The shutdown messaging war is in full effect, and early indications are that Republicans have been put in something of a bind, given the Democrats’ demand to extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies appears quite popular.

So Republican leaders have returned to a very familiar strategy – making false generalizations and misleading claims about undocumented immigrants, in an attempt to center the debate on more favorable terrain.

They’ve argued over and over again that Democrats are trying to provide health care to undocumented immigrants.

In fact, as CNN’s Tami Luhby has fact-checked, the changes Democrats are seeking on Obamacare and Medicaid would not directly provide coverage to undocumented immigrants, since they aren’t and still wouldn’t be eligible for either program.

That’s not to say there aren’t kernels of truth behind their claims, and the issue is complicated. Medicaid dollars do, in some situations, end up paying health care costs for those in the country without documentation as a matter of longstanding federal law. But the GOP’s political strategy to cast Democrats as holding government funding hostage over the issue rests on a rather Machiavellian and factually challenged effort to demonize migrants.

Let’s break it down.

After Republicans spent days largely just making this claim without detailing it, Vice President JD Vance stepped forward at Wednesday’s White House press briefing to at least put some meat on the bone.

His case boiled down to two things.

His first point was that the asy