The sure-fire way to learn what happened at yesterday's Senate Judiciary hearing about Trump's zero-tolerance policy is to read the testimonies and watch the hearing in full.
If you don't have 3-plus hours to kill, here are the takeaways from 5 news stories -- starting with the items you are least likely to have read about.
During yesterday's committee mark-up of the Homeland Security Appropriations bill, Reps. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) allowed for the passage of several amendments that would undermine the Trump Administration's immigration enforcement efforts and increase foreign-worker competition for vulnerable American workers.
The Western Growers association is working to sabotage the effort to pass a House bill containing E-Verify, despite the fact that the rest of the agribusiness lobby has signed off on the bill. This Western Growers continues to try to defeat any serious attempt to end illegal immigration, and will only accept a permanent "solution" that amounts to indentured servitude for agricultural workers.
Here are representative comments of what I heard from my first 73 conversations.
This is a different kind of 4th of July holiday than we've had since at least the early '70s.
A growing number of Members of Congress -- and protesters in the streets -- are questioning the legitimacy of the United States of America remaining a true nation of self-determining people.
The Trump Administration's "zero tolerance" policy for illegal border crossings will reduce illegal immigration. If Congress takes action, it can ensure that parents and children are kept together while they await the outcome of their cases. If the President wants to pursue a "zero tolerance" policy against criminal employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers, he must support the inclusion of E-Verify as part of any necessary reform bill.
Although it came up 20 votes short of passing, H.R. 4760 ("the Goodlatte bill") yesterday gained the most votes in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives in terms of mandating E-Verify and ending the chain migration categories.
That is something to celebrate!
President Trump has a clear choice. he can sign the Goodlatte bill, which would fulfill some of his campaign promises, or he can sign the Speaker Ryan "compromise" bill, which is a Gang of Eight redux. Ryan's bill does not include E-Verify, and it won't cut the number of green cards issued every year.
The draft text for House Speaker Paul Ryan's "compromise" bill is out, and it's as bad as we feared. Speaker Ryan's amnesty plan follows the same playbook that the Gang of 8 followed, granting an immediate and permanent amnesty to at least 1.8 million illegal aliens with only promises of future enforcement.