“In a near party-line vote.., the House of Representatives blocked the most direct pathway for lawmakers to revoke the emergency executive powers Trump used last month to impose tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico, and China. That change helps further cement executive control over trade policy and creates additional challenges for lawmakers seeking to claw back some control over tariff decisions.”
“Trump’s administration axed temporary protections for Venezuelan immigrants in the early days of his second term. In less than a month, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans nationally stand to lose temporary protected status, opening them up to deportation — leaving South Florida Republican Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Gimenez scrambling to try to convince Trump to change his mind.”
“It took an all-out lobbying blitz that involved promises of future spending cuts, a scattering of presidential threats and 11th-hour policy concessions involving tariffs and visas for Afghan refugees. But in a 217-213 vote, the House passed a seven-month funding patch without needing a single Democrat. Republicans planned to immediately leave Washington and hand Senate Democrats a stark dilemma with the threat of a government shutdown looming early Saturday morning.”
“only 121 of those 293 B.T. (Before Trump) Republican legislators (41 percent) still have an office on Capitol Hill.
Some of this, of course, is normal attrition. Nineteen of the Republicans who left Congress did so to seek another office, something House members do all the time. Thirty lost a general election, indicating they didn’t want to leave Congress. Some of the 70 who retired from elected office, such as 82-year-old former Rep. Kay Granger, probably did so for age or health reasons rather than political ones. There were even four Republican members of Congress who died in office.
But some undeniably left because they no longer fit in in Trump’s GOP. Most obviously, 10 lost a primary election to a fellow Republican, including former Reps. Liz Cheney, Jaime Herrera Beutler and Tom Rice, who all faced a Trump-backed primary challenger after voting to impeach him in 2021. Several others, like Trump critics former Sen. Jeff Flake and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, likely chose not to run for reelection because they were worried they would meet the same fate. Other departed Republicans, like former Sen. Rob Portman, former Speaker Paul Ryan and former Rep. Ken Buck, expressed frustration with the direction of their party on their way out the door. Two, former Reps. Justin Amash and Paul Mitchell, even left the Republican Party before retiring from Congress.”
“The problem for Trump is that for all of his talk of prioritizing loyalty in his second term, he has staffed his administration with a number of conservative ideologues who could have very different ideas about what the government should be doing — none more influential than his likely soon-to-be budget director, Russ Vought.
Vought is a well-known quantity on Capitol Hill from his time as a staffer there, to say nothing of his work as a Project 2025 author and all-around warrior for small government. Republicans there saw his fingerprints on the spending freeze — or the “Vought memo,” as some are calling it.
“This has Russ’s name written all fucking over it,” said one GOP aide who works in appropriations, adding, ”I see a disparity between what Trump wants to do and what Russ wants to do.”
In other words, the battle between fiscal hawks and populists is set to rage not only on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in the coming months, but inside the White House itself.
“There’s an undercurrent of the old Republican Party at play where they’re like, ‘We’re going to cut benefits’ and all this,” the lawmaker said. “And like the new Republican Party is like, ‘Yeah, we don’t care about that.’””
“GOP leaders see an opportunity for a new, working-class coalition, which includes more union outreach. It’s a major shift, and fault lines are already forming over President Trump’s pro-labor Cabinet nominee, former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer.”
…
“Hawley has been quietly circulating draft legislation that would prevent employers from stalling union contract negotiations — keeping the process to months, not years, according to a copy obtained by Axios.”
“Out went Turner (R-Ohio), a brash, prickly defense hawk who had been elevated by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and had become an internal headache for Johnson due to what many saw as his hamfisted handling of a divisive intraparty debate over surveillance powers.
In came Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), a more MAGA-friendly, America First type who, crucially, had better relationships with the House GOP’s hard right — the fractious bloc that Johnson needs to keep happy as he tries to pass Trump’s agenda with a razor-thin majority in the coming months.
In, too, came a new crop of rank-and-file Intel members — each of whom helped Johnson with parochial political problems in the House. He rewarded Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), who helped run his speaker vote whip operation, and found a consolation prize for Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), who lost out on the Foreign Affairs Committee gavel.
Problems solved. But, also, problems created.
The easygoing, always smiling Johnson is quickly learning that wielding power means making enemies — especially when you bungle the execution.
Johnson entered his private meeting with Turner armed with a host of internal conference reasons for firing him, but the speaker’s decision to briefly cite “concerns from Mar-a-Lago” as a justification for his decision vexed Trump’s inner circle, who said that the president-elect had nothing to do with the matter and accused Johnson of trying to paper over his own political considerations.
Perhaps more importantly, he has made a new enemy in Turner, who declined to comment.”