Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) diverged from his party recently by acknowledging that the breakdown of the southern border is really a “crisis.”
“There’s a crisis at the border,” Fetterman told reporters on Friday. “And I don’t know how anybody could pretend that there isn’t.”
Fetterman has often voiced his disapproval of his party’s stance on the border issue during the past few weeks.
“I’m not a progressive,” Fetterman told NBC News. “I just think I’m a Democrat that is very committed to choice and other things. But with Israel, I’m going to be on the right side of that. And immigration is something near and dear to me, and I think we do have to effectively address it as well.”
Amidst a surge in illegal alien crossings into the United States, House Republicans have remained steadfast in their insistence for enhanced border security, as the possibility of a government shutdown approaches. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recently visited the southern border with a small group of his colleagues to assess the situation following a record-breaking 3.2 million interactions with illegal aliens in the fiscal year 2023.
These figures do not encompass “gotaways” and individuals who have evaded detection, hence concealing the actual count. Since President Biden assumed office in January 2021, almost 8 million undocumented immigrants have entered the country.
The president has urged congress to approve a substantial foreign aid package that will allocate tens of billions of dollars in extra security financing to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. House Republicans have enacted a distinct foreign aid package and have urged the president to propose a comprehensive plan to initiate negotiations on foreign aid.
House Republicans have pledged to refrain from providing financial support to Ukraine until the issue at the border is resolved.
In a separate interview with the Daily Beast, the PA Senator doubled down against Democrats with a rare show of support for Donald Trump, alleging that his party’s plot to remove the former president from the ballot will only backfire.
While Fetterman is no fan of Trump’s, he does not appreciate the efforts to keep leading Republican presidential contender off state ballots in 2024.
“I just want to just go on the record to say how incredibly unhelpful it is to have other states removing him from the ballot,” Fetterman told the website for a column published on Thursday.
“All of that is a gift to Trump,” he said, “and all it does is just make him more popular and strong. That’s just going to energize his base. It’s just not helpful.”
The Daily Beast observed that just a small number of Democratic leaders have issued comparable cautions against the endeavors, such as the ones that resulted in the removal of Trump from the ballots in Colorado and Maine.
The Colorado Supreme Court removed Trump from the ballot in response to a complaint claiming that he was not qualified to hold public office due to his involvement in an insurrection, which is prohibited by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
However, in Maine, the secretary of state, who is a Democrat, withdrew Trump by invoking the identical language in the 14th Amendment.
Trump has lodged an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court about the Colorado ruling, while he has taken the Maine case to the state court.
Gene Stilp, a Democratic activist residing in Dauphin County, initiated a federal lawsuit in September with the aim of removing Trump from Pennsylvania’s ballots. However, he then withdrew the action last month. Stilp then proceeded to launch a similar lawsuit to prevent U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a Republican from York County, from being on the vote.
According to a report by KYW-TV in Philadelphia, Stilp intends to resubmit his lawsuit against Trump in a state court.
On January 4, the station also conveyed that Al Schmidt, the Secretary of State of Pennsylvania, stated that the state’s election code does not grant him the power to refuse a candidate’s nominating petition on the grounds of their eligibility.
“In Pennsylvania, that is a question that can be answered only by the courts,” he told the station.
