Senate deal on border and Ukraine at risk of collapse as Trump calls it ‘meaningless’

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, says is “meaningless.”

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 now that negotiations have dragged for weeks, election-year politics and demands from Trump are weighing it down.

At stake is a plan that both President Joe Biden and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have worked on for months to broker in hopes of cajoling Congress to approve wartime aid for Ukraine. The U.S. has run out of money to supply Ukraine, potentially leaving the country stranded without robust supplies of ammunition and missiles to fend off Russia’s invasion.

Trump on Thursday ramped up his criticism of the potential compromise, writing in two lengthy posts on his social media platform that it would be “meaningless” in terms of border security and “another Gift to the Radical Left Democrats” as Biden runs for reelection.

<bsp-list-loadmore data-module="" class=«PageListStandardB» data-gtm-region=«Other news» data-gtm-topic=«No Value» data-show-loadmore=«true» data-gtm-modulestyle=«List B»> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Other news </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Russian courts jail a Putin critic and a woman convicted of a blast that killed a pro-war blogger </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Nepal asks Russia to send back