WILL BORDER TALKS GET TRUMPED? If Senate Republicans were confused by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s closed-door comments Wednesday on the pending border negotiations — and, boy, were they — Democrats were downright vexed. The notion that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign imperatives might derail months of work by a small group of senators hoping to open a bipartisan path for Ukraine and Israel was met with frustration by Senate Democrats, who vowed to press forward regardless. “It speaks to how badly this place is broken,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a red-state Democrat who is facing a tough re-election for his seat. “Hopefully the American people won't accept that bullshit.” McConnell on Thursday made clear he remains supportive of the border talks led by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), but he still faces growing skepticism from the rightmost wing of his conference. Murphy said he wasn’t surprised that McConnell would acknowledge the political challenges. “It shouldn't be a shock to anybody that Donald Trump doesn't want to fix the border,” he said. “It shouldn't be a shock that, you know, some Senate Republicans don't want to fix the border. They have become a lot of Republicans have become used to this being just merely a political issue, not an actual policy problem. And that's hard for them to get over.” What’s next: The long-awaited and much anticipated text is “absolutely” coming next week, Sinema said Thursday, with Murphy adding that “90%-plus” was already written. And then, he said, “we wait” on Republicans. “We won't get every Democratic vote for this deal, but the majority of Democrats will likely support it. Not every Republican will support it, but we need them to decide that they want to put this on the floor and have a debate,” he said. “I think what Republicans are realizing is that the proposal that we have agreed upon will fundamentally fix many of the problems at the border and in a broken asylum system,” Murphy continued. “And there is unquestionably a group of Republicans that don't want to fix the problem, and they are now faced with a compromise policy proposal that will fix big parts of the problem.” To recap: The idea of pairing Ukraine aid with immigration policy changes originated with Republicans who made clear they would only approve security aid abroad if measures were taken to improve security at home, at the U.S.-Mexico border. The outlines of such a bargain were sketched out last year, and since then Trump has continued his march toward the GOP presidential nomination, making the surge of migrants a central issue of his campaign. As Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) put it Thursday, “There's a fourth person in the negotiating room. It's Sinema, Murphy, Lankford and now Trump.” — Daniella Diaz, with assist from Anthony Adragna
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