One after another, House Democrat leaders are going down their to-do list of messaging bills to pass out of the chamber in an effort to broadcast and sell their priorities to the American people. There is no subtlety about their values and passion. Yet, the last time I checked, Republicans still control the Senate. Where is their competing agenda on issues like the border invasion? Why have they not voted on a single major legislative reform this term other than handing the Democrats one win after another on budget bills? A new Politico expose might provide us with an answer to these questions.

Politico’s story is on Todd Inman, a special liaison between Mitch McConnell’s office and the Transportation Department helping to secure pet infrastructure projects in Owensboro, Kentucky, Inman’s home city within McConnell’s home state. The secretary of transportation happens to be Elaine Chao, McConnell’s wife. Inman is her chief of staff. Somehow, projects in the Kentucky river town that were previously rejected, according to Politico, wound up being approved, and McConnell kept taking credit for them. The story was based on multiple conversations with local elected officials and emails obtained via FOIA request:

The city submitted its first grant application during the final months of the Obama administration, under a freight and highway improvement program called FASTLANE. But after a technical review by career DOT staff, the city’s application was passed over in favor of other projects.

According to [Daviess County chief executive Al] Mattingly, local officials were undeterred and saw Chao’s appointment as Transportation secretary — and Owensboro local Todd Inman’s new role as director of operations in her office — as a valuable connection moving forward.

Back in Washington, Inman encouraged that perception. In a February 2017 email to McConnell’s chief of staff, he wrote, “The Secretary has indicated if you have a Ky-specific issue that we should flag for her attention to please continue to go through your normal channels but feel free to contact me directly as well so we can monitor or follow up as necessary.”

Owensboro submitted a second grant application in the first year of the Trump administration under the department’s INFRA grant program — the new administration’s successor to FASTLANE — which was likewise unsuccessful. Weeks before that application was due, McConnell’s office emailed members of Chao’s staff with the Owensboro Riverport Authority CEO’s contact information, requesting technical assistance for the riverport’s grant application. Derek Kan, Chao’s undersecretary for policy, forwarded the request to his deputy, who confirmed that they were following up.

Finally, in 2018, the riverport resubmitted a third time under the department’s BUILD program, a competitive infrastructure grant program that began under the Obama administration’s economic stimulus law. This time, the application was successful. City officials held a December news conference in front of a Christmas tree in City Hall announcing the $11.5 million federal award.

Four months later, as McConnell prepared to launch his reelection campaign, he called Mayor Watson and asked him to pull together a group of political and business leaders at the riverport to tout his role in getting Owensboro the grant award, Watson said. On April 22, within days of officially launching his 2020 campaign, the Senate majority leader stood inside a riverport building and celebrated his achievements.

“I can’t tell you how exciting it is for me to see what the riverfront has spawned,” McConnell told the assembled crowd. “Not only the project itself, but all around it.”

There is nothing illegal about this process, but it gives you a glimpse of what makes McConnell’s political heart beat. There is no sense of urgency to run for re-election on defending Kentucky’s sovereignty and security from illegal aliens, even though it has become the top concern of voters. Not a single piece of border security legislation has been brought up on the Senate floor this session, over one year into this border crisis. Nothing on sanctuary cities, a Flores fix, asylum reform, etc. McConnell has refused to even attempt to pass a budget bill with any border priorities in it and has handed Democrats everything they wanted in these “must-pass” bills without anything in return to fix the border.

Rep. Chip Roy, whose district is now being overrun with African migrants from countries with lethal epidemics, quipped on Twitter, “If only we could turn border security into pork!”

Indeed, these GOP leaders would be pulling every string known to man to get the job done.

Roy refers to Trump’s recent appointment of former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency responsible, among other things, for asylum policy. Yesterday, The Hill reported that the top three Senate Republicans – Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, and John Thune – all oppose the appointment of Cuccinelli. They are upset that, as head of Senate Conservatives Fund, Cuccinelli has attacked some sitting Senate Republicans in the past.

