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Donald Trump will soon start his second term as president. Don’t expect a strong opposition party or healthy “resistance” movement this time, at least not in Washington during the “shock and awe” start of his new administration. With 10 days before the president-elect is sworn in, Democrats in Congress are already capitulating to Trump harder than virtually anyone expected — and Republicans are ecstatic over the degree to which Trump and the GOP’s wins have “paralyzed” the Democratic elite.
On Tuesday, four dozen House Democrats joined Republicans in passing a viciously right-wing immigration bill — legislation that, just last year, was seen as a conservative messaging bill. Six Democratic lawmakers flipped their positions, voting for the legislation after rejecting it last year. There’s a strong likelihood that the immigration bill will pass in the Senate, too, after most of the Democratic caucus voted to begin debate on the legislation.
The Laken Riley Act, cynically named after a Georgia nursing student who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant, is a smorgasbord of extreme conservative immigration ideas. First, the legislation would require the federal government to detain undocumented immigrants accused of theft without bond, regardless of whether they are convicted. Perhaps more dramatically, the legislation would empower conservative state attorneys general to sue the federal government over supposed failures to enforce immigration laws — and to demand that courts ban visas from certain countries if those countries refuse to cooperate with the United States on deportations.
“The idea that we should detain and deport people when they are simply accused without giving them a trial is contrary to our basic American values,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who voted no on the Laken Riley Act last year and again on Tuesday, tells Rolling Stone. He adds, “We need to stand up against the Trump administration abusing their power in how we treat immigrants, and I am proud to have voted my conscience.”
It’s looking less and less likely, though, that Democrats are going to begin the second Trump administration by standing up to him — be it on immigration, or potentially any major issue at all. Predictably, Trump, his allies on Capitol Hill and senior members of his government-in-waiting are over the moon about what this could mean for their (openly authoritarian and bloodlusting) agenda.
“He remade the Democrat Party,” an incoming Trump administration official assesses. “President Trump forced them to start seeing things his, and the American people’s, way.”
When Rolling Stone discussed this matter with half a dozen Trump officials, GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and longtime MAGA-aligned Republican operatives this week, there was an outpouring of football-spiking and jubilance over the degree to which Democratic lawmakers and their liberal stalwarts were — to borrow a term repeatedly used by several of these sources — “paralyzed” in the face of this year’s coming Trump onslaught.
For the short term, at least, the fact that the 2024 election has freaked out enough of the mainstream Democratic Party into seriously entertaining chunks of Trump’s policy priorities has given the president-elect significantly more leeway and leverage than the slim conservative majorities on Capitol Hill might have otherwise suggested.
“I think it’s important to distinguish between capitulation to Trump in a way that betrays Democratic values, versus constructive pragmatism,” says Jesse Lehrich, a former 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman. “Because I actually worry about both ends of the spectrum — weak-kneed Dems letting Trump steamroll them on one end, and the party just reflexively opposing anything Trump supports (i.e., 2017-style ‘resistance’) on the other.”
Lehrich adds, “I hope Democrats go way harder at Trumpworld corruption than they did in his first term. I hope they take bigger, bolder, more attention-grabbing stands to demonstrate how hard they’re fighting for people. But we also have to listen to voters, and demonstrate that we’re listening. If you are in politics because you want to do good, you have be able to win elections, so I don’t think there’s any virtue in just being the anti-Trump party refusing to learn any lessons.”
So far, at least seven Senate Democrats have endorsed the Laken Riley Act: Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.). Their votes are likely already enough for passage in the Senate, but Democrats could still provide more “yay” votes.
On Thursday, most members of the Democratic Senate caucus voted to begin debate on the Laken Riley Act; only nine opposed the procedural vote to advance the bill, while six voted present.
Some of these “yes” votes represent a remarkable shift. “Immigration is personal for me,” Fetterman, who is married to a former undocumented immigrant, wrote on X during his Senate campaign two years ago. He noted his wife “lived in America undocumented for years after fleeing violence in Brazil when she was 7. I wouldn’t have a family if it weren’t for immigration. It’s what makes America, America.”
Fetterman recently pledged to protect “Dreamers,” or undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. As journalist Pablo Manríquez notes, the Laken Riley Act would mandate the detention of Dreamers over minor offenses.
Ossoff, for his part, said during a 2020 campaign debate, “We can have an immigration policy that puts American workers first, that provides that path to legal status, that protects Dreamers, secures our borders, and doesn’t violate the human rights of innocent people seeking a better life or fleeing persecution.”
The American Civil Liberties Union has opposed the Laken Riley Act on the grounds that it violates immigrants’ basic rights. The organization wrote in a recent letter that mandatory detention “flies in the face of our Constitution,” adding, “The Fifth Amendment protects all ‘persons’ — including immigrants — from the deprivation of liberty without due process of law.”
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights similarly warned lawmakers: “Mandatory immigration detention on the basis of a mere arrest is unprecedented, and it would invite abuses that almost certainly would disproportionately impact people of color.”
It would be easier to entertain the idea from various elite Democrats that they need to work with Trump if so many of them hadn’t spent years insisting that Trump is an authoritarian — if not fascist — madman and a threat to democracy who they feared would jail them if allowed to return to power.
And yet, immigration is not the only issue on which Democrats appear ready to roll over for Trump.
Fetterman, who is set to meet with Trump soon at his Mar-a-Lago club in South Florida, indicated on Tuesday he could support Trump’s demands that the U.S. take over Greenland.
Trump recently posted online that Greenland, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, “is needed by the United States for National Security purposes.” He subsequently refused to rule out attempting to acquire Greenland via military means or economic coercion.
Fetterman said on Fox News on Tuesday that acquiring Greenland isn’t a “bonkers” idea, explaining that he was open to discussing the idea of “just buying it out” — like when the U.S. made the Louisiana Purchase.
Trump also said this week he intends to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday he would “agree to working with Donald Trump on renaming the Gulf of Mexico” — if the president-elect “first agrees to work with us on an actual plan to lower costs for Americans.”
What can we even say? You drive a hard bargain, sir.
Several Democratic lawmakers have indicated they are interested in working to some extent with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the government-slashing commission that will be co-led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and GOP businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.
At least two Democratic lawmakers have said they will join the House’s DOGE caucus — Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz and Oregon Rep. Val Hoyle. Both lawmakers voted this week to pass the Laken Riley Act after failing to support it when it came up for a vote last year.
