Pretty rapidly Senate Republicans seem to be falling in line behind Donald Trump’s demand to kill the Senate border deal.

Sen. Mike Rounds now says he’d be no on cloture if Sen. Schumer brings the bill up for a vote this week, as he said he would. For clarity, “no on cloture” is Senate-speak for supporting filibustering the bill, which he’s actually been a supporter of. In other words, he’s leaving open the possibility he might vote for it later after amendments. But that likely means after adding poison pills to scare off Democratic votes. At a minimum GOP Senators are saying, okay nice start. Make it more draconian and we’ll talk.

At least for now it seems like Trump’s demand to kill the bill have made it impossible for it to get to 60 votes. Trump’s got supporters of the compromise lining up to announce they’re against it.

Following up on the post below about this Senate border bill. However this goes I suspect it will go quickly. No one in the Senate wants to get caught out on the losing side of it. With that in mind Politico’s Burgess Everett just reported that Sen. John Thune says he’s “still reviewing the text and I think James Lankford worked as hard as he could to get the best deal under the circumstances.”

I wouldn’t be so quick to assume Democrats got taken by working with Senate Republicans to put together this bipartisan border deal. There are a number of provisions in this deal which many Democrats won’t like at all just on the merits. That is an important question. But here I’m talking about the politics. It’s House Republicans who are in an awkward position now.

House Republicans are now clearly refusing to support provisions they’ve been demanding for years. Now they claim that they are refusing to support or even allow a vote on the deal because it doesn’t go far enough. But it’s a bit late for that since they were already pretty open about simply refusing to vote for anything until Trump becomes President again.

There was a helpful article in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend illustrating some of the actual situation in Israel-Palestine. It’s a profile of far-right Kahanist politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is one of the two ultra-far-right figures keeping Netanyahu in power. Through the article he pines for the return of Donald Trump who would, Ben-Gvir says, finally give Israel the free hand it needs to encourage the “voluntary” departure of the Gazan population and resettle the strip with Israel settlements.

“Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which goes to Hamas,” Ben-Gvir told the Journal. “If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”

I want to flag to your attention two interesting articles on the the shape of the 2024 election. The first one is from Nate Cohn of the Times and it is is on a topic that requires some background explanation.

There’s been a debate for the last year or so about two potential sources of insight into who has the advantage going into 2024. Camp one looks at polls which show Trump and Biden either roughly tied or Trump with a small but significant lead. But a lengthy list of special election outcomes tells a different story. It shows Democrats significantly and fairly consistently exceeding historical benchmarks and, often, polls. There are a lot more polls than special elections. But special elections aren’t estimates of election results. They are actual election results.