Trump Isn’t Getting His Way With Congress Anymore

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump may be losing his mojo on Capitol Hill. 

Both chambers of Congress rebuked the president on Thursday, with the Senate advancing a bipartisan resolution limiting military action in Venezuela and the GOP-controlled House voting to pass a Democratic bill extending Obamacare subsidies.

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Meanwhile, dozens of House Republicans voted to override Trump’s vetoes on two separate pieces of legislation that passed unanimously last year. While the votes fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto, it was still a display of intraparty opposition considered unthinkable at the start of Trump’s presidency. 

And in the Senate, a Republican helped lead an effort to put up a plaque honoring police officers who protected the U.S. Capitol from a violent mob on Jan. 6, 2021 — contradicting an effort by the White House to rewrite history and blame U.S. Capitol Police for the chaos that occurred.

Although Trump still holds tremendous sway over the Republican Party and the idea of the GOP-led Congress trying to block Trump’s most egregious executive actions remains a fantasy, the day’s events showed some defiance in a Republican-led Congress that served as Trump’s lapdog for most of the first year of his second term in the White House. 

“We’re seeing a lot more independence,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) told HuffPost. “I don’t want to overplay it this early in the game, but for years, there was just a complete unwillingness for independent thought from members of his party. But we are seeing a lot more of that now, people are thinking about their own constituents in their own states and how this is viewed.”

The most significant vote concerned Trump’s military actions against Venezuela, which included the capture of the country’s strongman president over the weekend and his transport to the United States for trial. 

Five Republican senators bucked their party and voted to advance a symbolic resolution limiting further military hostilities against Venezuela. The senators expressed concerns with the administration’s plans there, particularly Trump vowing to “run” the country and leaving open the door to committing troops on the ground. 

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“A drawn-out campaign in Venezuela involving the American military, even if unintended, would be the opposite of President Trump’s goal of ending foreign entanglements,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), a former U.S. Marine who has long sought to restore Congress’ powers over declarations of war, said in a statement after voting in support of the measure.

Trump lashed out in a post online, calling for the five Republicans to lose their jobs “and never be elected to office again.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), one of the targets of Trump’s anger and the most vulnerable GOP senator up for reelection this year, deadpanned to reporters about the president’s post.

“I guess this means he would prefer to have Gov. Mills or somebody else” in the Senate, referring to Janet Mills, Maine’s Democratic governor, who is running against Collins.

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The others downplayed Trump’s attack, in yet another sign that Republicans may be getting more comfortable ignoring his outbursts. 

In the House, Republicans took rare action to try to override the president’s vetoes of two bills that passed the House last year on voice votes – meaning they had so much support no lawmaker wanted to bother taking a tally of the yeas and nays. 

One of the bills, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Col.), would have funded an unfinished water pipeline project in her rural southeastern Colorado district. In his veto message, the president said the federal government shouldn’t have to pay for the project. In response, Boebert questioned whether the veto was political retaliation for her support for legislation requiring the Justice Department to release its files on the late *** predator Jeffrey Epstein. (Another theory for Trump’s veto is that he’s mad Colorado won’t release from prison Tina Peters, one of his false electors from the 2020 election.)

Boebert provided one of the crucial four Republican signatures on a discharge petition to force a vote on the Epstein bill. The House later overwhelmingly supported the effort, in yet another embarrassing rebuke of Trump, who fought the release of the files every step of the way. 

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Boebert also noted on Thursday that the groundbreaking on the project occurred in Trump’s first term. 

“I just know that this is something that the president heavily invested in in 2020,” Boebert told HuffPost, adding that she didn’t know for certain that Trump’s veto was related to her pushing for the release of the Epstein files.

Although Republicans largely supported Trump’s military operation in Venezuela last week, many of them drew a firm line against the administration’s saber-rattling against Greenland, a territory owned by Denmark, a U.S. ally. They warned doing so would threaten the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which includes Denmark, a country that supported the U.S. following the 9/11 terror attacks. 

“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,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement on Wednesday. 

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Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) also publicly excoriated one of Trump’s closest advisers, Stephen Miller, with a fiery speech on the Senate floor over what he called Miller’s “stupid” and “amateurish” comments insisting that the U.S. must annex Greenland.

Tillis, who is retiring at the end of this year, disagreed with the idea that his party has undergone some kind of dramatic shift against Trump in recent months. But in going after Miller in such a public way, and in pushing for honoring Capitol Police officers who responded on Jan. 6, Tillis may be just getting warmed up in breaking with Trump.

He also warned on Thursday that Trump’s administration needs to get their ducks in a row or else face electoral doom in this year’s midterm elections.

“I think the only thing we want to do is be very tight on execution, so that we’re best positioned to win in November,” Tillis told HuffPost. “And there are some rough edges that we need to smooth off.”

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