Republican defections test Trump's grip on party unity
Article excerpt
Donald Trump's once-total command over congressional Republicans is fracturing on multiple fronts. A $72 billion funding package for immigration enforcement stalled in the Senate as GOP members split over spending levels and border priorities, with Republican leaders uncertain they have the votes to pass what Trump views as a signature issue. The cracks widened after primary losses, mounting legal indictments, and defections among longtime allies have eroded the aura of invincibility that insulated him from political consequences for years. Frank Luntz declared as recently as late May that Trump held "complete and total control" of the party, yet weeks later senators are openly resisting his agenda. The moment tests whether Trump's influence over the GOP is genuinely weakening or whether these divisions represent the kind of temporary turbulence that has never before dislodged his grip. The outcome in the Senate will offer the first real measure of whether Republicans will continue to bend to his will on core party priorities.
Longtime Republican pollster Frank Luntz recently declared, “There is zero doubt tonight that Donald Trump is in complete and total control of the Republican Party.” His statement came after the president’s preferred candidate, Ken Paxton, primaried Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in late May.
Luntz was not alone in seeing a political colossus. “Trump’s grip on the Republican party has never been tighter,” the Guardian reported after the primary win by Paxton, the Texas attorney general. “The GOP is ‘Donald Trump’s party,’” Kentucky’s WUKY radio station stated. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) expressed the same sentiment on NBC’s Meet the Press: “This is the party of Donald Trump.”
These sentiments are not inaccurate. Cornyn was the third sitting congressional legislator toppled that month. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) also lost to well-financed primary opponents backed by Trump and the MAGA money machine. And that is to say nothing of the Indiana state GOP legislators he helped defeat because they refused to gerrymander their state’s congressional districts.
Yet, primarying fellow partisans is one thing, and marshaling majorities in two chambers to enact policies into law is another. And congressional Republicans have been resisting or outright pushing back on Trump lately.
(Washington Examiner illustration; Associated Press photos)
The Committee on House Administration unanimously reported the Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act a few weeks ago. This blandly titled bill would remove the president’s power to appoint the Librarian of Congress and the Registrar of Copyrights. Instead, these positions would be filled by a bipartisan congressional commission and removable only by Congress. Readers of this magazine may recall that Trump, a year ago, fired the heads of these offices and attempted to install members of his administration. Congress and the agencies resisted, and now the legislature appears poised to make its authority over these agencies indisputable.
In late May, the president’s desire to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through the budget reconciliation process was derailed. First, Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, ruled that the $1 billion in proposed ballroom funding violated a chamber budget process rule. Trump demanded that GOP senators fire her, which they refused to do.
Senate Republicans then balked at the Trump administration’s creation of a $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund that could give money to people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The president sent Todd Blanche, his acting attorney general, to meet with GOP senators. It went badly. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told listeners to his podcast that 20 senators berated Blanche.
“There were fireworks at an epic level, and I got to say it’s one of the roughest meetings that I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate,” said Cruz, first elected to the Senate in 2012.
Legislators have also clashed with the president over defense matters. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), who chair the House and Senate Armed Services committees, respectively, criticized Trump’s withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany in early May.
“We are very concerned by the decision to withdraw a U.S. brigade from Germany,” the pair stated in a press release. “Rather than withdrawing forces from the continent altogether, it is in America’s interest to maintain a strong deterrent in Europe by moving these 5,000 U.S. forces to the east,” and closer to Russia.
Soon thereafter, Rogers and his committee showed they meant business in their draft National Defense Authorization Act, which sets defense policy and authorizes spending for it. The bill would continue the requirement that the United States have 76,000 troops in Europe, and it would curb the Pentagon’s power to move personnel out of Eastern Europe. It also would authorize $175 million in spending for the Baltic Security Initiative, money the Trump administration did not request.
The bill also pushed back against the Pentagon’s delay in rotating a second Armored Brigade Combat Team into Poland. The legislation also demanded that it provide a risk assessment of this delay and a plan to permanently station these troops to defend against Russian aggression.
The differences between the GOP-led House Armed Services Committee and Trump do not end there. The draft NDAA would authorize $1.15 trillion in defense spending rather than the $1.5 trillion Trump demanded. Rogers has said additional defense funding might be provided through a reconciliation bill, but that could be very difficult to get through the Senate. Republicans only hold 53 seats, and Trump’s meddling in GOP primaries has alienated Cassidy, Cornyn, and some number of their colleagues.
The House’s NDAA is loaded with other provisions that would circumscribe the administration’s discretion to spend the funds. Prominent among them is a provision to delay the Navy from spending funds to start the construction of the so-called “Trump-class” battleship requested by the president. Notably, the legislation would also refuse to rename the Defense Department as the War Department, which Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth desire.
TRUMP ENDORSEMENT TRACKER: HERE’S WHO THE PRESIDENT HAS PICKED IN GOP MIDTERM ELECTION PRIMARIES
GOP legislators’ growing comfort with resisting Trump may be growing due to his plunging poll numbers. Voters generally are souring on the president’s handling of nearly every issue aside from immigration. And Republican voters’ confidence in the president’s ability to tame inflation and grow the economy has plummeted since the start of his administration. The party of unpopular presidents almost always loses seats in midterm elections, so a YOLO, you only live once, logic may be taking hold among some GOP senators and representatives.
Trump’s power to use party primaries to punish insufficiently loyal Republicans is indisputable. Yet, power in these low-turnout elections is not the same as executive power. Presidents, scholar Richard Neustadt noted, get things done by persuading lawmakers and appointees that the public backs their agenda. On that count, Trump seems something less than a colossus.
Kevin R. Kosar (@kevinrkosar) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and edits UnderstandingCongress.org.