Politics
Opinion: A Republican senator got the border deal the GOP said it wanted. Watch while his party betrays him
How did we get to this place where so many legislators don’t legislate, where lawmakers won’t make law? Why come to Washington if not to govern?
I witnessed the obstructionist evolution among Republicans in Congress in the post-Reagan years. Successful legislating requires compromise, and the more right-wing that Republicans — and their voters — have become, the less compromising they are.
Donald Trump only intensified the dynamic. As president, he talked a big game about bipartisan deals with Congress on gun limits, infrastructure, healthcare and immigration, and delivered on none, leaving the White House with enough grist for a new book: “The Art of No Deals.” As Time magazine reported early in his term about Trump’s negotiating style, “Time and again, the President has proven himself an unreliable partner.”
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Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Alas, even out of office, Trump continues to work his black arts against deal-making, exploiting spineless Republicans’ fear of him and his supporters.
Trump’s immediate thumbs-down Monday on a bipartisan Senate border-security compromise (“horrendous,” he pronounced) was the apparent coup de grace for the first significant immigration bill in years. Trump’s toadies in the House preemptively declared the bill DOA. It may not get there; sycophantic senators are putting even Senate passage in doubt.
Forget those Republicans for now, however. Instead, let’s acknowledge a Republican profile in courage: Sen. James Lankford.
The formerly obscure Oklahoman has braved not-so-friendly fire from the right for months while he negotiated the immigration compromise with Democratic Sen. Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and advisors to President Biden, who blessed the final product. Now, with Republicans’ attacks redoubled, Lankford is standing his (high) ground — and standing up to Trump. (It helps, to be sure, that Lankford was elected to a second term in 2022 and doesn’t face his voters again until 2028.)
Lankford is a rarity in Congress, a Republican willing to work with Democrats to actually try to solve problems that Americans want solved, rather than endlessly campaign on them. The few such Republicans — Sen. Todd Young of Indiana is another — must get credit when it’s due. They certainly aren’t getting it from their party: The Oklahoma party censured Lankford for his efforts last month, before rescinding its action.
Constructive Republicans were the rule in Congress when I began covering the place, That was mostly before the advent of social media, right-wing cable and grievance-infused populism. Now, too many members of Congress count clicks and cable hits, not hard-won laws, as measures of success.
Senate Republicans “used to be divided between conservatives and moderates. Now it’s divided between invertebrates and vertebrates,” said Luke Albee, a longtime senior Senate aide who worked for two Democratic senators always looking for principled conservatives willing to cut deals. “Senators like Lankford … are in the vertebrate camp, though they are clearly on the endangered species list.”
Few Congress-watchers expected this leadership from Lankford, least of all on immigration, easily one of the nation’s most divisive issues, and one that Republicans hope will be Biden’s and other Democrats’ undoing in November.
Lankford, a lanky 55-year-old whose drink of choice is iced skim milk, has a bass voice befitting the Southern Baptist preacher he used to be, but otherwise projects a boyishness that calls to mind the ginger-haired Opie from early TV’s fictional Mayberry. He’s no RINO. Lankford checks all the boxes on Republicans’ litmus test: pro guns and fossil fuels, anti taxes, abortion and gay rights. On Jan. 6, 2021, he was among the 2020 election objectors before the rioting, but he ultimately voted to certify Biden’s election.
Lately, Lankford has been ubiquitous in the media, unflappably pushing back against what he calls Republican “falsehoods,” like the claim that the border compromise would permit 5,000 migrants into the country daily. He describes the provisions on asylum, detention, deportation, border-security funding and presidential authority to close borders as a once-unthinkable win for conservatives. The bill omits, just as Republicans prefer, Democrats’ past priorities: permanent legal status for DACA beneficiaries and a path to citizenship for longtime, law-abiding unauthorized immigrants.