That is certainly an understandable position from where they sit. But perhaps the reason Cuccinelli has gone after some of these Republicans is because they care more about expanding pet spending projects than protecting our border? Perhaps, if they’d work with Cuccinelli to secure the border and actually make Republicans distinguishable from their Democrat counterparts, there would be no need for people like Cuccinelli to look for Republicans who, you know, actually are passionate about the Republican Party platform.

Two weeks ago, active-duty soldiers at the border were detained and disarmed by a group of Mexican soldiers on the U.S. side of the border. In addition, last week, five men armed with AK-47s were caught on camera in Lukeville, Arizona, escorting an illegal alien woman through a low border barrier with full confidence that neither Border Patrol nor the military would do anything about it – other than completing their criminal smuggling conspiracy by processing and releasing the illegal immigrant. The president promised to get tougher and send “ARMED SOLDIERS to the Border.” Well, the military has now announced a surge … of lawyers and cooks.

Yes, America is not allowed to engage in military operations to repel armed invaders at our own border; the best the military can do is help Border Patrol with cooking meals and transporting illegal immigrants to further facilitate catch-and-release. Over the weekend, the L.A. Times reported that the Pentagon “is moving to loosen rules that bar U.S. soldiers from interacting with migrants on the southern border.” The government is sending 300 additional soldiers, to include “military lawyers who can help Customs and Border Protection agents process migrants, drivers to help transport detained migrants and cooks to provide meals for them.”

Undoubtedly, the move is designed to free up more border agents. But free them up to do what? Border Patrol most certainly will not go after the cartels and repel violent invaders even right at our border, per long-standing rules. Nor are agents turning back the migrants. Thus, if they are going to engage in catch-and-release anyway, what is the point of marshalling the military into that business as well? Shouldn’t the military at least be freed up to patrol the frontier against an invasion, something Border Patrol was clearly never empowered to do?

Responding to this announcement, Col. Dan Steiner, a retired Air Force veteran who coordinated military operations at our border for the Texas government, told CR that “the military attempted to answer a logistical issue for Border Patrol, but not the tactical issue of force protection” arising from the incident with the Mexican soldiers last week. “I’m not sure how sending extra lawyers, extra drivers, and extra cooks addresses the issue of preventing the next ‘confusion’ incident with Mexican soldiers or the cartels,” said Steiner. “Does it help put more Border Agents back on the line? Yes. Does it make the troops safer? No.”

Steiner, who warned on my podcast last week of a coming Arab Spring-style collapse in Mexico, noted that this is part of an overall approach to the border that is built upon processing and adjudicating mass migration rather than deterring it. “Helping to reduce the burden logistically on Border Patrol is not addressing the issue of mass migration or the cartel and smuggler incursions at our border.”

Funny enough, per the L.A. Times article, the administration is getting accused of pushing the boundaries of the Posse Comitatus Act by having the military interact with migrant processing. In reality, the military would be on more solid legal ground executing its core mission of defense against external threats rather than dealing with internal immigration laws, if it were freed up to strike out against the cartels and smugglers approaching our border. That is the quintessential use of the military.

The Posse Comitatus law was signed by President Grant in 1878 to prohibit the military from being used to enforce domestic Reconstruction-era laws against American citizens in the southern states, absent direct authorization from Congress. To repel an invasion at our border — any invasion — is actually the quintessential use of our military that our Founders had in mind. Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution tasks the federal government with guaranteeing states’ protection against invasion, and we owe it to Arizona and Texas to secure their territory. And unlike “offensive expeditions” that George Washington felt required congressional authorization for deploying troops, the use of the military to fight the drug cartels and smuggling is part of “the power to repel sudden attacks” that James Madison and Elbridge Gerry promised at the constitutional convention would be left to the executive.

Between the diseases, drugs, crime, labor, sex trafficking, and belligerent acts of rogue Mexican soldiers and dangerous cartels, why won’t this administration finally treat our border as the consummate national security issue rather than some domestic policy issue? The blueprint for stopping this is obvious, but nothing will change until the administration closes the border to immigration and begins arming our soldiers with weapons of war to combat the brutal cartels rather than with lawyers and cooks.