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House Minority Leader McCarthy and Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming appeared together at a 2020 press conference, prior to landing on opposite sides of the congressional investigation into the January 6, 2021 siege at the US Capitol.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The January 6 committee has interviewed nearly 1,000 witnesses about what its members say was an effort to overturn the US election.

Seven House Republicans have, so far, elected not to answer the committee's questions.

Defying this investigation could empower Democrats to do the same when Republicans return to power.

While some Trump administration officials have been indicted for refusing to cooperate with the January 6 select committee's investigation into the deadly siege at the US Capitol, a half-dozen House Republicans (and counting) have, so far, sidestepped testifying before the congressional panel.

The holdouts, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jim Jordan of Ohio, have offered varying reasons for not participating ranging from complaining about the committee's public outreach to assailing the "baseless witch hunt."

The committee and its witnesses, meanwhile, are presenting accounts that Trump and his advisors were informed their efforts to overturn the election possibly illegal but pressed on, with some of them seeking pardons in the Trump administration's final days.

Their arguments could come back to haunt them if they win back control of the House this fall, and Jordan or House Committee on Administration ranking member Rodney Davis of Illinois try to flex the new majority party's powers next year only to have House Democrats recycle the precedent-setting rejections.

Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona

Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona speaks during the Freedom Caucus press conference on immigration outside the Capitol on Wednesday, March 17, 2021.Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

The select committee in a May 2, 2022 letter asked Biggs to testify about any communications he'd had with former President Donald Trump, Trump administration officials, and Stop the Steal rally organizers about challenging the 2020 election results.

Biggs accused the committee of leaking subpoenas to the press before notifying the actual members involved, and railed against the "pure political theater."

"The January 6 Committee's ongoing, baseless witch hunt is nothing more than an effort to distract the American people from the Democrats' and Biden's disastrous leadership," Biggs said May 12 in a press release.

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Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama

Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama conducts a news conference in the Capitol Visitor Center on the Fire Fauci Act on Tuesday, June 15, 2021.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

The select committee in a May 2, 2022 letter asked Brooks to testify about public statements he made in March about Trump repeatedly lobbying him to "rescind" the 2020 election and reinstall him as president. Brooks aired those particular grievances after Trump pulled his endorsement from Brooks' bid to replace retiring Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama.

Brooks began laying out stipulations for testifying before the "partisan Witch Hunt Committee" in an undated statement, but then declared "that time has long passed."

"If they want to talk, they're gonna have to send me a subpoena, which I will fight," Brooks said in a campaign press release.

Brooks told Insider that he considers himself an outlier among the investigation's targets because everything he knows is already in the public domain, including testimony he gave in 2021 after being sued by Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California about the insurrection at the US Capitol.

"I am quite different from all other persons the Committee seeks to interview in that I have already given numerous, lengthy written, sworn statements (Swalwell lawsuit) and written, unsworn public statements that detail my knowledge and conduct concerning January 6 events," Brooks wrote in an email. "The Committee thus already has a fairly full accounting of all knowledge I have."

Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas

Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas is a former White House physician who has declared Trump in "excellent health."Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

The select committee in a May 2, 2022 letter asked Jackson to testify about any communications he had with members of the pro-Trump Oath Keepers or participants in the "Stop the Steal" rally that immediately preceded the attack on the US Capitol.

Jackson fired back the same day, disavowing any text messaging with Oath Keepers and bashing the committee and press for their "ruthless crusade against President Trump and his allies."

"Yet again, the illegitimate January 6 Committee proves its agenda is malicious and not substantive," Jackson said in a press release. "Their attempt to drag out a manufactured narrative illustrates why the American people are sick of the media and this partisan Committee's use of January 6 as a political tool against conservatives they do not like."

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio at a Capitol Hill press conference.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Jordan's got the longest-running paper trail with the committee to date.

The select committee got things rolling on December 22, 2021 by asking Jordan to testify about his communications with Trump before, during, and after January 6, 2021 regarding challenging the election results.

In his initial response on January 9, 2022, Jordan said he had "no relevant information" to offer the committee, and took investigators to task for even asking.

