Consider these several events of just the past two days.
Anxious House Republicans. Public opinion is turning against Trump, putting Republicans in Congress at risk. After the Democratic candidate picked up a state Senate seat in a heavily Republican Pennsylvania district, Trump and panicky House leaders decided that Rep. Elise Stefanik, whom Trump appointed to be U.N. ambassador, had to stay in the House lest a Democrat pick up her vacated upstate New York seat in a special election. Trump carried the district by 21 points in 2024.
The fears were stoked by the even longer-shot risk of a Democratic pickup in Florida’s Sixth District, vacated by the appointment of the disgraced former congressman Michael Waltz as national security adviser. Trump carried that district by 30 points. Recent polls show the Democrat, Josh Weil, up by three points.
Growing Bipartisan Opposition. With budget negotiations just weeks away, Republican Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, signed a tough letter to the White House with her Democratic counterpart, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington. The joint letter objected to Trump’s Monday memo to Congress claiming the right to spend only some of money authorized by the continuing resolution that kept the government open.
“Just as the president does not have a line-item veto, he does not have the ability to pick and choose which emergency spending to designate,” the letter said. This matters because Collins will be a key player in negotiations over the budget reconciliation, which includes Trump’s attempt to extend and expand the expiring 2017 tax cuts. Collins is up for re-election in 2026, and herself vulnerable to a Democratic challenger.
