Senator Lankford Anticipates Border Deal This Week

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told reporters that a border bill wasn’t likely to be passed Wednesday, but “we’re hoping to get it out this week,” Politico reporter Daniella Diaz posted on X.

Lankford, a key Senate negotiator, has been working for weeks with a small bipartisan group and officials from the Biden White House to craft a deal that would provide funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, as well as address the surge of migrants at the U.S. southern border.

But House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told Republican conference members that what he’s heard about the Senate deal relating to Ukraine aid and policy at the U.S.-Mexico border would make it “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber.

Johnson on Friday sent a letter to House colleagues to update them on “the supplemental and the border, since the Senate appears unable to reach any agreement.”

“If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway,” Johnson wrote in his letter, which was obtained by Politico.

According to CNN, an aide to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told a group of Senate Republican chiefs of staff last week that a bipartisan deal linking enhanced border security with Ukraine aid has no chance of passing House if the legislation includes measures such as work permits for migrants and a 5,000-border crossing threshold to trigger enhanced expulsion authority.

Complicating matters further are former President Donald Trump’s objections to the compromise, which he told Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, would be “too weak.”

In a private meeting on Jan. 24, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., acknowledged that Trump is the GOP’s likely presidential nominee and recognized the former president’s opposition to the deal.

“We’re still working on it,” McConnell said Thursday.