But Lankford’s Republican colleagues are focused on politics, not policy, and he knows it. He characterized the thinking of many of them on CNN: “We’re in a presidential year, so let’s not help Biden in the process.”
His foes include the Senate’s usual knee-jerk naysayers, including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. Lee personifies the modern Republican Party’s disdain for bipartisan legislating: He arrived in Congress in 2011 as a tea party insurgent who had unseated a widely respected Republican. The incumbent’s sin? Compromising with Democrats on the hot issue of that time, healthcare.
Lee’s upset victory shook party incumbents and presaged the replacement of pragmatic Republicans with the uncompromising kind. Like Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, J.D. Vance of Ohio. Now that ilk defines the party in Congress.
Which is why so many Republicans lie about a border-security bill that they initially demanded and why on Wednesday they’ll likely deprive the deal of the 60 Senate votes needed to proceed, taking the attached aid for Ukraine and Israel down with it.
If that’s not the death of governing, it’s something close. If only we could have more Lankfords, and fewer Lees.
Politics
Trump stirs GOP primary drama with visit to Massie’s Kentucky home turf
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President Donald Trump is taking his feud with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to the libertarian lawmaker’s home turf on Wednesday.
Trump is expected to hold an event in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Kentucky announced on social media Monday. It’s located in the northern part of the state’s 4th Congressional District, which Massie represents.
Massie’s primary rival, Ed Gallrein, will attend the Hebron event, his campaign confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, while deferring all other questions on the matter to the White House.
Massie himself will miss the event due to a previously scheduled official engagement, his spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
KHANNA AND MASSIE THREATEN TO FORCE A VOTE ON IRAN AS PROSPECT OF US ATTACK LOOMS
President Donald Trump will be visiting Rep. Thomas Massie’s congressional district on Wednesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
When asked about the visit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital, “President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his Administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable.”
The president has thrown his considerable influence behind Gallrein to unseat Massie after the GOP lawmaker publicly defied Trump on multiple occasions.
MASSIE, KHANNA TO VISIT DOJ TO REVIEW UNREDACTED EPSTEIN FILES
Massie most recently was one of two House Republicans to vote to stop Trump’s joint operation in Iran with Israel, though the legislation was successfully blocked by the majority of GOP lawmakers and a handful of Democrats.
Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Ed Gallrein congressional campaign)
He was also one of two Republicans to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.
Trump in turn has hurled a slew of personal attacks against Massie, including calling him “weak and pathetic” in a statement endorsing Gallrein in October.
“He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time, one of numerous criticisms targeting the Kentucky Republican through the years.
He called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in July amid Massie’s bipartisan push to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But Massie has so far appeared to defy political gravity despite making political enemies out of both Trump and House GOP leaders.
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He handily defeated multiple primary challengers in 2024 and 2022, despite public feuds with Trump, and has served his district since 2012.
Gallrein is a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who launched his campaign days after Trump made his endorsement. Their primary election day is May 19.
Politics
California Democrats launch pricey polling effort to winnow crowded gubernatorial field
As anxiety mounts among California Democrats about the potential of a Republican being elected governor, the state party will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling to assess the viability of the sprawling field of candidates hoping to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to plans released Tuesday.
The move comes after nearly every Democratic candidate refused party leaders’ call last week to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the vote in the June primary — an outcome that could lead to a Republican being elected to statewide office for the first time in two decades.
“Candidates have filed, and now they’ve got the opportunity to showcase their viability, their path to win. I want to simply ensure that everybody has information to fully understand the current state of the race,” said Rusty Hicks, the leader of the California Democratic Party.
As campaign season ramps up, the series of six polls will allow “candidates, supporters, the media, voters, anyone and everyone to have a clear understanding of what is or is not happening in this particular race,” he said.
The filing deadline to appear on the June 2 ballot was Friday. Three days earlier, Hicks released an open letter urging candidates who did not have a path to victory to withdraw from the race. Of the nine prominent Democrats who had announced runs for governor, only one heeded his call: former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon.
