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GOP lawmakers introduced two dozen bills that would make it harder to vote in Texas ahead of Friday's filing deadline. Those bills would bar counties from sending absentee ballot request forms to people who did not ask for them, limit counties' authority to expand voting hours, require faster purges of voter rolls, make it easier to challenge signatures on absentee ballots and more.

Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican sponsors of two of those bills on Monday identified the bogeyman that inspired the legislative pushes: Harris County, the state's largest county and the home of Houston. Democrats have made major gains in recent elections in what was once a conservative-leaning area, helping the party narrow the GOP's margins in statewide elections and giving Republicans incentive to seek to limit votes there.

"We must pass laws to prevent election officials from jeopardizing the election process," Abbott said after detailing Harris County's handling of the 2020 election.

The bills are part of a larger push across Republican-controlled statehouses -- including Georgia and Arizona -- to implement new laws to suppress votes following former President Donald Trump's lie that voter fraud was to blame for his loss last year to President Joe Biden.

Abbott and other Republicans have offered no evidence of widespread fraud in Texas. The only example Abbott cited Monday was a 2014 case in which a man was charged with offering cocaine and cash for votes in a school board race in Donna, Texas.

Still, Abbott claimed that efforts to broaden voting access such as those of Harris County introduce "the potential for voter fraud."

"There's really one thing all of us can and should agree upon, and that is we must have trust and confidence in our elections," Abbott said. "One way to do that is to make sure that we reduce the potential for voter fraud in our elections."

He made no mention of Republicans' role in undermining that trust by falsely claiming that the results in several swing states were tainted and attempting to overturn them in courts and in Congress.

Matt Angle, a Democratic strategist who founded the Lone Star Project, a political action committee that backs Democrats, said Republicans are targeting Harris County because of Democrats' rising vote share in -- along with Tarrant County, home of Fort Worth -- "the two kind of linchpin counties."

"When Democrats get up to about 55% consistently in Harris County and when we carry Tarrant County, it'll be hard for Republicans to make that up in the rural counties," Angle said.

The legislative moves by GOP lawmakers come after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led a lawsuit by Republican state attorneys general from 17 states to disenfranchise the voters of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by overturning their results based on unfounded claims of fraud. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in November offered a $1 million reward for evidence of voter fraud in Texas, but has not yet paid anyone.

"It's part of the big lie," Lina Hidalgo, who as Harris County judge is the county's chief executive, said Monday on CNN. "It's part of the intimidation, the confusion, the antics that (the Republican Party) has engaged in for so many generations that culminated in President Trump asking people to overturn the election."

"What they're doing is filing bills that are essentially a poll tax that weaponize the election system against our own voters," Hidalgo said. "Obviously, these Republicans are hoping their work is going to disenfranchise mostly Democrats. But the truth of the matter is, it's going to disenfranchise both parties. And what they're proposing is absolutely tragic and reminiscent of the worst of what we've seen in Texas and across the South since Reconstruction."

Meanwhile, Cain, the Texas House Republican who was alongside Abbott on Monday, claimed that "the only form of voter suppression" is illegal votes being cast.

"You know, the only form of voter suppression is when an illegitimate voter, an ineligible voter, casts a ballot. When an ineligible voter casts their ballot, what they're actually doing is they're silencing the voice of an American citizen, of someone that is eligible to vote. It's wrong and we should stop it," Cain said.

Bettencourt said he was pushing for "uniformity" among counties' early voting hours, which he said couldn't be viewed as "anything but a positive because everyone can view those hours."

"I don't think there's any denial of voter rights with that. I think uniformity is what we need in Texas so rural voters coming home from work have the same access as urban voters," he said.

Abbott in February declared that election security would be an emergency item on the Texas Legislature's agenda for its 2021 session.

"Election fraud is unacceptable, and that's exactly why I made it an emergency item this session," he said Monday. "Our objective is very simple, and that is to ensure that every eligible voter gets to vote. It's also to ensure that only eligible votes are the ones that count at the ballot box."

Over and over, Abbott and the GOP lawmakers pointed to Harris County's efforts to expand voting access in 2020 as examples of what they are seeking to prohibit.

Other Republican legislators have also cited Harris County, including state Rep. Jared Patterson, who said that "irregularities in Harris County polling hours of operation and the opportunity for voter fraud when no one is looking" motivated a bill he introduced that would prohibit counties from allowing early voting after 9 p.m.

