Democrats embrace tougher border enforcement, seeing Trump’s demolition of deal as a ‘gift’

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate’s border proposal was one of the toughest bipartisan bills to emerge on the issue in decades. Yet it quickly collapsed when Republicans — galvanized by Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee — rejected the compromise as insufficient.

Now Democrats see an opening.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called Trump’s rejection of the border legislation “a gift” for Democrats and said they plan to “constantly over the next year” remind voters that it was Republicans who torpedoed the deal. And he says the strategy has already paid dividends, with Democrat Tom Suozzi, who campaigned on tougher border enforcement, winning a special election this week in New York, flipping a House seat away from Republicans.

Schumer said the race in his home state of New York “says something very significant — that border is no longer the province of Republicans.”

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That calculation is already having far-reaching effects, transforming the way President Joe Biden and Democrats talk about one