Cat Zakrzewski and Theodoric Meyer
Since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second term, a Republican-controlled Congress has confirmed almost all his controversial nominees, ceded trade authority to the White House and largely acquiesced as the president started a hugely unpopular war in Iran.
But the administration’s plan to create a $US1.8 billion ($2.5 billion) fund for people claiming political persecution has proved a step too far, triggering a GOP revolt on Capitol Hill that forced the White House to back down. On Tuesday afternoon, acting Attorney-General Todd Blanche announced that the administration is “not moving forward with the fund. Period.”
The standoff revealed new strains in Trump’s relationship with a Congress that has rarely exercised its power to check him, at a vulnerable moment for his presidency. Republicans’ newfound defiance may say less about the fund itself than about a sharply shifting political dynamic that could have consequences for the rest of Trump’s term.
The tensions between the White House and GOP lawmakers are building as the midterm elections approach and Republicans are becoming increasingly concerned about the party’s ability to maintain their narrow majorities in the House and Senate, especially as the president’s policies keep pushing up consumer prices.
“You’re starting to see Republicans want to show some independence from Trump, and this was an easy issue to do it on,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist.
“This Congress was already very hard to govern, and it will only get harder as Trump becomes less popular and the midterms draw nearer. There’s a lot of frustration with the political situation that they find themselves in.”
Republican strategists viewed the deeply unpopular fund as a particular political liability. In a May Economist/YouGov poll, 49 per cent of respondents said they opposed the fund, including 48 per cent of Trump voters and 45 per cent of those who identified as MAGA supporters. And Senate Republicans had a direct way to show their displeasure – by blocking a $72 billion immigration enforcement funding package that Trump badly wants.
Many Republican lawmakers and strategists struggled to figure out how to even talk about the fund, amid criticism that it amounted to Trump self-dealing and rewarding his political supporters.
“People that have pled guilty to physical acts against the president may actually be able to get compensated. How absurd does that sound coming out of my mouth?” said Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Tillis decided to oppose Trump’s spending bill last year and is not running for re-election.
Last month, senators also revolted against a proposal to add money to a budget bill to cover security costs related to Trump’s plan to add a ballroom to the White House. Trump has repeatedly emphasised that the ballroom is a top political priority, even as the public opposes the initiative by a wide margin.
The Senate parliamentarian – responsible for advising the Senate on its rules – ruled that the ballroom funds could not be included in the measure. Trump then urged Senate Republicans to fire the parliamentarian, but they have ignored his call.
The Senate last month also advanced a resolution to end the Iran war on a 50-47 vote, with four Republicans joining Democrats in advancing the proposal. Still, the measure is unlikely to become law, in part because Trump could veto it.
At the same time, Trump has alienated Senate Republicans by endorsing challengers in GOP primaries, ending the political careers of well-liked figures such as John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
A more defiant Congress could provide a significant obstacle for Trump, who is increasingly confronting barriers to his hard-charging tactics to remake American government and society. Initiatives ranging from his tariffs to his Kennedy Centre renovations have been stymied in the court system, and world leaders have displayed a greater willingness to push back against the increasingly embattled president.
Trump has largely governed through executive action, circumventing the legislative branch to advance his agenda, with the exception of his 2025 tax cuts package. To date, Congress has been far more deferential to Trump than it was in his first term, when members of his own party thwarted his repeal of the Affordable Care Act and blocked his attempt to build a border wall.
Trump has been uncharacteristically silent on the current backlash.
He has not fielded questions from the White House press corps since the cabinet meeting on Wednesday. His remarks over the past several days have been limited to posts on Truth Social and interviews with individual news outlets, including a Fox News segment about the ballroom with his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
He has not acknowledged or confirmed that the payout fund is dead.
The White House dismissed the notion that there is any daylight between Trump and congressional Republicans. “President Trump is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in the House and Senate,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said.
“The White House and President Trump have enjoyed working closely with House and Senate Republicans to deliver on many important promises to the American people, including the largest tax cut for working Americans in history. While the media and Democrats attempt to sow non-existent divisions, we look forward to continuing this close relationship to continue fulfilling President Trump’s agenda that Americans elected him to enact – especially funding ICE and CBP [immigration enforcement and border protection].”
Still, Republican Louisiana Senator John Neely Kennedy said the party became concerned about Trump’s payout fund in part because of a lack of clarity from the administration about how it would work and who would administer it.
“I support redressing people’s grievances, but I don’t want a fixed process,” Kennedy said. “And I’m not saying the process would be fixed, but it could give an appearance of that. And that’s what the pushback was all about.”
He added: “When you don’t understand what’s happening, and it happens in Washington – I don’t care who’s in charge – you assume the worst. If you trust government, you failed history class. And so people assumed the worst.”
The ‘YOLO caucus’
Republican senators pressured the White House to abandon the payout fund by threatening to derail the immigration enforcement package, giving them leverage over the administration. Trump also has three cabinet-level vacancies and would need the Senate to confirm his nominees, although he has shown a willingness to keep such appointments in acting roles for extended periods.
When Trump on Tuesday announced he would appoint loyalist Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence, several Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said they were unsure whether Pulte had relevant experience. Pulte, a housing regulator, has no background in intelligence.
“I don’t see any evidence of qualification for that job,” Cornyn told reporters.
Cornyn is among a handful of Republican lawmakers who may be newly emboldened to criticise Trump after the president effectively ended their careers. Lawmakers in this position have informally become known as the “YOLO Caucus”, a reference to the term “You Only Live Once”.
Trump sought to consolidate his control of the legislative branch by endorsing the primary opponents of senators he viewed as disloyal to his political movement. Given Republicans’ narrow majority in Congress, those lame-duck members of the party still have significant power to thwart Trump’s policy plans.
Republicans were particularly angered last month by Trump’s announcement that he would endorse Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton in the state’s Republican Senate primary, paving the way for Paxton’s defeat of Cornyn. Many Senate Republicans argue that Paxton is a scandal-plagued candidate who will need extensive funds to prevail in the general election.
‘Just pretend like this never existed’
Republican lawmakers unleashed their growing fury at the Trump administration during a heated meeting with Blanche before Memorial Day. The senators pressed him about who would be eligible for the fund, including whether money would be handed out to people who participated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Multiple senators yelled at Blanche during the meeting, saying it appeared that the president was “self-dealing”, Texas Senator Ted Cruz said on his podcast.
“The anger and frustration from Republican senators was not legal, it was political,” Cruz said. “It was, ‘you’re putting us in a position’ that for many of the Republican senators, they were not willing to defend.”
The fund was also a personal issue for some lawmakers who were on Capitol Hill during the January 6 attacks. “They continue to have very personal, emotional trauma from it,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican political strategist appointed by Trump at the State Department during his first term.
On Tuesday, some of the fund’s critics were eager to move on from the debate.
“I just feel like we just need to do a Wayback Machine and just pretend like this never existed and take whatever steps are necessary to make sure it can never exist or disperse,” Tillis said. “There are other mechanisms for people who were over-prosecuted.”
Jarrell Dillard contributed to this report.
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