BREAKING: Senate Republicans just broke ranks with Trump in stunning public revolt
The relationship between Donald Trump and his own party in the Senate is fracturing in ways that can no longer be ignored. During an 18-hour marathon of amendment votes on a $70 billion budget reconciliation bill, Republican senators repeatedly used the floor to distance themselves from the president, and the fallout is only beginning.
Three of the most vulnerable GOP incumbents up for re-election this November, Senators Susan Collins of Maine, John Husted of Ohio, and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, each voted for Democratic amendments targeting Trump’s most embarrassing proposals, including a 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom and a $1.8 billion Justice Department fund designed to compensate MAGA allies who claim they were unfairly prosecuted under Biden.
Senators who were recently pushed out of their own primaries because Trump backed their opponents are no longer playing along. Cornyn, who lost his primary runoff after Trump called him “very disloyal,” is now openly demanding that Trump’s attorney general pick Todd Blanche prove he can operate independently of the president who hired him as a personal lawyer. “He’s not the president’s lawyer. He’s the chief law enforcement officer of the country,” Cornyn said.
Cassidy, another Trump casualty, has become one of the conference’s most assertive independent voices. He co-sponsored amendments to redirect the so-called anti-weaponization fund toward fraud prevention and toward compensating law enforcement officers injured defending the Capitol on January 6th. He has no regrets about his vote to convict Trump at the Senate impeachment trial, and he is making that known.
The political math is getting harder for Majority Leader Thune, who is trying to hold the conference together while the White House keeps dropping politically toxic announcements right before critical votes. Trump himself forced a floor vote on the SAVE America Act, his voter ID priority, reportedly to expose which Republicans oppose it. Collins, Murkowski, Tillis, and McConnell voted against it, a signal that it doesn’t have the votes even within the GOP.
With midterms approaching, vulnerable Republicans are done absorbing the damage. The cracks are real, they are widening, and Trump’s grip on his own Senate majority is slipping.