That means the eight other candidates’ names will appear on the ballot, regardless of whether they decide to later drop out. And that creates the possibility of a Republican winning the race because of how California elections are decided.
The state has a voter-approved top-two primary system, under which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.
Two prominent Republicans will appear on the ballot: former conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Even though Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, and the state’s electorate last elevated Republicans to statewide office in 2006, it is mathematically possible for Democrats to splinter the vote, allowing the two GOP candidates to advance.
Under such a scenario, not only would Republicans be guaranteed the leadership of the nation’s most-populous state, but Democratic voter turnout also would probably be depressed in November, potentially affecting down-ballot races such as those that could determine control of Congress.
Hicks’ call last week prompted concerns among candidates of color, including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, that the effort was aimed at every nonwhite candidate in the race.
The state party chairman responded that his letter was not aimed at any specific candidate.
“It’s not something I lose sleep over,” Hicks said when asked about the racial claims. But he added that the voter surveys will be conducted by Los Angeles-based Evitarus, the state’s only Black- and Latino-led full-service polling firm, and will oversample historically underrepresented communities: Latino, Black and Asian American voters.
Hicks said the polling will cost “multiple six figures” but did not specify the exact amount.
The first poll will be released on March 24, and then five additional surveys will come out every seven to 10 days until voters start receiving mail ballots in early May.
“We’re putting this forward to ensure everyone is armed with the information they need to clearly have an eyes-wide-open assessment of where the state of the race currently is between now and when ballots land in the mailboxes of voters,” Hicks said.
Politics
Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’
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President Donald Trump outlined five key items he believes will tip the upcoming midterm elections in the GOP’s favor — if Republicans can muscle them through Congress.
“No transgender mutilation surgery for our children,” Trump told an audience at the Republican Members’ Issues Conference. “Voter ID, citizenship [verification], mail-in ballots, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports.”
“It’s the best of Trump. Those are the best of Trump. This is the number one priority, it should be, for the House,” Trump said.
Trump’s exhortations to Republican lawmakers come as the GOP wages an uphill campaign to hang on to a controlling majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He framed his legislative priorities as a way for Republicans to capitalize on popular demands within the GOP base that would increase their chances of preserving a Republican governing trifecta.
President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1, 2026. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
HOUSE REPUBLICANS PUSH ELECTION OVERHAUL WITH VOTER ID, MAIL-IN BALLOT CHANGES AHEAD OF MIDTERMS
Currently, Republicans hold just four more seats than Democrats in the House of Representatives.
The GOP holds six more than Democrats in the Senate.
To keep the numbers in their favor, Republicans will need to beat historical trends. In the vast majority of past cases, parties that capture the White House in presidential elections face blowback in the midterms. Notably, the last time a majority party gained seats in both chambers of Congress in the midterms came under the Bush administration in 2002, following devastating attacks on the World Trade Center.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, left, and President Donald Trump shake hands during an Invest America roundtable in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, District of Columbia, on June 9, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
REPUBLICANS, TRUMP RUN INTO SENATE ROADBLOCK ON VOTER ID BILL
Trump said he believes Republicans have a shot at bucking the trend come November if they focus on his list.
“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of his legislative priorities.
Republicans have already taken strikes towards two of them through the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and cast a ballot. That bill cleared the House last month for a second time in the 119th Congress.
Its future is uncertain in the Senate, where Republicans would need the assistance of seven Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster. Democrats, for their part, believe the legislation would disenfranchise voters who cannot readily provide documented proof of citizenship through a passport, REAL ID, or birth certificate.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. has promised a vote on the package despite its long odds.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during a “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Several members have introduced bills on transgender issues, although none of them have cleared either chamber.
“I’ve never been more confident that if we keep these promises and deliver on this popular agenda, the American people will stand with us in overwhelming numbers, just as they did in 2024,” Trump said.
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