Congress
GOP steps aside as Trump assaults Congress’ power
President Donald Trump has declared an all-out war on congressional power. And his allies on Capitol Hill aren’t doing much to fend off the invasion.
From firing a slate of inspectors general to changing citizenship qualifications to delaying a ban on the TikTok app, the president is running roughshod over Congress in his first week back in office. The effort culminated Monday night with a budget office memo freezing “all federal financial assistance” pending a review by administration political appointees.
The effort represents a frontal assault on the legislative branch’s core constitutional power to raise and spend federal funds — the “power of the purse” that has been zealously protected by generations of congressional leaders of both parties. A federal judge temporarily blocked the move Tuesday.
Yet many senior Republicans quickly fell in line, brushing off the implications of the freeze — with some saying they expected it to be narrowed and many others defending it as Trump simply making good on his electoral mandate.
“You need to understand, he was elected to shake up the status quo,” said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), calling the Office of Management and Budget order “exactly what he was elected to do.”
“I think it’s a long time coming,” added House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.). “I hope this sets a precedent.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) also downplayed the freeze as a “preliminary step,” describing it as “a normal practice at the beginning of the administration until they have an opportunity to review how the money is being spent.” (He later called for “additional clarity” from the White House.)
Democrats, meanwhile, declared the situation nothing short of a “constitutional crisis,” as Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) told reporters Tuesday. Party leaders said state attorneys general were readying lawsuits to challenge the freeze, and they called for the cancellation of a planned committee vote on Trump’s budget director nominee, Russ Vought.
House Democrats have scheduled a Wednesday meeting to launch a “comprehensive three-pronged counteroffensive” to include litigation, legislation and a “Day of Action” to raise alarms about the funding halt.
“This is the most serious assault on the constitutional separation of powers and the authority of our Congress in the history of the country,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats. “I can never recall a time where the executive essentially tried to usurp the clear constitutional authority of Congress to authorize and fund programs.”
Trump’s actions amount to the most significant test yet of just how much deference he can expect out of the Republican congressional majorities. Already he has shown that he is dealing with a strikingly more malleable GOP than he had when he was last inaugurated in 2017 and there was a significant element of the party — including then-leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan — willing to buck his wishes.
While top leaders including Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson minimized the threat to the institution they lead, there was more ambivalence to be found further down the GOP ranks.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a Trump ally, said the president was “testing his own authority” and would soon back away.
“Clearly an all-encompassing freeze on grant programs and appropriations can’t long endure,” he said. “They’ll go through it, probably item by item, line by line, budget by budget. Who knows how they’ll do it. But, for now, it’s a pretty major test of separation of powers.”
Trump officials have called some GOP lawmakers who have voiced concerns, telling them to stop, according to two people familiar with the private conversations who were granted anonymity to describe them. But many still weren’t shy about describing mass confusion they encountered overnight Monday, with bewildered constituents flooding their phone lines.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in an interview that he woke up at the House GOP retreat at Trump’s Miami-area resort to text messages from constituents worried about Trump’s order.
“For people, this is their livelihood,” Bacon said, adding that ”it’s already appropriated money” and that he hoped the freeze was “short-lived.”
“So they just gotta realize,” he added of the Trump administration, “when you come in with a sledgehammer, there’s some frag.”
GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of flood-ravaged North Carolina expressed concerns about disaster relief funding: “I can’t imagine that the president would knowingly cut off housing assistance from people displaced from their homes.” And Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said her office’s phones were “ringing off the hook all morning” with calls from people “wondering what it means, how long it’s gonna last.”
The spending freeze could have immediate governing implications for Republicans. With just over six weeks until federal funding expires, they are faced with the tricky business of negotiating a fiscal 2025 spending deal with Democrats.
With Trump now exercising the power to hold up federal spending, even briefly, those Democrats are warning that those talks are in peril — to say nothing of the additional need to raise the nation’s debt limit in the coming months.
“Can you imagine what it’s going to be like … if those agreements mean nothing? That somebody can sit back and say, ‘Sure, I’ll give you that,’ knowing full well that their president’s in power and they will keep the funding out?” Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) asked Tuesday. “We cannot function as a democracy in this country if we cannot respect and abide by our ability to make agreements in Congress.”
