Trump Administration Should Start With An Immigration Bill

One of the challenges of any new presidential administration is deciding what should lead the legislative agenda. Nothing dissipates faster than the momentum and legislative mandate that accompanies a strong election victory. This is especially true of second-term presidencies, as Trump’s is in spite of the Biden interregnum. George W. Bush attempted Social Security reform, failed at it, then turned to immigration and failed at that, too — while seeing a good deal of focus during the crucial early months of his second term diverted by the Terri Schiavo controversy. Barack Obama, riding high on hubris and driven by the emotional moment after the Newtown shooting, wasted his own second-term legislative window on a losing battle for gun control.

There’s a bunch of things Donald Trump and Republicans will want to do over the next two years. Many are outside of the regular legislative process: executive actions, confirmations, tax and budget bills. But with what looks like a modest House majority and 53 Senators, Republicans will be in a position to pass bills through the House that can pass the Senate if and only if there is Democratic support. The most obvious big-ticket issue on which that may now actually be possible is immigration. The Biden approach to immigration is completely dead — you can’t find anybody in the Democratic Party who now both acknowledges and defends how the Biden-Harris administration approached border security in 2021-23. It is universally recognized, at least implicitly, to have been a massive, unforced political error. Even Kamala Harris ran on promising to secure the border and pretending that Republicans in Congress, not the administration, were responsible for the administration’s policies. Democrats across the country ran ads pledging to get tough on the border and even openly embracing Trump on the issue. Where I live on Long Island, Laura Gillen flipped New York’s fourth district from Anthony D’Esposito, and Tom Suozzi was reelected in the third district, won by George Santos in 2022; both of them focused almost entirely on getting tough on the border in any ad that wasn’t purely negative. Elissa Slotkin was especially vigorous in embracing Trump immigration policies in her Senate campaign. And all of them, even those who defended the Biden-Harris position by blaming Trump for blocking the bipartisan Lankford bill in the spring, ran on the importance of working across the aisle on the issue.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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One of the challenges of any new presidential administration is deciding what should lead the legislative agenda. Nothing dissipates faster than the momentum and legislative mandate that accompanies a strong election victory. This is especially true of second-term presidencies, as Trump’s is in spite of the Biden interregnum. George W. Bush attempted Social Security reform, failed at it, then turned to immigration and failed at that, too — while seeing a good deal of focus during the crucial early months of his second term diverted by the Terri Schiavo controversy. Barack Obama, riding high on hubris and driven by the emotional moment after the Newtown shooting, wasted his own second-term legislative window on a losing battle for gun control.

There’s a bunch of things Donald Trump and Republicans will want to do over the next two years. Many are outside of the regular legislative process: executive actions, confirmations, tax and budget bills. But with what looks like a modest House majority and 53 Senators, Republicans will be in a position to pass bills through the House that can pass the Senate if and only if there is Democratic support. The most obvious big-ticket issue on which that may now actually be possible is immigration. The Biden approach to immigration is completely dead — you can’t find anybody in the Democratic Party who now both acknowledges and defends how the Biden-Harris administration approached border security in 2021-23. It is universally recognized, at least implicitly, to have been a massive, unforced political error. Even Kamala Harris ran on promising to secure the border and pretending that Republicans in Congress, not the administration, were responsible for the administration’s policies. Democrats across the country ran ads pledging to get tough on the border and even openly embracing Trump on the issue. Where I live on Long Island, Laura Gillen flipped New York’s fourth district from Anthony D’Esposito, and Tom Suozzi was reelected in the third district, won by George Santos in 2022; both of them focused almost entirely on getting tough on the border in any ad that wasn’t purely negative. Elissa Slotkin was especially vigorous in embracing Trump immigration policies in her Senate campaign. And all of them, even those who defended the Biden-Harris position by blaming Trump for blocking the bipartisan Lankford bill in the spring, ran on the importance of working across the aisle on the issue.