"This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core Constitutional principles, and would serve to further erode legislative norms," Jordan wrote in his first letter back to the committee.

After he'd been subpoenaed, Jordan noted that he was still waiting to hear back about questions he posed to the committee in January and bristled at the "dangerous escalation" of compelling him to testify.

"You have not substantively addressed any of the points in the letter or alleviated any of the concerns I raised," Jordan wrote on May 25 adding, that the same concerns "still exist today and have only grown as the Select Committee has continued to leak nonpublic information in a misleading manner in the intervening period."

A federal judge, however, dismissed Republican contentions that the committee is improperly constituted and doesn't serve a legislative purpose, and recently a judge swept aside similar arguments made by one-time Trump advisor Steve Bannon in his failed attempt to get his contempt of Congress trial dismissed.

Jordan delved even deeper into why he's unlikely to ever testify before the committee in the 11-page, heavily-footnoted letter he sent the panel on June 9. In that third missive, Jordan contests the panel's formation, membership, subpoena powers, and "legislative purpose," among other things.

"You seem to believe that you have the authority to arbitrate the scope of a colleague's official activities," Jordan wrote on June 9. "Respectfully, I do not answer to you or the other members of the Select Committee. I am accountable to the voters of Ohio's Fourth Congressional District."

Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia

Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia has faced scrutiny for leading a tour group through the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021.Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

The select committee has repeatedly asked Loudermilk to testify about a tour group he led through the US Capitol complex on January 5, 2021 that included at least one person who returned the following day during the riot.

The committee's first letter on May 19, 2022 mentioned that it had reviewed security footage of said tour and that investigators had questions about where they had been.

House Committee on Administration ranking member Rodney Davis defended Loudermilk a day later on social media, calling reports of GOP-led reconnaissance tours "demonstrably false" and urging the Capitol Police to release all security footage from January 5 to clear the air.

The committee released clips of the Loudermilk-led tour on June 15 and followed up with another letter asking him to explain why one of the photo-snapping group members appeared to be documenting areas "not typically of interest to tourists, including hallways, staircases, and security checkpoints."

Loudermilk responded on Twitter, lambasting the committee for "undermining the Capitol Police and doubling down on their smear campaign."

Loudermilk's account of who was on the tour and what they were interested in has shifted over the past 18 months.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy talks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington, DC on April 6, 2022.Scott J. Applewhite/AP

The select committee in a January 12, 2022 letter asked McCarthy to testify about his communications with Trump before, during, and after January 6, 2021 regarding challenging the election results. McCarthy has acknowledged having at least one conversation with Trump while MAGA supporters were swarming the Capitol, but has, so far, declined to discuss it with the committee.

The committee subpoenaed him about it on May 25.

McCarthy told reporters that he's sent the committee two official responses through his attorney, Elliot S. Berke, and said he's considering releasing said letters to the press. McCarthy aides did not respond to Insider's request for copies of the letters.

CNN reports that in one letter, Berke accused the committee of playing partisan politics.

"Its only objective appears to be to attempt to score political points or damage its political opponents acting like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee one day and the Department of Justice the next," Berke wrote.

When asked why Democrats should comply with any congressional investigations House Republicans choose to pursue if they claim the majority next year given the defiance he and others have shown about January 6, McCarthy said the difference is "we won't be illegitimate."

"We won't issue subpoenas going after our political opponents," McCarthy told reporters at a June 9 press conference. "We'll do exactly what Congress is supposed to do. We'll uphold the Constitution."

Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania

Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania photographed outside the US Capitol on December 3, 2020.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

The select committee in a December 20, 2021 letter asked Perry to testify about his communications with Trump administration officials about installing Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Clark as acting US attorney general to help overturn the 2020 election results.

Perry accused the "political witch hunt" of "fabricating headlines" in a May 12 press release, but didn't specify whether he'd testify.

Perry's attorney John P. Rowley III closed the door on that in the response he sent the committee on May 24.

Rowley wrote that Perry declined to testify before a committee "that is operating in contravention of its own rules" and "committed to scoring political points, rather than focusing on the troublemakers who broke into the Capitol."

