There has been a brewing war between Donald Trump allies Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, and Republican lawmakers are said to be handing Bannon a weapon to use.
Columnist Greg Sargent on Saturday published a piece making the argument that the GOP is gifting something that "Bannon can use this to his advantage in the MAGA civil war over immigration."
The feud, which has been called a "consequential schism," appears to have its origins in the dispute over immigrant visas for engineering jobs, common in Musk's business.
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According to Sargent, the Bannon gift is an "onerous new immigration bill" that "would empower state attorneys general to force wholesale visa denials."
"Republicans may not know it yet, but they’re in the process of handing Steve Bannon a powerful weapon to wield in his war with Elon Musk over visas granted to high-skilled immigrants," the columnist wrote over the weekend. "This could further divide the MAGA coalition over immigration—and badly inconvenience Musk, who is trying to protect those visas from a ferocious assault being waged by Bannon and his allies."
Sargent added that, "The weapon in question, it turns out, is buried in the Laken Riley Act, the controversial bill that would mandate the detention of undocumented immigrants accused of minor nonviolent crimes."
"Another provision in the bill—which the Senate advanced in a key procedural vote Friday with Trump’s tacit blessing, putting it on track to become law—would authorize state attorneys general to bring lawsuits to force presidential administrations to deny visas to any particular country that isn’t accepting deportees. That provision has attracted public criticism, but Republicans have been unmoved," he wrote. "What observers haven’t noticed, however, is that this measure is directly relevant to the Bannon-Musk battle. Bannon can now enlist a right-wing state attorney general—like Ken Paxton of Texas—to bring a lawsuit designed to halt visas to, say, people from India, which supplies many high-skilled tech workers. Under the law, it’ll be perfectly plausible that a handpicked judge could stop the issuance of such visas."
“We’re definitely going to use it, and we’re going to get after attorneys general,” Bannon is quoted as saying.