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Republicans are upping the ante with more aggressive and urgent messaging on the border crisis less than five months out from the midterm elections.

State leaders and lawmakers in Congress have torn into President Joe Biden for his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border crisis for nearly a year and a half, but they amplified their concerns this week, bringing their border solutions front and center as a plethora of other concerns (inflation, Ukraine, and abortion) fight for the attention of voters.

From my perspective, it's been a big issue. And it will continue to be one with all the folks coming across, said Brendan Steinhauser, a veteran GOP operative who led successful campaigns for Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas. Just the sheer numbers, the volume, I think that's what's driving a lot of this because Gov. Abbott, congressman Chip Roy, and others are saying the federal government continues not to do anything.

Roy debuted a plan on Monday to address loopholes in immigration law that he argued allow noncitizens to cross the border illegally, then get released into the United States, leading more people to come knowing they may not be deported. More than any policy, Roy said the Republican Party needs to find its voice on the issue.

CARAVAN MIGRANTS NEAR U.S. BORDER AS OTHER GROUPS CROSS INTO TEXAS

It doesnt have to be this way," Roy wrote in an opinion article for the Washington Examiner. "The people both need and deserve a secure border, but ending the crisis is going to require Republicans in Washington, D.C., to grow a spine, dig in, and fight to keep their promises for once.

"If the people ever again entrust Republicans to lead the House of Representatives or any other part of the federal government, there can be no more excuses, Roy said, calling on the party to force the completion of Trump-era border wall projects, remove all illegal immigrants in the country, and unabashedly go after cartels.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), who is seeking a third term in office this November, endorsed Roys detailed plan in a post on Twitter and called for the hundreds of Republicans running for House and Senate seats this year to follow suit.

Eight GOP senators then released a 56-page report detailing how the Biden administrations border and immigration policies encourage illegal migration and have put national security in jeopardy.

The number of migrants encountered attempting to enter the U.S. illegally from Mexico rose in May, surpassing all previous records over the past century, an indication of the scale of the illegal immigration crisis at the border.

U.S. border officials intercepted 239,416 migrants attempting to enter the country illegally last month, the fourth consecutive monthly rise. In the first 16 full months of Biden's term in office, federal law enforcement officials at the southern border have stopped noncitizens attempting to cross into the U.S. without permission 2.975 million times, including migrants who were denied admission at ports of entry.

President Bidens border crisis continues to shatter records. This is a national security nightmare that only gets worse by the day, echoed Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY). Its time for the White House to act. Our report lays out immediate steps the Biden administration can take right now to secure our border. Tackling the root causes of illegal immigration and reinstating important Trump-era reforms that we know work will help stop the surge of migrants from overrunning our border.

On Wednesday, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) held a press conference on Capitol Hill alongside the head of the Border Patrol union, Brandon Judd, to call on Biden to visit the border. Biden has not visited the southern border since taking office.

"You need to go to the border and hear from the agents in the communities in Texas and Arizona, the hell it's like to live along the southern border," Graham said. "President Biden, if you do not go to our border to visit firsthand and see what's going on and to hear from the Border Patrol agents themselves, you're letting down your country, you're derelict in your duty, and there will be repercussions ... for that lack of interest here in the Senate."

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Holding Democrats' feet to the fire could prove a successful tactic for Republicans if they win back majorities in the House and Senate, leaving Democrats with control of the White House, Steinhauser said.

"If you're Biden and you have a huge midterm loss and your approval rating is low and you've got all these issues maybe if Republicans come to you and say, 'All right, you do these things on border security, and we'll give you some stuff on the dreamers.' I don't think it's that crazy," Steinhauser said. "Republicans can sort of tell the base, 'Hey, we got the security measures done.' The business community on the Republican side might feel good about some of the other things. And then Biden can say, 'I got something done.'"

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The week Republicans got serious about the border - Washington Examiner

MAGA was always supposed to be about taking our country back. But do Donald Trumps most ardent soldiers even want to be part of the United States of America?

Texas Republicans not only want to secede but also imagine that after backing out of our country, they would live in an Eden of their own creation where there are no state or federal income taxes. How this penniless republic would then fund even basic services, much less build infrastructure and raise an army, not even God knows. But the states record of running its own power grid isnt a hopeful indicator.

Were this fantasy ever realized, of course, Republicans would elect no more American presidents. This year, such a withdrawal would mean that Democrats would hold both the House and Senate.

Im not sure if the sort of person whod consider NRA favorite Sen. John Cornyn a sellout for trying to do even a little something about mass shootings knows that none of this is going to happen.

