Republican lawmakers exploded, last week, at revelations that the Biden administration is considering plans to resettle Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in the United States. “I didn’t even think Biden was crazy enough to do this,” Florida governor Ron DeSantis told reporters.

According to a bombshell report from CBS News, “in recent weeks” senior officials have been examining options to “offer a permanent safe haven to some of those fleeing war-torn Gaza.” Internal planning documents leaked to the news outlet reveal that Gazans with extended family in the US could be granted refugee status, allowing them permanent residency, housing assistance, and a path to American citizenship.

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst led 34 of her GOP colleagues in denouncing the plan as a “national security risk to the United States.” In a scathing letter to the White House, the irate Republican senators declared that “our first obligation should be to rescue our own citizens, not Gazans.” Calling the administration’s counterterrorism track record at the border an “abject failure,” the senators demanded that any Palestinian refugee plans be immediately suspended.

With the GOP in a furor, White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre would only confirm that the administration is “constantly evaluating policy proposals” on the matter. Democrats, meanwhile, remained conspicuously silent. If the CBS News report was intended as a surreptitious trial balloon, Republicans took it down with a bazooka.