to the truth, doing whats right, honoring her oath to the constitution when so many in our party are too scared to do so.

The one-minute ad featured the elder Cheneys sharpest public attacks against Trump to date. Best known as the most powerful vice-president in American history, and a major figure in leading the US to war in Iraq, he has taken to defending his daughter in her fight against Trump.

Theres nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never near the Oval Office. And she will succeed, he said in the ad.

The younger Cheney has been widely praised from liberals as vice-chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack. Cheney has been one of Trumps most pointed critics, accusing him of violating the constitution for his role in the insurrection.

In return, she has been largely ostracized from her party. Cheney faces an uphill re-election battle against the Trump-backed candidate Harriet Hageman, who maintains that the 2020 election was stolen.

Liz Cheney has long forgotten she works for Wyoming (or perhaps she never knew), not the Radical Democrats, Hageman tweeted on Thursday. Wyoming deserves a Congresswoman who will represent us AND our conservative values. Its time to retire elitist Liz Cheney.

Though Cheney has at least a million dollars more in donations to her campaign against Hageman, she was 22 points behind Hageman in a July poll conducted by the Casper Star-Tribune.

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Cheney said she does not expect to lose on 16 August.

I really believe that the people of Wyoming fundamentally understand how important fidelity to the constitution is understand how important it is that we fight for those fundamental principles on which everything else is based, she said.

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Dick Cheney attacks Donald Trump as greatest threat to our republic - The Guardian US

It might be nice one day to wake up and feel sereneeven hopefulabout the state of American politics. To know that all of those people who have been warning about the growing threat to democracy are way ahead of their skis. But today is not that day.

Arizona Republicans are nominating an entire cast of characters who argue not only that Donald Trump won the election in 2020, but also that the states results should be decertifieda process for which there is no legal basis. These Trump-endorsed candidatesKari Lake for governor, Mark Finchem for secretary of state, Abraham Hamadeh for attorney general, Blake Masters for senatorall won their respective primaries this week and are now one election away from political power.

Read: The Kansas abortion shocker

Some strategists might frame these Republican wins as a gift to Democrats, and you can look at it that way. Democrats will be more competitive in the upcoming midterms than they might have been if more reasonable Republicans were on the ballot. Moderates and independents abound in Arizona, and they arent going to be excited to vote for a passel of kooks. But that doesnt change the simple fact that the fundamentals are on Republicans side this year: Joe Biden is still unpopular; inflation is still high; America might soon be entering a recession.

Nobody should be popping champagne, Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist and the publisher of The Bulwark, told me. This is the most antidemocracy slate of candidates in the country. Were in a very dangerous situation.

Stop the Steal candidates are runningand winningall over the country. But Arizona concentrates a lot of them within a single geographic arealike an ant farm of election deniers.

Lake might prove the most significant of these candidates. Lakes lead over her top Republican opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, had grown to nearly 3 percent when the gubernatorial primary race was finally called in her favor on Thursday night. Before becoming an enthusiastic proponent of Trumps election lies, Lake was a local TV-news anchor, making her a household name in Arizona and giving her something that many political candidates lack: confidence in front of the camera. Like Trump, Lake has a difficult-to-describe magnetism with Republican-base voters; they simply cannot get enough of her.

Throughout her campaign, Lake has called Biden an illegitimate president and vowed that, if she becomes governor, shell be reviewing and decertifying Arizonas 2020 election resultsdespite multiple audits (and even a partisan review) showing precisely zero evidence of widespread fraud. Even ahead of the primary, Lake claimed to have evidence of funny business; the NBC reporter Vaughn Hillyard tried to get Lake to share some of that evidence, but she would not. Lake and Finchem, the cowboy-hat-wearing would-be secretary of state whom I profiled last month, have been cooking up new ways supposedly to prevent fraudby banning voting machines and early voting. Both Lake and Finchem primed voters to believe that, if they lost, only fraud would explain their losses. Of course they did. Thats the new Republican playbook, and these two know it better than anyone.

Lakes opponent in November, Katie Hobbs, is Arizonas former secretary of state and a run-of-the-mill Democrat who will probably try to position herself as the sane, competent foil to Lakes wild-eyed conspiracy monger. Thats a solid strategymaybe the only one that can work. But Hobbs is so run-of-the-mill that shes boring. And what Hobbs lacks in personality, she makes up for in baggage, after a former staffer successfully sued last year over discrimination. For Arizonans who are still fans of democracy, though, Hobbs is the obvious choicean apt example of the Terrible Candidate/Important Election scenario that my colleague Caitlin Flanagan described this week.

David A. Graham: Well, the cover-up sure isnt making January 6 look any better

Arizona Democrats like Hobbs do have a genuine shot at defeating this slate of extremists. The basic fact of these Republicans extremism makes all Democratic candidates look better by comparison. Many independent voters, who count for something like one-third of all Arizona voters, and moderate Republicans would probably have happily voted for any Republican but Lake; come November, some of them may be willing to turn that into any candidate but Lake. Plus, Democrats seem to have gotten their groove back in recent weeks. Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., reached a long-elusive deal on sweeping climate legislation; gas prices are dropping fast; and the overturning of Roe v. Wade might energize an otherwise sleepy set of Democratic voters just in time for the midterms.