Perry has also denied that he sought a presidential pardon for anything related to the 2020 election tampering. January 6 committee cochair Liz Cheney said during the June 9 hearing that investigators had uncovered evidence that Perry and other GOP lawmakers had angled for pardons after the Capitol was attacked.

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These 7 House Republicans aren't cooperating with the January 6 committee and here's how they've justified blowing off the investigation - Yahoo News

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who voted to impeach then-President Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, said on Sunday he believes Trump will run again in 2024 and that voters still like him a lot.

Upton predicted to CNN State of the Union co-anchor Dana Bash that the former president will be difficult to beat if he pursues a third bid for the White House amid high prices at the pump and other economic challenges.

Hes had a number of decisive wins where hes endorsed candidates that they have won, Upton said of Trump. Hes had a few losses as well, but he certainly entertains a majority of the Republican base and will be hard to stop.

Democrats are facing historical headwinds as this years midterm elections approach, a political problem exacerbated by voters concerns over President Bidens handling of the economy.

As we look at the economy, we look at gas prices, all these different things, folks are not really happy with the Biden administration, which is why he is mired at a level even below where Donald Trump was at this point in his tenure, Upton said on Sunday.

Bidens approval rating clocked in at 39 percent, according to a USA Today-Suffolk University poll released last Monday that mirrors other recent dismal surveys for the president.

Meanwhile, Upton has faced increasing criticism from his own party after supporting legislation to establish an independent commission to investigate Jan. 6 alongside 34 other House Republicans as well as joining nine of his Republican colleagues in impeaching Trump.

One of those 10 Republicans, Rep. Tom Rice (S.C.), was defeated in his GOP primary last Tuesday against former state Rep. Russell Fry, whom Trump endorsed.

Despite recent victories from many Trump-backed candidates, Upton, who is not running for reelection, said on Sunday he expects some Republicans who voted to impeach Trump will remain in office.

We will see when these primaries are over, but, yes, I think there will be some of the 10 that are standing, Upton said.

Originally posted here:
Republican who voted to impeach Trump says former president will be hard to stop - The Hill

When retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig said at Thursdays blockbuster hearing of the Jan. 6 House committee that "Donald Trump, his allies and his supporters are a clear and present danger to our democracy, it served as yet another hair-on-fire warning that the former president and those around him have no fealty to the rule of law or democratic traditions.

Trump was told that Pence had no constitutional standing to hand the election to Trump and his attempt to do so would break the law. But that didnt stop him.

In Republican-dominated state legislatures around the country, new laws based on Trumps false claims about electoral fraud are making it more difficult to vote, and in particular, to cast mail-in ballots. More than 100 Republicans whove repeated Trumps lies about the 2020 election have won GOP primaries. Even this week, Republican election officials in New Mexico refused to certify a local election over bogus concerns about the use of Dominion voting machines, which Trump and his supporters wrongly vilified.

Even more dismaying is that none of Trumps aides who rejected his lie and his plot have done so publicly. The committee showed video testimony from Jason Miller, a Trump campaign adviser, dismissing Eastmans legal theories as "crazy" but the committee also showed his appearance on Fox News on Jan.5, demanding that Pence stop the certification.

Those around Trump either told him what he wanted to hear or enabled his fantasies. Even as he continued to spread misinformation and tell his supporters that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, they said nothing. They only talked after they were subpoenaed.

Earlier this week, we heard from the committee that Trump was told multiple times that his claims about a stolen election were not true and that he had lost the 2020 election fairly and squarely. But that didnt stop him, and hasnt stopped him from repeating the lie over and over again.

On Thursday, the committee presented evidence that Trump was told multiple times, including by Vice President Mike Pence, that his efforts to get the vice president to stop the certification of electoral votes on Jan.6 would not fly. Trump was told that Pence had no constitutional standing to hand the election to Trump, and his attempt to do so would break the law. But that didnt stop him, and he continued to publicly and privately pressure Pence up through Jan.6.

