Senate deal on border and Ukraine at risk of collapse as Trump pressures Republicans

WASHINGTON —  A bipartisan Senate deal to pair border enforcement measures and Ukraine aid faced potential collapse Thursday as Senate Republicans grew increasingly wary of an election-year compromise that former President Trump, the likely GOP presidential nominee, appears to oppose.

Senate negotiators have been striving for weeks to finish a carefully negotiated compromise on border and immigration policy that is meant to tamp down the number of migrants who come to the U.S. border with Mexico. But as the talksdrag on, election-year politics and demands from Trump are weighing the negotiations down.

At stake is a plan that President Biden and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky have worked for months to broker, hoping to cajole Congress into approving wartime aid for Ukraine. The U.S. has run out of funding for Ukraine, potentially leaving it stranded without robust supplies of ammunition and missiles to fend off Russia’s invasion.

In a closed-door GOP meeting on Wednesday, McConnell acknowledged that Trump opposes the deal and that he’s the party’s likely presidential nominee, and discussed other options, such as dealing with Ukraine and the border separately, according to two people who spoke anonymously to discuss the private meeting in remarks first reported by Punchbowl News.

McConnell’s comments raised fresh doubts in the Senate about his level of commitment to the border deal, though advocates for moving forward countered that the leader’s remarks were being misinterpreted.

“We’re still working on it,” McConnell said of the deal Thursday morning, speaking to reporters.

He also reassured his conference at a Republican luncheon Thursday that he still personally supports pairing the border and Ukraine, said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).

Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, the head GOP negotiator, said the group is still working on the package. He said that McConnell was advocating for the proposal while acknowledging the political reality amid the presidential primary season.

“I think that’s the shift that has occurred, that he’s just acknowledging,” Lankford said. “That’s just a reality.”

Lankford has been working with a small bipartisan group and White House officials to try to close the deal. But release of the bill has been held up by haggling over the cost of new border policies and disagreements over limiting the president’s ability to let people into the country in special circumstances, such as when they flee war and unrest.

“We’re really focused on making sure we get the bill out and that we get it through the Senate,” said Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent who has been central to the talks.

White House spokeswoman Olivia Dalton told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday that the Biden administration has been working with the negotiators “in good faith,” feels that progress has been made, and hopes it will continue.

The second-ranked Senate Republican, South Dakota’s John Thune, said: “We’re at a critical moment, and we’ve got to drive hard to get this done. If we can’t get there, then we’ll go to plan B.”

But congressional leaders have not identified any other way to push wartime funding for Ukraine. Scores of House Republicans are unwilling to send more money to the fight, even as longtime party stalwarts including McConnell have tried to convince them that preventing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advance in Europe is directly in America’s interest.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York agreed, saying: “We know that if Putin prevails in Ukraine, the consequences for Western democracy and for the American people will be severe, and haunt us for years.”

“Democrats are also resolute on reaching an agreement on securing the southern border,” the Democratic leader said.

Trump has loomed large over the talks, first skewering American support for Ukraine and now potentially upending a compromise on immigration that would hand Biden, his likely Democratic opponent for the presidency, new policies that could contain the historic numbers of migrants making their way to the country.

With Republicans continuously raising the issue on the campaign trail, the border is expected to remain central to this year’s election.

Trump has said on social media that there should be no deal unless Republicans “get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people.”

The lead Democratic negotiator, Connecticut Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, said he still has hope that Republicans will decide to accept the compromise — even though Democrats didn’t want to tie Ukraine aid and border security together in the first place.

“A lot of Republicans have become used to this being just merely a political issue, not an actual policy problem,” Murphy said. “And that’s hard for them to get over. But there is a big group of Senate Republicans who do want to solve the problem.”

Seeking to hold off objections from Trump, Republican senators have argued that the policies under discussion would not have an immediate effect on problems at the border and would even give Trump greater border enforcement authority if he is reelected.

“The issue will still be a live issue, and I’d think it’d be one of the defining issues in the campaign,” said Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican. “So we need to do our job here.”

But this week, a vocal contingent of Republicans have raised objections, including with heated exchanges during a closed-door GOP lunch on Tuesday, according to several senators who were in the meeting.

Those speaking against the deal argued that presidents already have enough authority to implement hard-line border measures and that Trump should have a say in opposing the agreement.

“If we expect him to be able to secure the border, he ought to be able to see this bill, and he ought to be able to be engaged and say, ‘Is this going to help me secure the border or not?’” said Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, at a news conference Wednesday. “What we know is, he doesn’t need it.”

Sen. J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican and Trump ally, said the former president indicated in a conversation last week that he was worried the deal would be “too weak.”

“When it fails ... it allows the president to blame quote, unquote ‘MAGA Republicans’ for the failure of a border security package, when in reality what failed was a very weak border security package,” Vance said.

But some Republicans worried that walking away from a chance to enact border policy could backfire.

“If we were given an opportunity, and we decided for political purposes not to do it, yeah, I think we could be in serious trouble,” said Rounds. “A lot of our candidates could be in serious trouble back home.”

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.