And yet. Despite what hopeful Democrats might tell you, Arizona isnt a purple state; its more of a lightish red. And this year remains an excellent year for Republicansprobably the best chance for any Republican extremist to make it into elected office not just in Arizona, but anywhere in the country. When the political party in power has a president running in the mid- or upper 30s and inflation is high and people are feeling recession-y? Longwell said. Youre in a danger point. You just are.

The danger of a Lake or Finchem election in November is pretty straightforward, as Ive outlined in previous stories. State leaders can easily cast doubt on an elections results if the outcome doesnt suit them, and this entire slate of Arizona Republicans is clearly prepared to do that. Governors and secretaries of state can tinker with election procedures or propose absurd new requirements, such as having every voter reregister to vote, as the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, has suggested. What happens if the outcome of the 2024 presidential election comes down to a closely divided Arizona? What if such a pivotal state was run not by Democrats and Republicans who are loyal to the democratic process, but by conspiracy-drunk partisans who wont stop until they see their candidate swearing on a Bible? Theres a reason Trump has endorsed this slate; he knows these candidates will be pulling for him no matter what.

Maybe the most important thing to note is that whatever happens to these Trump sycophants in November, theyve demonstrated that a not-insignificant number of Republican voters want themthe cream of the conspiracy cropto lead their party. In Tuesdays primary, Rusty Bowers, Arizonas Republican speaker of the house who did not cooperate with attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, lost his State Senate race to an election denier. Lake, who has become a household name in Trumpworld and raked in campaign donations from across the country, will be well positioned, whatever the coming election result, to be a MAGA superstar.

If youre still tallying up Trumps primary wins and losses as an indicator of his grip on the party, youre missing the point. The mans enduring legacy is figures like Lake and a GOP packed with cranks and conspiracy theorists. They will be defining the next generation of Republicans, and [Lake] will be among the next generation of leaders, Longwell said. If she wins, or even if she loses.

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The Most Antidemocratic Slate of Candidates in America - The Atlantic

WASHINGTON For the past month or so, Republicans have insisted that the U.S. economy is in a recession, a period of reduced economic activity that can be politically devastating for the party in power.

Then, on Friday, the U.S. Labor Department announced the economy added half a million jobs last month, pushing the national unemployment rate down to 3.5% almost as low as it has ever gotten, and a strong indication that the economy is not, in fact, in a recession.

Still, Republicans insisted at a press conference on Friday, where they bashed Democrats plans to pass a major domestic policy bill, that theres a recession going on.

Were in a recession and this [bill] is going to make it worse, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said.

HuffPost asked the five Republican senators at the presser how Julys job growth could happen in a recession. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) pointed out that in the first and second quarters of the year, the U.S. saw negative growth in gross domestic product, an important economic metric.

The definition of recession is negative GDP growth in two successive quarters, Cassidy said.

Cassidy has a point: If you do a Google search for the definition of the word recession, the top dictionary result calls it a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.

But economists dont use a simple rule of thumb to figure out when the economy is in recession they follow the determinations of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private nonprofit organization thats served as custodian of the business cycles ups and downs since the 1960s.

The NBER describes a recession as a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across industries. Quarterly GDP is a factor, but the most important measures are personal income and payroll employment. Those metrics both show growth.

In a Frequently Asked Questions page on its website, the NBER explicitly rejects the two-quarters definition, stating that GDP could decline by relatively small amounts in two consecutive quarters without warranting the determination that economic activity had peaked and begun to fall. The GDP readings this year showed modest declines for somewhat technical reasons, such as decreases in private inventory investment by businesses.

A tricky thing about the recession debate is that the recession determination comes many months after the fact, following revisions to the governments various monthly reports on jobs, income, consumer spending and manufacturing. So even after a recession starts, theres no official declaration until later.

Now, just because theres strong job growth, that doesnt mean people should be happy with the economy. Consumer prices have been rising at the fastest pace in decades, including at a 9.1% rate in June. Consumers are especially buffeted by volatile prices for food and gas, and consumer sentiment, as measured by surveys, has been remarkably low. Surveys also show that voters believe the economy is in a recession, and Republicans want those voters on their side.

Im very pleased that weve got strong job growth, but were in a recession, Cassidy said.

At the same time, some of the voters who tell pollsters they think the economy is in recession could be saying so because they have heard Republicans say it so many times on TV. Since a bad economy could benefit Republicans in Novembers election, they have an incentive to paint as dire a picture as possible, and less incentive to present a more nuanced, more truthful picture.

Whats strange is that Republicans are exaggerating economic problems when the public already strongly dislikes whats going on. And there is a real risk of recession around the corner, with the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates in order to bring inflation down.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) offered his own recession metric: Recession, to me, is when I go back home and the community bankers say, Hey, Doc, whats going on? Business is slowing down. Why are people afraid to invest?

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) noted that labor force participation numbers are still below pre-pandemic levels. And if you talk to families, they are having a harder and harder time keeping up, he said.

Graham suggested that questioning his economic analysis amounted to media bias against Republicans. If a Republican were in charge, you wouldnt be asking that question, he said.

Graham, in particular, should know that economic data is not pointing unequivocally toward recession. In response to a query from the South Carolina Republican this week, the head of the Congressional Budget Office an economist named Phillip Swagel told him its too soon to say theres a recession.

It is possible that, in retrospect, it will become apparent that the economy moved into recession sometime this year, Swagel wrote. However, that is not clear from data that were available at the beginning of August.

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Republicans Say Economy Is In Recession After It Added Half A Million Jobs In July - HuffPost