LANKFORD EXPLAINS HIS BORDER-DEAL BENCHMARK This newsletter’s most faithful readers probably know of the “Hastert Rule,” but here’s a quick recap for newcomers: The GOP, when it controls the House, sets an informal rule to only take up legislation that could win “the majority of the majority.” In the Senate, meanwhile, James Lankford is trying to meet a different, harder standard. The Oklahoma Republican senator has spent months looking for a border and immigration deal that can win a majority of the minority. (If he succeeds, maybe the Hill press corps will call it the Lankford Rule.) Senate Republicans don’t control the floor, but Lankford outlined his thinking in an interview. If he can get 25 or more of the 49 GOP senators to sign onto something, he’s betting that it might be enough to get Speaker Mike Johnson to take up a big emergency spending bill with Ukraine aid – without losing the gavel to a conservative rebellion. When Lankford met with House Republicans on Wednesday, he told them that he doesn’t plan to back a border deal that barely skirts the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Lankford explained that he doesn’t want to win “51 Democrats and 10 Republicans. … That is not what this is. This is not just trying to barely squeak it over to them.” Let’s be real: His goal is incredibly challenging. Because any bipartisan border deal would move alongside Ukraine funding, you can count on maybe 10 of the 49 Senate Republicans to start off in the no camp. Which means Lankford needs to convince about two-thirds of the GOP senators whose votes are up for grabs. This week’s closed-door conference briefing among Senate Republicans showed three factions that remain: Clear yeses, clear nos and perhaps the biggest and trickiest category – maybes who don’t want to walk the plank on a border deal only to see the House block it. “There’s a significant number that like the direction that it's going,” Lankford said of his negotiations on Thursday afternoon. Lankford commands real respect in the Capitol. He’s not a bomb-thrower and is quite conservative, even beating a primary opponent from the right in 2014 who had the support of Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Sarah Palin. The Oklahoman’s also been in the bipartisan mix plenty of times over the years – and hasn’t yet landed a big deal. Lankford was in the room in 2018 as senators tried for a bipartisan deal on border security, but he eventually soured on it and voted no as then-President Donald Trump savaged the agreement. That 2018 border plan never made it out of the Senate. Lankford’s current work could face the same exact fate in the coming weeks, particularly if Trump romps in the primary. At the table beside Lankford are Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), both of whom worked out a bipartisan gun safety agreement in 2022 against long odds. Murphy, in an interview, agreed with Lankford’s forecast that any successful bill would have to get most Republicans. “This is not the gun bill, where you had every Democratic vote and you had just enough Republican votes,” Murphy said. “It's going to be different.” But Murphy acknowledged that more Republicans appear to be starting off as hard nos. So does he think Lankford can get it done? “I wouldn't still be at the table months later if I didn't think that this had a finish line. I've walked away from plenty of negotiations. … And there's certainly a possibility that this falls apart. But that possibility goes down, not up every day,” Murphy said. The hard truth remains: Lankford can’t guarantee GOP support until he finishes the bill. When he finishes writing it, he might find that the votes aren’t there, or that he’s crafted an unexpectedly popular deal among Republicans. Until then, he has no whip count. “We'll know once there’s text. I'm not being flippant about it. But everybody's got to read it,” Lankford said. — Burgess Everett
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