The former head of the RNC's Hispanic outreach committee in Florida is so fed up with the national party's stance on immigration that he's switching teams and registering as a Democrat.
Jason Richwine might have written that "No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites," but he is not some kind of bigot, he says in his first interview since cutting ties with the Heritage Foundation.
Jason Richwine, co-author of a controversial report from the Heritage Foundation that criticized the potential cost of immigration reform, has resigned from the organization.
A co-author of the already controversial new Heritage Foundation study — the one that claims to show immigration reform will cost the U.S. $6.3 trillion dollars — wrote in 2009 that the government should grant immigrants visas based on IQ. And of course his idea that Latinos won't assimilate because they're doomed to low IQs for generations is offensive. But more importantly, his idea is wrong.
One important fight in this week's dizzying array of amendments to the bill is simply about extending current laws to gay people. "Guns, gays and immigration — it's too much," one senator reportedly told the White House. "I can be with you on one or two of them, but not all three." What about two in one bill? Does that have a better chance? Or a better chance to kill the whole thing?
Rubio's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal says that while he'll listen to upset voters about immigration reform, there's only so much criticism from professional conservatives he'll put up with. There's plenty to go around.
As several politicians and pundits using the Boston bombing as a cautionary tale about immigration, public support for immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants has dropped 7 percentage points in less than a month, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University.
The Los Angeles Times announced late Wednesday that it would join the Associated Press in dropping the phrase "illegal immigrant" from its style guide.
One way to understand how hard it is for Republicans to agree amongst themselves on immigration reform is to look at what's controversial in the Senate — and compare all of that to what's controversial in the House. Because they are very, very different things.
The junior Senator from Texas is a man who clearly has tremendous confidence in his own abilities — he's publicly scolded fellow senators, he read Shakespeare during an anti-drone filibuster, and now he's reportedly thinking about a run for president. This has not made him many friends inside the Senate, but it has won him many, many fans outside of it.
Of the Senator's latest expert suggestions — that the Boston bombings and Benghazi showed a national security weakness — President Obama said, "No, Mr. Graham is not right on this issue, although I'm sure it generated some headlines." Wrong. What it generated was cable news hits for Graham. And the No. 1 thing Lindsey Graham is an expert on... is getting on TV.
We've gotten so used to the idea that conservative media parrot official Republican Party talking points that even Luntz — king of the on-air focus group, prompter of Fox News teleprompters — is surprised when they fail to do so.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a citizen on September 11 of last year. With the country focused on how his family came to the country and proposals in the Senate and House revamping the immigration process, a little context on the history of immigration in the United States is in order.
Voters in South Carolina may see a new spot from "Americans for a Conservative Direction," promoting Senator Lindsey Graham as an anti-Obamacare, anti-spending Republican. They probably won't realize the real force behind the spot: Mark Zuckerberg.
"Is citizenship now a tactic in the war on terror?" asks conservative RedState.com columnist Dana Loesch. Should you be wondering, she goes on to point out that "It's a legitimate question." It is also a stupid question.
The Kentucky senator won the coveted position of "Republican liberals kind of like" with his drone-related filibuster earlier this year. Paul will surely disappoint them today with his demand that the Senate delay immigration reform until until we figure out how the Boston marathon bombers got into America, and how to prevent that from happening in the future.
Politicians finally have enough material to begin exploiting the Boston marathon bombing. Immigration, plus a little guns.
One of the main complaints some conservatives have against immigration reform is that a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants would create millions of moochers living off federal benefits. And what is the No. 1 symbol of American moocherdom? The Obamaphone.
The race was not a sprint, but a long, hard slog. Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert won that race today, but he could never have done it without the hard work of others who went before him.
About that "gang of eight," which includes Chuck Schumer and John McCain: It isn't really much of a "gang," Stewart said on last night's Daily Show.
As the world turned in the 24 hours since two explosions went off around 3 p.m. Monday, most of the world's attention turned to the aftermath in Boston. But other things were happening, believe it or not, so here's a quick primer on what you may have missed.
The Senate immigration bill has some weird math. While pundits and politicians of both parties are nearly unanimous in agreeing we need immigration reform, the bill seems crafted more to send a statement than to actually make the economy or human lives better.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio went on seven Sunday talk shows to pitch a bipartisan immigration reform deal, while a handful of Republican lawmakers famous for their wacky cable news interviews can't get any attention.
Led by Facebook's Zuckerberg, a number of Silicon Valley executives today announced an initiative to facilitate immigration reform. Or, more likely, to ensure that reform includes the sorts of changes the tech industry wants to see.
