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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The New York Times app has all this stuff that you may not have seen. The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections. I can immediately navigate to something that matches what I'm feeling. I go to games always.
Doing the mini, doing the wordle.
I loved how much content it exposed me to. Things that I never would have thought to turn to a news app for.
This app is essential.
The New York Times app. All of the times, all in one place. Download it now at nytimes.com slash app.
From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. In ways big and small, the Republican-controlled Congress has begun rebelling against President Trump as never before — on everything from the war in Iran to his plan to use taxpayer money to pay his allies.
Today, Congressional Editor Julie Davis on whether the uprising is a preview of a new dynamic in Washington or a temporary show of independence that will vanish just as quickly as it arrived. It's Monday, June 8th. Julie? It's wonderful to see you. Great to see you, Michael. Thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
I would say, Julie, I don't think you're going to contest this, that from the first moment of Trump's second term, the question on kind of everyone's mind was whether the manner in which the president had consolidated his power had basically rendered this Congress, this Republican Congress, irrelevant, right?
I mean, it very much looked like a co-equal branch of government was choosing subservience very willingly. Right. And we started to ask the question, is Congress over? And the answer over the past 10 days or so seemed to change. And now it feels more like a no, it's not over.
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Chapter 2: What recent actions have Congressional Republicans taken against President Trump?
They're rebelling. To go back to your playground metaphor, Michael, it's a little bit like a group of kids who have obeyed their daddy for many, many months on pretty much everything and are finally just saying, no, daddy, we're not going to do this for you. Mm-hmm. That's quite a vivid completion of the metaphor.
So take us behind the scenes of this rebellion, if that's what we're going to be calling it. And we'll get to how durable it is and how far it may or may not go. But let's just understand it to the extent that it has been unfolding.
On the surface, a lot of it seemed to revolve around the weaponization fund, the president's nearly $2 billion effort to compensate people he claims are victims of overzealous government prosecution. But my sense is that that's not quite the full story. Yeah, it actually started long before the Trump administration announced that they were creating that fund.
This has been percolating for many weeks. And it's really, I think, a matter of Republicans sort of slowly and then very quickly waking up to the reality that a lot of what President Trump is doing is actually counter to their own political interests.
Let's remember that we are just months away from the midterm elections and Trump is intervening in Republican primaries against some pretty popular members of their caucus who are incumbents who are fighting for their political lives. Mm-hmm.
He intervenes in Louisiana, endorses a Republican congresswoman who's running against Bill Cassidy, the senator who's the head of the health committee, who has spent years in trying to ingratiate himself with Trump after having voted to convict him at his impeachment trial after January 6th.
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Chapter 3: Is the Republican rebellion against Trump a new trend or a temporary phase?
But Trump ultimately decided he wanted to take him out. And did. And he did. And he did. But the second Senate primary where President Trump intervened, and I think the more stinging one that made Republicans a lot angrier, was in Texas. where Senator John Cornyn had been facing a challenge from Ken Paxton, the attorney general. They were in a runoff. It was going to be a competitive one.
President Trump had stayed neutral. And days before the primary, he weighs in and endorses Ken Paxton. And that news that the president was going to do that just... hit Republicans on the Hill like a bomb.
They were completely irate, in part because Cornyn was seen as the much stronger candidate who would be able to win that seat without having to spend a lot of money, without having to really worry about it, because there are obviously a lot of other seats that they need to be worrying about defending in the midterm year.
So that just soured the mood among Republicans who are sort of looking around, seeing that President Trump's agenda is getting less and less popular with voters, seeing that he's doing things really they feel like are for himself and not for the good of the party.
You know, Republicans are fighting to hold on to majorities in both chambers, and they have an uphill battle, and there started to be a real feeling like he was making it harder for them.
Mm-hmm.
And I should say that both of these senators are very popular with their Republican colleagues. They're seen as effective, they're seen as experienced, and they know how to do their jobs.
And the very same day that Trump came out and endorsed Paxton against Cornyn, in the weekly party lunch, Bill Cassidy, returning for the first time since being defeated in his primary, got a standing ovation from Republicans. It was kind of like a moment where they sort of were saying, you're our guy, even if you're not President Trump's.
clearly what's starting to dawn on these Republicans is that Trump is making the midterms about him, making it about revenge, not at all what's best for a party trying to keep control of Congress. And on top of all this, what Trump is clearly doing in the eyes of these Republicans is rewarding their subservience.
