American democracy is facing significant challenges. Its institutional mechanisms that are meant to safeguard the domestic political arena and guarantee Washington's commitments abroad have broken down. The deep-seated affliction eating away at this most powerful of Western democracies has a name: the "Trumpization" of the Republican Party.
Nothing better illustrates the toxicity of Trump's grip on one of the country's two major political forces than Congress's inability to vote through US military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The psychodrama has been going on for weeks without elected representatives giving the green light to this assistance, which Ukrainians sorely need in the face of Russian aggression.
Republicans initially wanted to make this aid conditional on measures relating to immigration. Joe Biden's Democratic administration has allowed a chaotic situation to develop along the 3,150-kilometer US-Mexico border. The region is the setting for an unprecedented wave of migration, with two and a half million people entering the US in 2023. Border police, immigration services and local migrant reception facilities are overwhelmed.
In the Senate, Democrats, who just barely hold a majority, acquiesced to the Republicans' request and concocted a bipartisan bill – nearly twenty Republicans endorsed it – which toughens the conditions for immigration to the United States. Together with the military aid, the package deal amounts to $118 billion (€110 billion) – of which 60 billion would go to Kyiv.
Democrats' concessions on the southern border in exchange for unfreezing military assistance: compromises forged in a mature democracy. It was early February. President Biden said he was ready to sign, and all that remained was to obtain the agreement of the House of Representatives, where Republicans have a tiny majority. However, this was all without accounting for the great magus of the MAGA cult – "Make America Great Again."
Political paralysis
Trump, who has been dominating the Republican primary campaign for the November 5 presidential election, has ordered his loyalists in the House to oppose the Senate's bill. They complied, but why? Why refuse an immigration reform that satisfies many of the demands of the Republican right? For one reason: Trump's electoral interests.
He has made immigration one of the themes of his battle against Biden. To keep this argument alive and kicking, chaos must persist at the border with Mexico. The daily tragedies that play out on both sides of the Rio Grande must be perpetuated. They are good for the Republican candidate and bad for the Democrat candidate. The important thing is not the general interest, but Trump's future.
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