By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com, editor@news-photos-features.com
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s flat statement that the hard-fought bipartisan border deal, entangled with aid desperately needed by Ukraine and Israel and humanitarian aid for Gazans, is “dead on arrival” because “Trump told me to kill it” is all the more reason why the Special Election for NY-03’s Congressional seat on February 13 is of national and even international importance.
Electing Democrat Tom Suozzi – with a proven record at working towards bipartisan solutions and cutting out the political gamesmanship – is crucial.
Suozzi’s election will further eat into the Republican Majority, now just two votes that have been used to literally strangle government and use lives as hostages to force grossly unpopular policy. But it would also send a message to neighboring Republican Congressmen who so far have talked a good game about being “reasonable” and “responsible” to their constituents while actually aiding and abetting the MAGA extremists that have captured their party. The Long Island Republicans have shown that they have no actual moral center or actual policy positions but will do whatever keeps their party in power, and right now that means kowtowing to Trump and his MAGA extremists.
Suozzi’s opponent, Nassau County Legislator Mazi Pilip, has demonstrated that she is a stooge for the party. Despite her attack ads showcasing the migrant crisis and saying over and over “it’s a problem” has just adopted Johnson’s line in opposing the bipartisan immigration deal (without even seeing it).
But that is consistent during her extremely brief time as an elected official that her loyalty is not to constituents but to the Republican machine that “brung” her to the party. She has no actual positions (or even understanding) of national issues, and on the extremely rare occasions she has been put in a position to answer questions, has actually flip-flopped on key issues like abortion, assault weapons ban, and whether or not “no man is above the law” and should be held to account. She now says she would vote for Trump even if he is convicted (but has refused to say whether she voted for Trump in 2016 or 2020, the rare times she has voted since becoming a citizen and registering to vote in 2012).
“This is a pretty good indication of what this race is about – I want bipartisan solutions and my opponent is taking Republican talking points from extremists,” Suozzi said during an online press conference.
“It’s incomprehensible to me that a candidate can claim that her number one priority is securing the border yet takes a dead-on-arrival approach on the only compromise border bill that has had a chance of passing our Congress over the past 30 years,” said Suozzi who offered a bipartisan “grand compromise” on immigration reform in 2019 with then Republican Congressman Peter King. “Everyone agrees this is the toughest, fairest set of reforms in decades. My opponent, Mazi Pilip, called this bipartisan deal the legalization of invasion of our country. That’s not only outrageous but dangerous. Today, she took outrageous step and sided with extreme members, demonstrating them that mission is to play politics with people’s lives, in coming out against bipartisan border deal instead of finding bipartisan compromise.”
Actually, the bipartisan immigration deal gives Republicans what they have been clamoring for: changes asylum laws, builds more wall, adds more detention beds, hastens the 10 year backlog to a matter of weeks before migrants claiming asylum can be deported by hiring immigration judges, border agents, and providing work permits for those allowed to come in. (80 percent who seek asylum are denied and deported, but presently, that process can take 10 years.)
The bill would also provide funding for cities and states that are sheltering migrants and for the first time, gives the President temporary emergency authority to shut down the border when the system is overwhelmed.
And while the bill does not address providing a path to citizenship or even legal status for the DACA recipients or the millions of undocumented migrants currently living in the country, as Democrats have wanted, it does restore the path to citizenship for people who join the armed services that Trump ended.
“By opposing this bill, [Mazi Pilip] is opposing funding to increase ICE detention capacity to 50,000, funding to hire hundreds ICE deportation officers, border patrol, US customs officials, asylum officers, increasing deportation flights, as well as a compromise that would provide $14 billion in aid to Israel and crucial aid to Ukraine to fend off Putin’s brutal invasion,” Suozzi said.
“People are tired of these political games that Mazi Pilip and her handlers are conducting.”
It makes Pilip’s attacks on Suozzi as the “liberal” single-handedly responsible for the border crisis all the more absurd and calculated.
Constituents, Suozzi said, “want commonsense leadership and people coming together to get things done. I’ve built my entire career on getting things done, working across party lines in so many ways, including immigration.”
Suozzi stressed that if this deal doesn’t pass now, it will be more than a year before another will happen. But for both Democrats who want to address DACA and a path to citizenship for the undocumented millions living in shadows, and for the Republicans who are finding fault, this legislation isn’t the end.
But it’s part of the bigger issue of “good government” – something that Republicans have abandoned since Newt Gingrich’s 1996 “Contract on America,” where he instituted a policy of ”my way or the highway” - never compromising with Democrats, effectively disenfranchising more than half the country, making irrelevant all the people who elect Democrats, with no rights of citizenship, their votes and their voice don’t matter – and regularly using shutdowns, threats to crash the economy and impeachment as political weapons, and now, literal political violence, backed with ubiquitous guns, to extort lawmakers or drive them out of government altogether.
Hank Johnson is going further, abandoning national interest in favor of Trump’s (and Putin’s and Xi’s) political interest: he only flip-flopped on demanding a Congressional solution to immigration (using Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan as hostages) after Trump told him he needed to prolong the border crisis because it so inflames voters and to deny Biden “a victory.” (Trump also wished for a recession this year, before the 2024 election – something that a government shutdown and refusal to pass a budget could achieve.)
The flat rejection to even bring the bipartisan immigration deal to the floor for debate has consequences for America’s place in the world, as Putin salivates (and prolongs his brutal invasion of Ukraine) over the chaos in Congress and Trump’s return to the Oval Office, Xi laughs at US abandoning Ukraine as he plots his own invasion of Taiwan, and Iran bolsters its proxies to destroy Israel and, with Russia, becomes the supreme power in the Middle East.
Today, instead of embracing the very policies and programs they have been clamoring for, house Republicans are set to actually impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, further undermining governance with pure unadulterated politics – just as the Republican-controlled House has done absolutely nothing but stoke the concerns Americans have except hold sham “investigations” into Hunter Biden (reminder, never a government official as Jared Kushner, who left the White House with $2 billion from the Saudis, and Ivanka Trump, who managed to acquire a basket of trademarks from China and left with $960 million in “earnings”) in order to impeach Biden (for what, exactly?).
Even in this high-speed dash to the Special Election on Feb. 13, Mazi Pilip has flip-flopped on most issues that are most important to NY-03 constituents. She has waffled on women’s reproductive rights, now saying that she agrees with Dobbs and her backing by Conservatives means she would be a vote for a national abortion ban; she reversed herself on “No Man is Above the Law” to now say she would vote for Trump even if he is convicted of any of the 91 crimes he is presently in four different courts for, including stealing and misusing the nation’s most classified secrets and organizing the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election – in order to further ingratiate herself with Trumpers.
Suozzi has been resolute throughout his career – in his support for Israel, standing against anti-Semitism, his support for women’s reproductive rights.
Early voting is underway until February 11. The Special Election to send someone to Congress who will actually stand up for NY-03 takes place on February 13. Vote Tom Suozzi.
(See what is in the bill: Biden-Harris Administration Calls on Congress to Immediately Pass the Bipartisan National Security Agreement)
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