On the morning Congress was to meet to certify the results, according to evidence the committee presented Thursday, Trump, in a heated phone call with Pence, called him a wimp and a pussy for refusing to do what he asked. Trump went to the Ellipse that day and further admonished Pence in public.

As the insurrection was unfolding, Trump tweeted, Mike Pence didnt have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands truth! From all appearances, that electronic communication from Trump only seems to have further antagonized the rioters attacking the Capitol.

To Luttigs point about allies and supporters, Trump didn't act alone. His top legal adviser and enabler, John Eastman, continued to push his harebrained legal theory that Pence could stop the certification even after virtually every member of the White House staff, and Pences own chief of staff and counsel, told him it was a no-go.

White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said he told Eastman youre going to cause riots in the streets. Eastman allegedly shrugged and said America has witnessed such violence before.

According to Thursdays testimony from Pences legal counsel, Greg Jacob, Eastman acknowledged that his plan would violate the Electoral Count Act and, thus, break the law. Jacob said Eastman also acknowledged that the Supreme Court would reject his legal reasoning, likely unanimously.

In video testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said he told Eastman youre going to cause riots in the streets. Eastman reportedly shrugged and said America had witnessed such violence before.

Even after Trumps supporters had trashed the Capitol building, Jacob testified, Eastman was still lobbying Pences staff to have the vice president stop the certification.

And then, in what is perhaps the most telling and gobsmacking moment of the hearing, the committee acknowledged the existence of an email Eastman sent to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani asking to be placed on a list of individuals to be pardoned by Trump.

The duplicity is stunning. Trump and Eastman understood full well that what they were proposing was illegal, could lead to violence and would fundamentally undermine American democracy.

Apparently, they didnt care.

When his plan fell apart, Eastman also beseeched the president to grant him a pardon so he couldnt be held accountable for his actions.

Trump continues to beat the drum of the big lie by lying to his supporters and demanding that Republican officeholders accept his lunacy or face his political wrath.

Rather than reject Trumps cascade of lies as the overwhelming majority of Trumps White House aides and the vice president did at the time Republicans continue to enable Trumps assault on American democracy.

In short, as Luttig suggests, the dangers represented by Trump and the cowardice of those who have allowed him to take a stronghold over the Republican Party remain clear and present. None of this was inevitable. Its the result of weak men and women who remained silent.

Michael A. Cohen, a columnist for MSNBC and a fellow with the Eurasia Group Foundation, writes the political newsletterTruth and Consequences. He has been a columnist at The Boston Globe, The Guardian and Foreign Policy, and he is the author of three books, themost recent beingClear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans.

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Trump and January 6 will continue to haunt America - MSNBC

Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux

The January 6 hearings are about the events of a single day, but they implicate a much broader phenomenon: the Republican Partys faltering commitment to democracy. The mob attack on Congress a year and a half ago was merely the most grotesque manifestation of Donald Trumps rejection of democracy, and Trump himself merely the most grotesque manifestation of his partys authoritarian impulses.

Parties that are committed to democracy must, at minimum, do two things: accept defeat and reject violence, wrote the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way earlier this year. Trump has built a movement that does neither. And while he is justifiably known for his petty egocentrism, he has finally and genuinely infused this movement with beliefs that are greater than his self-interest and whose power will outlast him.

The hearings, hoping to gain the widest possible approval, have devoted respectful attention to the perspective of the Republican Partys mainstream. That perspective was expressed by Trumps former campaign manager Bill Stepien, who testified, There were two groups. We called them kind of my team and Rudys team, referring to Trumps onetime personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. I didnt mind being characterized as being part of Team Normal. During his deposition, former attorney general William Barr, another member of Team Normal, colorfully heaped scorn on Trumps claims to have been the victim of systemic voter fraud.

Nobody should dismiss the importance of Team Normals refusal to follow Trumps conspiracy theories to the barricades, which might have averted a constitutional crisis. But the Republican mainstream has used the existence of Team Normal to dismiss Trumps effort to overturn the election as little more than a prank gone wrong. The Wall Street Journal protested that the committee makes it seem as if there was a chance of success. There wasnt. It was an impossible plan hatched by screwballs, and it would have gone down as such if the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers hadnt breached the Capitol. Sure, Trump might have gone off the deep end along with a handful of advisers, but Team Normal always had it under control.

