Welcome to Washington: How Far Will Senate Republicans Take Their Revolt?

Senate Republicans tend to side with the president as often as they can, rarely pushing back against his nominees or his legislative agenda. President Trump’s apparent growing disdain for the lawmakers who largely — though not exclusively — stay in line is causing some senators to throw up their hands and kick off a quiet revolt. Welcome to Washington, where members of the Senate have been sent home until the beginning of June after Republicans failed to coalesce around a strategy to fund immigration enforcement agencies like ICE and the Border Patrol. The decision to go home capped off a week of nasty backbiting between senators and the administration. The bitterness began in earnest after Mr. Trump made the decision to endorse Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, over Senator John Cornyn in Tuesday’s Republican primary for the United State Senate. Senators were already ticked off by the loss of their friend, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, in his primary for another term last weekend. Dr. Cassidy fell to Mr. Trump’s favored candidate, Congresswoman Julia Letlow.Dr. Cassidy came in third behind the state treasurer, John Fleming, marking the first time in nearly 80 years that a sitting senator failed either to win or to come in second in his or her own primary race. After Dr. Cassidy’s loss and Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Paxton, the urgency to fund the president’s ballroom and greenlight his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” dissipated.During a meeting with the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, on Thursday, senators did not hold back against Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer. Some senators even yelled at Mr. Blanche, according to Senator Ted Cruz. The Republican senators were angry, Mr. Cruz said on an episode of his podcast, “Verdict,” on Friday. “People were, the entire meeting — they were screaming at the acting attorney general,” Mr. Cruz said. He predicted that about 20 Republican senators were opposed to the anti-weaponization fund, based on the mood inside that meeting with Mr. Blanche. “It was angry, it was hot.”Even just a few weeks ago, it would be hard to imagine Republican senators being so willing to attack the Trump administration’s decisionmaking to a similar degree. Scandals around the accidental disclosure of military information, the FBI director’s alleged drinking problem, and the Trump family’s business dealings abroad were all met with little more than shrug. Now, with a critical mass of Republican senators either retiring, facing Trump-backed challengers, stuck in tight re-election battles, or simply trapped by their own personal moderation, the acrimony between the Senate and the White House may only grow worse. There were already four key swing votes in the Senate before Mr. Trump started going after incumbent lawmakers. Senator Lisa Murkowski has already beaten back one Trump-backed primary opponent and has made clear that she is an independent voice for Alaska. Senator Susan Collins of Maine is certainly distancing herself now that she is locked in a tough re-election campaign. Senator Thom Tillis, who is retiring after Mr. Trump had threatened him with a primary challenge, voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and has pushed back against some of the president’s nominees. Senator Rand Paul’s libertarian sensibilities have always made him an odd fit for the MAGA movement. The Senate has a reputation for pomposity, which to a large extent is accurate. More fundamentally, though, the chamber can be like any other workplace — senators have their friends, their acquaintances, their petty squabbles, and the people they barely know. Mr. Trump’s problem for trying to manage Senate Republicans is that he has really angered even some of his most die-hard allies by going after two of the most well-liked workhorses in the chamber — Mr. Cornyn and Dr. Cassidy. A former lawmaker, Congressman Tom Rice — who voted to impeach the president after January 6, 2021 — once joked to the Washington Post: “What do you call somebody who votes with Trump 99 percent of the time? A traitor.”It’s clear now that the majority of Republican senators — from Trump diehards to traditional conservatives to self-described moderates — feel they may only be one misstep away from being labeled as traitors, as Mr. Rice was. The real question is: Will those nervous senators put up a real blockage, or will they forget their acrimony and get back on board the president’s ship?

Welcome to Washington: How Far Will Senate Republicans Take Their Revolt?

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