In large part due to Donald Trump’s stubborn hold over the Republican Party, a bipartisan deal that would exchange harsher immigration policies for another round of Ukraine funding appears to have reached a dead end.

On Sunday, the Senate finalized a deal that would pair about $60 billion in aid for Ukraine with more than $20 billion for border security. The legislation would make it harder for migrants to qualify for asylum status and grant the president the ability to shut down the border when it becomes “overwhelmed.” However, heeding Trump’s wishes, House Republican leadership declared the deal “dead on arrival.”

“Let me be clear: The Senate border bill will not receive a vote in the House,” Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, wrote in a Sunday post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Here’s what the people pushing this ‘deal’ aren’t telling you: It accepts 5,000 illegal immigrants a day and gives automatic work permits to asylum recipients—a magnet for more illegal immigration.” (The legislation does not allow for 5,000 migrant crossings per day; instead, this number of crossings—if reached on a rolling seven-day average—would serve as the benchmark for the president shuttering the border.)

While Trump and his congressional allies claim to oppose the deal on policy grounds, the former president has privately warned that its passage would serve as a boon for Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, HuffPost previously reported. The president could point to it as proof that he is doing something to curb the record numbers of migrant entries and that Washington is functional under his leadership. Of course, in the bill’s absence, higher and higher levels of migration from now until November is likely help Trump and hurt Biden, as more public attention is paid to the issue.

While the bill’s demise may be a win for Trump, not all Republicans are pleased with his politically strategic stonewalling. “I just think it’s unfortunate that we can’t, as individual United States senators, take the time and the effort and intellectual honesty to study something on your own and make a decision,” Kevin Cramer, a Republican senator from North Dakota, told Politico last week. “Donald Trump has an opinion too. That’s great, but ours should be our opinion.” Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, suggested that his House colleagues are more susceptible to Trump’s pressure campaign because they face reelection every two years. “President Trump has had an influence on it. You also have to think about where we are in political cycles,” Tillis told Politico. “If you’ve got somebody who’s got a filing deadline in March or April or May, there’d be no way to prevent an uninformed person from challenging them.”

In a most candid comment, John Cornyn, a Republican senator from Texas, argued that Trump has nothing to worry about. Deal or no deal, he claimed, the border will still serve as a crisis point Republicans can exploit in November. “What I would tell [Trump] is I don’t think the issue is going to go away,” said Cornyn, speaking to Politico. “Even if something were to pass in the next 10 months, I don’t think you’re gonna see a dramatic change at the border.”

As for Trump himself, he has said that “only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill,” despite the deal being crafted in part by James Lankford, a conservative senator from Oklahoma. “This Bill is a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for The Republican Party,” Trump added in a Truth Social post Monday. “It takes the HORRIBLE JOB the Democrats have done on Immigration and the Border, absolves them, and puts it all squarely on the shoulders of Republicans.”