One flaw in the Team Normal theory is that its not always easy to detect who is on the team. Giulianis colleagues remembered him from his days as Americas Mayor and might not have grasped how quickly he had radicalized. John Eastman, who spearheaded Trumps various legal strategies to steal the presidency, and Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a fervent foot soldier in the attack on the 2020 results, operated within respectable Republican circles for years. A Justice Department lawyer named Jeffrey Clark had plotted with Trump to seize control of the DOJ and declare the election void, only to be narrowly thwarted by Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and other officials who had assumed their colleague was an ordinary, non-fascist Republican lawyer. Rosen was stunned, reported the Washington Post. He had known Clark for years and once had worked with him at Kirkland & Ellis. Rosen told the Senate committee that he wondered whats going on with Jeff Clark. That this is inconsistent with how I perceived him in the past.

Another flaw is that Team Normal was willing to engage in a great deal of abnormality. Trump was planting the seeds to challenge the election outcome for months in advance, depicting mail ballots as a source of uncontrollable fraud. Barr echoed these lies, nonsensically claiming that people in foreign countries could easily mail in fake ballots. Trumps plan was to encourage his supporters to vote in person and use the fact that those ballots were counted first to claim victory. Jonathan Swan of Axios reported that Trump was telling confidants about this scheme before the election.

And while they now pronounce themselves shocked, shocked, to have discovered gambling in the establishment, the response by Team Normal to a sitting presidents attempt to steal an election was neither deep nor sustained. Barr resigned quietly, publishing a sycophantic letter depicting Trump as a victim, rather than a perpetrator, of partisan hardball and political conspiracies. Stepien said nothing and is now working for a primary challenger to Liz Cheney, who has been ostracized for criticizing Trumps coup attempt.

The deepest flaw in the Team Normal worldview, and the point at which its belief system turns from merely nave to dangerous, is its assumption that it is safe to give power back to Trumps party even if Trump is leading it. Barr made this plain when he admitted that while he strongly prefers a different nominee, he would support Trump again should he win the 2024 primary. It is the underlying premise of the non-Trump Republican Establishment.

This complacency fails to account for the partys rapid transformation since Trump left Washington on Air Force One to the sounds of the Village People. Trumps intraparty critics have portrayed his relentless focus on litigating the election as the self-defeating tactic of a loser. Trump is acting on an entirely personal and selfish priority, complains National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry. Theres no principle at stake in embracing the Jan. 6 mob or advancing 2020 conspiracy theories. In truth, it is actually an effective organizing tool built around the unifying idea that Democratic election victories are inherently illegitimate. He has inspired millions of followers and harnessed their energy to reshape the party into a vehicle to advance his vision.

Well over 100 Republican nominees for national or statewide office explicitly endorse Trumps fantasy that the election was plagued by large-scale fraud. A much greater number of Republicans simply refuse to say one way or another if Joe Biden won the election fairly. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, asked recently about Barrs confession that Trump had no grounds to dispute the election results, first asserted that something fishy did occur (You saw some states not follow their state-passed legislation) before pivoting to his desire not to keep relitigating 2020.

The party is split between those Republicans who refuse to take a stance on Trumps coup and those who actively endorse it, with the latter faction rapidly gaining ground. The Republican nominee for Nevada secretary of state, a job that would oversee elections, has asserted, Your vote hasnt counted for decades. You havent elected anybody. The people that are in office have been selected. Pennsylvanias Republican candidate for governor not only supports Trumps election-fraud lie but was present at the storming of the Capitol on January 6.

Recently, the New York Times reported that members of the Proud Boys, a paramilitary sect that planned an operation to infiltrate the Capitol on January 6, are joining the Miami-Dade Republican Executive Committee. The groups chairman feebly protested, Yes, we have different points of view in our party. Thats how we are. And my job as Republican chairman is to protect everyones First Amendment right, however wrong they may be, as though political parties have no right to engage in viewpoint discrimination.

