It Is Happening Every Day, Every Where
As G.O.P. lawmakers have largely ceded power to President Trump, they are also pushing the bounds of a little-known statute to undo federal rules — and potentially undermining the filibuster.
Republicans have raced to approve the president’s picks to serve as top diplomats around the globe, in some cases with solid backing from Democrats.
A pledge from the top Senate Republican that his chamber would embrace far deeper cuts than the measure would require persuaded a critical bloc of fiscal hawks to drop their opposition.
Republicans pushed through their blueprint for tax and spending cuts after Democrats forced them to cast politically painful votes into the early morning on every element of President Trump’s agenda.
Some Republicans are uneasy that their party is pursuing a tactic that could weaken the filibuster and backfire in the future.
The cracks in support show how seriously some conservatives are taking the administration’s aggressive and at times slapdash tactics.
A few G.O.P. lawmakers said they would look into the breach, but party leaders largely tempered their criticism of the Trump administration.
The top Senate Democrat said his members were not ready to provide the votes to allow the Republican-written stopgap spending measure to pass ahead of a March 14 midnight deadline.
In his second term, President Trump is cultivating warm relationships with G.O.P. lawmakers — and using the implicit threat of ruining them if they stray — to keep them in line behind his agenda.
Congressional Republicans have mostly tempered their criticism or deferred to the president as he topples what were once their party’s core foreign policy principles.