Astead Herndon

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This is Today Explained.

You cover Congress, which feels like the place to be, particularly over the next couple weeks.

It does seem like we're always asking a similar version of the question of, like, is this the time Republicans on Capitol Hill break from Trump?

And I kind of want to ask it again today, but can we just start off with a, like, bigger overview?

I know we're entering into a midterms year, and that can sometimes cause people –

particularly in Congress, to be a little more free.

Do we expect that question of our Republicans breaking more with Trump to change now that it's calendar 2026 and not calendar 2025?

Yeah, that all feels like important context.

We've seen for the war powers debate that we're about to talk about some willingness for Republicans to seem like they're being their own person.

But of course, that feels like it's consistently tested against the White House's own political muscle.

I mean, Trump's foreign interventionism definitely seems like the latest flashpoint in the GOP relationship with him.

We did see five Republicans break with the White House and support that War Powers resolution, at least last week.

Now, what changed from last week to this week?

Yeah, what does that look like?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, the resolution was part of the growing the question we were talking about at the beginning about Republicans red line with Trump in the House and Senate and specifically for military intervention.