DREAM Act Portal Forum - Daily DACA Round-Up: 1/23/2018

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the round-up. Let's get to it:

I am skipping yesterday largely because of my laziness, but also because what had transpired yesterday was a two big spin cycle, one from Democrat legislators and some media members and another from activists, Republican legislators and other media members.

I will just say this - We will not fully know whether Democrats "won" this fight until Feb. 8 (or even later!). It is hard to say Democrats did not "cave," however.

Here's one article that says Democrats put themselves in better position by caving - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...b002283005c4ca

On the other hand, did this shutdown scare Senate Democrats from shutting down the government again? That's what some senators seem to say privately.

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/955775503402766341

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3...utdown-tactics

A Morning Consult poll shows that the shutdown has increased voters' support for DACA (https://twitter.com/eyokley/status/955834260283449344), but does it matter to many moderate Democrat senators?

We will see...

Let's get right to today. Today began at SCOTUS - Who agreed to "expedite consideration" of the DACA case. What does that mean? Basically, SCOTUS wants both proponents and opponents of the injunction to submit their case/brief soon so it can make a decision on whether to take the case.

Still unlikely that SCOTUS will decide on this case before Spring, and SCOTUS won't even decide whether to hear the case until it reconvenes on Feb. 16. (https://twitter.com/KarenTumlin/stat...31671718232064)

Meanwhile, the spin cycles continued but the significance of today was that negotiations over DACA seem to have picked up once again.

GOP House members (In this case, Republican Study Committee which includes 154 congressmen) again called for the Goodlatte bill to come to a vote, although the bill is DOA on the Senate as Senate Democrats likely favor the status quo over the bill: https://twitter.com/scottwongDC/stat...08122182029313

GOP House Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and WH again stressed that the bipartisan Graham/Durbin bill is not going to happen:

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/stat...69282222350336

WH is throwing its support behind the Goodlatte bill: https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/955801320719638528

The truth is that WH doesn't want to give this so-called "amnesty" unless significant changes are made to the legal immigration system. You can say it has been hijacked by hard-liners such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK)... but Trump did win his election through anti-immigrant rhetoric, after all. It increasingly looks like Trump and WH see Cotton and other hard-liners as offering "course corrections."

Meanwhile, Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has officially withdrawn an offer to Trump in the line of $25 b. (!) border security funding for a DACA fix. Now we don't know how that $25 b. was offered (Was it all in one year? Over 10 years?), but still astonishing.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...l-offer-359156

So, what's next? Well, enter the Gang of... 60? That's what Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) is suggesting at least.

https://twitter.com/seungminkim/stat...01819514966016

Graham means figuratively, in that he wants a biparitsan deal to be of some Dems + some GOP, rather than all Dems + few GOP or all GOP + some Dems.

He also means literally: The so-called Gang of Six has now become the Gang of 13.

"The list included senators who had already struck the bipartisan immigration deal vehemently opposed by the White House: Durbin and Graham, as well as Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). Among others who attended were Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Angus King (I-Maine), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)."

(Most interesting comment from the article comes from Sen. John Thune (R-SD) - Who says DACA for border security is a lot easier deal to pass than adding other elements of the immigration debate. The problem, however, is that WH and the House want to add those elements in, whether to just strangle this deal or to get what they want)

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...it-wall-362981

Here's Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) who says she may not trust Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) but trusts the group of moderate GOP senators to come to a deal.

https://twitter.com/DavidWright_CNN/...31763061956611

They seem to want to use Graham/Durbin as a starting point, but with the House and WH openly hostile to it, will they succeed?

That should just about do it. No big meeting or anything like that planned for tomorrow, it seems, so get some rest and sleep, and may God smile upon us tomorrow.

My apology for not formatting this, but I'm typing this at 10 PM on the West Coast so...please forgive me. I'll be better tomorrow.

P.S. Some good news in New York as Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state will use its share of Medicaid money to insure DACA recipients (https://www.politico.com/states/new-...am-ends-206926)

P.S. 2. A survey of "forecasters" put the odd of a DACA deal by April 1 at 33 percent (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...legalize-daca/). I would have put the odds lower, but they know more than me, after all.