Asked if he approved of his home citys Republican organization welcoming Proud Boys, Senator Marco Rubio refused to say. (Well, when you ask me about the communists and socialists that are part of the local Democratic Party, then we can talk about whos a member of the Republican Party.) Rubio, a barometrically perfect measure of the center of Republican opinion, is giving his tacit endorsement of a modern version of the Brownshirts joining the party cadres.

A party that could be trusted not to launch another attack on democracy would be willing and eager to expunge its sins. The Republicans refusal to reckon with January 6 and exclude the insurrectionists is the strongest sign that they will try it again the next chance they have.

Want more stories like this one?Subscribe nowto support our journalism and get unlimited access to our coverage. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the June 20, 2022, issue ofNew YorkMagazine.

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January 6 Hearings: Republicans Will Do It Again - New York Magazine

The conservative intelligentsia is in the grip of a profound demographic pessimisma sense that a diversifying America necessarily spells doom for the right, and that the movements only hope is therefore to halt, or at least sharply reduce, immigrant inflows. Portents of demographic doom have long been a mainstay of conservative media, whether on the Fox News prime-time lineup or in highbrow journals of opinion, and embracing restrictionism has become a surefire way for ambitious Republicans to signal their edginess and resolve.

But a funny thing has happened on the road to conservative demographic doom. Since 2016, a rising number of first- and second-generation Americans have been gravitating to the political right, a trend that predates the current political travails of the Biden administration and that has grown particularly pronounced among voters of Latin American origin. Cosmopolitan liberals who have long imagined themselves the vanguard of a rising progressive majority are now confronting the possibility that they are an overrepresented rump, with political influence that stems more from their control over elite institutions than widespread popular support.

Given this emerging political realignment, immigration, and the incorporation of immigrants and their descendants into American civic life, is proving less an obstacle to conservative political ambitions than an opportunity to expand the conservative coalition. Rather than cower in fear at the progressive lefts supposed efforts to use immigrant inflows to remake the U.S. electorate, as some on the restrictionist right would have it, why dont conservatives embrace an immigration strategy that can move America in a more conservative direction?

The term restrictionism conflates two distinct ideas: that our country should take in fewer immigrants, and that Americans, and Americans alone, have the right to choose whom to admit to the United States. If the former is polarizing, the latter commands broad public support, which helps explain why Americans have traditionally drawn a sharp distinction between legal and illegal immigration, perceiving the latter as a violation of the rules the country has established for selecting newcomers. Further, there is good reason to believe that what matters to GOP voters is not absolute reduction but control. The big question, in other words, is not How many immigrants? but Who decides, and on what grounds?

From the May 2021 issue: America never wanted the tired, poor, huddle masses

The key is to focus on what I call selectionism, or the unambiguous defense of the American peoples right to choose whom to admit and whom to exclude, and to do so on the basis of promoting the national interest. By abandoning restrictionism for selectionism, ambitious Republicans could not only assuage the concerns of their base while promoting the interests of the countrythey could also, potentially, chart a path out of the current immigration deadlock that would appeal to a broad, multiracial majority of Americans.

The politics of this moment represent a striking reversal. As recently as a decade ago, many of the Republican Partys rising stars were calling for a major increase in immigrant admissions. Today, in contrast, virtually all Republicans have united around the cause of immigration restriction. And though this is true for a number of reasons, perhaps the most salient is the aforementioned conviction that immigrants and their descendants are destined to become foot soldiers of the progressive left.

Anxieties over ethnic change are a familiar feature of U.S. politics, and calls for immigration restriction grounded in a belief in fixed ethnic identities and political allegiances have a certain realpolitik logic. Cosmopolitan liberals really have described immigrants and their descendants as part of a coalition of the ascendant that can foster progressive political dominance, and at least some of their opponents have taken this demographic triumphalism seriously. The trouble with this brand of ethnocultural determinism, however, is that it reflects a political era that is drawing to a close.