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Chapter 4: What factors are driving Republicans to push back against Trump's agenda?
But all around him, there is mounting evidence that he is really not keeping Republicans in line on a variety of his priorities. It's right around this time that Republicans decide to drop the billion dollars that they had put in their bill for his ballroom project. We all know how much he cherishes that project. He talks about it all the time.
While Republicans wish that he would talk about the economy, he's always talking about the ballroom project. Right. They dropped that. It's a not-so-subtle brush-off to him. Right. They basically say, despite your desire that we slip it quietly into a bill, we're actually going to take it out. Right. They don't want to have to defend it. They don't want to have to vote for it.
And they really are not letting up on this payout fund. They make it very clear that this thing has to die if they're going to be able to move forward with the immigration bill.
And it's sort of by coincidence around this moment, as I recall, that a court rules that the White House can't do anything when it comes to this weaponization fund, which kind of assists these congressional Republicans in their opposition. Right. It gives them a bit of support for their position that the administration just has to abandon this, although the court order is only temporary.
So it also strengthens their resolve to really be like something needs to be done about this to once and for all get it off the table. And in fact, within a couple of days, the administration does back down on the fund. The Justice Department puts out word that they're not going to challenge this court ruling.
And in this case, it was especially notable because even after the White House said they were going to abide by this court order, which they clearly did not agree with, Republicans went a step further and said, we don't trust you. We don't trust the word of the White House. We don't trust the Justice Department saying they're going to abide by this.
We want an on-the-record disavowal of this thing and to be assured that it will never return. And that is just not something we have seen Republicans do. They, you know, have been very... deferential and given President Trump a lot of latitude and a lot of benefit of the doubt. And that benefit of the doubt is just gone at this point.
And then Todd Blanch goes back to Capitol Hill and testifies under oath that we are not moving forward with this fund, period. Right. And I think it's fair to say, if you're evaluating the strength of this Republican rebellion at its peak over the past couple of weeks, this is the high watermark of it.
When congressional Republicans, using the leverage they have over something that the president wants, which is his money for the immigration crackdown, kill off this weaponization fund. Right. Right.
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Chapter 5: How is the weaponization fund impacting Republican unity?
And therefore, the threat that they pose to the president is inherently temporary, worth saying. Absolutely. And it's not clear how far any of them are willing to go with this, right? We saw Senator Cassidy vote for the War Powers Act. We didn't see John Cornyn cross party lines on that.
He's a very loyal Republican, and we have yet to see him really manifest his, you know, grievance, if he feels any, toward the president in a vote. But the fact remains that their political incentive to do whatever the president wants them to do has vastly diminished.
Yeah.
Well, I think, Julie, that gets at the ultimate question that we have to ask here, which is how durable and potent is this resistance likely to be in the long term? Obviously, a unique set of circumstances played out here all at once, where the president ousted popular members of the Republican Party from their jobs. That made sense. folks really angry.
Then he dropped this idea of the weaponization fund into everyone's laps. That made them angry. That doesn't happen every day. And how likely are these congressional Republicans over time to snap back into this more subservient role that Trump has conditioned them to take? Right. It's a great question. It's the question to ask.
And it's instructive to look at what happened Thursday and Friday, where Republicans finally were able to pass their immigration bill. And what we see is that given the opportunity by Democrats to go a step further and actually put it in writing in law that there can never be President Trump's compensation fund for his political allies—
Republicans figure out a way to block that, not to vote for that. And that allows them to keep this immigration bill, this top priority of President Trump on track. But even as they're handing him this big victory, there were all these signs still of how Republicans were sort of parting ways with and finding ways to distance themselves from Trump. Hmm.
Before the immigration bill passed, there was this long series of votes overnight and into Friday morning. They call it a voterama, where there were a series of amendments offered to the bill. And there were some Republican votes for those proposals, including several votes on the fund and a proposal to say that Trump could never use any federal money for his ballroom.
The same was true on a Democratic proposal to try to block him from naming Bill Pulte, the housing director, as the director of national intelligence. Another thing that had really enraged a lot of Republicans. None of these things ultimately were able to succeed and be added to the bill, but the fact that Republicans were willing to vote the way they did...
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