Bettencourt called for 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. voting hours everywhere, and said keeping the same hours everywhere "helps rural Texans feel like they have the same opportunity as urban Texans" -- despite the reality that urban voters often face long lines that do not exist in rural areas.

Proposals such as Bettencourt's Senate Bill 7, which would bar public officials from sending absentee ballot request forms and would require identification with returned mail-in ballots, and Cain's House Bill 6, which similarly bans the mailing of absentee ballot request forms and also would block county elections officials from altering elections procedures without the approval of the Texas secretary of state, largely seek to bar local elections officials from making their own decisions about administering elections.

"A lot of them sound pretty technical but what they really do is increase the authority of the secretary of state of Texas to direct the counties to do specific things," Angle said.

Bradner reported from Chicago and Gallagher reported from Houston.

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Texas Republicans target Houston with raft of bills seeking new voting restrictions - CNN

On an invitation-only call last week, Sen. Ted Cruz huddled with Republican state lawmakers to call them to battle on the issue of voting rights.

Democrats are trying to expand voting rights to illegal aliens and child molesters, he claimed, and Republicans must do all they can to stop them. If they push through far-reaching election legislation now before the Senate, the GOP wont win elections again for generations, he said.

Asked if there was room to compromise, Cruz was blunt: No.

H.R. 1s only objective is to ensure that Democrats can never again lose another election, that they will win and maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and of the state legislatures for the next century, Cruz said told the group organized by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed, conservative group that provides model legislation to state legislators.

Cruzs statements, recorded by a person on the call and obtained by The Associated Press, capture the building intensity behind Republicans nationwide campaign to restrict access to the ballot. From statehouses to Washington, the fight over who can vote and how often cast as voting integrity has galvanized a Republican Party in search of unifying mission in the post-Trump era. For a powerful network of conservatives, voting restrictions are now viewed as a political life-or-death debate, and the fight has all-but eclipsed traditional Republican issues like abortion, gun rights and tax cuts as an organizing tool.

That potency is drawing influential figures and money from across the right, ensuring that the clash over the legislation in Washington will be partisan and expensive.

It kind of feels like an all-hands-on-deck moment for the conservative movement, when the movement writ large realizes the sanctity of our elections is paramount and voter distrust is at an all-time high, said Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action, an influential conservative advocacy group in Washington. Weve had a bit of a battle cry from the grassroots, urging us to pick this fight.

Several prominent groups have recently entered the fray: Anti-abortion rights group, the Susan B. Anthony List, has partnered with another conservative Christian group to fund a new organization, the Election Transparency Initiative. FreedomWorks, a group formed to push for smaller government, has initiated a $10 million calling for tighter voting laws in the states. It will be run by Cleta Mitchell, a prominent Republican attorney who advised former President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Heritage Action has announced a new effort also focused on changes in state voting laws. It included a $700,000 ad campaign to back GOP-written bills in Georgia, the groups first foray into advocating for state policy.

So far, the states have been the center of the debate.More than 250 bills have have been introduced in 43 states that would change how Americans vote, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice, which backs expanded voting access. That includes measures that would limit mail voting, cut hours that polling places are open and impose restrictions that Democrats argue amount to the greatest assault on voting rights since Jim Crow.

That push was triggered by Trumps lies that he lost the presidential election due to fraud claims rejected by the courts and by prominent Republicans and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that those groundless claims sparked.

But the fight over voting laws now extends far beyond Trump and is shifting to Washington, where the Democratic-led Senate will soon consider an array of voting changes. The package, known as H.R. 1, would require states to automatically register eligible voters, as well as offer same-day registration. It would limit states ability to purge registered voters from their rolls and restore former felons voting rights. Among dozens of other provisions, it would also require states to offer 15 days of early voting and allow no-excuse absentee balloting. Democrats, who are marshaling their own resources behind the bill, argue it is necessary to block what they describe as voter suppression efforts in the states.

Republicans contend its a grab bag of long-sought Democratic goals aimed at tilting elections in their favor. Cruz claimed it would lead to voting by millions of criminals and illegal aliens.

The bill says America would be better off if more murderers were voting, America would be better off if more rapists and child molesters were voting, Cruz said.

He added that he had recently participated in an all-day strategy call with national conservative leaders to coordinate opposition. The leaders agreed that Republicans would seek to rebrand the Democratic-backed bill as the Corrupt Politicians Act, he said.

