Oklahoma’s GOP Senator James Lankford has been censured by his state’s GOP party for his role as lead GOP negotiator in a border deal that might give President Biden a political win in an election year.
On Saturday, the Oklahoma Republican Party vice chair Wayne Hill announced the approved censure, and threatened to withhold support for Lankford for “playing fast and loose with Democrats.”
Lankford hit the Sunday shows, refuting the GOP’s false claims about the bill, including that the deal was about letting 5,000 people in a day.
Lankford explained the bill “focuses on getting us to zero illegal crossings” per day.
“There’s no amnesty. It increases a number of Border Patrol agents and it increases asylum officers. It increases detention beds so we can quickly detain and then deport individuals,” he told Fox anchor Shannon Bream.
According to Lankford, even the GOP congressmembers took an oath. “We all have an oath to the Constitution and we have a commitment to say we’re going to do whatever we can to be able to secure the border.”
Lankford won reelection in in 2022 and is not up for reelection until 2028.
The text of the deal might be ready to go to the Senate floor in the coming days, but the question is whether Republicans are listening to Trump’s attempts to tank the deal.