Trump is in a mess of his own making
Plus: Dems slam Republican leaders for Iran war powers delay and block GOP women’s museum proposal as the DNC finally releases the 2024 autopsy.
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First Things First
President Donald Trump spent months steering congressional Republicans toward a reconciliation showdown designed to showcase unified GOP strength on immigration enforcement and border security.
Instead, Senate Republicans left Washington on Thursday for Memorial Day recess without even beginning debate on the package after internal backlash to Trump-backed provisions exposed growing frustration with a White House many senators increasingly view as politically demanding, strategically undisciplined and uninterested in the institutional realities of governing Capitol Hill.
The collapse marked more than just a procedural setback for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). It hardened an emerging tension within the Republican conference over how much political risk lawmakers are willing to absorb for a president who continues to ask Congress to move aggressively on his agenda while simultaneously complicating Republicans’ political standing back home.
Several Senate Republicans privately blamed Trump for turning what they believed should have been a politically advantageous reconciliation bill into a messaging nightmare after the White House pushed for a $1 billion ballroom-security funding provision and a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, which alarmed both institutionalists and vulnerable incumbents.
The irony frustrated many Republicans: reconciliation itself became necessary largely because Trump’s governing philosophy treats bipartisan compromise as political weakness, particularly on immigration enforcement and federal law enforcement policy. Rather than pursuing bipartisan talks on changes to immigration enforcement practices or federal investigative powers after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in January, Republicans moved to use reconciliation to fund a massive expansion of ICE and Customs and Border Protection operations through the remainder of Trump’s term.
But once reconciliation became the primary governing vehicle, it also became vulnerable to Trump’s broader political instincts: score-settling, loyalty tests and legacy-building projects that many Republicans viewed as unnecessary political baggage attached to an otherwise unifying border-security package.
Senators spent much of Thursday openly signaling discomfort with the anti-weaponization fund after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche met privately with Senate Republicans to defend the proposal. The lengthy meeting appeared to deepen concerns rather than resolve them.
“Our members have very legitimate questions about it,” Thune told reporters earlier in the day.
The White House also appeared caught off guard by the extent to which the ballroom funding and anti-weaponization provisions had become political liabilities inside the conference, particularly as Republicans already face worsening political headwinds tied to inflation, rising gas prices and growing voter unease over the administration’s handling of the conflict with Iran.
That frustration has become more personal for some Senate Republicans in recent days after Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) lost to a Trump-endorsed House rank-and-file member and the president backed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over John Cornyn (R-Texas) in an upcoming GOP runoff election for a seat Democrats now see as winnable due to Paxton’s myriad general-election liabilities.
Trump endorsed primary challengers against Sen. Bill Cassidy and Sen. John Cornyn, two well-liked members inside the conference who nevertheless found themselves targeted by the president and the MAGA movement.
For many Republicans, many of whom personally and politically respect Cassidy and Cornyn, the episodes reflect a deeper concern that Trump increasingly views Congress less as a separate governing branch and more as a vehicle to execute his political agenda with minimal resistance, while MAGA activists increasingly treat lawmakers who assert institutional independence as disloyal or insufficiently conservative.
Even so, few Republicans expect the broader reconciliation effort to collapse permanently. Trump still retains an overwhelming influence over the Republican base, and many lawmakers ultimately support the underlying goal of securing long-term funding for his immigration agenda.
But the failed push before Memorial Day recess handed Democrats a potent political opening heading into the summer by reinforcing their argument that unified Republican government has become consumed by internal dysfunction, political self-interest and ideological spectacle rather than affordability concerns facing voters.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) quickly seized on the moment Thursday afternoon, declaring that Republicans were “in complete disarray” after abandoning plans to move the package before recess.
For now, Republicans will return home without the bill Trump demanded by June 1 and with growing evidence that even a fully Republican Washington may not be enough to overcome the political and institutional tensions shaping Trump’s second term.
What Paid Subscribers are Reading
In last evening’s Congress Nerd Sunset, I wrote about how Democrats appeared to test a new “fighting for you” midterm message on Thursday built around affordability, corruption and the argument that President Trump and Republicans are prioritizing wealthy allies and special interests over everyday Americans. The messaging experiment reflects a broader work inside the party to craft a clear and compelling closing argument to voters ahead of the 2026 midterms.
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Happenings
The Senate will meet at 8:30 a.m. and the House will meet at 10:30 a.m. for pro forma sessions.
President Trump will participate in a swearing-in ceremony for Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh in the East Room at 11 a.m. before traveling to Rockland County, New York, to campaign with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), one of the three House Republicans who represent a district that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Trump will then travel from New York to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for the remainder of the weekend.
In the Know
Dems slam GOP for Iran war powers delay: House Republican leadership abruptly pulled a planned floor vote Thursday on a Democratic-led War Powers Resolution to force President Trump to seek congressional approval for future military action against Iran, retreating after Democrats concluded the measure likely had enough bipartisan support to pass due to GOP absences.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), who sponsored the resolution, accused Republicans of ducking the vote because “they knew they were going to lose it,” while Jeffries, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) blasted the GOP for behaving like a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of the Trump administration.
As I reported in Thursday morning’s Sunrise, the move came one week after a separate Iran War Powers Resolution failed by a single vote and days after the Senate advanced Sen. Tim Kaine’s version with support from four Republicans, underscoring growing bipartisan unease over the increasingly costly and open-ended conflict.
Dems block GOP women’s museum proposal: The House rejected legislation on Thursday that would have advanced plans for the long-discussed Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum after Democrats abandoned the previously bipartisan effort over late Republican changes tied to transgender inclusion and presidential authority. The bill failed 216-204, with Democrats leading the opposition and a handful of Republicans defecting.
The original museum proposal had broad bipartisan support for years, but Republicans added language limiting exhibits to “biological women,” barring transgender inclusion and giving Trump final authority over the museum’s location on the National Mall. Democrats accused Republicans of turning a consensus project into a culture-war vehicle aimed at pleasing the president.
The bill would also have decoupled the women’s museum from the long-linked National Museum of the American Latino, leading to frustration among Hispanic Democrats after both Smithsonian projects were originally authorized together in 2020.
Martin releases DNC autopsy: Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin on Thursday released the party’s long-delayed and deeply disputed autopsy of the 2024 election, publishing the 192-page report alongside a striking disclaimer that the DNC could not independently verify many of its claims, data points or sourcing.
The release comes months after Martin shelved the report over concerns it would distract from the midterms, a reversal that triggered backlash from Democratic activists, strategists and some elected officials who accused the DNC of abandoning transparency. The report itself argues Democrats became overly reliant on anti-Trump messaging, underinvested in state parties and organizing and struggled badly with male, rural and non-college voters, while repeatedly faulting the Biden White House and the truncated Harris campaign for failing to define then-Vice President Harris on favorable terms.
Reaction to the rollout was almost as brutal as the reaction to the findings. Critics across the party blasted the document as incomplete, error-ridden and internally contradictory, with missing sections and repeated editor’s notes disputing unsupported claims. Some Democrats privately questioned Martin’s leadership after he spent months defending the decision not to release the report, only to abruptly publish it anyway amid mounting pressure.