GOP Senator Says Trump Will Extend DACA Deadline if Congress Doesn't Fix It First

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A Republican senator claimed on Thursday that President Trump personally told him he would delay the expiration of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program if Congress has not passed any legislative fix for DACA by the time it is set to end on March 5.

Oklahoma Senator James Lankford told The Washington Post that Trump told him he was willing to “give it some more time” to find a solution for the undocumented young people brought to the country as children and granted temporary immigration protections, even after he axed the program.

“The president’s comment to me was that, ‘We put a six-month deadline out there. Let’s work it out. If we can’t get it worked out in six months, we’ll give it some more time, but we’ve got to get this worked out legislatively,’ ” Lankford told the newspaper outside a Thursday evening town hall in Tulsa.

The comments were made in a call with the president last month, a Lankford spokesman told the Post, and Trump also apparently didn’t offer insight into how long any extension might last.

This is an issue on which Trump seems eager to appear compassionate. In the past, Trump praised DACA recipients as “good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs,” the highest praise a Republican can offer to those they view as among the most exceptional—and therefore deserving—immigrants. But trusting anything Trump says, even if it offers a glimmer of hope to a vulnerable population, is a fool’s errand, so we’re left with yet another game of wait and see.

WHAT ELSE?

• In a speech scheduled for today at 12:45 p.m., Trump will reportedly refuse to certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal crafted by the Obama administration but won’t withdraw from the deal, Axios reported.
• Hollywood is full of high-powered creeps: as Variety reported Thursday evening, Amazon put its top entertainment executive, Roy Price, on a leave of absence after Isa Hackett, the executive producer on the Amazon original series The Man in the High Castle, alleged that he sexually harassed her.
• The death toll from raging wildfires in Northern California climbed to 31 on Friday, with hundreds still missing.

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