A trio of Republican senators are hoping to solve the DACA problem, and they have reason to believe President Trump will get on board. The senators, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Orrin Hatch of Utah, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have introduced the Solution for Undocumented Children through Careers Employment Education and Defending our Nation Act.
That cumbersome title is shortened to SUCCEED, and it’s a slightly more conservative version of the famed DREAM Act, which attempted to provide amnesty for children of illegal immigrants who were brought into the country as minors. Trump, Lankford said in a press conference Monday, was “very supportive” of the ideas behind the SUCCEED Act.
Lankford laid out the basic outlines of the legislation in a phone conversation with the president on September 12, a week after the administration announced it would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Since then, there’s been “productive conversations” between the senators’ offices and the White House on SUCCEED, according to one Capitol Hill source.
President Obama had created DACA through executive order in 2012 after Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act. The program was designed as a temporary solution, but Trump campaigned on ending it as conservatives criticized it as an example of executive overreach.
Since announcing he would begin winding down the program this month, President Trump has expressed a desire for Congress to find a legislative “fix” for those who registered under the DACA program and had recently discussed a deal with Democratic leaders on the issue. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi claim that Trump agreed to their proposal, though the White House has been less committal.
The SUCCEED Act looks a lot like the DREAM Act, but with some stricter requirements to allow DACA recipients to stay in the country—including proof of steady employment and a clean criminal background check. When I asked Kevin Bishop, a spokesman for DREAM Act co-sponsor Lindsey Graham, what the South Carolina Republican thought of the new legislation, Bishop said it was “in the ballpark” of the DREAM Act.
“The administration has spoken with the offices of Senators Lankford and Tillis about the legislation, however we aren’t going to weigh in on this bill until it goes through the OMB and agency review process,” said a White House official.
Mark It Down—“Yeah, this wasn’t White House-approved travel.” —White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when asked about HHS secretary Tom Price’s taxpayer-funded charter flights, September 25, 2017.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended President Trump’s criticism of professional athletes who protest the national anthem before games on Monday, saying that “it’s always appropriate for the president of the United States to defend our flag.”
Sanders insisted that Trump’s comments, which included calling players who knelt for the anthem “son[s] of a bitch,” were not meant to tear people down.
“This isn’t about the president being against someone,” Sanders said. “This is about the president and millions of Americans being for something. Honoring our flag, honoring our national anthem.”
Sanders also said the protests, which began when Colin Kaepernick (then with the San Francisco 49ers) refused to stand in order to make a statement about the unfair treatment of African Americans by law enforcement, shouldn’t be directed at the American flag.
“I think if the debate is really, for them, about police brutality, they should probably protest the officers on the field who are protecting them instead of the American flag,” Sanders said before clarifying: “I was kind of pointing out the hypocrisy of the fact that if the goal is and the message is one of police brutality, then that doesn’t seem very appropriate to protest the American flag.”
Reality Check—Hurry up and read my colleague Jonathan Last on the subject of Trump vs. the NFL. As JVL puts it, we’re all losers in this fight. Then, read my other colleague Barton Swaim and his Washington Post op-ed from last year about why Colin Kaepernick’s symbolic protest “missed the point.”
Special Election Watch—Alabama Republicans head back to the polls today in the Senate special election primary runoff between incumbent Luther Strange and frontrunner Roy Moore. President Trump remains a Strange supporter, having appeared with him in Huntsville on Friday. But he has done so in his own Trumpian way, saying both candidates were “good men” and acknowledging that while “we have to be loyal in life,” he “might have made a mistake” in endorsing Strange.
Speaking to reporters Monday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders avoided a question asking whether Trump felt he owed his support to Republican senators like Strange who voted for the health-care legislation the White House strongly supported.
“I think the president feels that he owes it to the American people who elected him, which means they supported the agenda that he was trying to promote,” Sanders said. “And the more that we have like-minded officials helping promote and push that agenda and pass that legislation, I think the better off we are.”
Three days after Trump’s rally in Huntsville and on election eve, Vice President Mike Pence appeared with Strange at a rally in Birmingham—while former White House strategist Steve Bannon, now back at Breitbart, introduced Moore in Fairhope on Mobile Bay.
Must Read of the Day—Jamie Kirchick on how Valerie Plame revealed an “all-too-common view”—on the left!—“about nefarious Jewish influence over American politics.”
Song of the Day—“Hard to Explain” by the Strokes.