But the law-and-order party is definitely pushing Texans to ignore any federal law that it decides should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified. On Juneteenth, the party declared that it wanted to start by repealing the Voting Rights Act.

Texas schools should, according to the GOP platform, be required to teach the evils of socialism, while climate science and even evolution would be presented as challengeable.

Already, among Republicans not just in Texas but across the country, elections are legitimate only if the right candidate wins. Which is how the Texas GOP knows that Joe Biden is not our legitimate president, though somehow, all of the other candidates elected in 2020, when the GOP overall did very well, are perfectly legitimate officeholders.

This is not just moving to the right but moving to the alt-universe in which Republicans who have not lost their way are considered the enemy, too. And not just the enemy, but the rightful prey of the righteous.

I refer, of course, to the loathsome new commercial from Missouri Senate candidate Eric Greitens, the disgraced former governor, who has declared open season on RINOs, or Republicans in name only. The GOP leader of the Missouri Senate called the police after seeing the ad.

It shows the candidate, along with his pump-action shotgun and a bunch of other guys in tactical gear, storming a house in search of those Republicans who dont agree with him that reality is whatever dark MAGA men say it is.

As Tuesdays Jan. 6 committee hearing again made clear, it was brave Republicans RINOs, as MAGA would have it who did save our country after Biden was elected.

Arizona House Speaker Russell Bowers described being pressured by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to convene a committee to replace the states electors with a slate willing to vote for Trump instead. I will not break my oath to the state and U.S. Constitution, Bowers told them.

Bowers kept asking them for evidence that the massive fraud they were describing had actually occurred. And they kept putting him off, telling him that they did have proof without ever producing any. At one point, Bowers said, Giuliani came out and said, Weve got lots of theories; we just dont have the evidence.

The loopy lawyer formerly seen as Americas mayor tried to convince him to overlook that technicality and put his party first, asking, Arent we all Republicans here?

Yes, of the sort that some Democrats dont believe exist, and that Trump and his allies dont want to survive unscathed.

Asked to read from the journal Bowers kept at the time when Trump was leaning on him, he did: I do not want to be a winner by cheating, he wrote. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to with any contrived desire towards deflection of my deep foundational desire to follow Gods will, as I believe he led my conscience to embrace. How else will I ever approach Him in the wilderness of life, knowing that I ask for this guidance only to show myself a coward in defending the course he led me to take?

Bowers also talked about the threats he and his family had received, and about how upset his gravely ill grown daughter had been about protesters in his neighborhood blaring lies calling him a pedophile. She isnt upset anymore because she died in late January, but does that make MAGA world ashamed? You know the answer.

Republican election officials from Georgia also testified about being pressured to pretend that there had been widespread fraud that they tried to find but couldnt. While Trumps legal team claimed that 10,315 dead voters had cast ballots in the state, for instance, Republican officials found only four. They found 0 underage voters.

Fulton County election worker Shaye Moss testified that she and her mother, also an election worker, had been forced into hiding after Giuliani claimed that they had changed the outcome in Georgia by bringing in suitcases of fake Biden ballots and scanning them multiple times.

GOP officials said that all the video Giuliani had claimed proved fraud actually showed was the normal process playing out. The suitcase was the usual carrying receptacle for votes. And that memory stick that Moss mother had supposedly handed her, and that Giuliani had told the world proved she was as guilty as a drug dealer passing off a vial of cocaine?

It was a ginger mint, said Moss, who like every other election worker in that video has since left her job.

Since then, Trump supporters have succeeded in replacing many of the Republicans who did put country above party who still recognize laws they might not like and winners for whom they did not vote with those who do not.

Theyve been replaced by those whose view of American democracy is so far from anything the founders they claim to love ever believed that its no wonder some want to exit this country and start a new one.

The Jan. 6 committee is right to make Republicans who did the right thing under extreme pressure the heroes of these hearings. Because if the American experiment is going to continue, were going to need many more like them.

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Column: MAGA secessionists versus the Republicans who really did save our country after 2020 - Yakima Herald-Republic

Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona house of representatives, wanted Donald Trump to win the 2020 election. He worked hard to elect him and, when the time came, cast his ballot for the president.

What he wasnt willing to do was cheat for him.

In searing and at turns emotional testimony, Bowers, a rock-ribbed conservative from battleground Arizona, recounted for the House select committee investigating the January 6 assault how he resisted a relentless campaign by the then president of the United States and his allies to do just that.

