Craven Self-Preservation Puts Senate GOP at Odds With Trump

INSIDE: Todd Blanche ... Broadview Six ... Stephen Colbert

UNITED STATES - MAY 21: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche leaves the Vice President’s office in the Senate Reception Room to meet with Republican Senators in the Mansfield Room in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, May 21, 2026. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

‘Our Majority Is Melting Down Before Our Eyes’

Senate Republicans have always felt like the weakest of the political bulwarks protecting Trump and Trumpism, but real signs of senators crumbling en masse have remained few and fleeting. Yesterday’s developments were more real and may not be so fleeting.

Resistance within John Thune’s conference to Trump’s vanity ballroom and the travesty of the anti-Weaponization Fund coupled with House GOP leaders yanking a vote to rein in the Iran War because they were going to lose on the floor gave the real sense that Republicans see their own midterm prospects as dim.

“Our majority is melting down before our eyes,” a GOP senator told Punchbowl.

But there’s a lot of nuance here that suggests something less than a sea change in the underlying political dynamics. Our eagerness to see real change, real opposition to Trump, and a real erosion of his political support is so overwhelming that it can skew our perspective.

Nearly half of GOP senators reportedly spoke out against the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s face in a contentious Senate lunch yesterday, but the only senators going on the record with their criticisms are the usual suspects: lame duck senators already on the outs with Trump, Punchbowl notes:

In most cases, the only Republicans who are publicly speaking out against these initiatives are the victims of Trump’s revenge tour or otherwise not seeking reelection. But GOP leaders’ decisions on both the ballroom and weaponization fund make clear that they feel the same way.

Another dynamic in play: Senators may feel emboldened now not just because things are looking bleak electorally in the fall but because the window for Trump to primary them has mostly closed. That’s not a mark of courage, but it does inform the underlying politics.

What isn’t happening is important, too. Senate Republicans still aren’t keen to defend Congress as an institution against a rogue executive intent on stealing its powers as his own. They’re not rising up in defense of the rule of law. They’re not drawing a line in the sand: This far, no further.

Rather, they’re trying to nickel and dime their way to something that is more politically palatable. It’s about the “optics.” This gives rise to half-measures like the proposal being floated to prohibit “Anti-Weaponization Funds” from going to those who assaulted cops on Jan. 6. That’s great as far as it goes, but it still leaves $1.776 billion in unappropriated funds in the hands of an unchecked president for him to use to prop up his political machine.

Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) was an exception, saying he didn’t think any guardrails could fix the fund: “I don’t like the fund at all.”

In normal times, craven self-preservation is sometimes all the democratic system offers as a means of course correction, but so long as one of the two major parties is on an authoritarian bender, these will not be normal times.

The Tax Side of the Corruption

It’s been interesting to observe the world of tax professionals and former IRS officials entering the debate, agog over the sweeping release granted to Trump et al. in the deal for the “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

At its core is the immense disconnect between the I.R.S.’ wrongful leak of Trump’s tax returns and the reward of absolving Trump from complying with the tax laws at any point prior to the signing date of this week’s corrupt bargain.

“It’s just completely contrary to the notion that you’re supposed to comply with the law and the I.R.S. is there to make sure you do that,” George Yin, a tax law professor and former chief of staff at the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, told the NYT. “The idea that you can get a free pass from the I.R.S. or anyone can get a free pass from the I.R.S. is just completely ridiculous.”

Quote of the Day

“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.”—Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Get in Line

MAGA World figures are already posturing about why they deserve a portion of what Sen. Thom Tills (R-NC) called a “payout pot for punks.”

Among the notable figures, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio says he expected to get between $2 million and $5 million from the fund. “I’m not greedy,” Tarrio told Reuters. “But my life was all fucked up because of this.”

It’s not just insurrectionists and those once criminally charged seeking compensation but a whole cross-section of right-wing groups and Trump allies, ranging from abortion foes (who the settlement specifically invited to apply) to “millions of Americans whose online speech was censored at the behest of the government, parents silenced at schoolboards, senators whose records were secretly subpoenaed, churchgoers targeted by the FBI, and so on,” according to a DOJ overview given to GOP senators.

Down the Memory Hole!

While President Trump is corruptly accruing funds to pay off his insurrectionist allies, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued orders yesterday without explanation clearing the way for the Trump DOJ to dismiss the seditionist conspiracy and related indictments arising out of Jan. 6.

Pardons and commutations aren’t good enough. Convictions by juries can’t be allowed to stand on the record. It will be as if the indictments themselves never happened.

Broadview Six Case Collapses

The Trump DOJ dropped all remaining charges in the prosecution of the ICE protestors in the Broadview Six case in Chicago during an extraordinary day in court that revealed extensive prosecutorial misconduct and irregularities in front of the grand jury.

“I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts,” U.S. District Judge April Perry said, after reviewing grand jury transcripts behind closed doors and without defense counsel present.

Redacted grand jury transcripts that had been previously been produced to the judge left out the most damaging and incriminating parts of the proceedings, and DOJ prosecutors had not revealed that fact to her, even as she had openly surmised that the redactions were probably just IT glitches.

“And frankly, it is that that I find the most problematic,” the judge said, adding, “I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken.”

Thread of the Day

Criminal defense attorney Ken White goes through the transcript of the highly irregular hearing yesterday in the Broadview Six case:

ICE Agent Will Surrender on State Charges

The ICE agent facing state charges in Minnesota for a road-rage-style incident during Operation Metro Surge will surrender after Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty issued a nationwide warrant last month for his arrest.

Colbert’s Last Late Night Show

The cancellation of a late night show doesn’t rank with the losses of the last 16 months, but the underlying principles under attack are as important as any that Trump has assailed, and the capitulation by CBS mirrors the other cases where institutions and corporations have crumpled rather than stand strong.

Stephen Colbert closed it out with a singalong led by Paul McCartney, who famously first performed in America on the same stage 62 years ago:

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