Until very recently, one could take this notion that immigrant origins are a reliable predictor of support for Democratic candidates for granted. Drawing on data from the 2016 presidential election, for example, the political scientist George Hawley found that established Americansnative-born Americans with native-born parents and grandparentswere significantly less supportive of Democratic candidates than first- and second-generation Americans, even after controlling for a wide range of individual-level attributes. And though one could argue that the unique circumstances surrounding Donald Trumps polarizing presidential campaign played a role in this outcome, as Hawley readily acknowledges, it nevertheless helped make the case for conservative demographic pessimism.

Yet today, the conservative movement finds itself on the cusp of what could be a prolonged period of political success. If non-college-educated voters continue to move rightward, as many observers on the left and right confidently expect, Republicans will soon have an even larger advantage in contests for the U.S. Senate and Electoral College, which Democrats will find exceedingly difficult to overcome. This possibility has engendered dread among progressive intellectuals, who fear the prospect of a more powerful GOP, and it has given rise to popularist calls for a new Democratic politics that is more responsive to working-class interests and sensibilities. But to take full advantage of this opportunity, the right would do well to embrace selectionism.

Consider that most Americans strongly prefer educated immigrants in high-status jobs over other immigrants, and this preference varies very little according to education, partisanship, labor-market position, and ethnocentrism, according to a study by the political scientists Jens Hainmueller and Daniel Hopkins. As a result, high-skill immigration has had a markedly different political impact than low-skill immigration.

In 2018, the economists Anna Maria Mayda and Giovanni Peri released an analysis of the impact of immigrant inflows on county-level election outcomes from 1990 to 2010. They found that an increase in the proportion of college-educated immigrants in a given countys population was associated with increased support for Democratic candidates, while an increase in the proportion of non-college-educated immigrants was associated with increased support for Republican candidates, a result that they hypothesized was tied to the perceived costs and benefits of immigrant inflows. That is, because higher-skilled newcomers were seen as generating positive spillovers for their communities, they boosted support for the more pro-immigration Democrats; a lower-skilled influx, in contrast, buoyed restrictionist Republicans.

From the October 2021 issue: Plan Z for immigration

In the years since 2010, however, the immigration landscape has changed. In the 2000s, it was not uncommon for Republicans to back the expansion of low-wage guest-worker programs to signal their pro-business bona fides, a stance that, as Mayda and Peris work suggests, engendered a conservative backlash in rural regions. Outside of agriculture, however, GOP-aligned employers and donors have lost interest in spending their political capital on making it easier to recruit low-skill immigrant labor. The rise of offshoring has meant that large domestic employers have less economic interest in lobbying for low-skill immigration today than in earlier eras, when low-skill, low-wage manufacturing represented a larger share of the U.S. economy. Weve seen this pattern in many of the worlds market democracies. More and more, support for low-skill immigration is rooted in humanitarianism, not hard-nosed economic self-interest. The result is that the Republican elite has largely jettisoned its politically costly commitment to low-skill immigration, thus allowing for a pivot to a more politically appealing selectionist stance.

At the same time, as the Democratic Partys activists and donors have moved leftward, Democratic policy makers have come to reject the default expectation that new immigrants should be economically self-reliant, an expectation closely tied to selectionism. During the welfare-reform era, conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats worked together to pass limits on immigrant eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, non-emergency Medicaid, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and a range of other programs, an approach dubbed immigration yes, welfare no. This proved politically effective for immigration advocates, as there is evidence that U.S. voters are more concerned about immigrants collecting public benefits than they are about the prospect of immigrant wage competition.

More recently, however, progressives in the media and the nonprofit sector have come to place a heavy rhetorical emphasis on the moral and humanitarian dimension of immigration policy, suggesting that denying entry, and public benefits, to almost any would-be migrant would be unacceptably cruel. Democrats in state legislatures and in Congress have worked to expand access to public-benefit programs to immigrants, including unauthorized noncitizens. On the left, immigration yes, welfare no is giving way to immigration yes, welfare yes, a stance that remains anathema to conservatives and moderates. The implication of this position is not only that U.S. citizens have no say in who is admitted to the country but also that American taxpayers must foot the bill for immigrants who cant support themselves. Given the unpopularity of this arrangement, restrictionism is becoming a more potent wedge issue for Republicans running against Democrats who find themselves constrained by elite progressive opinion.

