Welcome to Washington: Trump’s Relationship With the Senate Is Straining

When the Senate returns to Washington, nearly everyone’s attention will be on a reauthorization for spying powers used to monitor foreigners. The more important story, however, is the growing frustration with President Trump among GOP senators, a frustration that is now manifesting itself in actual votes. Welcome to Washington, where lawmakers have just a few weeks left to win substantive legislative victories. This week will be dominated by a reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This provision of federal law allows the government to spy on foreigners without a warrant. For years, this practice has accidentally hoovered up the communications information of American citizens. Democrats aren’t going along with a reauthorization in order to stage a protest against a Trump loyalist, Bill Pulte, who last week was appointed as the acting Director of National Intelligence. Among Republicans, there are plenty of protesters on more substantive grounds. On Friday morning, seven — a stunning number — GOP senators voted against a motion to proceed to a Section 702 reauthorization.Within hours, the White House’s wrath was apparent. Section 702 “is the authority for surveillance on foreign soil — the core of all US security.” A libertarian demand to make Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “get approval from liberal DC judges (the ones who targeted Trump) is madness,” the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, wrote on X. “No conservative aim is ever served through subservience to leftist DC judges,” he asserted.“Across the West, leftist judicial tyranny propels marxism and reverses patriotic reform. Blocking FISA 702 to demand more power for leftist judges is a continuation of the same strategic & ideological error that gave the left decades of institutional dominance in the first place,” Mr. Miller wrote in another post over the weekend. Mr. Hegseth said something similar in his own social media post. “Democrats are choosing to halt action on reauthorization, undermining national security and putting politics ahead of the safety of the American people,” Mr. Hegseth wrote. “At a time of growing threats around the world, Congress should be strengthening the tools that protect our nation — not weakening them.”What goes unmentioned in either of those statements is the fact that numerous Republicans have gone rogue. Those senators who voted against proceeding with the bill on Friday include Senator Rick Scott of Florida, a diehard Trump supporter; Senator John Kennedy, a champion of the president’s judicial nominees; Senator Mike Lee, who wholeheartedly embraced the often chaotic DOGE agenda; and Senator Eric Schmitt, arguably the Senate’s most ardent advocate for cracking down on immigration, both legal and illegal. The Section 702 debate is notable for the number of conservatives who broke with the president despite his demand for a reauthorization. The saga speaks to a larger issue within a Senate that is increasingly willing to buck the president on important policy issues. Take last week’s vote on the nearly $70 billion immigration enforcement spending bill. Only one Republican lawmaker — Senator Lisa Murkowski — voted against passage of the bill, though there were a number of important defections along the way. Senators Jon Husted, Dan Sullivan, and Susan Collins voted to block both Mr. Trump’s “anti-weaponization fund” and his ballroom project. All three are in re-election fights this year, and their abandonment of the president’s beloved projects signals an admission that he is not s popular as he likes to believe he is. Senators Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy — the former having opted for retirement and the latter having lost his primary to a Trump-backed congresswoman — both spent all of Thursday trying to find a way to block Mr. Trump’s anti-weaponization fund. Dr. Cassidy went so far as to file an amicus brief in federal court arguing for a declaration that the fund is unconstitutional, saying that it “presents an immediate and dire threat to our constitutional order.” Senator John Curtis decided to threaten the acting attorney general’s nomination to lead the Justice Department full-time. He says that if the fund is not fully dead, then the GOP-led Senate could leave that nomination hanging. Ms. Murkowski was more frank. Early in the morning on Friday, the senator of Alaska said that Mr. Trump is making the Senate’s job more difficult with his decisions-making process. “I don’t think he thinks about it. I don’t think he thinks about it,” Ms. Murkowski said, frustrated by a lack of coordination with Republican senators and the White House. “I just don’t think he thinks about it.”

Welcome to Washington: Trump’s Relationship With the Senate Is Straining

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