Facing a stunning and unprecedented revolt from within her own party, Nancy Pelosi just threw in the towel and will pass the GOP’s border bill.
Pelosi is having a harder and harder time keeping her fragile coalition together and by caving to the GOP she will surely fire up the liberal wing of her party.
Remember, AOC has threatened to revolt before and with her may go Pelosi’s future. From CNN:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the House will pass the Senate’s version of a border funding bill.
“The children come first,” Pelosi said in a statement. “At the end of the day, we have to make sure that the resources needed to protect the children are available.”
Democratic leaders in the House are scrambling Thursday to reconcile their emergency border funding bill with a version that passed the Senate overwhelmingly Wednesday as a humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border rages on.
After a shocking image this week of a father and daughter drowned went viral — serving as a grim reminder of the dangerous journey migrants take to get to the United States — the haunting photo has added even more urgency for Republicans and Democrats to make a deal.
Disagreements between moderates and progressives in the Democratic caucus caused leadership to pause before bringing the bill to the floor, heightening the drama just days before Congress is expected to leave town for the July 4th recess.
The House unveiled an amendment to the $4.6 billion Senate bill late Wednesday, but Democratic moderates threatened to revolt and kill the latest border spending bill pushed by the House, according to two Democratic sources involved in the effort.
Behind the scenes, moderates were encouraging members of the blue dog and problem solvers caucuses to vote against a procedural vote that governed floor debate and force House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to pass the bipartisan Senate bill, as the White House and Hill Republicans have been demanding.
Rep. Henry Cuellar said that his understanding is that the House will vote on the Senate bill. He added that he expects the vote to come as soon as Thursday afternoon but exact timing remains fluid.
Asked why he thinks Pelosi ultimately decided to go with the clean bill, he said: “We cannot lead with a game of chicken,” adding the House and Senate can’t go back and forth on something as pressing as this.
Pelosi spoke on the phone with Vice President Mike Pence for nearly an hour Thursday, according to a senior Democratic aide. Pelosi then went into a meeting with her leadership team to brief them.
Pelosi — a speaker who has been at the center of fights between her liberal and moderate members before — is dealing with a two-pronged rebellion. Moderates argue the Senate bill — while it does not include all the protections they’d hoped — is adequate and far better than returning to their districts without having given any money to the Trump administration to deal with the unfolding crisis at the border.
“The House needs to take up the Senate bill and get money to the border,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a Democrat from Florida.
Cuellar, a Democrat from Texas, says that for him, the growing distress at the border is happening at home. The congressman pulled out his phone and showed reporters images he’d been sent from constituents at the border.
“Listen, I don’t go visit the border. I live at the border. Those men and women who sometimes get demonized. That is wrong. Those are my neighbors and I have their backs,” he said. “We cannot go home without getting this job done.”
