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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) faced hecklers angry with his leadership on immigration reform at a Friday Tea Party summit in his home state. According to reports, Rubio was met with cries of "No amnesty!" as he gave an address during the opening session of the Americans for Prosperity's Defending the American Dream Summit in Orlando.

RACINE — On Thursday it was a panel discussion and before that it was a post-town hall rally. There were press conferences, forums in English and Spanish and demonstrations. On Saturday, the push for immigration reform manifested in a hot parking lot behind Lopez Bakery, 1667 Douglas Ave., where a handful of young activists gathered to spray-paint a poster. “Rep. Paul Ryan,” they wrote, “we want a vote on comprehensive immigration reform.” The city has become a hot spot for pro-immigration reform demonstrations, panels and more because Racine County is represented by Ryan, R-Wis., one of few congressional Republicans to...

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin slammed what she called Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) latest rationale for passing comprehensive immigration reform; that President Barack Obama will enact reforms unilaterally with or without the GOP’s support. She called Rubio’s latest plea to conservatives “craven” and said that he should “go down fighting” against immigration reform rather than conceding that those reforms were already fait accompli. -snip- “To argue to conservatives who believe in limited government that we should pass this massive amnesty monstrosity because Obama is going to do it anyway smacks of the worst kind of political expedience,” she continued. “I think...

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio warned Tuesday that some on the Republican side of immigration reform could come up empty-handed if the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” plan fails. In an appearance on WFLA’s “The Morning Show with Preston Scott” in Tallahassee, Fla., Rubio explained that President Barack Obama will be tempted to enact his own immigration reform measures by executive order if Congress does not pass an immigration bill. An Obama executive order would legalize 11 million undocumented immigrants, he said. “I have been saying now for over a year I believe that this president tempted, will be tempted, if...

Against all logic, some prominent conservatives continue to promote the absurd proposition that right-wing candidates who fail to win over GOP voters in Republican primaries would magically succeed on November ballots. This assumption enables them to retain a naive faith in the claim that "true conservatives" who can't mobilize their own base to win nominations will somehow triumph in general elections by drawing support from moderates and liberals. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has most recently voiced this idea. "You know, if you look at the last 40 years, a consistent pattern emerges," Mr. Cruz observed in a July interview with...

Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel, told The Daily Caller on Sunday that the talk took place, but he declined to provide any details. Early this year, Boehner swore off future closed-door negotiations with Obama, after Obama used his post-election clout, plus his allies in the media, to force a tax increase through Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Friday that if House Republicans end up sending their collection of immigration bills to a conference with the Senate, Democrats would win. “If we go to conference, we would win,” Reid told a Nevada radio station.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says the House of Representatives will vote on a series of immigration bills in the fall, but wouldn’t commit to a vote on a measure similar to what the Senate has passed that provides a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country. “We’ve said we are not going to be bringing the Senate bill up — we don’t believe that that’s the right path toward an immigration reform bill,” the Virginia Republican said in an interview broadcast on “Fox News Sunday.” “We will have a vote on a series...

During football season, the teams that win call the right plays from their playbook. And when it comes to immigration reform, Congress needs to make sure it makes the right calls. The House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over our immigration laws, is taking a step-by-step approach to immigration reform and building a strategic playbook that first strengthens border security and interior enforcement, improves our legal-immigration programs, and fairly deals with unlawful immigrants. A robust border-security and interior-enforcement strategy is the first line of defense for any successful immigration system. Strong border security not only reduces illegal immigration, it also...

If the Senate immigration bill came up for a vote in the House, it would probably pass — some of the Republicans and almost all of the Democrats would combine for 218 votes. But conservatives have extracted promises from John Boehner not to let that happen, and the Speaker has dutifully pledged to keep the House from voting on any bill that lacks the support of most Republicans. That would seem to make comprehensive reform pretty dead, right? Except Paul Ryan, who clearly wants to pass a bill, floated a way around this promise: -snip- So the plan he's discussing...

