GOP in civil war as shutdown clock ticks

Senate Republicans are racing to clear a packed to-do list before lawmakers leave Washington at the end of the week.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is hoping to get his conference to approve a stopgap spending bill, 74 pending nominees, Russia sanctions and a contentious budget framework, but that work is complicated by a widening gap between what President Donald Trump wants and what the GOP caucus will actually deliver, reported the Washington Post.

The clearest flashpoint is the Save America Act, Trump's push to require proof of citizenship for voter registration and photo ID at the polls. Trump has demanded the Senate stay in session until the provisions pass, but Thune has repeatedly said that the bill simply cannot pass — even through the reconciliation process Republicans would use to bypass a Democratic filibuster.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has said outright he won't support it, and several other Republicans, including Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Susan Collins (R-ME), have raised their own objections to the broader budget framework.

The tension extends to the $95 billion package meant to fund the Iran war effort and aid farmers. The House already passed its version, loaded with defense spending, farm aid and election-related funding Trump wants tied to his voting-law priorities, but Thune has been blunt about the odds of it passing.

"We're probably not there," Thune told reporters, acknowledging he doesn't yet have the near-unanimous GOP support reconciliation requires. Compounding the math problem, Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker wants to push defense spending even higher, toward $300 billion — a move that risks alienating fiscally conservative senators already uneasy about adding to a $39.8 trillion national debt.

Then there's Todd Blanche's stalled attorney general nomination, another proxy fight for the same dynamic. Trump threatened over the weekend to revive a controversial $1.776 billion compensation fund for people like Jan. 6 defendants if Blanche isn't confirmed — a threat aimed squarely at Tillis and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who want firmer guarantees the fund is dead before they'll move his nomination forward.

Thune has avoided confrontation with the president, and Republicans are still working to pass a bipartisan stopgap funding bill and the Russia sanctions package championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

The accumulation of quiet nos — from Tillis, Cornyn, Murkowski, Collins and Thune himself — shows party leadership has become increasingly willing to tell Trump what he doesn't want to hear, even as they try not to say so out loud.