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Comment by octopoc | Hacker News Reader

> The Democratic-led Senate took up the security aid bill after Republicans on Wednesday blocked a broader measure that also included reforms of border security and immigration policy that a bipartisan group of senators had negotiated for months.

Setting aside the emotional aspect of this headline, there's something I find interesting. Most Republicans in the Senate oppose border security yet it's one of the most important issues for Republican voters. When they take such a contrary stand that is a very meaningful signal IMO. My guess is it's probably due to heavy pro-Ukrainian and pro-Israeli influence. China is likely not a factor because the bill includes defense money for Taiwan.

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Passing legislation on the border issue means they can't bring it up later.

No need to guess at their motivations:

From: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-republicans...

"The striking turn of events comes as Donald Trump tells the GOP to sink the bill, arguing that it could take the political heat off Democrats ahead of an expected rematch with Joe Biden.

Donald Trump is demanding that Republicans sink the agreement, which they struck with Democrats and is now backed by President Joe Biden, as Trump, the likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee, seeks to wield immigration as a political weapon in the fall election. Trump tore into the bill on social media, calling it “nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the Radical Left Democrats have done to our Border, just in time for our most important EVER Election.”"

> My guess is it's probably due to heavy pro-Ukrainian and pro-Israeli influence.

It'll be interesting to see how the Senate responds to the new bill:

> Still, the defeat of the bill left open the possibility that Congress could yet provide much-needed aid to U.S. allies. The Senate was expected to vote on Thursday on a $96 billion package that strips out the immigration provisions but leaves the foreign aid intact.

Republicans dumped the border bill because Trump told Senators he wants the issue to run on, so it's not a signal on Ukraine at all.

The bill was a huge concession from Democrats since it didn't include a path to citizenship for DACA and the bulk of the partisan elements of the bill were Republican ideas.

The republicans have spent the past two months pissing and moaning that "Democrats hate the border and want it to be super duper open and free and we should spend money defending the boarder instead of giving it to Ukraine"

Okay, said the democrats, and drew up a bill that gives Ukraine money (something that most of America wants, and is just generally a good return on investment), gives Israel some money (a bipartisan thing that pretty much only part of the democrat progressive movement gets upset about), and a policy for the boarder that is damn near closing it, a huge concession from democrats who seemed to brush off border worries for so long. Democrats literally said, "Fine, we will do exactly what you want, and maybe you are right we should be doing this"

Republicans shut it down. Why? Ask them: They are admitting behind closed doors that they simply did not want to "help" Biden.

Remember, they consider improving situations they care about to be a bad thing when the "wrong" team is in charge. They don't care that they don't govern, and their voters actively seem to agree that governing at all while the "other team" is in charge is unacceptable.

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