Trump Can't Decide If Migrant Farm Worker Industry Is a Worthy Sacrifice for His Mass Deportation Agenda

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4 days ago

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM's Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
President Trump's flip-flopping on whether to upend the agriculture and hospitality industries for the sake of following through on his haphazard mass deportation agenda reveals one aspect of what his immigration policies have, in part, always been about: punishing blue cities and states.
Members of the Trump administration have apparently not been on the same page, for weeks, about whether to pillage the agriculture and hotel industries of their migrant workers. As the President sent in the National Guard in to crack down on protesters in Los Angeles who were demonstrating against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the city, he was also privately mulling whether to pause migrant raids on farms and hotels, aware of the political risks of deporting a workforce vital to two important American industries. By mid June, the Washington Post reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was telling staff to, at least temporarily, pause on raids at farms, hotels and restaurants. Two days later, the DHS reversed course. At one point, Trump even suggested that 'good reputable farmers' might be given some sort of hall pass for employing undocumented immigrants if they 'take responsibility for the people that they hire.'
During an interview on Fox News' 'Sunday Morning Futures' with Maria Bartiromo over the weekend, it was clear that Trump has been feeling the heat from farmers, a voting base that has been supportive of his presidency.
'I don't back away,' he said. 'What I do have, I cherish our farmers. And when we go into a farm and we take away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years, who were good, who possibly came in incorrectly. And what we're going to do is we're going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge. The farmer knows he's not going to hire a murderer.'
You don't need us to tell you that Trump's second term immigration policies have never been about removing violent criminals from the country. It's another arm of his retribution scheme.
While much of Trump's mass deportations agenda is rooted in racism and Stephen Miller's paranoia about a Great Replacement, it is also clear that Trump sees it as a cudgel to go after states and cities that are led by elected Democrats. Those are, conveniently, the only places with sanctuary policies. Efforts to withhold federal funding from municipalities and states that don't comply with the Trump administration's deportation crusade are already underway.
A week ago, there were perhaps a dozen Senate Republicans who had concerns about Trump's 'big, beautiful' bill. On Saturday evening, only two voted down the motion to advance it — Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Rand Paul (R-KY). Tillis, as you may already know, promptly drew a primary threat from the president, and just as promptly declared he will not be running for office again anyway.
So what happened to all the other senators?
Dave Dayen at the American Prospect has a partial answer. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), one of the bill's skeptics, got a whole bundle of favors in a version of the bill that appeared Saturday.
The federal share of payment for Medicaid would be increased for 'the state with the highest separate poverty guideline.' That happens to be Alaska. Their share would increase 25 percent above that of a typical state.
Other programs bundle together benefits for 'noncontiguous states,' referring to Alaska and Hawaii. That includes an exemption from work requirements for SNAP, an increase in Medicare reimbursement rates to select health care providers, and a waiver from the cost-sharing provisions, whereby a state must contribute to SNAP funding.
Other gifts for Murkowski included an expanded tax deduction for whale boat captains.
Murkowski voted for the motion to proceed on Saturday evening.
Afterwards, the Senate parliamentarian stripped out some of these favors for Alaska. Perhaps Murkowski will now vote no on the bill's final passage. We wouldn't count on it, and, regardless, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) can spare one vote.
This morning, the Senate kicked off its 'vote-a-rama,' another term for its back-to-back votes on a series of amendments to the megabill. The first vote focused on whether Senate Republicans can use a problematic budgeting gimmick to attempt to make it seem like the $3.8 trillion cost of extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy won't add to the deficit.
My colleague Emine Yücel reported on the whole scheme a few months back: 'They're Engaged In Trickery': What Sen Republicans Are Actually Trying To Do With Their Tax Cut Magic Math
She will be updating us on the details of today's proceedings here in our liveblog, if you'd like to follow along or catch up.
A Congressional Budget Office assessment finds 11.8 million people would lose their health insurance under the latest version — nearly 1 million people more than would lose it under the House version.
A sneakily-inserted provision to drive down the cost of the bill will not only end federal support to wind and solar projects — it will impose new taxes on them.
Every hospital in the state of Louisiana sent a letter, reported on by Politico, to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Saturday warning that the Senate bill, which his chamber will soon take up, will be a disaster for his home state. It 'reflects an estimated annual loss of more than $4 billion in total Medicaid funding for Louisiana healthcare providers,' the letter warned.
Ryan Reilly at NBC:
At least three federal prosecutors who worked on cases against Jan. 6 rioters were fired Friday by the Justice Department, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials familiar with the dismissals.
A copy of one of the dismissal letters seen by NBC News was signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, notifying the recipient that they were 'removed from federal service effective immediately.' No reason for the removal was stated in the letter.
The Trump administration's star witness in its prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García, Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, was due to be deported, but is now free after cooperating with the government. Court documents and testimony suggest a significant portion of prosecutors accusations against Abrego García rest on Reyes testimony, the Washington Post reported.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) suggested that Mamdani's victory means New Yorkers have 'forgotten' about 9/11.
Trump, meanwhile, made the entirely predictable threat of withholding federal funding from New York City if Mamdani wins in November. 'I can't imagine it, but let's say this, if he does get in, I'm gonna be president and he's going to have to do the right thing or they're not getting any money,' Trump told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. 'He's gotta do the right thing.'
Mamdani, for his part, reiterated in response to Trump's threat that he would maintain New York's sanctuary city status.
'It's a policy that had previously been defended by Democrats and Republicans alike, until the fearmongering of this current mayor,' Mamdani he told NBC's Kristen Welker. 'And it's a policy that we've seen ensures that New Yorkers can get out of the shadows and into the full life of the city that they belong to, and it's one that I will be proud to stand up for.'
More here from Politico, Axios and TPM's own Hunter Walker.
Dara Kerr at the Guardian:
Federal agents blasted their way into a residential home in Huntington Park, California, on Friday. Security-camera video obtained by the local NBC station showed border patrol agents setting up an explosive device near the door of the house and then detonating it – causing a window to be shattered. Around a dozen armed agents in full tactical gear then charged toward the home.
Jenny Ramirez, who lives in the house with her boyfriend and one-year-old and six-year-old children, told NBC through tears that it was one of the loudest explosions she heard in her life.
'I told them, 'You guys didn't have to do this, you scared my son, my baby,'' Ramirez said.
Ramirez told the Guardian everyone who lived in the house was a U.S. citizen. The agents told her they were searching for her boyfriend, she said.
Hungary's innovative authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, threatened 'clear legal consequences' for anyone who took part in Budapest's parade on Saturday. That threat only turned the LGBTQ celebration into a protest against his government. More than 100,000 people showed up. Law enforcement stood by passively.
Orbán appears to face a real electoral threat from a center-right challenger, Peter Magyar, in this year's election. Magyar, also conservative, appeared to offer oblique support for the event, the Times reported, writing on social media that Orbán was trying 'to turn Hungarian against Hungarian, in order to create fear and divide us.'