But if restrictionism has greater appealat least to some votersthan the more self-flagellating forms of progressive humanitarianism, it is still not a position capable of building a durable national majority. Indeed, these two poles in the immigration debate feed off each other, locking the country in an unproductive, zero-sum dispute. Conservatives and some moderates, fearful that liberals wish to pursue a de facto open-borders policy, embrace restrictionist politicians as the least-bad option. Meanwhile, elite progressives, correctly judging that full-blown restrictionism alienates many voters, feel little pressure to moderate their rhetoric or take concerns over low-skilled and irregular migration seriously. The result is an immigration debate pitting the woke against the MAGA, with the broad majority of Americans of all colors left out. For Republicans, selectionism offers a way to break this impasseone that meets the concerns of their existing voters while broadening the partys appeal to the first- and second-generation voters already trending in its direction. The children and grandchildren of post-1965 immigrants would be especially drawn to a selectionist approach that welcomes productive newcomers while rejecting any compulsion to set immigration policy on the basis of the racialist fixations of cosmopolitan liberals.

Adam Serwer: The real border crisis

As for what a selectionist immigration agenda might entail, much depends on whether it should center on bloodless materialism or some robust vision for how newcomers might shape Americas cultural and political character. In light of the changing global economic and demographic landscape, and challenges and opportunities as varied as renewed great-power competition and the rise of intelligent machines, there is a strong case for focusing on attracting superstar talent. As Caleb Watney of the Institute for Progress has observed, the advantage to a country that attracts geniuses compounds over time, as clusters form around themtalent attracts more talentwhich helps all the individuals and firms in such clusters become more productive than they would be in isolation. Post-Brexit Britain has moved sharply in this direction. Having asserted the sovereign right to control immigrant inflows, the British government is adopting a points-based immigration system and launching a new high potential individual visa aimed at graduates of the worlds most prestigious research universities. And though populist critics warn that the governments selectionist approach is inviting an anti-immigration revolt, the survey evidence thus far suggests otherwise.

Progressive humanitarians and conservative restrictionists alike would no doubt denounce this frankly elitist approach to immigrant selection, but 78 percent of U.S. adults support encouraging high-skill immigration, including 63 percent of the minority of voters who favor reducing immigrant inflows overall. While evidence on the economic and fiscal impact of low-skill migrants on the native-born is contested, there is an overwhelming academic consensus on the economic benefits associated with high-skill inflows.

Nevertheless, I dont anticipate that a selectionism grounded in a narrowly utilitarian calculus will carry the day. If conservatives do eventually embrace a more creative and aggressive approach to immigrant admissions, as I believe they will, it wont be because of arguments about maximizing Americas growth potential, important though they may be. I suspect it will be in response to more-contingent developments. The ongoing incorporation of anti-socialist Venezuelans into the conservative coalition, for example, might lead Republicans to look favorably on other South Americans seeking to flee the rising influence of Marxist political movements in their homeland. In a similar vein, the political awakening among Asian Americans opposed to racial preferences and alarmed by rising urban violence might cast Chinese migrs fleeing their native countrys intensifying authoritarianism in a more favorable light. Rank-and-file conservatives might also see wisdom in welcoming Ukrainian refugees, or in raiding the most-skilled scientists, workers, and entrepreneurs from Russia and other geopolitical adversaries. And though the demands of progressive humanitarianism dont resonate with the right, at least some religious conservatives can be counted on to champion the interests of Christian minorities facing persecution in Africa and elsewhere, a brand of selectionism grounded in cultural affinity.

It would be foolish to expect Republican politicians to suddenly start disavowing their restrictionist commitments. But as more and more first- and second-generation voters turn right, the shrewdest conservative political entrepreneurs will come to recognize that immigration can represent a demographic boon more than demographic doom.

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How Republicans Can Win on Immigration - The Atlantic