The Slatest

Paul Ryan and Orrin Hatch Tell Trump Not to Cancel DACA

Orrin Hatch and Paul Ryan on May 18, 2016, on Capitol Hill.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

There have been rumors rumbling for a week that Donald Trump is going to cancel DACA, the Obama-created executive branch program which allows certain undocumented individuals who were brought to the U.S. as children—DREAMers—to receive work permits and protection from deportation. This is likely to be an unpopular move with the general public, which is mostly forgiving toward undocumented immigrants who are here through no fault of their own and haven’t done anything else wrong. It’s also a move that’s opposed by the the businesses that employ the nearly 800,000 people who are authorized to work through the program. And on Friday, two prominent Republican legislators—presumably motivated by their party’s support for big business and its admittedly oft-ignored incentive to not do hugely unpopular things—publicly urged Trump to let Congress create a long-term resolution to the DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, issue rather than canceling it outright. Here’s House Speaker Paul Ryan on a Wisconsin radio station:

And a statement by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch:

Axios’ Jonathan Swan, meanwhile, reports that the White House may delay its DACA decision until at least October. So, there is some hope that the United States won’t intentionally shoot itself in the foot by deporting hundreds of thousands of people who grew up here, have clean records, and want to hold jobs. In 2017, that counts as major good news!

Update, 1:15 p.m.: Make of this what you will. (Personally, what I plan to make of it is “the president says a lot of things more or less at random that may not have any bearing on reality.”)