In a sign of the anger over the freeze, 22 Senate Democrats voted to oppose Sean Duffy’s confirmation as Transportation secretary Tuesday after supporting him in a procedural vote the day prior, before the budget memo was released.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) aired concerns about the move Tuesday, calling it “far too sweeping” and for the administration to take a “more selective” approach. Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that he was in touch with the White House trying to get more information about the order’s impact but defended the attempt to rein in spending in general terms.
“You know, Trump promised to shake up the government,” he said. “I don’t mind him looking at the programs. I just want to know what the metrics are. What the timetables are.”
That was a frequent refrain from other Republicans, who effectively shrugged off Monday night’s memo despite Trump and his top allies making clear over many months that they have been readying to sidestep Congress on spending cuts.
“Just because it gets paused doesn’t mean it won’t get funded, and the ones that are funded are funded in a better way, more in line with our priorities,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.).
Few in the top GOP echelon showed much concern about political backlash — or what might happen next time Democrats are in charge.
Emmer’s advice for anxious Republicans? “Get on the team.”
Anthony Adragna, Zack Colman, Lisa Kashinsky, Mia McCarthy, Jennifer Scholtes, Josh Siegel and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report. Hill and McCarthy reported from Doral, Florida.
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley rescheduled a planned vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general late Friday in a preemptive move as negotiations between the Trump administration and GOP holdouts continue.
The vote, now set for Tuesday after a scheduled Thursday vote was postponed, isn’t an indication that a deal allowing for Blanche’s confirmation is near, so much as it is a nod to Judiciary Committee rules that require three days of notice for a panel meeting.
There is no sign that President Donald Trump is about to acquiesce to the unflinching demands of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who wants a controversial settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS substantially pared back.
Cornyn, who lost his primary to a Trump-endorsed candidate, wants the Justice Department to nullify a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and limit the scope of a tax audit immunity component of the pact.
Trump told reporters earlier Friday the fund is “dead” but added “I wish it weren’t.”
“I’d like to see them compensated,” he added, referring to people he considers victims of government abuse, including participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
To advance Tuesday, Blanche needs to pick up Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another senator on the panel with similar concerns. He can’t lose any GOP votes if he wants to be reported favorably out of the Judiciary Committee.
“Chairman Grassley wants Todd Blanche’s nomination to be successful,” said a Judiciary Committee spokesperson, who declined to be named. “Noticing the markup gives more time for the White House to secure the votes for the President’s nominee. Grassley would like to see Blanche confirmed before the August recess as he has an excellent record restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is zeroing in on one of House Republicans’ biggest contests — a purple district in Nebraska — when he starts his recess campaign sprint.
Scalise will travel to Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District in the Omaha area for an event with Republican Brinker Harding in the coming days, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter granted anonymity to share plans not yet made public. Republicans are digging in to defend the seat, which Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential race and is among Democrats’ best pick up opportunities this fall as they seek to flip the House.
Harding is running against Democratic consultant Denise Powell to replace retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon. Bacon, a moderate-leaning Republican, flipped the Omaha district red in 2016.
After Nebraska, Scalise is planning to travel across the country throughout August, including to defend GOP incumbents Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ and Zach Nunn’s key battleground seats in Iowa’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts and Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District.
He’ll boost candidates working to flip blue districts like Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, Derek Merrin in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District and Mike LiPetri in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.
Scalise also plans to travel to Michigan, Colorado, South Carolina and Texas for campaign events over the August recess.
President Donald Trump goaded John Cornyn on social media Friday morning, accusing the Texas senator of withholding his vote on Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination in retaliation for Trump’s central role in his political demise.
Cornyn, who lost his May primary to Texas’ scandal-ridden attorney general, the Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton, has threatened to block Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee until the White House promises to permanently shelve its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” in writing — something Trump appears unwilling to do.
“John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called “Fund,” which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Several Republicans bristled at the fund, which could have been deployed to compensate Americans who faced charges after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and which gives the president and his family audit immunity over taxes. At his July confirmation hearing, Blanche said that the fund, part of a settlement the president reached with the IRS, was defunct. But the administration has been “reluctant to change” the text of the settlement, Cornyn told reporters Thursday.
Trump signaled his continued support for the Jan 6 rioters on Friday.
“I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!” he wrote. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”
On Thursday, the president suggested that he could punt a Senate vote on Blanche until after Cornyn — and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — leaves the chamber at the end of the year. Cornyn, however, suggested on social media that there are other Republican senators with concerns about the fund.
“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” Cornyn told reporters.
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