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. 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.
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.
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 told me when I contacted him to ask whether he sees the law as useful to him.
Bannon stressed that he fully supports Trump, and that he expects Trump to use all his power on his own to deny visas to countries that don’t accept deportees. But Bannon confirmed that he will seize on the law if Trump’s State Department fails to deny visas. “We certainly will call for state A.G.s to do this,” Bannon said.
Musk and many tech executives adamantly support H-1B skilled-worker visas, arguing that they supply tech talent to fill a real shortage of U.S. expertise. Bannon and his camp strongly oppose H-1B visas, claiming that “globalists” like Musk actively seek to give these jobs to foreigners even though Americans absolutely could fill them.
The opposition’s cause has also attracted racists and “great replacement theory” fanatics, who describe H-1B visas as a Trojan horse for “third-world invaders.” As Vox’s Andrew Prokop details, this issue is fertile soil for those who like to believe America’s supposed white European identity is under siege, not least because high percentages of recent H-1B recipients come from India.
Trump recently sided with Musk in this battle. But when the Laken Riley Act becomes law—which looks inevitable after the Senate voted to end debate on it Friday, with 10 Democrats in support—Trump can’t necessarily control what happens next.
The reason is that the bill grants broad authority to state attorneys general to bring lawsuits against an administration—to force it into compliance with immigration laws—under various circumstances, provided their state can show that federal enforcement failures are minimally damaging to it. One such scenario is triggered if the government tries to deport people to their country of origin but that country refuses them.
If that happens, under the new bill an attorney general from that person’s state of residence can ask a federal judge to apply a Cold War law that empowers the State Department to halt some or all visas to that country’s people. Administrations generally don’t implement blanket visa bans due to diplomatic and international factors. But under this bill, an attorney general can ask a judge to require this. And a judge can do exactly that.
What people have missed is that Bannon can use this against Musk. If a few Indian nationals in Texas are subject to deportation but India doesn’t accept them (India is recalcitrant about this), Bannon can publicly urge Paxton to act. Paxton could argue that these deportation failures damage his state in some tiny way and find a pliant Texas judge who’s willing to require the visa ban on India.
“A federal judge absolutely could invoke the Laken Riley Act to block all visas from India, or even just specific types of visas, like H-1Bs,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told me. The law, which I strongly oppose, is the direct result of Trump’s relentless 2024 elevation of Riley’s awful murder by an undocumented immigrant last February.
It’s possible that a given attorney general might refuse to bring such a lawsuit even if Bannon asks. But at minimum, this gives Bannon a way to pressure pro-MAGA attorneys general to act by mobilizing the base against them via his War Room podcast.
Bannon confirmed that he will bring this sort of pressure. “The populist right, who’s trying to defend American workers’ rights, will be all over these attorney generals,” he told me.
Bannon said he expects the law to be more useful under future administrations, because he thinks Trump will use the visa-denial tool to compel countries to take deportees without lawsuits forcing him to. “I believe strongly that President Trump will have our back,” he said.
But will likely Secretary of State Marco Rubio really undertake mass visa suspensions? If not, Bannon noted, the law empowers attorneys general to make it happen, and he’ll demand as much: “It gives us another avenue.”
Indeed, this possibility apparently has some tech company lobbyists worried. A source familiar with ongoing conversations told me that tech lobbyists have been telling GOP lawmakers that they fear the law could be used to shut down some H-1B visas. Those lawmakers have been responding that state attorneys general won’t use it that way, the source says. But those lawmakers cannot make this promise, since they don’t control what these attorneys general may do.
If Bannon does go this route, such a lawsuit might end with the Supreme Court striking down the provision empowering attorneys general, which many experts believe is unconstitutional. But Bannon absolutely can attempt this, and there’s no telling how the courts will rule or how long it will take them to do so.
Either way, all this could create complicated situations. In Texas, for instance, Musk’s Tesla recently laid off workers while hiring many H-1B visa holders. While it’s not clear whether those things were directly linked, the move stoked controversy. Bannon could use the law to pressure Paxton to act. With Austin emerging as a tech hub even as Texas is ground zero in the immigration wars, Bannon said, the issue will grow in importance there.
“Ken Paxton is one of MAGA’s top attorney generals,” Bannon told me. “So I think Texas is going to be an early test case for this.”
The battle could put other MAGA leaders in a tough spot. The New York Times reports that top Trump adviser Stephen Miller recently told tech oligarch Mark Zuckerberg that he’d better get on board with the Trump agenda, and that Zuckerberg meekly agreed. However, although die-hard nativist Miller opposes H-1B visas, the Times reports that he’s refraining from talking Trump out of supporting them. If Bannon picks up this banner, it could make Miller’s position look awkward—or, dare we say it, positively “globalist” and even cuck-ish.
The bottom line is that the Bannon-Musk battle represents a genuine, deep tension inside the MAGA coalition. Though Musk pushes anti-immigrant social media memes to excite MAGA incels, he and many tech executives really seem to believe dynamic, entrepreneurial outside talent benefits the country—along with their bottom lines, of course.
Many opponents of H-1B visas also operate from a genuinely held worldview. In their reading, they allow globalist corporate oligarchs to hire foreign workers more cheaply, which, critically, relieves society (or the state) of any obligation to better equip Americans to fill such rewarding roles. Bannon recently argued that anger over that national failing helped fuel the rise of Trump.
The schism also reflects bigger arguments on the right over how to achieve the sort of American greatness the MAGA right professes to value—whether skimming the world’s outside talent can help outrace China or, conversely, whether brutal international competition for top tech jobs is producing an elite that’s lacking in patriotism and virtue.
How these conflicts will shake out is unclear. Many Republicans appear to agree with Musk, whom they now dare not cross. It’s perversely amusing that in their rush to give Trump the early victory he craves by passing a terrible immigration bill, Republicans may have inadvertently handed Bannon a potent weapon to use against their new tech overlord—one Bannon appears prepared to wield as aggressively as possible.
