It’s Not Too Late for Congress to Undo One of the Worst Supreme Court Decisions of the Last Term
Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story each week about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back. You’ll also receive updates on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team.
As members of Congress head home for the August recess after another season of escalating tactics in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, now is as urgent a time as ever for voters to demand commonsense immigration reform. When Congress members hold constituent meetings and rallies in their home districts in the coming weeks, our message should be clear: Pass the bipartisan American Dream and Promise Act.
The American Dream and Promise Act offers pathways to permanent status for Dreamers, those who were eligible for temporary protected status, and certain other highly vetted law-abiding noncitizens who now risk arrest, detention, and deportation. These individuals need legislative protections now—not because they have done anything wrong but because the Trump administration has been changing the rules and stripping hundreds of thousands of immigrants of the legal status that they built their lives on in the United States.
Getting this bill through the House is not a pipe dream. There’s a 218-vote threshold required for a discharge petition in the House. This bill is just eight votes shy of the requisite 218 votes. If the bill manages to get discharged, it will very likely pass the House and set a foundation for urgently needed immigration reform. That urgency has only grown in recent weeks.
In June, the Supreme Court turned a blind eye to the Trump administration’s grotesque racial animus against Haitians and effectively greenlit the dissolution of the temporary protected status program, which had offered protections to more than a million people. These individuals now face imminent loss of their work authorization and separation from their family members. Last........