You are asking me to do something against my oath and I will not break my oath, Bowers said he responded, when pressured repeatedly by Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Bidens victory in the state.

Bowers comments helped reveal how much of a threat to American democracy Trumps attempt to block Joe Bidens win was and how it was defeated by the actions of officials like Bowers. But, amid a continuing attempt by Trump and his Republican allies to peddle lies and control election races in 2024 battleground states, it also revealed the threat to the US is not over.

The presidents lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic, said the California congressman Adam Schiff, who led the hearing. If you can convince Americans that they cannot trust their own elections, that anytime they lose, it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern.

Trump lost the state of Arizona by less than 11,000 votes votes that were legally cast and fairly counted, Bowers said. But Trump refused to accept his loss and in his denial concocted a plot to try to stop the state from certifying the election results based on groundless conspiracies that Bowers likened to a tragic parody.

In perhaps his most damning disclosure, Bowers recalled a conversation in which Trumps personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani told him: Weve got lots of theories. We just dont have the evidence.

Bowers said the comment was so absurd that he and his staff wondered if it was a gaffe and laughed about it. But he found little reason for levity during Tuesdays hearing.

Bowers was joined in the cavernous Cannon Caucus Room by the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, and his deputy, Gabe Sterling, also a Republican, who testified about the pressure Trump and his legal team put on elections officials in their state.

In a phone call after the November election, Trump asked Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes just enough to flip Bidens election victory in the state.

Their refusal to obey Trumps demands was met with a barrage of online harassment and intimidation. Raffensperger said all of his personal information was made public. His wife began receiving sexually explicit threats and someone broke into the home of his daughter-in-law, a widow with two children. Bowers at the time was caring for his dying daughter who he said was troubled by the menacing crowd that gathered outside his home, pelting taunts and threats. During the hearing, Bowers read a passage from his journal.

It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me turn on me with such rancor, he wrote in December. I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.

Sterling became a standout figure when he called on Trump to stop riling up his supporters during a televised press conference held in the tumultuous post-election period while Georgia carried out a series of recounts. Death threats, physical threats, intimidation its too much, its not right, Sterling said in his remarks, parts of which the committee showed during the hearing. He told his committee he lost it that day after being told that a young election contractor with Dominion Systems was receiving death threats from purveyors of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

I tend to turn red from here up when that happens. And that happened at that time, he said.

Lives and livelihoods were disrupted and destroyed as a result of Trumps lies, the committee heard. Wandrea Shaye Moss, a former Georgia election worker, testified on Tuesday that she no longer felt safe, secure or confident since becoming the subject of one of Trumps most pernicious fraud claims one involving suitcases that both federal and state officials said was baseless.

Tuesdays witnesses were all that stood between what the chairman of the committee, Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, described as a close call and a catastrophe for American democracy, during its fourth public hearing. It also revealed new details in the brazen, if ill-conceived, scheme to put forward fake slates of electors in seven states as part of a last-gasp attempt to keep Trump in power.

Again and again the committee has sought to show that the violent insurrection on 6 January, horrible as it was, isnt the whole story. Nor is it the end of the story. Its part of a coordinated and continuing plot by the former president and his allies to remain in power by any means possible.

Focus on the evidence the committee will present. Dont be distracted by politics, the committees vice-chair, the Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, urged viewers. This is serious. We cannot let America become a nation of conspiracy theories and thug violence.

Trumps big lie, the committee said, was a dangerous precursor to the deadly insurrection on 6 January. But it remains an urgent threat to democracy.

Trump continues to claim that he won the 2020 election and polls suggest millions of Republicans believe him. Indeed, before the hearing he claimed Bowers had said the Arizona election was rigged and he actually won the state. Under oath, Bowers said Trumps recollection of their conversation was categorically false.

Nevertheless, embracing the lie has become a requisite for his endorsement, which has delivered mixed results in Republican primaries. In Georgia, Raffensperger overcame a Trump-backed challenger to win re-election as the states attorney general.

But elsewhere, election deniers are winning primaries in an attempt to seize control of elections administration in key states across the country. In Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the secretary of state, Republicans chose a nominee who helped organize the rally that preceded the attack on 6 January and has openly mused about fraud in future elections.

And across the country, election workers like Moss are being driven out by threats of violence and intimidation. In some instances, election watchdogs have warned, they are being replaced by partisans and conspiracy theorists.

Look no further than New Mexico, Thompson said on Tuesday, where a Republican commission refused to certify the results of the states primary election, citing unfounded claims about the security of the voting machines. The commission ultimately bowed to an order by the states supreme court and certified the election but the committee said it was a blinking red warning sign ahead of the 2022 and 2024 elections.

