Back-to-back Defeats Highlight US Republican Chaos

Democrats will force a vote Wednesday on US immigration reform that has already been sabotaged by Donald Trump, as they bid to highlight Republican dysfunction underscored by a series of humiliating legislative setbacks

Washington, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Feb, 2024) Democrats will force a vote Wednesday on US immigration reform that has already been sabotaged by Donald Trump, as they bid to highlight Republican dysfunction underscored by a series of humiliating legislative setbacks.

House Republicans were embarrassed Tuesday by back-to-back defeats on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and on an aid package for Israel that raised questions over the party's credibility and ability to govern.

The missteps came after conservatives in the Senate, under pressure from Trump, vowed to block a package of immigration reforms they themselves had spent months championing as part of a broader $118 billion foreign aid package.

A vote on the compromise, set for Wednesday afternoon, is doomed to fail but Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to press ahead anyway, to get Republicans on the record opposing immigration reforms in an election year. He will then force a vote on a foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan without any of the border security measures. But even if that succeeds, it looks to be on shaky ground in the House, where Republicans have insisted on fixing the crisis caused by a surge in illegal entries at the southern border before addressing foreign aid requests.

Much of the Republican chaos has been blamed on Trump, who looks almost certain to be the party's nominee in November despite losing the presidency to Joe Biden in 2020 and being embroiled in criminal charges. The Republican is running for a return to the White House on a platform centered around accusing Biden of failing to resolve the border issue.

Senate Republicans demanded border security as a condition for supporting pro-Western Ukraine as it battles a full-scale invasion by Russia launched in 2022. But a bipartisan compromise -- months in the making and combining Ukraine and Israel aid with some of the toughest immigration curbs in decades -- collapsed within days of its release on Sunday, as Trump warned lawmakers to reject it.

Biden said in a White House address as the deal was falling apart that Trump was seeking to "weaponize" the border crisis and urged lawmakers in the "Grand Old Party" (GOP) to "show some spine.

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"Republicans have to decide: Who do they serve -- Donald Trump or the American people?" Biden said.

The House Republicans have been piling misstep upon misstep in the current Congress, notably including a mutiny that left them leaderless for weeks. Tuesday stood out as what congressional media outlet Punchbowl news described as "one of the most embarrassing days in recent House GOP history."

The defeats left Republicans questioning the direction of the party under Speaker Mike Johnson, who was the fourth-choice replacement after they ousted his predecessor Kevin McCarthy and then rejected several more popular but more divisive alternatives.

Johnson has a razor-thin majority, meaning he can usually afford to lose only three or four votes, depending on who is present.

On Mayorkas -- a target for impeachment because of his perceived inaction on border security -- Johnson appears simply to have miscalculated how many Democrats might be voting.

Three Republicans voted against the measure, which was enough to kill it after a wheelchair-bound Democrat still wearing his hospital gown returned from emergency surgery at a nearby hospital to vote no.

But political analysts questioned whether it was prudent for Johnson to gamble on a vote that would go down in history when he knew three of his own members were going to defy him.

"It was once a given that House leaders would only hold a vote on a bill if they knew they had the support to pass it," said Gabe Fleisher, author of the Wake Up To politics newsletter.

"Former (Democratic) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, never lost a vote in her eight years wielding the gavel," Fleisher said.

"Johnson, who came into the high office with the least legislative experience of any speaker in 140 years, just lost two in a single night. Consider it yet another norm obliterated by his dysfunctional House GOP majority."

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