The key aspect of this, again, is: Are we as Republicans going to have press conferences and complain the border is bad and then intentionally leave it open?

-- Senator James Lankford
(chief GOP negotiator on the border bill)

As of now, things are looking like that's going to wind up being a "Yes," Senator Lankford. Now that Donald Trump is heavily weighing in against it, it may be completely impossible to pass any sort of border or immigration bill for the rest of this year no matter what it contains. Which would be a huge missed opportunity for Republicans, but they're perfectly content to just endlessly play politics with the issue without ever doing anything to solve the basic problems.

This is nothing new, by the way. The closest (up until this point) that Congress ever recently got to passing any sort of immigration reform (comprehensive or not) came under the presidency of George W. Bush, in 2007. Hammered out by a bipartisan group in the Senate, the bill then never passed, to Bush's great disappointment. As is the case now, Republicans revolted over the deal and decided to play politics instead. End result: no changes in the laws.

Back then, the bill had a lot more input from Democrats. A "path to citizenship" was included. This time around, there are virtually no Democratic agenda items in the bill. It is almost solely a Republican-written bill. There is no broad-based path to citizenship, not even for the Dreamers. And no matter how many times Trump and his minions scream it, there is no "amnesty" for anyone either. The bill would toughen up asylum requirements and vastly speed up the process. It would provide billions of extra dollars to the Border Patrol and the Immigration and Customs service as well.

At heart, this is a Republican proposal. The reason this is so is that the other things in the overall bill -- the foreign policy items -- are what Democrats care most about passing right now. The border part of the deal was the Republican counterweight to the aid to Ukraine, plain and simple. But as Lankford bemoans, Republicans are now looking like they won't take "Yes" for an answer -- they are happier to allow the crisis to continue unabated so they can use it as a campaign issue all year.

This is where the tribalism in our politics can lead, folks. Republicans don't want to give President Joe Biden a "win" during an election year, even though (from their own perspective) it would be a big win for the entire country as well. They don't want tougher border laws which would force Biden to close down the border on a regular basis. Instead, they want to campaign on the issue -- as indeed they have done for roughly the past 30 years (if not more). If the problem were in any way even partially solved, that would mean they couldn't campaign as effectively on it any more -- even though this is the best deal they are likely ever going to get.

Trump and his followers believe that if Trump wins in November, he'll somehow be able to magically get a better deal from the next Congress. This is absolutely not going to happen, at least under the current Senate rules. Even if Republicans win control of the White House, the House, and the Senate, they're not going to wind up with 60 Senate seats. And Democrats are going to be in no mood to pass a border bill that Trump wants, if the current effort gets tanked by him. So Trump might be able to get any bill he wants through a GOP House but it will then die in the Senate, leaving the laws unchanged. Of course, the Senate could always decide to jettison the legislative filibuster, but that's getting pretty far into the weeds this far in advance.

Up until Trump weighed in, the bill had a certain momentum -- an indefinable sort of legislative quality that some bipartisan deals have and some don't. Some of these agreements have a sort of mojo (rizz?) to them which allows them to keep moving forward no matter the opposition until some form of the deal winds up on the president's desk. This deal seemed to be one of these, at least at first. It was going to pretty easily clear the Senate and then the House would reluctantly vote on it and pass it mostly with Democratic votes (but with enough Republicans joining in to make it truly bipartisan).

That prediction is now out the window, however. It's an open question whether it'll even pass the Senate at this point, with Trump out there ranting and raving about what a bad deal it is (and how he would hate for Biden to get any credit for it whatsoever). Even if it does somehow squeak through the Senate, it's highly doubtful that it'll go anywhere in the House with Trump so staunchly against it.

Which is a shame for other reasons -- it may wind up guaranteeing that Vladimir Putin gets to keep a huge chunk of Ukraine. It may guarantee Putin's Russia gets to keep all of Ukraine, eventually. Which is a truly terrifying prospect, but today's Republican Party simply does not care.

Perhaps the bill will get through the Senate this week though. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is still behind the effort, and the Border Patrol's union just put out a statement supporting the bill, calling it "a step in the right direction," and "far better than the status quo." Perhaps there are enough Republicans in the House who could be convinced to force a floor vote on it over the objections of the speaker (through parliamentary means). Perhaps. These things occasionally do happen.

But right now things look pretty bleak for passage. Because, as Senator Lankford frustratingly pointed out, the Republican Party is indeed quite content to hold press conferences and complain the border is bad and then go right ahead and do absolutely nothing to make it any better. After all, it's precisely what they've been doing for decades now.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant