Republicans in Congress spent this week doing something they have rarely been willing to do in the Trump era: breaking with Donald Trump on a cluster of high-profile fights. They opposed a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, pushed back on money for a White House ballroom and helped pass a war powers resolution on Iran.
Jonathan Capehart said the moves looked like Republicans finally deciding to push back because Trump was wrong. He also said some were driven by something less noble, the urge to get a little bit of revenge after losing primaries to Trump-backed challengers. “It’s amazing what happens to the spine when you lose your primary race because the president of your own party supported someone against you,” he said.
One of the clearest breaks came over the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, which several lawmakers opposed before the acting attorney general said it was not moving forward. In another fight, opposition to a billion-dollar White House ballroom was pulled from a spending package. And in the House, four Republicans joined Democrats to pass a war powers resolution on Iran, a rare show of cross-party resistance on a foreign policy question tied directly to presidential power.
Those votes do not add up to a revolt, and Capehart did not pretend they did. He called the Republican pushback a possible shift, but also said it amounted to only a few lawmakers and a “two-inch tsunami.” Still, he said the pattern mattered because Congress had been dormant for most of Trump’s term. David Brooks put it more bluntly: “Congress does stand for something, and it’s been dormant for most of the Trump term.”
Capehart said the question now is whether this week was a one-off series of events or the start of something bigger. He pointed to Trump’s approval rating as the marker that could change the calculation, saying the “magic number is 37 or whatever Trump’s approval is right now,” and adding that it gets easier for Republicans to defy him as those numbers fall. For now, the answer is not a blanket rebellion. It is a small but notable crack in a coalition that has mostly stayed aligned with Trump, and the next vote will show whether it widens.
