Senator Lankford absolutely beclowned himself by trying to deny the 5,000 migrants/day wasn't actually in the bill. Being dishonest is one thing, being dishonest when everyone KNOWS you're lying makes him look stupid at the same time.

Because it wasn't in the bill. It wasn't 5K migrants per day being allowed into the country. It was 5K encounters - meaning that when Border Patrol encountered someone who wasn't claiming asylum and they were immediately thrown out of the country, it still counted. What leaked was people claiming that the bill would codify allowing 5K people per day into the country, which was totally false.

If that bill didn't have the 5,000 trigger in it it would have PASSED.

You can't say that we're never again accepting an asylum application, from anybody ever again, ever.

That's what the trigger kicked in. Refusing to even accept an asylum application. It wasn't that until 5K people came in we couldn't do anything. We would continue to be able to do everything we do now, including expedited removals for non-asylees, whenever we can do it now. The only thing subject to the 5K trigger was the complete moratorium on accepting asylum applications (again, in possible violation of international human rights law).

I know that there were some folks out there that believed the trigger meant we just let the first 5K people walk into the country, but we've been talking about it enough that I know you don't believe that. There's no way that Johnson would have killed the bill over just the trigger.