Last Thursday, the House voted 230-196 to pass a clean three-year extension of subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. This came after four Republicans joined Democrats in forcing the vote with a discharge petition. A total of 17 Republicans, mostly in swing districts, joined with Democrats to pass the extension.
The measure now goes to the Senate, where it will probably be watered down or die. In December, an identical bill got 51 votes in the Senate, where it takes 60 to break a filibuster. There is some talk about negotiations on a subsidy extension, but nothing that can attract broad support has been proposed.
Also on Thursday, the Senate by a margin of 52-47 advanced a measure to require President Trump to get Congress’s consent for military operations in Venezuela under the War Powers Act. Five Republicans voted with Democrats—Todd Young of Indiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Josh Hawley of Missouri. If passed by the Senate, the resolution would go to the House, to face an uncertain fate.
A cynic might view this routine as purely performative, with Republicans in the two houses periodically switching roles as tough cop and fake cop. It allows a few Republicans to put on a show of distance from Trump that makes no real difference.
But that’s a little too cynical. The opposition to Trump policies on the part of a handful of Republicans is real. There just aren’t enough of them, on enough key issues.
The five GOP senators who voted to advance a war powers resolution did get Trump’s attention. He posted on Truth Social that they “should never be elected to office again,” and personally phoned Sen. Collins to berate her in what sources called a “profanity-laced rant.”
Last week, in another hopeful sign, Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee joined Democrats in restoring most of Trump’s cuts to scientific research. Trump’s budget included an overall cut in scientific funding to $154 billion from $198 billion—a drop of 22 percent. The Senate committee voted to appropriate roughly $188 billion, a cut of only 4 percent, for research in key agencies such as NSF, NASA, EPA, the Department of Energy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Unlike the War Powers Act, the House can’t just bury the Senate action. There will be genuine negotiation.
Yet on the issues that matter most, precious few Republicans have been willing to take Trump on. With a few exceptions, such as Kentucky’s Rep. Tom Massie, those who have been most forthright in challenging Trump are either already out of office or not running for re-election. Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene is now both after stepping down last week.
Among the other exceptions: Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who is up for re-election this November, said that the idea of seizing Greenland “should be dropped.” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is retiring this fall, was more pointed, calling Trump’s demands for ownership of Greenland “amateurish” and “absurd.” Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former majority leader, declared, “The use of force to seize the sovereign democratic territory of one of America’s most loyal and capable allies would be an especially catastrophic act of strategic self-harm to America and its global influence.”
But these and other isolated criticisms are not sufficient to slow Trump down. As Trump becomes more unpopular, his actions become more dictatorial, reckless, and grandiose. On the most alarming recent incursion of all, the effort to turn an expanded ICE into a paramilitary Gestapo, not a single Republican legislator has called for restraining ICE or directly challenged the White House lie that Renee Good, murdered by an ICE officer, was a “domestic terrorist.”
We can hope that other forces will slow down Trump’s megalomania. NATO member nations are resisting his Greenland fantasy. The Supreme Court is beginning to set some limits. But more elected officials of his own party need to admit Trump’s deepening lunacy and the stakes.
Let’s hope that the rare Republican criticism of Trump’s clumsy assault on Fed Chair Jay Powell is a harbinger of more nerve. It’s a sad day when the main Republican heroes are Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.