The focus on voting is visible across the conservative movement, even among groups with no clear interest in the voting debate. At a televised town hall in February, leading Christian conservative Tony Perkins fielded several questions about voting before tackling topics on the social issues his Family Research Council typically focuses on.

Perkins answered the question by recalling how voting laws were made stricter in his native Louisiana after a close 1996 Senate race won by Democrats. He noted that the state now votes solidly Republican.

When you have free, fair elections, youre going to have outcomes that are positive, Perkins said before urging viewers to push state lawmakers to restore election integrity.

Stronger voting regulations have long been a conservative goal, driven by old and some say outdated conventional wisdom that Republicans thrive in elections with lower turnout, and Democrats in ones with more voters. That has translated to GOP efforts to tighten voter identification laws and require more frequent voter roll purges. Both efforts tend to disproportionally exclude Black and Latino voters, groups that lean Democratic.

In a sign of the increasing attention to the issue last year, Leonard Leo, a Trump advisor and one of the strategists behind the conservative focus on the federal judiciary, formed The Honest Elections Project to push for voting restrictions and coordinate GOP effort to monitor the 2020 vote.

But the issue expanded beyond what many conservatives expected. As Trump groundlessly blamed fraud for his loss, and he and his allies lost more than 50 court cases trying to overturn the election, his conservative base became convinced of vague irregularities and holes in the voting system.

While Leos group, like other parts of the establishment GOP, kept a distance from such claims, state lawmakers stepped in quickly with bills aimed at fixing phantom problems and restoring confidence in the system.

Were certain our vote will count, were certain our vote is secure, were certain our system is fair and not having any sort of nefarious activities, said Iowa Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, a Republican who authored a wide-ranging election bill that shortened the states early voting period.

Similarly, other outside groups soon jumped into the debate thats roiling their activists who write the letters, make phone calls and send the small donations that keep the groups relevant.

Its gone up the chain of priority, said Noah Wall, executive vice president of FreedomWorks, which trained 60 top activists in Orlando last weekend on voting issues. If you were to poll our activists right now, election integrity is going to be near the top of the list. Twelve months ago, that wasnt the case.

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Erika Geiss felt a tinge of dj vu on January 6. She watched in horror and disbelief as thousands of riotersdriven by Trumps lie that the 2020 election was fraudulentscaled the outer walls of the USCapitol and violently forced their way inside the building and into the Senate chambers. But the ire and vitriol that Geiss says she saw watching live coverage of the Capitol insurrectionists on TV at her home didnt surprise her. It was all too familiar. We saw that here, says Geiss, a state senator in Michigan representing a district just south of Detroit. And we saw it mounting and escalating throughout April.

On April 30, 2020, as Geiss and her colleagues convened for a legislative session in the Michigan Statehouse, a demonstration against the states stay-at-home orders took a harrowing turn as the protesters forced their way inside the building. Just as the insurrectionists did on January 6, the Michigan rioters broke through barricades and doors and pushed their way past security personnel until they entered the Senate chamber. Though the Michigan event never turned physically violent against lawmakers, it came quite close as protesters hovered and shouted in the galleries, many wearing bulletproof vests and armed with rifles and AR-15-style assault weapons. In hindsight, the riot at the Michigan Statehouse in April seems like a dress rehearsal for what happened eight months later at the US Capitol.

But theres a key difference in the aftermath of both riots that highlights an alarming divide growing in the Republican Party. Whereas the Congressional Republicans are trying to figure out what the future of their party looks likeweighing how much of Trumpism and its extremist elements they can cling to without totally repelling more moderate votersa growing number of GOP lawmakers at the state level are doubling down on their radical viewpoints, dangerous conspiracy theories, and association with paramilitary militias and other violent extremist groups. For every Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) currently in Congress, there are dozens of more like her at the state leveland with close ties with right-wing extremist groups.

After four years of embracing Trumpand all the ugly, racist rhetoric and violence that came with himsome of the more cravenly opportunistic Republicans are now trying to leave it behind. It can be a clumsy sight to behold: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) delivered a scathing condemnation of Trumps actions leading up to January 6, but still voted to acquit him during impeachment (though seven of his Republican colleagues crossed party lines on that vote, a record number). And 11 Republicans in the House voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments over her history of racist remarks and conspiracy theories. But the national party is still very much beholden to Trump. At the Conservative Political Action Conference two weeks ago, Trump delivered the keynote address, where he gave an authoritarian speech with a warning. With your help, we will take back the House. We will win the Senate. And then a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House, Trump said. And I wonder who that will be.

