Republicans Want to Punish Divorced People to Fund Tax Cuts

“But I want to protect ourselves, our most recent examples of domestic terrorism were not what we have spent the majority talking about today: crime from a migrant,” Slotkin said. She noted that she didn’t dispute that some crimes are committed by immigrants—in fact, Slotkin was one of the more than two dozen Democrats who voted in support of the Laken Riley Act, which would, among other things, allow the government to detain undocumented immigrants accused of committing nonviolent crimes.

During the hearing, several Republican lawmakers had already waxed poetic on their xenophobic views about immigrants and fretted over so-called “migrant crime,” of which Trump had touted gruesome cases on the campaign trail in an attempt to fearmonger about Joe Biden’s immigration and border policies. In reality, undocumented immigrants are statistically less likely to commit a violent crime—but “migrant crime” still manages to take up lots of airtime and column inches, as well as generate clicks because it evidently also wins elections.

“I just want to know, and I want to hear from you, as an intelligence officer, that you’re going to speak about real threats and not blow something up, politicize something, make something more exciting because maybe that’s what the president wants to hear,” Slotkin said. “But your mission to protect and defend the Constitution means calling honestly what the threats are to the country. Can you just give me a ‘yes or no,’ please?”