The system held, but barely, Schiff said. And the question remains, will it hold again.

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A few good Republicans stopped Trump but his threat to democracy isnt over - The Guardian US

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Letter to the Editor: Tennessee Republicans could act to lower gas prices - Dickson Post

And while Republicans and anti-abortion forces were increasingly working in concert to turn the states to their advantage, abortion rights supporters accused Democrats of all but giving up on local elections.

On the far right, they realized that the most lasting impact of 2010 would be in the states, said Daniel Squadron, a former New York state senator and the executive director of the States Project, which was founded by Democrats in 2017 to try to win back control of legislatures. On our side, state power was a footnote. The lesson we took was Focus more on midterms; the lesson they took was Wield power in states. And today, both sides are reaping what we sowed.

Abortion rights groups lacked the infrastructure their opponents had in the states. NARAL had cut its number of state affiliates nearly in half between 1991 and 2011. And with Democrats in the glow of winning Congress in 2006 and electing the nations first Black president two years later, abortion rights groups were having trouble convincing big donors and grass-roots supporters alike that Roe was in trouble.

Donors liked to support congressional and presidential elections, and tended to go away when they perceived that the threat had disappeared. When you were trying to convince them they had to put money into Kansas or Nebraska, they were like, Thats futile, said Nancy Keenan, the president of NARAL at the time.

Opponents of abortion rights had always proved easier to mobilize than supporters. In polls and focus groups, NARAL asked women who were sympathetic to its cause what it would take to get them to be more active in protecting Roe v. Wade. Consistently, Ms. Keenan said, We received answers saying, If they overturn it.

Some younger activists were pushing abortion rights groups to stop apologizing for or seeking compromise on abortion. To the new generation, abortion was health care, and bodily autonomy was not something to be compromised. The Democratic Party platform in 2012 left in safe and legal but took out rare.

When you were trying to convince them they had to put money into Kansas or Nebraska, they were like, Thats futile.

Anti-abortion groups exploited this, portraying the Democrats position on abortion as anytime, anywhere, under any circumstance, and paid for with government funds. By contrast, said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a 20-week ban looked reasonable, in keeping with what polls showed Americans wanted.

Two thousand ten was the year that the light came on about the reality of abortion law in the nation, she said. It was the year that the polarization between the extreme abortion absolutism and the Republican Party position was a winning contrast. Its the first year that sitting officeholders could see that this issue really helps us. And it just got stronger every election cycle because we would not relent with that contrast.

Republicans running in right-leaning districts backed increasingly strict laws to appeal to reliable anti-abortion voters and avoid primary challenges. By 2016, one analysis found not a single Republican state legislator willing to identify as pro-choice.

In the nearly 50 years between the Roe decision and its reversal on Friday, states enacted 1,380 restrictions on abortion. Almost half 46 percent were enacted since 2011.

Professor Devins, of William and Mary, revisited the question of abortion politics in 2016, this time in a paper for The Vanderbilt Law Review. He stuck by his 2009 assessment, but the middle ground he had written of approvingly then had disappeared. Today, red state political actors are not interested in compromise, Professor Devins wrote in 2016. With the rightward shift in the Republican Party, abortion rights had become about partisan advantage, along with voter identification laws, tax reform and elimination of public-sector unions.

In 2015, the Florida Senate had taken just one hour to approve a 24-hour waiting period on abortion, with Republicans rejecting all eight amendments offered by Democrats. Wisconsin had passed its ban on abortion after 20 weeks without a single Democrat. And a bill in Texas to prohibit abortions based on fetal abnormality was brought up for a committee vote after the House had recessed and Democrats were absent.

Its conventional wisdom to say that the courts decision in Roe caused the polarization over abortion, said Reva Siegel, a law professor at Yale. But the court did not cause that polarization. It was the Republican Partys quest for voters political party competition that savaged Roe. Once the attack on Roe was underway, the defense needed to be full tilt in politics as well as in the courts and in all political arenas, state, local and federal. Because over time the attack on Roe has become more than an attack on abortion; it has become an attack on democracy.

By 2019, proponents of the incremental strategy for undoing Roe were losing to those who wanted the frontal attack. With two new conservative justices, the Supreme Court was tilted toward the latter. Momentum was on their side, and states began passing legislation designed to force the court to act. Twenty-week bans had led to 18-week bans, eight-week bans, and now six-week bans.

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How Did Roe Fall? Before a Decisive Ruling, a Powerful Red Wave. - The New York Times