GOP push behind Trump agenda has Congress in an uproar

Boston Globe

20 hours ago

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And that was just last week. Veteran lawmakers said that the level of vitriol and dysfunction in the Capitol had reached a fever pitch.
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'It is bad — really bad,' Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said when asked to assess the mood on Capitol Hill. 'There's a level of frustration. How do we get back to doing our jobs?'
Republicans have achieved hard-won legislative victories, but those have come at a cost, setting the stage for a meltdown that has, among other things, raised the prospects of a government shutdown this fall. Some GOP lawmakers are feeling squeezed, while Democrats, outraged that the White House is shredding funding agreements and doling out money however it wants, are threatening to abandon a tradition of bipartisan spending deals.
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'I want to warn my colleagues once again: If you keep going down this path, you are going to further undermine our bipartisan process,' said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. 'The more bridges you burn, the fewer paths you leave to get things done.'
Her comments came as all but two Republicans banded together to push through legislation around 1 a.m. Friday allowing the Trump administration to cancel $9 billion in previously approved spending on foreign aid and public broadcasting. Murkowski, one of the two opponents in her party, said the measure was an unacceptable breach of congressional spending power.
It was not just the spending divide that was inciting tumult on Capitol Hill. In a lengthy session Thursday evening, Democrats and Republicans on the powerful House Rules Committee engaged in nasty back-and-forth over the rising clamor for Congress to vote on releasing criminal files in the investigation of Epstein, who died by suicide in a federal jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
That morning, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee had stormed out of a meeting in protest after Senator Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who leads the panel, cut off debate and forced a committee vote on the disputed judicial nomination of Emil Bove.
Bove, a Justice Department official and former defense attorney for Trump, is up for an influential post on a federal appeals court that encompasses Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. He has been accused by a former Justice Department colleague of declaring a willingness to defy court orders on immigration, a charge Bove has disputed.
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Democrats wanted more time to examine the nomination. But Grassley forged ahead despite those demands, ramming the approval through in one of a series of Republican-only votes. Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, implored him to stop, accusing the chair of 'an abuse of power.' The two had worked closely in the past on criminal justice issues.
'To me, it is a president who has such a thrall over the Republicans in the Senate that he could get them to surrender not just their power, but their constitutional obligations,' Booker said after the blowup, adding that Republicans were relinquishing their ability to provide a check on White House nominees.
Grassley dismissed the complaints, claiming Democrats had executed 'a political hit job' on Bove. He said Democrats had shut down Republican members of the committee in the past, when they held the gavel in the majority.
'This is not unprecedented — either the walking away or what we did as a majority,' Grassley said. 'It has happened before, and we have to move things along.'
Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the chief architect of a campaign to pry spending power away from Congress, exacerbated tensions on Capitol Hill. He told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast that there needed to be less bipartisanship around federal spending — not a sentiment typically heard on Capitol Hill. He also reiterated his contention that spending levels set by Congress were an advisory ceiling, not a floor.
His commentary infuriated Democrats already bristling at the $9 billion in added cuts — the first approved by Congress in decades under a special procedure that allows the president to cancel spending.
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'He wants to destroy,' Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, the minority leader, said as he called for Trump to fire Vought. 'Destroy the way that Congress works, destroy the balance of power and upend our entire Constitution. Russell Vought doesn't believe in this democracy.'
Vought's comments could complicate efforts by Republicans and Democrats to work out spending levels for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Democrats said that his argument destroyed any incentive for them to strike deals, since he made clear the White House would seek to unravel them later with an assist from Senate Republicans. A test vote in the Senate on the first of the annual spending bills is scheduled for Tuesday.
'That just profoundly undermined the stability and purpose of a bipartisan appropriations process,' Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, a member of the Appropriations Committee, said of Vought's comments.
Some lawmakers attributed the congressional edginess to lawmakers being wrung out from repeated all-night sessions to push through the Republican tax cut and domestic policy bill, and from late-night Senate debate over the additional cuts sought by the administration.
'A lot of this is people are just tired,' said Senator John Boozman, Republican of Arkansas. 'Hopefully this all blows over soon.'
Some of the fights have occurred within Republican ranks. On Wednesday, an internal House Republican dispute over cryptocurrency legislation led to a usually routine process vote being held open for more than nine hours as leaders toiled to secure the necessary support. It was just the latest in a series of congressional records being set with extended floor fights and speeches.
'I am tired of making history,' Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Wednesday night. 'I just want a normal Congress.'
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Given the intensity of the divisions so far and the potential momentous clashes ahead, normal seems out of the question.
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