Senators have come up with compromises on immigration and gun control even though Washington was supposed to be paralyzed and President Obama's agenda was supposed to be pretty much dead, smothered by the fiscal cliff, the sequester, and the NRA.
An analysis on the early details of the "gang of eight" proposal shows a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants that is an intentionally arduous bureaucratic labyrinth that will take two decades years to crawl through.
The Senate will release a bipartisan immigration reform bill by the end of the week — maybe. The "gang of eight" can't even agree on whether they'll come to an agreement in time. But you wouldn't know that, watching the kook-free coverage of the immigration debate.
An arrest Friday in Colorado capped a week full of connections between law enforcement killings and white supremacist groups, including Breitbart's claim that "the mainstream media has gone to great lengths to label ad-infinitum the Aryan Brotherhood as a 'white supremacist' group." So what do real white supremacists really think of the Brotherhood? We went straight to the source.
The tragedy at Newtown hasn't inspired Republicans to embrace gun control. And it's starting to look like the tragedy of Mitt Romney isn't enough to get its base on board with immigration reform either.
While the Republican National Committee thinks it needs to support immigration reform to start winning presidential elections, Republicans in Congress have reason to think they need to oppose to keep winning elections.
That faint sound you hear is Senate reporters from the AP, The New York Times, and beyond smacking their delete keys, rethinking their agenda setting aloud, and figuring out how we talk now, amidst a serious legislative discussion
Graham is taking friendly fire from The Daily Caller, which criticizes the senator's efforts to facilitate a country club's hiring of Jamaican workers on temporary permits. At its heart, the critique isn't about politics — or even necessarily the Senate's pending immigration deal. It's about jobs.
Congress' found its new willingness to tackle immigration reform in mere hours late one Tuesday evening last November, but actually acting has has taken five months and counting.
The bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill was being held up by a dispute over how low-skilled workers would be incorporated into the all-encompassing agreement, but it appears that wrinkle's been smoothed over and the bill could be unveiled in a little more than a week.
The push and pull between the Republican Party's members who are more and less enlightened on matters of race has been going on for a long time. And in just the last decade, the GOP has seen plenty of two-steps-forward-three-steps-back moments when it's tried to minority outreach programs.
There are a few lessons for Washington in the new ABC/Washington Post poll released today. One is that (non-Republican) people still like Obama. The second is that one option for Congress to turn its horrible ratings around would be for it to actually do something.
Does the Tea Party still exist? Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus has been all but dormant for months, while new Republican stars are stealing the limelight.
If Latinos won't reward Republicans, why should Republicans do anything to help Latinos?
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
Paul will endorse a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants Tuesday, and to measure how much and how quickly Republicans have changed on the issue, just look at what he used to say. Then just look at the voters Republicans are infuriating while they win over new ones.
He was a controversial pick for a speaking slot at CPAC, with organizers saying Trump was wildly popular with attendees. But it's hard to say why. He doesn't know how to give a political stump speech, and that was evident on the floor Friday morning.
A bipartisan group of senators has reached a tentative agreement to create a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, but that path is filled with stuff both parties usually reject as intolerable for American citizens.
After doing five Sunday talk shows to promote his new pre-campaign book, Jeb Bush got tired of being asked if he's going to run for president in 2016.
He was the immigration guy in the Republican Party. But now, there's a new immigration guy — Bush's protege, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio — and suddenly Bush's position on immigration is very confused.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
New bad guys are not-so-loosely inspired by the Tea Party, and that has commentators not-so-quietly complaining about a couple of outwardly racist xenophobes who want to send Mexicans back across the border. Even if that was kind of the whole point.
A lot of people are noticing that Marco Rubio's immigration reform plan has a lot in common with President Obama's immigration reform plan, which Rubio denounced as "half-baked." This is not good for Rubio.
With 48-hours of spin and Republican criticism on its side, the Obama administration continued to back away from an immigration plan that leaked over the weekend.
Although Sen. Marco Rubio trashed President Obama's immigration plan, it is not clear what the major differences are between the two proposals, especially for one of Rubio's most important audiences, conservatives.
Things seemed to escalate quickly there. After a copy of the White House's back-up immigration reform bill leaked, Marco Rubio moved quickly to shoot down the bill's proposals to ensure his bipartisan effort remained the favored method to get this deal done.
In a speech given two weeks ago in Las Vegas, the President gave the first preview of his immigration reform back up plan. If Senate or Congress can't get the job done, he has a bill waiting for them to vote on. We now know what, exactly, makes up a chunk of the President's proposals.
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