Chuck Schumer Is Setting a Trap Over Trump’s Wall

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Chuck Schumer finally got it right yesterday:

Senate negotiators found themselves back at Square 1 on immigration on Tuesday, as the Senate Democratic leader withdrew the biggest gesture he had made to strike a deal: an offer to fully fund President Trump’s proposed wall at the Mexican border. “The wall offer’s off the table,” the leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, told reporters at the Capitol a day after senators overcame an impasse to end a three-day government shutdown.

Schumer has been widely mocked for this, since it’s obvious that Democrats are, in fact, willing to fund the wall. It was already in their previous proposals, after all. So what’s the point?

That’s easy: Schumer has figured out that if there’s another government shutdown, it needs to be seen as the Republicans’ fault. So he’s going to negotiate a deal that gives Republicans most of what they want in return for DACA—except for the wall. If they refuse to pass another continuing resolution—or Trump threatens to veto it—because it doesn’t contain funding for the wall, then it’s their fault. Democrats were the voice of sweet reason, but Trump was so obsessed with his stupid wall that he shut down the government over it.

In other words, it’s a trap. It’s also a fairly obvious trap, so the question is how Republicans are going to react to it. We’ll have to wait and see.

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At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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