The scene at the state level makes one thing clear: Trump still dominates. The Wyoming GOP formally censured Rep. Liz Cheney for voting to impeach Trump. (And a number of other state Republican parties followed suit and censured their respective congressional leaders for not pushing election-related conspiracy theories and turning their back on the former president.) Meanwhile, radical Republican state lawmakers who were once considered fringe members of their own party have moved to the front and center, thanks to the Trump playbook. Many of these folks have been in our legislatures for a while, says Carolyn Fiddler, the communications director for Daily Kos. And they always leaned in that direction. But Trump normalized it. And he demonstrated that you can use it as a way to gain and exercise power.

In the immediate aftermath of the April riot in Michigan, the states top Republican, Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, initially condemned the local militia that organized the protest, calling them a bunch of jackasses. The outrage didnt last long.

A few days after Shirkey issued that statement, he privately met with one of the organizers of the Michigan riot, according to the New York Times, during which he said the optics werent good of armed protesters in paramilitary gear storming the Michigan Capitol. After the protesters threatened to return to the Capitol with weapons, Shirkey publicly cozied up with their cause and two weeks later he spoke at one of their rallies against the states COVID regulations, where he appeared onstage with at least one member of a local militia who was later arrested for allegedly conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Stand up and test that assertion of authority by the government, Shirkey said at the rally. We need you now more than ever.

Since then, Shirkey has been the face of the Michigan Republican Partys descent into extremism. In the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, Shirkey was caught on video parroting claims that the Capitol riot was a hoax staged by people to make Trump supporters look bad. It was arranged by somebody who was funding itIt was all staged, he says in the video, which was first reported by the Detroit Metro Times. Later in the video, Shirkey suggests that McConnell is in on the conspiracy. I think they wanted to have a mess, Shirkey said. They would have had to recruit this other group of people.

But Shirkey isnt the exception in Michigans GOP. As the most powerful Republican in the state, he sets the tone and manner for which the rest of the party follows. That is where you have to ask, Is this who the GOP is? wonders Geiss. To a certain degree, I do believe it is. At least, it is who they are trying to become. And its almost like the conversion is complete at this point.

Michigan is far from the only state whose Republican Party has become dominated by extremists. In Virginia, the current frontrunner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination is Amanda Chase, a state senator who has been at the center of a number of controversies since she assumed office in 2016, including an incident in January 2019 where she introduced legislation in a senate committee meeting with a sidearm strapped to her hip. In July 2019 she responded to someone who criticized her extreme Second Amendment views on her Facebook page by saying, Its those who are naive and unprepared that end up raped. Sorry but Im not going to be a statistic.

Over the past year, Chase has boosted her popularity among her partys growing radical constituency, thanks to her anti-mask stunts, comments encouraging Trump to declare martial law to overturn the results of the election, and for speaking at the January 6 rally on the Ellipse, the 52-acre park just south of the White House, that preceded the insurrection. In the aftermath of the insurrection, Chase both referred to the rioters as patriots and alleged, without any evidence, that antifa had infiltrated the Trump mob and led the insurrection. The insurrection is actually the deep state with the politicians working against the people to overthrow our government, she told the New York Times.

Mark Finchem, a staunch Trump ally, member of the extremist militia group the Oath Keepers, and a Republican member of Arizonas House of Representatives, has similarly stirred up controversy within his own party for promoting conspiracy theories related to the election as well as his role in the January 6 insurrection. Like Chase, Finchem was at the Ellipse that day; afterward he posted pictures on Twitter from the Capitol grounds of the mob storming the building, with a caption that read, What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud. Finchem has continued to praise the insurrectionists and promote conspiracy theories about the election; last month it was revealed that he was actually paid by the Trump campaign to help overturn Arizonas election results. Finchem had 82 ethics complaints lodged against him over his comments and actions related to the election and the insurrection, but in early February the Arizona House Ethics Committee cleared him of all complaints, with the committees chair writing that all the complaints simply amount to an objection to Representative Finchems advocacy of controversial political opinions.

