D.C. Digest: U.S. Sen. James Lankford objects to becoming Democratic talking point

Democrats claim, and evidence supports, that Lankford’s fellow Republicans sabotaged the deal at the behest of former president and 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump.

In doing so, Lankford contends, Democrats are overstating their support for the bill. He has said several times, including last week on NewsNation, that this particularly applies to Vice President Kamala Harris, who since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee has expressed interest in seeing the measure revived.

“It’s hard for me to give her credit on it in that she was never a part of any of the negotiations,” Lankford said. “When in negotiations for four months on that, she or her staff never appeared. Not one phone call, not one zoom meeting, not one live meeting.”

Whether a vice president and her staff would have been involved in such negotiations is up for debate, but Lankford is insistent that Democrats do not deserve much credit for addressing border security.

Referring to $650 million carried over from the Trump administration, Lankford said, “The Biden administration has used much of that money … to do ‘environmental remediation’ along the border rather than border wall construction. What I was trying to do in February was to get this bill passed, to be able to stop the hemorrhaging at the border, but also to be able to make sure that funding was no longer used for environmental remediation but (what) it was intended for — building the border barrier itself.

“That’s the wall. That’s the road next to the wall. That’s the fiber optics. That’s the cameras. That’s what it was intended for. They’ve not been spending it for that.

“That money, in all likelihood, that $650 million they will spend on everything else but the wall,” Lankford said. “So by the time we get to next year, we could pass this bill. But the border wall funding would probably already have been spent by this administration for things not border-wall related.”

In March a federal judge ordered the administration to use the money as directed by Congress. According to the Texas Tribune, the Biden administration has spent “border wall” appropriations on “closing gaps of current border barriers, environmental remediation, clean-up efforts and erecting 15-foot concrete panels topped with 6-foot steel bollards in the Rio Grande Valley.”

Border crossings have dropped sharply in recent months, apparently because of executive actions taken by the administration after Lankford’s bill failed.

Return to Kabul: On the third anniversary of the United States’ tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin said he and “our team” rescued “over 500 American citizens” left behind by the U.S. government.

During the withdrawal, Mullin was part of a private mission that attracted national attention when its existence was leaked to the press and it was refused assistance by the U.S. State Department.

Mullin blamed the State Department for the leak. The State Department said Mullin and his group were causing more problems than they were solving.

In a statement last week, Mullin noted that no one has been held accountable for the calamitous retreat.

“We owe it to the Americans the Biden-Harris administration left behind and those who needlessly lost their lives to provide accountability,” said Mullin.

Dots ‘n dashes: Congress is recessed until after Labor Day. … Mullin toured western Oklahoma for several days last week. … Mullin and four other Republican senators pressed acting Labor Secretary Julie Su about the agency’s revelation that it overestimated the number of jobs added in 2023 and 2024 by 818,000. … Dave Natonski is Mullin’s new chief of staff. … Third District Congressman Frank Lucas lauded a leadership change at a foundation suspected of funneling Chinese financial support to U.S.-based scientific research. … Finbold, which reports on congressional members’ stock investments, said Mullin and 1st District Congressman Kevin Hern own shares of Raytheon, which recently won a $1 billion Air Force contract.

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