Organizations slammed the budget bill Congress passed on Friday for not providing protection to the Dreamers

No dream act for undocumented immigrants ...

The budget bill Congress passed on Friday morning has met with fury from immigrant groups – who have accused Democrats of betraying Dreamers.

Organizations including the youth-led immigrant group United We Dream, Indivisible and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus condemned the legislation, which provided no protection for undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children. The Dreamers face deportation on 5 March unless an immigration bill is passed.

Make the Road Action, a group that works on behalf of immigrants, published a list of 73 Democratic congressmen and women who it said had “betrayed immigrant youth”. Make the Road and United We Dream, a youth-led immigrant group, are urging activists to call their representatives to stress the need for protection for Dreamers.

Make the Road Action (@MaketheRoadAct) Here are the 73 Democrats that betrayed immigrant youth and families this morning by voting for a budget bill that excludes #Dreamers. Our movement will hold you accountable and continue to fight for a #DreamActNow. CALL your Rep now to express your frustration: (202) 224-3121. pic.twitter.com/eUP8l0nsKH

The perceived inaction could yet come back to bite centrist Democrats in the coming months. Angel Padilla, policy director for Indivisible, tweeted that the vote “should prove to dreamers that just because democrats are better than the alternative doesn’t automatically make them your friends”.



The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has promised a debate on immigration next week, but the House speaker, Paul Ryan, has made no such commitment.



The Congressional Hispanic Caucus slammed Ryan and the House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, demanding that they bring an immigration bill to the House floor before the 5 March deadline.

“If they do not give us a vote on bipartisan legislation that protects Dreamers, then they will be condoning the deportation of Dreamers, it’s as simple as that,” the CHC said in a statement.

Hispanic Caucus (@HispanicCaucus) If @SpeakerRyan and @GOPLeader McCarthy do not give us a vote on bipartisan legislation that protects Dreamers, then they will be condoning the deportation of Dreamers – it’s as simple as that.



Read full @HispanicCaucus statement here: https://t.co/OsTQAvkP5h #protectdreamers pic.twitter.com/KEOGU7tppB

Midterm hopes

Even while Democrats continue to disappoint the left, they are closer than ever to winning control of the House in the 2018 mid-terms, according to the Cook Political Report.

The non-partisan organization’s House race ratings shows that – at this moment in time – Democrats would not need to win any “likely Republican” seats to take control of the chamber. (These are congressional districts where a Republican is narrowly expected to win.)

Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) For the first time this cycle, there are 24 GOP-held seats in our @CookPolitical Lean D & Toss Up columns. Theoretically, Dems no longer need to win any seats in our Lean R column to win a majority.

Instead, if the Democratic party can win the likely Democratic seats and enough of those districts labelled “toss ups”, they would win control.

The Senate is a much bleaker prospect for the party, however.

What we’re reading

• A different perspective on Democrats’ midterm prospects comes from Will Stancil, writing in the Atlantic. The recent boost in Trump’s approval rating – and the waning of Democrats’ resistance to Trump – risks “eroding” their appeal to voters, Stancil says.

• “Big business is hijacking our radical past,” says Gary Younge, here at the Guardian. He’s talking about that Ram truck commercial which used a recording of Martin Luther King – but also about the way activists who were reviled in their time are now embraced by corporations. “It is worth examining the manner in which radical history is misrepresented and radicals themselves are routinely co-opted,” Younge writes.

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