Finchem isnt an outlier in his own state party, either. In late January, Arizonas GOP officially censured three of its top members, Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake, and Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain, for anti-Trump comments and actions. Both Flake and McCain were censured by their party specifically for endorsing Biden, calling out McCain for her support for leftist causes such as gay marriage and growth of the administrative state and for Biden, which they said was in direct opposition to Republican values, the interests of the American people and the Constitution of the United States. The group condemned Ducey for his emergency orders to fight the spread of the coronavirus, which they said are unconstitutional and restrict personal liberties.

Though Trump may be gone from office, the problems he created are growing larger every day. And whereas state lawmakers like Shirkey, Chase, and Finchem might once have been brushed off as fringe lawmakers whose extremist agenda was merely a distraction with little consequence, their rise to power poses an existential threat in statehouses across the country. Having someone parrot conspiracy theories and try to sow doubt in our elections is very, very unhelpful to say the least, says Laurie Pohutsky, a Democratic member of Michigans House of Representatives. Its dangerous to be completely honest, especially when were trying to make sure that more people are participating in the democratic process. Since the election, state Republican lawmakers in several swing states have used false claims of voter fraud and other election conspiracy theories to pass new restrictive voting laws that will further disenfranchise millions of people from the right to vote.

Democrats may have won control of the White House and Congress, but Republicans still have party control of governments in 30 states. And when redistricting happens in the next two or three years, after the most recent census is released, most of those GOP-controlled legislatures will redraw district lines to further gerrymander and ensure that their party can retain control and grow in power for another decade. And if extremism is what helps Republicans win elections at the state level, thats what the party will ultimately embrace, according to Fiddler. Republicans value numbers more than sort of managing the direction of their party, and they will take wins where they can get that, she says. I think youre going to see a strengthening of the grip of these extremists, these QAnon believers and whatnot, on the Republican Party before it has any hope of swinging the other way.

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The most radical Republicans aren't in Congress. They're in the statehouses. - Mother Jones

Their message was almost identical to one they delivered from outside the Capitol last week and echoed their take on almost every other issue Biden touches. This time, they had a new backdrop next to railroad tracks and on desert terrain right along the border.

Its more than a crisis. This is a human heartbreak, McCarthy said at a press conference with the delegation lined up behind him. The sad part of all of this is it didn't have to happen. This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration. Theres no other way to claim it than a Biden border crisis.

In February, U.S. border agents apprehended more than 100,000 migrants a 28 percent increase from the previous month, according to agency statistics. The majority of those migrants are sent back. And officials say a chunk of those migrants are repeat crossers who have been expelled in the past, not new migrants.

CBP also took into custody nearly 9,500 unaccompanied children in February, a 61 percent increase from January. And those numbers are projected to be significantly higher for March, as officials have already seen dramatic increases in the first half of the month.

Migrant children and teenagers are processed after entering the site of a temporary holding facility south of Midland, Texas, on March 14, 2021. Teenagers began arriving Sunday at a converted camp for oilfield workers where volunteers from the American Red Cross will care for them. | Eli Hartman/Odessa American via AP, File

McCarthy and the delegation ticked off their concerns with the rising numbers of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border: They argue that Biden has thrown open the borders and now Americans are at increased risk for coronavirus from migrants crossing over. More illegal Fetanyl is crossing over. More migrants from Iran and Haiti are crossing over. And more migrant children are vulnerable to sex trafficking.

McCarthy's delegation did not offer concrete policy solutions, however. Nor did they offer evidence to back up their claims. And officials and community leaders here insist their claims are alarmist and don't accurately capture what's happening here; Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence are the ones flocking to the border.

"Can we just agree not to use these human beings in front of us as political pawns? Let's just make sure they're taken care of," said Ruben Garcia, director of El Pasos Annunciation House, one of the largest shelter networks in the country.

Still, the visit made clear that Republicans are taking over Trumps playbook as they eye their best path to winning back the majority in Congress in the 2022 midterm elections. Its a reminder that Biden likely wont find Republican allies on immigration a hot-button issue he has prioritized since day one in office.

At the same time, the Biden administration is working to build the fair and humane immigration system the president promised on the campaign trail. However, Biden is running up against a major challenge. Thousands of unaccompanied minors children and teens are arriving at a pace faster than the administration can move them out of the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and into shelters where they await to be united with vetted sponsors. Over the weekend, the Biden administration mobilized FEMA to help with processing the children.

Republicans for weeks have sharply criticized Biden for his efforts during his first 50 days in office to undo some of Trumps immigration policies, such as slowly admitting migrants who were part of the Remain in Mexico program, which forced asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while they wait for their U.S. cases to be heard.

Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, described Bidens immigration policy as disorder at the border by executive order.

Republicans also argue that Biden is sending the message that the border is open, which it is not. The border remains largely closed as Biden continues to use a public health authority that Trump invoked in March 2020 to allow for migrants apprehended at the border to be immediately expelled due to the pandemic. Biden has only opted to make an exception for unaccompanied children. Some families arriving with small children are also being allowed to stay, due in large part to a new law in Mexico thats stopping them from taking in small children.

Meanwhile, Biden is also taking heat from progressives, who worry hes taking too long to reform the U.S. immigration system and is also treating migrant children inhumanely. Their concern is largely centered around the unaccompanied migrant teens and children being held in CBP detention cells for longer than the 72-hour maximum allowed by law.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas himself has said: A Border Patrol facility is no place for a child. But minors are being held in CBP custody as they wait for beds to open up in shelters. The Biden administration for days now has been scouting different locations they could fashion into temporary overflow shelters to make more beds available, according to White House officials and immigrant advocates tracking the situation. Theyre also looking for ways to cut red tape or practices that make it harder to quickly place minors with vetted sponsors.

A sign sits in front of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in downtown Dallas, Texas. The U.S. government wants to house up to 3,000 immigrant teenagers at the center as it struggles to find space for a surge of migrant children who have inundated the border and strained the immigration system just two months into the Biden administration. | Tony Gutierrez/AP Photo

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday defended the president's handling of the situation: We have a lot of critics but not many of them are bringing forward solutions.

Community leaders and Democrats here argue that Republicans are trying to manufacture a crisis thats not there for political gain, as most migrants are still being kicked out and those being allowed to stay are being processed in El Paso in an orderly fashion.

Garcia said hes grateful to see the Biden administration adopting a more humanizing and migrant-friendly tone and language than the Trump administration, but he doesnt expect Republicans to stop using that anti-immigrant, inflammatory language.

They saw the political gain that Trump was able to make by doing that, Garcia said.

Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat representing the area the delegation is visiting, slammed the group for opting to follow the Trump playbook and continue in their messaging of hate, racism and xenophobia without bringing true solutions to the table.

Escobar also was quick to shut down the use of the phrase border crisis to describe the current situation at the border, explaining it minimizes the years of officials in Washington failing to pass legislation.

I bristle when I hear it because its a way to ignore everything else, like: What is it thats driving immigration? Why have we failed to pass laws to fix this very broken system? Escobar said. Its a way to not focus on the failures that brought us to this moment a moment that has lasted years.

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Republicans take Trump's playbook to the border - POLITICO

Republicans remain resolutely opposed to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, which prevented Iran from building a nuclear weapon in exchange for economic relief.

But for a political party that claims an unshakeable commitment to Israels security, the GOP would be wise to consider how Israels top spies men who have dedicated their lives to defending Israel from foreign threats view the deal.

Indeed, of the six living former directors of Israels storied foreign intelligence agency, four have publicly praised the Iran nuclear agreement. None have echoed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin NetanyahuBenjamin (Bibi) NetanyahuMOREs extraordinary criticism of the deal.

These former high-level intelligence officials are not alone. Israels military leadership, high-profile Israeli nuclear experts, former directors of Israels internal security agency and a former Israeli prime minister have all echoed Mossads former chiefs in praising the Iran nuclear deal.

Shabtai Shavit, Mossads director from 1989 to 1996, hailed the agreement as an opportunity for Israel to join a new Middle Eastern order. According to Shavit, the agreement bought us 15 years, in which all kinds of things could happen. Now, with Trump having withdrawn from the agreement, the Iranians have enough enriched uranium for at least one bomb.

Danny Yatom, Mossads chief from 1996 to 1998, called President TrumpDonald TrumpThe Hill's Morning Report - Biden: Back to the future on immigration, Afghanistan, Iran Juan Williams: Biden flips the script The Memo: Two months in, strong Biden faces steep climbs MOREs unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal a mistake, arguing that remaining in the deal made it easier to persuade Iran to make much more concessions.

Efraim Halevy, who led Mossad from 1998 to 2002, declared that the Obama administration scored a great success with the Iran nuclear deal, applauding the agreements rigorous monitoring system. In Halevys words, the deal blocks the road to Iranian nuclear military capabilities for at least a decade.

