The assumption in many political circles is that Donald Trump’s control over congressional Republicans is complete and unrelenting. The president barks orders, and GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill obey, motivated by some combination of fear, partisan allegiance, loyalty or ideological agreement.
But while Trump’s power in Republican politics is obviously considerable, those assumptions are not always correct. The Washington Post reported:
The Senate rebuked President Donald Trump’s trade policy for the third time in as many days, voting 51-47 on Thursday to eliminate the national emergency underpinning Trump’s global tariffs announced in April. The resolution followed two others earlier this week — to eliminate duties on goods from Canada and Brazil, respectively — that passed with bipartisan support, indicating discomfort among lawmakers with the president’s aggressive use of tariffs to reshape U.S. trade relationships.
The first in this series of votes came on Tuesday night, when 52 senators approved a resolution to block Trump’s trade tariffs on goods from Brazil. Democrats, not surprisingly, endorsed the measure, and they were joined by five Senate Republicans: Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
A day later, 50 senators passed a measure to terminate many of the tariffs Trump has imposed on Canada. Though a handful of members missed the vote, four Senate Republicans voted with Democrats: Collins, McConnell, Murkowski and Paul.
The day after that, the Senate did it again, advancing a resolution that would not only block the White House’s tariffs, but also the emergency order the president issued as the basis for the tariffs. Those same four GOP senators — Collins, McConnell, Murkowski and Paul — voted with the Democratic minority.
In April, when a narrow, bipartisan majority in the Senate rejected Trump’s tariffs on Canada, a Politico report summarized it as “the most significant rebuke to Trump that congressional Republicans have yet mustered in his second term.”
Six months later, the scope of the rebuke is even more obvious.
The practical value of this week’s votes in the Senate is limited. The Republican-led House will almost certainly ignore the resolutions, and in the unlikely event that the lower chamber were to pass them, the measures would face inevitable presidential vetoes. But given how low contemporary standards have fallen, the actions in the Senate this week represent a modest breakthrough anyway. This is the first instance in Trump’s second term that bipartisan majorities in the Senate rebuked a key piece of the administration’s agenda three times. Will this have lasting real-world consequences? No. Is it a step in the right direction? Yes. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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