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said Wednesday that comprehensive immigration reform has the support of dozens of members of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Among GOP backers of comprehensive reform he cited Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican candidate for vice president. Gutierrez said 195 of the 201 Democrats in the House would vote for a reform bill similar to the one passed last month by the Senate, meaning that fewer than two dozen Republican votes would be needed to reach the magic number of 218 required to pass it.

Keeping immigration on the back-burner helps avoid a recess filled with angry town-hall meetings reminiscent of the heated August 2009 protests where the backlash against health care reform coalesced. Doing nothing also starves Democrats of a target, Republicans argue. But for Boehner, who by all accounts wants to see some kind of immigration reform pass, that raised serious strategic problems. First, passing tougher enforcement measures before August would take all the momentum away from other more divisive measures, such as giving “Dreamers,” the children brought to the United States illegally, a legal option for staying in the country. While House...

-snip- The Wisconsin Republican has worked behind the scenes for months to convince others in his party to support a bill that would legalize unauthorized immigrants. And on Friday, he said that, "we're going to vote on a bill for people who are undocumented."

Rep. Paul D. Ryan might have just given away the road map for House consideration of immigration reform. “Tentatively, in October, we’re going to vote on a border security bill, an interior enforcement bill, a bill for legal immigration,” the Wisconsin Republican and Budget Committee chairman told constituents at a district town hall event Friday, according to a report by the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. Ryan also reportedly said negotiations were underway for the chamber to vote on legislation that would provide undocumented immigrants with “probationary” visas while they waited a minimum of 15 years to attain citizenship.

When Lamar Alexander joined 13 other Senate Republicans to vote for the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill last month, he was waving a red flag in front of the tea party. Attending a rally in Smyrna, Tenn., last weekend, Alexander was greeted by a crowd of about 300 conservative activists — organizers said — wearing bright red T-shirts that read “Beat Lamar” in big bold letters. They held signs that blared: “You betrayed us” and “No more RINOs. Conservatives only.” Continue Reading Text Size -+resetAdvertisementLatest on POLITICO POLITICO Playbook: Is your city next? Grassley: Abedin stonewalling Benghazi mom: Son's death...

A House panel on immigration on Tuesday took up proposals that carve a pathway to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants who were brought here at a young age. The Republican-led panel pitched the issue as a key piece of their stepwise approach to immigration reform. “They had no input in their parents’ decision to bring the family to the U.S. illegally. And many of them know no other home that the United States, having grown up as Americans since they were toddlers,” Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, said at the hearing heavily attended by Hispanic youth. Subcommittee...

As an overhaul of immigration laws shifts to the House, a right-leaning group is launching a new television ad campaign Monday that will call on House lawmakers -- and, implicitly, resistant Republicans -- to support the Senate-passed “border surge” as part of “conservative immigration reform." The ad seeks to influence rank-and-file lawmakers as House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) convenes Republicans behind closed doors to assess how the GOP majority will respond to the bipartisan Senate bill.

President George W. Bush cautioned against criticizing gay couples, saying in an interview on “This Week” that you shouldn’t criticize others “until you’ve examined your own heart.” Bush had waded into the revitalized same-sex marriage debate last week - if only barely - in a comment to a reporter in Zambia, who asked whether gay marriage conflicts with Christian values. “I shouldn’t be taking a speck out of someone else’s eye when I have a log in my own,” Bush said last week. In an interview in Tanzania with ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl, the former president...

The drive to overhaul U.S. immigration law may get a high-profile boost next week, just as House Republicans begin to consider their legislative options, when former President George W. Bush addresses the matter at an immigration event at his presidential library. Mr. Bush, whose own effort as president to pass an immigration bill failed, rarely addresses current policy debates, but he has made clear that he supports the renewed effort this year. On Wednesday, he will address 20 new citizens as they are sworn in at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Three panel discussions will follow on the topic...

Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker is refuting a local newspaper’s report that he has endorsed the Senate immigration reform bill. The governor’s office told the Weekly Standard: “Governor Walker has not endorsed any specific policy.”