While Republicans continue to demand that negotiations over Irans nuclear program expand to include Tehrans malign behavior, Halevy flatly rejected such a maximalist approach. According to Halevy, the Iranians would ... have built a nuclear arsenal by the time non-nuclear issues such as Irans support for regional militant groups and its missile program were hashed out.

A fourth former Mossad director, Tamir Pardo, signed a letter in support of President BidenJoe BidenAstraZeneca says COVID-19 vaccine found 79 percent effective in US trial with no safety concerns The Hill's Morning Report - Biden: Back to the future on immigration, Afghanistan, Iran This week: Senate works to confirm Biden picks ahead of break MOREs approach to Iran. Pardo, along with several high-profile Israeli security experts, welcomes the American initiative to get Iran to again transparently follow the guidelines in the [nuclear agreement].

Pro-deal sentiment among Israels spies is not limited to Mossad directors. In an explosive interview, the agencys recently-retired deputy director an apolitical and widely respected intelligence official whose identity remains concealed for security reasons blasted Netanyahus relentless efforts to undermine the agreement.

According to this former senior official, Israels situation today is worse than it was at the time of the nuclear deal. We have a situation in which there is uranium enrichment in Fordow, there is activity in Kashan, there is work at Natanz, [Iran has] accumulated 2.5 tons of enriched uranium, and now advanced centrifuges.

Echoing former Mossad director Efraim Halevy, the unnamed official slammed Netanyahus demands parroted by congressional Republicans that negotiations with Tehran should expand to include non-nuclear issues. Such a maximalist approach, Mossads former deputy chief argues, endangers Israel by muddying the waters and distracting from what he views as the one true existential threat to Israel: an Iranian nuclear weapon.

The former spy also blasted Netanyahus complete opposition to the Obama administrations efforts to rein in Irans nuclear program. In his telling, Netanyahus relentless obstruction obliterated Israels capacity to shape the agreement.

Ami Ayalon, a former director of Shin Bet Israels internal intelligence and security agency agrees with his Mossad counterparts. According to Ayalon, when it comes to Irans nuclear capability, this [deal] is the best option. When negotiations began, Iran was two months away from acquiring enough material for a [nuclear] bomb. [With the agreement in place,] it will be 12 months.

Another former Shin Bet chief, Carmi Gillon, penned one of the more impassioned defenses of the Iran nuclear agreement. Writing in 2017, Gillon urged then-President Trump not to withdraw from the deal, calling it a blessing for Israel and a clear success.

According to Gillon, two years on from the signing of the agreement to curtail Tehrans nuclear program, Israel and the region are safer than ever because the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon is more remote than it has been in decades. Thanks to the agreement, Irans nuclear program has been defanged and all its pathways to a bomb blocked.

Perhaps most importantly, Gillon wrote that the majority of my colleagues in the Israeli military and intelligence communities supported the deal once it was reached.

Gillons claim of broad support for the agreement among Israels national security experts is echoed by Uzi Arad, a former high-ranking Mossad official who served as Netanyahus national security adviser from 2009 to 2011. According to Arad, the majority of Israels national security community favors the deal.

Indeed, support for the agreement extends to Israels military leadership. Asked whether senior military officers viewed the Iran nuclear deal as good for Israel, Yair Golan, Israels second highest ranking military officer from 2014 to 2017, responded with a simple answer: Unequivocally.

According to Golan, the general sentiment in the senior ranks [of the Israeli military] was one of satisfaction [with the Iran nuclear agreement]. In Golans telling, it is in Israels urgent national security interest for the United States to return to compliance with the deal.

Indeed, support for the agreement among Israels top generals should come as no surprise, as the calm on the Iranian nuclear front allowed the military to focus on other threats.

Ultimately, Netanyahus hard-line approach to Iran is at stark odds with the consensus of Israels intelligence, foreign policy and military experts. Indeed, in a scathing op-ed, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert labeled Netanyahus maximalist campaign Israels greatest failure.

Of course, this is not the first time Netanyahu finds himself on the wrong side of a critical security issue. Testifying before Congress in 2002, Netanyahu made a bold personal guarantee that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would have enormous positive reverberations on the region.

Israels spies surely disagreed with Netanyahus catastrophically wrong judgment then, as they do now. Republicans should take note.

Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of States Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.

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Republicans should listen to Israel's spies on the Iran nuclear deal | TheHill - The Hill