GOP/IMMIGRATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Republican leaders had muscled through their failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, punted on the perennial brinkmanship over the debt ceiling and finally reached the one issue that all of the party’s factions wanted to be on, tax reform.
Then, over a Chinese dinner at the White House with the two top Democrats on Capitol Hill, President Trump threw that momentary sense of satisfaction into disarray, forcing Republicans to confront the subject that packs more emotional and political force than anything they had on their busy agenda: immigration.
Virtually nothing can drive Republicans more bitterly apart than immigration policy, which has vexed the party ever since President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Republican leaders were scorched by the issue when President George W. Bush pushed it in his second term. The divisions re-emerged when President Barack Obama took it back up…
Mr. Trump’s tentative agreement on Wednesday with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to move forward on legislation to protect the legal status of young, undocumented immigrants and to delay, for now, a fight over the president’s promised border wall triggered anger and bewilderment on the right.”
-Jeremy W. Peters, “Immigration’s Sudden Re-Emergence Scrambles Republican Agenda,” The New York Times online, Sept. 14, 2017