Now that they’re back in Washington after a weeklong break, Senate Republicans should make their first order of business something they’ve been wanting to do for a long time anyway: saying goodbye to their least favorite member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, Attorney General Eric Holder.
The problem is that giving Holder a proper send-off requires confirming his replacement, Loretta Lynch. And approving Lynch means acknowledging that they cannot block Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Those actions have since been put on hold by a federal judge, although the administration plans to appeal. At any rate, it’s clear that Senate Republicans do not have the votes to pass a bill preventing the Department of Homeland Security from carrying them out. So they are blocking Lynch instead, mostly out of sheer frustration.
In other words: The fight over Obama’s immigration order is over. Republicans have lost. Holding Lynch hostage — or even defeating her nomination, as Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are urging — will not change this central fact. Republicans are now in charge of Congress, and the Department of Homeland Security is funded only through the end of the month. This is their problem to solve.
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