Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the most vocal Trump-aligned anti-interventionists, voted for the ALLIES Act, but said he was sensitive to his conservative peers who felt that it went too far. As a lawmaker who represents a Florida Panhandle district with one of the nation’s highest number of military installations, service members and veterans, Gaetz said in recent days at least a dozen constituents have called him to personally recommend Afghans who helped save their lives while overseas.
“In my district, it’s a kitchen-table issue,” Gaetz said. “There are people over there who have kept my constituents alive — not 100,000 of them; the several thousand who had hot lead flying at them, too. That’s not my hyperbole. That’s the reality.”
Rep. Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican who also served in the Green Berets, acknowledged that “there are a lot of mixed feelings” among conservatives over accepting more immigrants and refugees.
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