With the government still shut down for the third time in less than a year, Trump has ramped up his desperation to secure funds for his unpopular border wall.
Despite the fact that the majority of Americans oppose the border wall, the president is nonetheless holding hundreds of thousands of government employees hostage to try and force Democrats into allocating $5 billion for its construction.
The issue, however, is that Trump and Republicans have no leverage. With a new Democratic-controlled House of Representatives — elected in the face of a campaign in which Republicans even used the issue of immigration to try to drive their base to the polls and failed — there is absolutely no mandate to now kowtow to Trump's misguided border policy.
A wall will not solve our immigration issues but instead will serve as an ineffective and exorbitantly expensive monument to both Trump's ego and his racist agenda. We need comprehensive immigration reform, which Republicans could have prioritized when they had control of all three branches of government. Instead, they passed a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires.
We, the undersigned, call on Democratic leaders in the House and Senate to hold their ground and refuse to allocate a dime for Trump's ridiculous border wall. The American people spoke loud and clear in the last election; with immigration front and center in the campaign, the answer was a resounding "no."
Do not give an inch. We will win this fight.
